The Graduate Students in English Association is run by and for graduate students in the department. The GSEA organizes the annual (dis)junctions graduate conference and CINtax film festival produces the annual directory of faculty and graduate students, and funds mini-grants to partially defray conference travel expenses. In addition, the GSEA sponsors a mentoring program for incoming graduate students, helps with orientation, and organizes graduate students' roles in recruiting applicants and admits to the program.
The GSEA also organizes three department parties each year and holds a series of fund-raising events among other activities, including bowling and karaoke nights. Since 2001, the GSEA has sponsored the Marathon Read on campus.
The GSEA is distinct from the campus wide Graduate Students Association to whose meetings it sends two representatives.
GSEA MISSION STATEMENT
(from the GSEA Bylaws)
The Graduate Students in English Association, hereafter known as GSEA, at the University of California, Riverside, is a body of graduate students annually nominated and elected by the general graduate population of the Department of English. Our primary purpose is to ensure the representation of graduate students' concerns at all relevant levels of the English Department's business.
Ensuring representation includes sitting on or nominating graduate students to all committees whose activities affect any aspect of graduate student life, such as the Graduate Committee, the campus-wide Graduate Student Association, the Committee on Writing Courses, and the meetings of the English Department, to name a few. We also work to support and/or to maintain certain important practices that have evolved at the department, such as the English Department Book Sale, the Graduate Directory, and the annual Graduate Student Conference.
Most importantly, GSEA acts as an intermediary between the graduate students of this department and the institutional mechanisms that run it. Our main objective is to act as a voice for graduate students, whether we are actually speaking for the feelings of the overall graduate population or we are reporting the concerns of a small group within the graduate community. We of the GSEA will always first and foremost listen to all members of the graduate student body that elected us and will attempt to put those concerns expressed to us by our constituents at the front of all other agendas.
President: Alan Lovegreen
Vice President: Regis Mann
Secretary: Gretchen Bartels
Treasurer: Giulia Hoffmann
Representatives: Dahlie Conferido, Kristin Noone, Katy Warren