[current members only]
Elections for the board of directors for the Consortium on Graduate Communication are now open.
Please click here to access the ballot.
Voting will end on March 22, 2022 at 11:55 pm EST.
The following positions are on the ballot: Treasurer, Secretary, and Member at Large (two positions). The Treasurer will serve a term of four years. The Secretary will serve a term of two years. Members-at-large will serve two-year terms. The terms begins on July 1, 2022.
The slate of candidates for each position is included below (it can also be viewed on the ballot).
Treasurer
Steve Simpson
Professor of Communication, Dean of Arts & Sciences, New Mexico Tech
Steve Simpson came to New Mexico Tech to create and administer communication support programs for graduate students. Someone looked at him and said, now here’s a guy who likes administration. And now he’s the Dean of Arts and Sciences and oversees all departments and programs related to the physical sciences, humanities and social sciences, and education.
In my first term as treasurer, I learned that we still had a lot of work to do to document our financial processes to enable smooth transitions from one treasurer to another. I hope to use this next term to create a better system so that we are not so reliant on one person with a lot of institutional knowledge to make things work, which is an important part of our organization becoming stable and sustainable.
Secretary
Rachael Cayley
Associate Professor (Teaching Stream), University of Toronto
Rachael Cayley teaches academic writing and speaking to graduate students at the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) at the University of Toronto. Before joining GCAC in 2007, she worked as an editor at Oxford University Press in Toronto. She has a PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. Rachael blogs about graduate writing at Explorations of Style.
I have been a member-at-large since 2020. I am now interested in the role of secretary because I would like to continue to contribute to the work of the Board. The past two years have, of course, required the CGC to alter its ways of interacting with the membership; the organization has clearly demonstrated its capacity to provide valuable resources, intellectual support, and community, online as well as in-person. As secretary, I will support this ongoing work of the Board by keeping organized records and facilitating regular meetings. In addition to the established duties of the secretary, I would like to work on creating clearer guidance for new members-at-large as they join the Board.
Member at Large
Heather Boldt
Interim Director, English Language Support Program, Emory University
Heather Boldt is Interim Director of the English Language Support Program at Emory University. She works with international graduate students and researchers, helping them advance their academic and professional language skills, and also serves as Emory’s 3MT® coach. She is passionate about professional development, with experience serving on International TESOL’s Awards Professional Council, as SETESOL program chair and Business Council member, and 5 years on the Georgia TESOL board, including as conference chair and president.
After many years of TESOL conferences, I was thrilled when CGC formed and convened in Toronto. Since I work almost exclusively with graduate students, I felt like I had finally found my people. As a board member, I hope to help CGC continue to thrive and grow as the professional forum for sharing research, resources, and best practices in graduate communication. With 16 years’ experience teaching in a program housed within a graduate school, I can bring my perspective as an instructor and teacher trainer. I have also served in the director role and therefore have experience as an administrator and curriculum designer to share. Finally, I have extensive experience on the boards of professional development organizations. With Georgia TESOL, I served as president, conference chair, program chair, and member-at-at large. I recently completed a 3-year term on TESOL’s Awards Professional Committee and hope to now turn my attention to serving CGC.
Melinda Harrison
Lecturer and Graduate Faculty, Auburn University at Montgomery
Melinda teaches international graduate student support courses at Auburn University at Montgomery. She is completing a mixed-methods dissertation, titled “Second Language Socialization of International Students in a Master of Public Health Program,” at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she also teaches graduate courses in TESOL.
I envision CGC expanding our membership as well as our website and consortium resources.
First, we can expand our relevance to support a broader range of contexts for graduate student communications, which is consistent with our 2022 theme, Expanding Perspectives in Graduate Communication. Because of the recent increase in motivations for institutions of higher education to internationalize (Seeber et al., 2016), graduate communication and support is a concern at a wider variety of institutions globally. There is an opportunity for us to expand our membership and offer networking and resources to those providing graduate communications support at a wider variety of institutions.
Second, I envision CGC expanding our perspectives by providing more discipline-specific resources and networking opportunities, beyond general academic communications. I would like to propose that we expand our shared resources on our website and at our annual consortium to include a broader range of specific academic areas.
Please click here to access the ballot.
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