Every spring semester graduate students are asked to nominate and elect three graduate students to serve as officers of the English Graduate Student Association. The elected officers serve for the course of the following academic year.
Typically, EGSA uses the designations President, Vice President, and Treasurer as titles for each officer. Some years, officers have decided to share the workload equally, without regard to these titles. In more than one case, the officers chose to assign new titles that reflected their sharing of the workload.
Officers should be committed and prepared to organize events and stay in contact with all graduate students on an ongoing basis. While they often make it look easy, their behind the scenes work involves: surveying graduate students via e-mail or printed memos, writing proposals in accordance with Graduate Colloquium Guidelines, advertising all events with flyers, posters, and word of mouth, writing letters to speakers before and after engagements, working with the graduate director on various issues, contacting professors to see if they can lead workshops, updating information such as this website, writing articles for the EGSAStencil Newsletter and producing the newsletter, making phone calls, keeping records of paperwork, and holding planning meetings. As one former officer put it, "I'm not going to lie to you, it's a lot of work."
At the same time, serving as an EGSA officer is a wonderful opportunity to get to know more graduate students and professors and to serve the department in a meaningful way. One former officer said, "Gathering our large and diverse group of graduate students together was a challenge, but in the process I met a lot of people and felt more like I was part of a community." Officers also report feeling encouraged by faculty support: "It was great to see how faculty were willing to work with EGSA to create workshops and lectures that graduate students would find beneficial." Serving on EGSA also provides officers a chance to learn about how administration works at the level of both the department and the university. "I learned skills that I'm sure I will use in my future education career," reported one former president. Serving on EGSA also provides an opportunity to put some of those great ideas you have into action. Finally, serving as an EGSA officer gives you a chance to have the "inside scoop" on English Department functions and events, to meet the scholars delivering lectures, and know faculty and administrators in other departments.