We are pleased to announce our new Sigma Tau Delta, Iota Chi Chapter, board members for the 2013-2014 academic year!
Eric Barnhart: President
Gina Srmabekian: Vice President
Jaclyn Hymes: Secretary
Trista Payte: Treasurer
Hannah Jorgenson: Press Secretary
Evelyn Giebler: Secretary of New Membership
Laura Dunlap: Historian
Michael Dunbar: Chapter Liaison
Want to know more? Click on “Meet the 2013-14 Board” to the left, or follow this link.
We have all been hard at work already lining up some great events, fundraisers, and community service opportunities. Stay tuned to the blog as we’ll post more information as it becomes available!
Because Sigma Tau Delta, the Associated Graduate Students of English, and the Northridge Creative Writing Circle all love each other so very much, and all love working together even more, we have decided to combine forces and have one giant party of a final meeting to celebrate the end of the semester.
So here’s the plan. We will meet at 3:15pm in JR319 and each club will take care of their end of the year business, in a systematic and orderly fashion.
And then, most importantly, the members of the three clubs can mix and mingle, catching up with old friends, making some new ones, and celebrating our love of all things English-y!
There will be STILL be snacks and fun and frivolity…but now there will be 3x more of it!
So join us, for a bit of business and then a whole lot of celebration. Because we have reached the end of one helluva semester, and we definitely have much to celebrate.
Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi will be holding the last meeting of the semester at CSUN on Friday, December 7th, at 3:00 pm in Sierra Tower room 703. We’ve got big items on the agenda, such as community service, fundraising, and (of course) our fabulous conference that’s coming up in April.
Attached are the minutes for our open Sigma Tau Delta meeting on October 3rd. We encourage all members who weren’t able to attend to review the minutes. There are some great ideas cooking in there, and we could use your input!
We at Sigma Tau Delta are all about supporting other programs and organizations in our wonderful CSUN Department of English. Here is an event that we are happy to promote, which we think you would all benefit from attending:
This Fall, the English Department Brown Bag Series will spotlight new faculty members.
Next Monday, 10/15, the Brown Bag Series will feature an academic panel with Dr. Lauren Byler, Dr. Nate Mills, and Dr. Danielle Spratt. The panel is scheduled from 2:30 to 4:00 PM in the LNJ Reading Room (JR 319).
Dr. Lauren Byler holds a Ph.D. from Tufts University and has published articles on Dickens and Trollope. She joined the CSUN faculty in Fall 2012.
Dr. Nate Mills holds a Ph.D. from University of Michigan, where his dissertation won the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award and the Clarence D. Thorpe Dissertation Prize. He has published articles on Baldwin, Cleaver, and Ellison and joined the CSUN faculty in Fall 2011.
Dr. Danielle Spratt holds a Ph.D. from Fordham University and has published articles on Gulliver, Gaddick, and Siddons. She serves as FYI/JYI Adviser and joined the CSUN faculty in Fall 2011.
Drs. Byler, Mills, and Spratt will give a brief informal talk with an overview of their research, scholarship, and publications, followed by an open forum Q & A with students for advice on graduate applications, teaching practices, and professional development.
ALL are welcome to attend!
This is a great chance to meet some of the newer professors in the department and learn about issues like graduate school, PhD programs, and publication. It’s also a great chance to rub elbows with other English students and organizations; the presidents of Sigma Tau Delta, AGSE, and the Northridge Creative Writing Circle will all be there.
One of the many perks of membership in Sigma Tau Delta is the opportunity to compete for exclusive scholarships. The current board of the Iota Chi chapter would love to see some of these scholarships go to our Iota Chi members here at CSUN!
Scholarship applications are due on October 29th.
Please take a moment to look at the available scholarships and see whether you or someone you know might be eligible!
Before applying for a scholarship (with the exception of the Alumni Epsilon Scholarship), a student must be nominated by his or her chapter. (Contact us if you are interested in applying for a scholarship so that we can start the nomination process.)
Students may apply for more than one scholarship.
All applicants will be required to submit an electronic copy of their most recent college transcript(s). A transcript may be scanned and saved as a PDF (the preferred file format). JPEG, GIF, and PNG saved as 100 DPI or less are also accepted file formats.
Applicants will need two letters of recommendation. At least one recommendation must be written by a college English Department faculty member. Students will use the email recommender request process built into the STARS Online submission process.
In addition to general eligibility requirements, each scholarship and academic award may have specific eligibility criteria.
Tonight we held our first open meeting of the 2012-2013 academic year. Thank you so much to all who came! The meeting was quite productive. Minutes will be posted soon, but in the meantime, here is a brief recap of some of tonight’s meeting highlights:
1) Our last garage sale was quite successful, so we will be hosting another garage sale at the end of this month! It will take place on Saturday, October 27th – keep your eyes out for a Facebook event invitation where you will find the address. We could use your help! We would love for people to help us work at the garage sale or to help with promotion, and we really need your donations! Help a good cause and help yourself get some extra closet space! Get rid of your old furniture, clothes, and baby items. (Also, what sold particularly well last time was electronics.) If you’ve got something to donate but can’t drive to the sale to drop it off, contact any Sigma Tau Delta member (you can find us on Facebook) and we will arrange to pick it up from you or find a local dropoff point.
As you can see, we even had a celebrity appearance at our last garage sale.
2) We tossed around ideas for possible Sigma Tau Delta merchandise, and we came up with some great stuff. Hopefully we will have cool STD swag available soon!
3) We also discussed some ideas for faculty-led workshops that we’d like to host, covering topics like “How to Write a CV” and “What do you do with a BA in English?” Stay tuned for more on those. If you have any suggestions for a workshop that would interest you, please let us know.
4) Finally, and most excitingly, we revealed the big news we’ve been sitting on for a while now:
Details on the Sigma Tau Delta Conference at CSUN in the Spring
Date: Saturday, April 27th, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Aimee Bender
As you can see, we even had a celebrity appearance at our last garage sale.
We are beyond excited to have Ms. Bender joining us at our conference! For those unfamiliar, she is a novelist and short story writer, known for her surrealist style. You can find out more about her on her official page, and of course, on Wikipedia. If you haven’t read her work and you’d like to before the conference, we highly encourage it!
Conference theme: The exact wording is not set in stone yet, but we are thinking “Between Worlds,” with a focus on hybridity, the interstitial, surrealism, post colonial, dystopia, fantasy, alternate realities… We are working on a Call for Papers and will have the exact details out to you as soon as possible!
All of our fundraising goes to support activities like our amazing conference. The opportunity to participate in creating and planning an event like this is one of the great benefits of being a member of this organization. The workshops, conference, and events belong to all of our members. Please don’t be shy – get involved!
Details on the next open meeting will be announced; keep your eyes on Facebook for a poll to help us figure out the best possible date and time.
Come and join us at Chili’s in Northridge to hang out, meet fellow bibliophiles, and celebrate the start of another academic year. The fundraiser will be from 6:00pm – 11:00pm at the Chili’s right by campus. Walk on over after your evening classes!
Bring one of our fliers, and Chili’s will donate 15% of the sales* to our organization. Click here to download: Sigma Tau Delta
(If you aren’t able to print the flier, you can find some on the Sigma Tau Delta bulletin board on the 7th floor of Sierra Tower at CSUN, or find one of your friendly neighborhood STD officers at Chili’s on Thursday.)
*Booze counts, too!
The cheesy fries… they are calling you.
Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi will use the money raised to fund our upcoming sure-to-be-awesome conference, as well as community service projects. So please come out and celebrate with us!
It may be the middle of summer, but the Sigma Tau Delta board members are planning for the upcoming academic year with a vengeance!
We look more literary in black and white.
We had a very productive (and Nutella-fueled) board meeting on Monday, and made headway on some very exciting projects. Here are a few juicy tidbits for you:
We have confirmed a date for the Sigma Tau Delta conference! It will be on Saturday, April 27th. Mark your calendars! We can’t say anything now, but a fabulous guest speaker is in the works and we are seriously excited.
Sigma Tau Delta is hosting a back-to-school mixer on Thursday, August 30th, from 6:00 – 11:00 pm at the Chili’s near CSUN. Come, bring friends, meet other STD members, and toast the the start of a new semester! Make sure to print and bring one of the flyers found here in order to participate in the fundraiser:Sigma Tau Delta Chilis Flyer (<- click to download)
Other events on the calendar include a rummage sale fundraiser, most likely on the weekend of September 15th and 16th. More details will be forthcoming.
We do hope you’re all having a fantastic summer and that you’ll start the Fall semester feeling energized and motivated. Hopefully you’ve all found the time this summer to read a few books from your own personal reading lists.
As the summer slips away and the academic year begins, keep your eye on Sigma Tau Delta. We’ve got big plans!
