You're Invited to a Community Service Planning Meeting

Hope everyone is well and enjoyed the break!

I wanted to make sure that everybody in KU Ars Rhetorica knows about the community service planning meeting that's currently in the works.  At the last KUAR meeting, we discussed some possible service events.  One event we discussed was hanging out for an afternoon with some kiddos who are on the waiting list for Bigs in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program; another event on the table is an hour or so of conversation with adult English Second Language learners in a program for which KUAR co-chair Rachel Bloom volunteers.

Minutes from the first KUAR meeting on 2/9/11

According our by-laws (which were ratified by KUAR members on 2/9/11), the Secretary/Treasurer is to "take notes of meetings and post the meeting minutes to the chapter blog or distribute them via email to chapter members" (III.b). What follows is an account of the first KUAR meeting held on 2/9/11 in the Kansas Room, of the Kansas Union.

There were around 20 members present.

1. Chair called the meeting to order at 5:17 p.m.
2. Chair introduced herself and encouraged people list their names and email addresses on sign-up sheets that were circulating.
   
3. Co-Chair and Secretary/Treasurer introduced themselves.

What Exactly is the KUAR Blog?

Welcome to all who have recently (and not so recently) discovered our KU Ars Rhetorica Blog! Here you will find updates on meetings, events on campus, and various interests our members are discovering with rhetoric and the world. On the sidebar we have links to our Twitter page, the official RSA page, and other important sites you might be interested in following.

Who writes on the KUAR page? Well, if you become a member of KUAR, you'll automatically be invited to become an author - we're hoping to create a fun, informative, and dynamic web space where we can share

First meeting time and place

Looks like the first meeting of KU Ars Rhetorica will come directly after the next Communications colloquium, which is Wednesday 9 Feb at about 5pmish. Kundai, Rachel, and I discussed whether we wanted to intrude on the Coms students' usual post-colloquium happy hour. But the post-colloquium time seemed best because we're hoping to encourage some of the English folk to come to the colloquium first. The colloquium is in the Mallott Room of the Kansas Union, so we'll stay in the Union for the KUAR meeting (finalized room location yet to be determined since the University is on snow lock-down), and then we'll join the happy hour that's going on at the Oread at about 5:30-5:45 or so.

When we get the room location in the Union for the KUAR meeting finalized, we'll send out an official email with all the details.

So, mark your calendars! Wednesday 9 Feb @ 5ish @ Kansas Union

Welcome, welcome

So, here's KU Ars Rhetorica. You can call us KUAR or Ars Rhetorica for short.

When Rachel and I sat down last semester to discuss forming an RSA grad student group, we both talked about needing opportunities to do something with our rhetorical interests among our fellow rhetorically-minded grad students. Knowing that interests in rhetoric aren't the exclusive purview of English studies folk, we started thinking of ways to make this an interdisciplinary group. So we invited Kundai to be in on the organizing action, and that's the story of that!

We're still getting things settled and organized ahead of our first meeting. This blog is one of those preparatory things: we'd like to have a common site for posting things of interest to rhetorically-minded grad students (so we can stop cluttering each other's Facebook feeds) and for keeping everyone abreast of goings-on in KUAR. And we're hoping for a lot of goings-on... More about that in the near future.

Ultimately, we're hoping that KUAR will give us all a chance to talk about and do the things we'd like to do as grad students in rhetoric but haven't had the opportunity to (yet). So the group is going to be pretty fluid: it will be whatever you make of it. You're welcome to come help us start that making process!