2010 Conference Working Groups

Working Sessions

CORD-ASTR 2010 provides us with the opportunity to explore new kinds of conference programming.  In addition to paper panels and lecture-demonstrations, our more traditional conference activities, this year we are including “Working Sessions” as a means of diversifying how we engage with each other and the critical issues that animate our discipline.

Working Sessions are flexible format encounters that can function like seminars, research groups, reading groups, forums, working groups, and/or workshops. The conveners of such sessions propose and justify the format for their meeting, which leaves room for creative options.  

For example, participants can exchange papers before the conference and then discuss their research during the working session.  They can focus upon particular issues of interest and discuss them prior to, during, and after the conference.  They can select a reading list and use the session to discuss the texts.  Participants can read each other’s writing beforehand and then serve as respondents to papers. Sessions can include a cluster of break out groups that focus on particular topics or readings. Participants can even agree to provide each other with pre-conference paper editing as part of the exchange.  Importantly, working sessions can recur every year and potentially provide ongoing focus groups within CORD conferences in the future. The possibilities are numerous, but cannot include simply presenting papers orally.

Those interested in leading a working session should submit a proposal that includes a 300-word intellectual/scholarly rationale for the content of the session and a 200-word account of and rationale for the format chosen.  Also included in the proposal is a 500-word proposed call for potential participants in their working session, which highlights the main issues and goals of the group and outlines the expectations of participants. Successful calls will be widely circulated so those interested can apply.

Working sessions can be lead by 2-4 coordinators and involve up to 14 participants total. They should include a mixture of senior and junior scholars as well as graduate students.  Only a few participants should be specially invited.  Auditors are welcome to observe working sessions, but can only participate in limited ways.  

Working session participants can only join one group per conference and can’t also present a paper.  They are expected to meet all of the work expectations of the particular group, such as internal deadlines and engagement with each other’s work as explained in the call for participants.

Working session leaders are responsible for establishing communication among participants and designing the agenda for the session. Following the conference, they also submit a report on the group’s activities to the Program Committee.

Working Sessions offer us the opportunity to find new and creative ways of connecting with each other’s research and establishing dialogue within the discipline. We hope they will become an established part of CORD conferences in the future.

For more detailed information about ASTR working groups:
http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Defau...

Please download the attached Working Session Proposal Form below.