KYLE M. JOHNSON
STAFF WRITER

CSUSM’s Literature and Writing Department will be holding the school’s first ever Graduate Student Conference on April 28.

The event has given the opportunity for graduate students in MA or PhD programs to submit proposals for their scholarly papers on any subject of the conference’s theme.

While conferences of the same nature are common, this is the first one to take place at CSUSM.

With the help of faculty in the LTWR department, MA students Colleen Stricker and Michelle St. George took it upon themselves to orchestrate the conference.

“The idea for an academic conference is for scholars to showcase their work,” St. George said.

This particular conference will feature eighteen panelists, who have been selected from about twenty-something submissions to take part in the event. Some CSUSM alumni and faculty have offered to mediate the panels.

When choosing who to place on each panel, Stricker and St. George decided to pair CSU students with students from other establishments, for diversity.

The topics of the papers presented by panelists, which do not necessarily have to be their theses, feature a wide range of topics, so the conference could have a broad appeal. Panelists will have fifteen minutes each to present their papers to the audience.

Stricker and St. George have developed this conference with the hopes of being able to ultimately leave behind an important legacy for the CSUSM campus.

“You want to have this feeling that you belong to this community, and this community still belongs to you,” Stricker said.

While this particular conference is based out of the LTWR department, students from all departments are encouraged to attend and experience the event.

“[The conference] is good for the university, for students. It takes personal academic discourse into the academic community,” Stricker said.