I am so excited to introduce myself as an incoming co-chair of the 2019-2020 AAAL Graduate Student Council (GSC) Steering Committee! A professional organization such as ours serves many purposes, but one that I find most important is that it provides us membership in a community. As a graduate student, I have benefited from my membership in this community and the supports developed specifically for us. For example, I signed up for the Conference Connections at AAAL 2019 and was lucky enough to have Dr. Suresh Canagarajah assigned as my mentor. The advice, encouragement, and insight that was shared over a coffee break has already had a positive influence on me and I will continue to value the experience throughout my career. For graduate students at universities with a small, or nonexistent, population of applied linguistics enthusiasts, membership in this community is crucial. Therefore, it is both a pleasure and honor to serve in this community.
This past year, I served as a member of the 2018-2019 Social Media Sub-Committee, which was led by James Coda. We organized three webinars, Preparing Documents for the Job Market, Navigating Academia as a Minority Scholar, and Preparing for the Conference: Strategies for Maximizing your Experience. I emailed potential webinar speakers, created flyers, created the opening slideshow, and compiled audience questions for the moderator. As a member of the Social Media Sub-Committee, I also updated the website design and social media banners to be visually cohesive and to follow the AAAL design standards. At the 2019 conference, I managed the GSC Twitter account by tweeting and retweeting your great photographs and thoughts.
During the conference, I met with Rayoung Song, the former co-chair whose role I will be filling, and we discussed all of my new responsibilities. One specific responsibility that I am looking forward to is organizing the AAAL GSC Design Competition. The proceeds from this competition support the Fund for the Future of Applied Linguistics. I was one of the winners of the Design Competition this past year and am eager to participate in a new capacity by encouraging you to submit and by seeing your creativity shine.
Looking forward, I hope to continue the wonderful work that the GSC Steering Committee has done thus far. I hope to strengthen our community by increasing opportunities for meaningful engagement and the development of collegial relationships. I look forward to interacting with you in the upcoming year!
