1. Irina Burukina, core member
2. Marcel den Dikken, core member
3. Ekaterina Georgieva, core member
4. Zoltán G. Kiss, core member, chair
5. Mark Newson, core member
6. Péter Őri, core member
7. Attila Starcevic, core member
8. Péter Szigetvári, core member
9. Miklós Törkenczy, core member

• Viktória Dóra Tóth, departmental secretary
• Rami Alwardat, doctoral student
• Mohamad Ali Khalil, doctoral student
• Bálint Péter Hornisch, teaching assistant
• Viktória Pesti, teaching assistant

1. Nathaniel Torres has exused himself.
2. G. Kiss welcomes the Department and starts the online meeting by introducing the new department secretary, Viktória Dóra Tóth, who will be working in room 408, but of course she will be fully available to the Department the usual ways. Room 301 remains the DELG office, the two working PCs and the printers there remain to be available to this department.
3. G. Kiss announces that Nathan Torres is now employed full time as a lector until the end of August. The plan is to transform this status to assistant lecturer after August.
4. G. Kiss announces that SEAS will have a new secretary as Barbara Papp is leaving at the end of February. The new secretary will also be managing the administration of the Department of American Studies.
5. G. Kiss informs the Department that the official faculty homepage (https://www.btk.elte.hu/szervezetek/angol-nyelveszet-tanszek) should now contain the correct information about the Department. G. Kiss urges everyone to check and validate their data in the Stratégiai Adatbázis as the data there is what is automatically imported into the homepage.
6. The exam period, including the final exams, seem to have finished without any major problems, despite there being only two buildings available.
7. G. Kiss informs the Department about the seminar course group numbers for the spring semester. The average number of students is around 16 everywhere, except in the syntax seminars where the average is 18.4, the quota in six groups had to be raised to 20, which is not optimal for seminar groups. Newson says smaller desks could be placed in room 327 to arrange the desks more optimally. G. Kiss asks Viktória Tóth to check the availability of smaller desks.
8. G. Kiss reminds the Department about the registration periods, which can be found at https://qter.elte.hu/Statikus.aspx/Idorend
9. Törkenczy suggests that PhD elective courses be decided on early, preferably at the same time as the BA/MA specialisation courses are decided on. Optimally, there should be one syntax and one phonology elective course to be advertised in advance every semester.
10. G. Kiss reports that there are nine linguistics thesis titles that were submitted and haven’t been defended yet, therefore, nine theses are expected to be submitted and defended this semester. There are six potential theses on phonology, two on syntax, one on translation.
11. G. Kiss reports that during the latest Institute Council meeting Éva Szabó from the Dpt of American studies raised the idea that passing rate levels for seminar/examination marks should be perhaps unified within departments, and even perhaps the whole Institute. This idea may be considered and discussed later in the Institute meetings but it is difficult to see a uniform application of it.
12. Irina Burukina raised the issue of special needs students, namely, that some training for teachers would be useful to learn about teaching methodology involving such students. Starcevic suggested people from the Institute that may offer some information on this.
13. Newson expresses his concern of the potential use of AI during the Linguistic Theory MA course online examination. The Department agrees that the topics and the examination of this course need reconsideration; the issue will be returned to in the future.

minutes kept by Zoltán G. Kiss
verified by Péter Szigetvári

Budapest, 2024-02-21