Happy Friday, folks, as we head into October. This is the month of pumpkin spice everything, the month of falling leaves, and the month of shortening days. And this is the month where we pass the half-way mark on fall semester. It has been a whirlwind so far, right?
We continue to have much to celebrate.
Evan has a new essay in the online journal Flow. “Live Piracy: New/Old Directions in TV Flow” http://www.flowjournal.org/2017/10/live-piracy/.
Many of you have seen that Tom will receive the New Investigator Award from NCA’s Critical Cultural Studies Division in November. We are rocking and rolling NCA!
We are also into alumni panel season in the department and are hosting two next week – same time and same place:

Wednesday, October 11, 2:00-2:50 LSC 304-306
Thursday, October 12, 2:00-2:50 LSC 304-305

We have, as always, amazing guests. On Wednesday Kathleen Pitre (’00) Savanah Svoboda (’12), and Kurt Schwartzkopf (’92) will join us. On Thursday we will have Hannah Vancuren (’12), Garrett Hayes (’12, ’15) and Nicole Laydon (’02, ’04). While the panels target our Capstone students, all of our community is invited. Send your students!
After a great first Conversations for Community (C4C) event with our undergraduates, we are ready to plan our November C4C.  We would like to have a few faculty volunteers briefly discuss their current research and share ways that they have/could involve undergraduates in their projects.  We will also highlight opportunities for undergraduates to present their research both on campus and at conferences.  If you are interested in participating in this, please let Elizabeth know.  We’ll coordinate a date and time based on participants’ availability.
Katie is hosting the Tenure and Promotion Party in celebration of Elizabeth’s promotion to associate professor and tenure and Scott’s promotion to Full Professor. The party will be replete with the lighting of the Tenure and Promotion Torch.
We host these parties whenever someone earns tenure with promotion or promotion to full partly to celebrate the individual achievements of our faculty. But we also host them in recognition that these achievements are embedded in community. Our scholarship and teaching and service always and necessarily depend on our community. We read each other’s essays, we visit each other’s classes, we have conversations about how our professional—and our personal—lives are going. Without each other we would not have the successes each of us has as individuals. I just believe that is true.
Yours,
Greg