minutes of the 2024-09-17 meeting of the Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
participants
voting members
- Erika Asztalos, core member
- Flóra Lili Donáti, core member
- Zoltán G. Kiss, core member, chair
- Mark Newson, core member
- Péter Őri, core member
- Attila Starcevic, core member
- Péter Szigetvári, core member
- Nathaniel Torres, core member
- Miklós Törkenczy, core member
non-voting members
- Norbert Krek-Polyák, departmental secretary
- Luca Garai, doctoral student
- Mohamad Ali Khalil, doctoral student
- Firas Shbeeb, doctoral student
- Rei Iwai, teaching assistant
- Dominika Vozár, teaching assistant
- Elizaveta Zubenko, teaching assistant
- Vilmos Kovács, student representative
agenda
- G. Kiss welcomes the Department and starts the online meeting by introducing the new core members, Flóra Lili Donáti, who fills in Krisztina Szécsényi’s vacated position as a full-time lecturer, and Erika Asztalos, who is in a half position as a lecturer while Marcel den Dikken and Irina Burukina are on leave. Donáti and Asztalos report that their courses have started without major issues, but some seminar groups are too large.
- G. Kiss also introduces the new department secretary, Norbert Krek-Polyák. Viktória Tóth, will now solely be DELP’s secretary.
- G. Kiss also welcomes the new teaching assistants, who briefly introduce themselves and their research interests. Zubenko asks if a BA thesis can have potentially two supervisors, Starcevic promises to look into it.
- G. Kiss tells the new TAs that OTDK will be next year, and suggests they participate in it. Local TDK rounds should take place this autumn. Őri tells the Department he will have more information soon.
- G. Kiss reports that the new term did not start as smoothly as usual. Problems occurred with some room bookings, and a few seminar group quotas have been raised by the instructors to very high numbers. G. Kiss reminds everyone of the memos that were sent out cautioning against raising the quotas too much, primarily because the Department’s classes should be filled in next semester, too, and for seminars, quotas over 18–20 are not healthy. The Department agrees that seminar group quotas should not be raised over 20. Szigetvári suggests that the Department secretary should perhaps administer the group quotas of all seminar groups. G. Kiss also mentions that occasionally some group quotas have to be raised to let in Erasmus students, who often register for courses late. Starcevic informs the Department the Erasmus students have to be taken in always, even over quota, if they want to join a group.
- G. Kiss tells the Department that student numbers in Introduction to Linguistics seminars have been always higher in the autumn than in the spring, and that this may well be due to the fact that students think that they can only take it in the autumn, based on what Tanegységlista contains, even though the course is offered in the spring, too. G. Kiss will initiate that Tanegységlista records this course to be “1/2”, i.e. one that can be taken in the first or second semester.
- G. Kiss informs the Department that the Institute Council may decide that it does not require for teachers to be mandatory that they give the opportunity to improve seminar fail marks in the first two weeks of the exam period if a student indicates their intention to do so. The IC will vote on this issue in the future. G. Kiss says that he will vote in support of this.
- G. Kiss also informs the Department that IC asks every instructor that they let the students know about the antidiscrimination policy that can be found on the SEAS website at the start of the semester (eg a link can be included in the syllabus). The guidelines will also include a new section on harassment.
- G. Kiss lets the Department know that Dániel Cseh will resign as Institute secretary, and a new person will be required to take his post.
- G. Kiss also informs the Department that the Student Poster Presentation Conference will likely to be overseen by different departments each year in rotation, which means that DELG will have to do it soon.
minutes kept by Zoltán G. Kiss
verified by Péter Szigetvári
Budapest, 2024-09-17