Graduate Linguistics Circle

The Graduate Linguistics Circle (GLC) is a registered UCLA student organization. The purpose of the GLC is to provide a forum for the organized discussion and representation of graduate student opinions on any matter affecting the UCLA Linguistics department, and to provide a means whereby students can elect representatives to attend faculty meetings and serve on student-faculty committees. In addition, the GLC also serves as a forum for social and scholarly events. Full voting membership in the GLC is open to all students in the graduate linguistics program. The GLC generally meets once a quarter. We strongly encourage all students to attend these meetings and to become involved in departmental activities and concerns.

Executive Committee

The GLC Executive Committee is comprised of a President, Vice-President, and Secretary. Members of this committee serve as the official representatives of the GLC at faculty meetings. In this capacity, their primary responsibility is to voice student concerns and represent student interests. The members of the Executive Committee are elected in the Spring quarter for the following year. Individual responsibilities of are:

  • President: conducts GLC meetings and manages GLC business between meetings
  • Vice-President: provides assistance to the President and conducts GLC meetings in the President’s absence
  • Secretary: takes minutes at GLC meetings and coordinates publicity of GLC functions, including meeting announcements

Committees and positions

Departmental policies are made by the faculty in cooperation with the graduate student body. Accordingly, student representatives are elected to the various departmental committees. Student input is taken very seriously by the faculty, and participation in committee work is important and rewarding. The GLC organizes a number of permanent committees which coordinate various events and aspects of the department as well as a number of permanent individual positions which handle smaller tasks. Ad hoc committees and positions are constituted as necessary. The responsibilities of various permanent committees and positions are summarized below.

Permanent committees

Colloquium committee

4–6 students, 1 faculty; committee work begins in Spring quarter in order to begin plans for the next academic year. This committee

  • Solicits requests for speakers and organizes voting thereon
  • Contacts potential speakers and arranges a date and faculty host for visits
  • Keeps track of invited speaker budget
  • Circulates quarterly lists of Colloquium speakers, gives updates on Colloquia during the quarter, and announces individual Colloquia
  • Maintains contact with invited speakers in order to solicit abstracts of talks for circulation at the appropriate time and apprises speakers of time, place, and facilities for their talks
  • Makes arrangements for social activities associated with the Colloquium, e.g., lunch, individual meetings, drinks

Open House committee

6–8 students; committee work is entirely in Winter quarter. This committee organizes and is comprised of three subcommittees:

  • Scheduling: collects personal meeting availabilities from faculty and organizes individual prospective student schedules
  • Housing/transport: solicits hosts and drivers from current graduate students, collects travel information from prospective students, matches prospective students with hosts, and organizes transportation to and from graduate student hosts
  • Food: organizes restaurant choices for department-catered events, the pre-OH evening dinner, and the OH party; transports food to and from the OH party; organizes group lunches with graduate students for prospective students

Faculty feedback committee

At least 3 students; committee work is intermittent and membership is anonymous. This committee

  • receives quarterly news from faculty about which faculty members are up for personnel review (promotion or tenure)
  • solicits and compiles anonymous feedback from grad students about faculty
  • further anonymizes feedback and writes a feedback letter for submission to the (faculty) personnel review committee
  • gives feedback letters to President to sign on behalf of the GLC

GSLO signatories

Three students; responsible for obtaining funding for student-organized conferences and events that benefit the university as well as the department.

Website committee

3 students. This committee does not have a regular function but exists as an entity with administrative website power. It is responsible for this webpage.

Party committees

Department parties such as the Halloween/Fall quarter party and the 5k/Spring quarter party are also organized by grad students. The President coordinates with faculty to determine place and time. These committees comprise a variable number of students and subcommittees depending on the party. Subcommittees include: Food, Setup, Cleanup, T-shirt, Certificate.

Permanent positions

GSA Representative

The GSA Representative represents the GLC at meetings of the Graduate Student Association, the campus-wide graduate student organization. The primary responsibility of the GSA Representative is to present GLC requests for funds to the GSA. They also buy amenities (tea, coffee, coffee filters) using these funds and stocks the reading room with them.

Job search committee members

1–2 graduate students serve as committee members on Job search committees when the department conducts a job search. These students are not permanently elected to this position but are instead chosen on a search-by-search basis. Preference is given to students who are going on the job market soon, who share the same areal interests as the search, and who have not been on a Job search committee before. Their responsibilities are to review applications, attend committee meetings, participate in candidate interviews, and have/share one vote on search related votes. Either they or the President will represent the overall graduate student opinion at some faculty meetings relating to the search.

Blogmaster

The Blogmaster updates the website blog with grad student achievements such as grants, publications, talks, and conference presentations/attendance.

Reading Room/Kitchen Fairy:

The Reading Room Fairy and Kitchen Fairy maintain the neatness and cleanliness of their respective domains. They do not clean, but rather remind students to throw out old food, clean the coffee grinder after use, etc.

Roundtable Conte(ssa)

The Roundtable Counte(ssa) organizes talks for students if there is no availability in the area seminars, if the seminar meeting times are inconvenient, or if asked. They book the room for the talk and provide publicity — i.e., they email the listserv.

Desk Czar:

The Desk Czar assigns desks to students and visiting students. They maintain a list of current desk assignments, collect preferences from current students, and run a nonstochastic OT eval of preferences to determine next year’s assignments.

GLC Bylaws

The GLC has bylaws which help it operate more efficiently and equitably. The most current version of the GLC bylaws can be found here: GLC bylaws (Fall 2020).