From the Chair: Graduate Program Updates

In response to popular demand, I will let you all know what's what in terms of John Lucaites and Mary Gray and what their new professional situations mean to the Graduate Program.

Mary (who will be on leave from IU for a while and working at Microsoft Research in Boston) is still available to be on graduate exam and dissertation committees as a co-chair or a committee member. She will be returning to teach an advanced undergraduate course in fall 2013, and, depending on what can be arranged, she may be able to offer a graduate section of this course, or to arrange to co-teach graduate seminars with other faculty. If students develop projects that intersect with what Mary will be doing at Microsoft Research, she will do what she can to support this work--which could be everything from having them out to Boston/Microsoft for a visit, to meeting with these students when she's in Bloomington, to conducting Skype discussions with these students. The two student committees that she now chairs--and that involve digital media topics--will remain at IU in CMCL. They are not coming to Microsoft Research with Mary. Microsoft Research has agreed to pay for these students' remaining years in the program because they have been working with Mary as the chair of their committees and Microsoft wanted to make certain that they could continue to work with Mary while she was at Microsoft Research. So, all-in-all, Mary will be available as a mentor in many capacities while she is at Microsoft and when she returns periodically to IU to teach courses.

The Dean has agreed that John (who is the new Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities) can teach one course during summer 2013 -- C513: "Rhetoric and Judgment" -- and that, assuming that this works out to everyone's satisfaction, the Dean will let John continue to teach a graduate course each summer. We are all assuming this arrangement will work out very well, and John already has plans to teach "Visual Citizenship" in the summer of 2014. He will also continue to serve as a graduate advisor to his current students as well as to others who would like to work with him--as always, this will be a matter of "fit" with regard to John's agreeing to work with new students as an advisor, on special projects, or as chair or committee member on exams and dissertations. Where appropriate, John will also consider independent studies courses, though this will have to be managed carefully and kept to a minimum. He also plans to hold office hours in CMCL twice each week to meet with students. As with Mary--and all things considered--John will also be available to CMCL graduate students in most of the ways he was before he accepted the position of Associate Dean.

I would like to thank both John and Mary for being so generous in making themselves available to the CMCL Graduate Program even though they have new full-time positions outside of CMCL.

Best, Alex