This document is divided into the following sections:
Parts of this document are currently under revision. Your input is welcome.
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Organizing the social hour after the colloquium (see guidelines for shopping suggestions!) The social hour budget as of November 2002 is $90. Please do not go over budget.
Attending dinner with the speaker, for out-of-town speakers and speakers from other departments. (Dinners with our own finishing students are not subsidized, so you are not required to attend them.) If you cannot attend dinner, you can also persuade other people to go to dinner, but it is best if there are at least a couple students in attendance.
Grad student subsidy for dinners: Currently, grad students pay a $10 deductible, and the department subsidizes the rest. (The faculty host needs to submit the names of attending grad students in order to get reimbursed for this subsidy.) Currently, we are guaranteed to be subsidized for two such dinners a year, but in practice the department will probably pay for more than that.
The easiest thing to do is charge the food, and then submit the receipt for reimbursement. Give the receipts and the attendance list to Mary Hoang, the Departmental Coordinator, in 5306 Rolfe Hall. (She has a mailbox in the ling dept office, or you can run it over to her in Rolfe.)
You will need to make a rough attendance list of the people who attended. This is required for reimbursement. It might be a good idea to have a friend do this for you, as you might be too busy setting up to remember.
Ever since these reimbursements started getting done through official channels, there has been some concern about how long reimbursement takes. It generally takes a few weeks, and Mary assures us that it is expedited if you include the attendance list, the date, your receipts, etc.
If you need to get the money more quickly than this, talk to Mary and she can arrange an advance for you. You can either get the cash ahead of time, go shopping, and bring her the receipts, or else you can bring the receipts and then get reimbursed as an advance. (Be sure to talk with Mary ahead of time if you will want to do this, though; the petty cash resources are quite limited and we should only take advantage of this when we need it.)
If the speaker is from out of town, they may need an airport pickup and/or delivery. (Occasionally the faculty host can also do this, especially if they are long-standing friends with the speaker.) You or the faculty host need either to do this, or to find someone to do it. (If there is really no way, the department may be able to reimburse for a airport shuttle, but that's definitely the least personal option.)
The faculty host is responsible for:
Introducing the speaker
Cordinating with the student host to arrange dinner for the speaker. (The status of dinners for our finishing graduate students will be clarified soon. When these take place, student attendance is unsubsidized. Please take this into consideration when selecting a restaurant.)
Putting up out-of-town speakers when necessary/appropriate.
n cases where the speaker also needs an airport pickup/delivery, this is often done by the student host (or a proxy for the student host), but occasionally the faculty host may be willing and able to do this.
Also for out-of-town speakers: Managing student appointments with the speaker in the afternoon after the social hour. Usually the faculty host sends out an e-mail announcing the availability of appointments with the speaker. The sign-up sheet should be placed in the department office the week of the talk, and might be announced during the social hour, as well. Checking the sign-up sheet and informing the speaker of any appointments to be held. (It is also helpful if the faculty host can suggest a location for holding these appointments.)
Currently, a grad student attending the dinner with the speaker pays only a $10 deductible (except for dissertation colloquia) , while the department subsidizes the remaining amount. The faculty host should submit the names of attending graduate students along with the receipt, in order to get reimbursed for the speaker's dinner and the grad students' subsidy all at once.
(a version of this FAQ was formerly distributed as "An Inventory of Colloquium Guilt" )
Q: What do we do for speakers?
A: In general, there are three different categories of speakers: (These are distinguished not by how much we respect them, but rather by how much we feel the need to impress them!)
Outside speakers
speakers from other UCLA departments
our own students
Q: Is this difficult or time-consuming?
A: No. especially once you have done it once and you know what needs doing! (The social hour coordinator can provide you with tips and pointers, too) For student hosting, it can also be easier and more fun to sign up together with someone else, so you can shop together and share the duties... As long as enough people volunteer for stuff, no one person gets saddled with too much.
Q: Who should I feel guilty *ahem* eager to host?
A: There are many flavors of guilt in the world, but here are some of the strongest: faculty members: you should introduce your student advisees when they give their colloquium!
everybody: speakers who you recommended! (and we do keep track of who recommended who! so volunteer before we have to start calling people on this one! we don't want to discourage people from recommending, and we understand that not everyone is in a position to be able to host someone at their house; but the amount of work on your part is relatively small, and you may at least be able to help coordinate dinner or introduce the speaker...)
and a correlate: speakers who you voted for! (if so many people voted for speakers, why do we have such a hard time finding volunteers?)
another thing: it has been my experience doing this for a while that some subfields are easy to find hosts for, while others are like pulling teeth. 'Nuff said.
and one last thing: students of every year should feel on the hook for student hosting! this is easy and even a bit fun, and you don't need an MA to do it. (In particular-- it would be nice to see some first year students step forward... apparently at some schools, first year students are required to organize social hours.)
Q: What if I want to host, but can't do all parts of my duties?
A: It is of course possible to divide duties among several people so if you wouldlike to host someone, but there's one obstacle (like, say, you can't make it to the dinner), it is helpful to let us know this!!
It would be REALLY useful if you could think of other people who you could split the duties with, so that we don't have to scramble to find three people for each jobinstead of just one. But it's always useful to know what subtasks who's willing to do.
Q: How often do I need to host?
A: There are 30 weeks in a year, and many of them do not have colloquiua/social hours. In theory, we have more faculty and students than social hours, meaning we would be covered if everyone did it once a year. Unfortunately, in practice it seems that some people end up doing it many times in a year, while others have never done it. It has happened that there have been exceptionally large numbers of speakers in smaller subfields some years (but this tends to happen because of job searches, not colloquiua) but no one should feel guilty for not volunteering more than once in a year!
back to top of this documentNOTE: before you go shopping for social hour, you should check the supply of napkins, plates, flatware, etc. in the common kitchen (the cabinet underneath the microwave is for social-hour related things). Also if it looks like there s a lot of abandoned stuff in the refrigerator, you might put up a note to the effect that people should try to claim old things by Thursday night (or whever you are planning on bringing in social hour stuff)
The following foods are familiar to all of us as regular social hour foods, all easily obtainable at Trader Joe's or Ralphs', and should fit into the regular social hour budget without too much calculation. These things also can all be acquired quickly in one shopping trip, and don't require much in the way of preparation before putting them on the table.
The following are also quite easy, and have been a hit when they have made an appearance at social hour:
Also: some things are availabe through ASUCLA catering, and when the office has organized things (for incoming students, etc.) they have used this. It has occasionally been suggested that we should just figure out a reasonable order from them, and call it in whenever we will have a social hour. However, the last time this was researched, the prices were too expensive to make it worthwhile if things really get to be toomuch of a hassle, though, this might be investigated again.
A note on alcohol: we are NOT allowed to use the social hour budget to buy alcoholic beverages. We have, at times, a voluntary "sin tax" to create a fund for beer/wine at social hours. (People contributed $5 or so to provide a fund for alcohol outside of the regular social hour budget) Last year the interest in this waned, both on the part of contributers and hosts. However, recently a few people have asked about this -- if there is enough interest in it, we could revive this practice fairly easily.
These guidelines are designed to make it easier to shop for social hour, and make people more (not less) eager to volunteer! SOCIAL HOUR SHOULD BE SIMPLE AND BRAINLESS, there is no need to spend many figuring out what to get or preparing things. Also, if you have other good ideas or suggestions, feel free to share them
back to top of this documentThis document was originally written by Adam Albright. It is currently maintained by Leston Buell.
This document was last revised on February 8, 2001.
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