Workshop Coordinator Responsibilities

The three main areas of responsibility for workshop coordinators include coordinating logistical and financial matters for the workshop, fulfilling reporting requirements, and providing intellectual leadership. Although the specific delegation of leadership and coordination work in each workshop varies, the following paragraphs sketch out the basic expectations of workshop leaders. Faculty coordinators are responsible for making sure that all those involved in leading a workshop comply with workshop policies and meet the highest scholarly standards.

• Logistical & Financial Coordination[+]
  Faculty and graduate student coordinators are responsible for the logistical and financial management of their workshops. This typically includes such tasks as:
  

  • Scheduling rooms for meetings
  • Arranging for AV equipment and support (LCD projectors, VCRs, videotaping, etc)
  • Copying workshop administrator on all correspondence with invited speakers, their travel arrangements and honoraria
  • Arranging and cleaning up food/catering
  • Keeping track of spending and staying within budget
  • Complying with granting agency and Stanford University policies
  • Publicizing workshop activities
  • Distributing and/or posting readings to the web
  • Inviting workshop speakers
  • Arranging workshop speakers’ transportation, accommodations, and meals
  • Organizing special events, such as conferences and colloquia
  • Making sure that workshop organizers (themselves included) are reimbursed promptly for any workshop expenses they incur
  • Providing up-to-date schedules to the workshop administrator
  • Keeping the workshop administrator apprised of all details regarding visiting scholars scheduled to speak at workshop meetings
• Program Reporting Requirements[+]
  Although the primary reporting responsibility for the workshops rests with faculty coordinators, graduate student coordinators also participate in fulfilling workshops reporting requirements. These include providing the following information to the workshops administrator:
  

  • Post your event schedule information online directly to our website.
  • Track event attendance of both graduate student and faculty participants
  • Include the workshops administrator on any workshop email distribution lists or listservs
  • Provide a participant membership list at the beginning and end of the year
  • In the spring quarter, coordinate distribution of online participant evaluations.
  • Writing the end-of-year report, which should include all workshop meeting information, including dates and locations, speaker names, and talk titles

  We encourage coordinators to archive workshop events when possible by audio or video recording, and consider taking photos of group activities. The Humanities Center may also record or photograph workshop sessions for publicity or archival purposes.
  
• Intellectual Stewardship[+]
  Faculty coordinators are primarily responsible for intellectual stewardship of the Geballe Research Workshops, but graduate coordinators should also be actively involved in determining the intellectual design of the workshop. The interaction between graduate and faculty coordinators often sets the tone for collegial interaction between other students and faculty in the workshops. Graduate student coordinators play a vital role in making the workshops welcoming and comfortable spaces for other graduate students. Intellectual stewardship in the research workshops also means:
  

  • Defining an area of intellectual inquiry that is compelling to an interdisciplinary audience
  • Recruiting membership from a broad range of humanities disciplines
  • Articulating important emerging issues and trends within your chosen field
  • Responding to evolving intellectual interests of your group throughout the year
  • Encouraging Stanford graduate students and faculty, as well as outside speakers, to present work-in-progress
  • Ensuring a collegial tone for workshop interactions and avoiding hierarchies between faculty and graduate students
  • Promoting graduate students’ professional development by encouraging networking with established scholars in your field, and collaborative work with faculty, and presentation of work throughout the year
  • Promoting collaborative work with scholars outside Stanford. A number of workshops have produced collaborative research projects leading to outside grants or publication of collections of essays
  • Creating a web archive of workshop papers, work-in-progress reports, and reports