Important News on Conference Funding

A letter from our president, Holly Spofford…

Dear EGSA,

Dr. Russell has asked me to let you know that our conference funding for this semester is drying up—so many of us have travelled to conferences that Dr. Gardner said he can probably fund (at best) one or two more students for conference presentations. It’s a good sign, since it means that we’re doing a great job getting to conferences! But it does affect those of us who are planning on conference travel this semester and haven’t gotten funding from the English department yet, so stay tuned . . .

First, some important things to note about this:

• It isn’t just grad students: faculty members are also almost out of travel funding.
• Funding resets in June, so summer/fall conference funding will not be affected.
• We can still get the usual funding from the graduate school.
• Some conferences offer funding for grad students, so we might be able to apply for funding directly from the conference.

Second, if you are adversely affected by this, please let me know, and ASAP (ideally by Tuesday evening). For example, let me know if you have already committed to conference travel and will now have to fund it yourself or you were planning to get to a conference this spring and will now have to back out. Dr. Russell and I are working together to figure out how to avoid this in the future, so this info will be invaluable in figuring out a plan for this semester and for future years.

Thanks so much, y’all!

Holly Spofford