Sara Nixon, HGSA President, 2014-15
The History Graduate Students’ Association is the centre of the graduate student community here in the Department of History. We are committed to enriching the graduate student experience, holding social and academic events throughout the year.
This past 2014/2015 year was particularly exciting. We started off the academic year in September with welcome week events for both new and returning MA and PhD students. This included having an HGSA table at Carleton’s Grad BBQ, holding our fall general meeting, hosting our own HGSA BBQ at Brewer Park, and celebrating with a pub night.
Throughout the school year our wonderful VP Social Kathryn Boschmann kept us with busy (and sane) with many social events. In September we organized a bowling night at West Park Lanes in Hintonburg (which become a sort of tradition among history graduate students here). In December, we got together for the annual HGSA Christmas Party where lots of holiday treats and gifts were shared (and we were introduced to Laura Hochban’s amazingly delicious dip). We also went skating on the Rideau Canal and tried out how good we were at escaping from rooms at Escape Manor in downtown Ottawa (it turns out the first-year MA students aren’t that good).
New to this year’s long list of events was the HGSA’s Mental Health Week in November. With the support of the department we turned the History Lobby into a place to drink tea, pop bubble wrap, finger-paint and pot plants. These events had a great response and we hope that Mental Health Week continues next year.
Our VP Academic Nicole Marion was hard at work throughout the year ensuring an enriching academic experience for our history graduate students. Three brown-bag lunch workshops were held throughout the year where students casually came together to discuss methods in finding research topics, getting the most out of our coursework and navigating university research ethics.
In March 2015, the department hosted the very successful 21st annual Underhill Graduate Student Colloquium. Organized by Meghan Lundrigan and Alex Wilkinson, the theme of this year’s colloquium was “Pasts Echoing Presents: Historians as Performative Collaborators.” We got to hear about the research of many of our MA and PhD students as well as other graduate students from the university and all over Canada. It great three days of enlightening academic conversation and lots of live-tweeting!
We ended the year with the HGSA’s annual, and much-anticipated, rock social event, or as we like to call it: History Prom! Thank you to the co-organizers Joanne DeCosse and Matt Moore for organizing party, equipped with a make-your-own-sandwich bar and toy dinosaurs for everybody!
Thank you to everyone who helped make this a great year! We are looking forward to having PhD candidate Stuart Mackay as our next HGSA president for the 2015/2016 school year!
Cheers!