A Message from SAGE (continued)

By Elise Vist and Emma Vossen

We started off 2014 with several social gatherings, including the Orientation party (which featured tasty snacks and beer), a Thanksgiving Potluck (where people got crafty), and an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. We followed this up in the Winter semester with our Annual General Meeting, a Poetry night, and a trip to a local brewery with Wilfrid Laurier’s English/Film Studies department. We now offer funding for social and professional events held and attended by English grad students, where organizers can apply for up to $75 to host an event intended to encourage socializing and networking between English graduates. We’re currently working on offering more professional and academic workshops, including our CV-Writing workshop, which we held in two parts in April and an Area Exam QA scheduled for June 30th.

In the fall, we sent out a comprehensive survey to all members, gathering data on subjects like student satisfaction in coursework, teaching and TA-ing, and area exams. Using the data from this survey, we have presented reports to the Graduate Studies Committee on our suggestions for improving area exams and the dissertation proposal. Finally, SAGE has created a position on the executive for an International Student Representative in order to ensure that SAGE Executive is best able to serve our members!

We are looking forward to working closely with the Graduate Studies Committee on these projects.

For more information about our graduate studies program, please see: https://uwaterloo.ca/english/future-graduate-students