Rumors...

Two rumors that I have mentioned to a few people. Both matters should be more clear in the coming weeks:

* The Graduate School is currently considering new guidelines for funding conference travel, research travel, and the like. I have seen only a draft of these, and do not know if the procedures will be put into place during this year. The draft that I saw would make available to graduate students the same amount of funding that they have received in the past, and the procedures would not be very different from what we have done in the department. However, there would be a cap on the number of conferences for which a student would be funded over the course of his or her career. (That number still seems to be up for debate.) If these go into effect for this year, then I imagine that you will be hearing more about this sometime in December. However, I don't think it's anything to worry about.

* The department will probably be searching in this coming year for someone to oversee the first-year writing courses. When the ad goes to MLA Job List, I'll post it here. This is the only new search that the department will initiate this year. However, the department will be continuing the search for the Longstreet Chair (in African American literature) initiated last year.

Speaking of the Longstreet chair, one thing that you will notice is that when Longstreet candidates come to campus they will not be publicly identified (on fliers or Google calendar notices) as such. This is a courtesy that I have seen almost always extended to candidates in senior searches. The idea is that a person who already has a position will not want his or her home institution to find out that he or she is a candidate for another job -- at least not until he or she has it. Of course, rumors fly regardless....