At the business meeting of MACSIM 4, we decided that it would be beneficial to pool our collective knowledge and practices, and develop a list of MACSIM FAQs, which can serve as a resource for future MACSIM hosts, participating schools, presenters. These FAQs are the result of an open exchange and a collective decision-making process involving faculty among the MACSIM participating schools. They can be amended and/or elaborated upon as necessary.
What is MACSIM?
Where and when does MACSIM take place?
How many students can present?
How are student presenters selected?
Is there any funding for presenters?
Are advanced undergraduates and post-docs eligible to present?
What happens when there are open presenter slots?
MACSIM stands for the Mid-Atlantic Colloquium of Studies in Meaning. It is a day-long regional workshop related to studies in language and meaning, relatively broadly speaking. There are eight participating schools, stretching along the Northeast Corridor. These include (from North to South) NYU, CUNY, Rutgers, Penn, Delaware, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, and Georgetown. The idea behind MACSIM was to build a community among linguistic researchers investigating meaning in the mid-Atlantic region. Each school has at least one faculty representative, and can send a group of students to present each year. Each year, there is one invited speaker, who typically hails from one of the eight participating schools.
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Where and when does MACSIM take place?
The host of MACSIM alternates among the eight participating schools on a volunteer basis. MACSIM typically takes place every year (with a slight preference for the fall). However, there may be reasons for a school to reconsider when they host MACSIM, given other constraints, such as the timing and location of other conferences and regional events, availability of funding, and other commitments.
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How many students can present?
Each participating school is allocated a certain number of presentation slots, including one talk and the rest posters. Each school may have only one talk. Hosts can typically accommodate as many as three posters. Organizers may modify this number, however, in response to the space, time and funding that is available to them. The number of presenters allowed should be available to the participating schools far enough in advance for planning and selection purposes.
How are student presenters selected?
Student presenters for each school are ultimately decided by the local faculty representatives, although there are different approaches for how this is done. How presenters are selected is up to the individual schools. Faculty have to choose the method that works best for your school, department, faculty and students. We can, however, offer some possible options, which other participating schools have adopted over the last few years. Think of these as models, but not an exhaustive list of suggestions.
- Have faculty select presenters from among the interested students. The choice may be based on various combinations of factors, such as the seniority of the students, the quality of their work, their prior experience at MACSIM, and their need for the opportunity to present the work. Faculty should describe their procedure to students, even if it is subjective and loose.
- Conduct a peer-review process among the graduate students, officially anonymous, overseen by at least one faculty member. Begin the process at least a month before MACSIM. The decision could be based solely on the ratings and feedback, or on some combination of this and other relevant factors, such as those mentioned in (1).
- Have interested students express their interest in presenting to their faculty, and choose presenters by lottery.
The core participating representatives have discussed the availability of options such as centralizing presenter selection or incorporating a peer review process across schools. These options were considered non-optimal, because they induced a competitive aspect into the selection process, which could carry negative consequences for smaller or growing programs, and which may be perceived to go against the inherent collegial nature of MACSIM.
Is there any funding for presenters?
The availability of funds for presenters (typically restricted to compensation for travel expenses) depends primarily on the host school’s available resources. Consequently, the availability of funding may change from year to year. (Faculty travel is typically not covered.) We have been extraordinarily lucky in that for the first four MACSIMs, each host school was able to tap into various funding sources and provide travel funding for graduate student presenters and invited speakers. However, the availability of these funds is never assumed, nor was it assumed at the outset when MACSIM was founded. There are, therefore, a variety of options available where the possibility of travel funding is concerned. Here, we present a few possibilities, which should not be interpreted as an exhaustive list of suggestions, and which will depend on the desires and resources of the host school.
- Provide travel funding for all graduate student presenter (talks and posters), for all travel expenses. Usually, the amount of reimbursement will co-vary with distance.
- (1), but with reimbursement scaled by distance, with a cap for the amount of reimbursement.
- No travel funding provided. (If this option is adopted, it would be beneficial to notify participating schools well in advance, so they could work to secure funding for their student presenters.)
Previous MACSIM hosts have maintained budget and organizing information, which may be shared to facilitate decision making for upcoming MACSIMs.
Are advanced undergraduates and post-docs eligible to present?
By default, our presenters are graduate students. But if a school would like to have an undergraduate, or post-doc, or visitor present in one of the open slots, the relevant faculty should consult with the hosts of that MACSIM to see whether or not this is an option. One thing that must be taken into consideration is whether or not there is a surplus of other graduate students from other participating schools that would eagerly fill the open slots. Undergraduates or post-docs who are co-authors with the graduate presenters and can provide their own travel funding are welcome to attend!
What happens when there are open presenter slots?
Open talk slots will not be filled, and are automatically forfeited. We have found that having less than 8 talks makes it easier to create the schedule, and to maintain a single-day conference. In the case where there are open slots for poster presenters, it is up to the current MACSIM hosts to decide whether they will proceed with a smaller number of poster presenters, or open it up to all participating schools to nominate a maximum of one additional poster presenter. Faculty representatives from schools with more than 3 poster presenter candidates always have the option of contacting the current MACSIM organizers to ask whether having an additional presenter is possible. Whatever the case, there should be a maximum of one additional poster presenter per school.