Dear AGLSP Conference Participants and Attendees,

Welcome! On behalf of the Association and its Executive Board, welcome to the 2023 AGLSP conference, live and in person in beautiful San Diego, California! It is great to get a chance to connect with students, alumni, faculty and directors from across the country. Building on the amazing success of our San Antonio conference last year, #biblioTECHa23, #aglsp23, we are back together LIVE here in Southern California for some wonderlusting adventures. Poised on the verge here between Mexico and the United States, we hope you relish this chance to re-connect with colleagues, talk to students about their studies and their goals, and immerse yourselves in the interdisciplinary liberal arts in our workshops and panel sessions (we also hope you indulge in some Southern California and Northern Baja wanderlusting as the delights and diversions of this coastal region are beyond remarkable).

We will again have a day of workshops for directors and program administrators. The ideas will flow fast and everyone should expect to take home some helpful concepts for program management and student advising. Every year the AGLSP workshops send me back to SDSU with a few new things up my sleeve that I use to fend off a nettlesome Associate Vice-President or better position a student to complete their degree. For that first day of the conference we become a “hive mind”—we become stronger and more resilient through our fellowship with AGLSP program administrators and directors from across the country. Yes, there is some telling of tales, idle gossip and the like, (we are, in Academe, after all); but there is also necessary listening and hand-holding. Whilst many of our programs are thriving, others are in constant threat of being shut-down! AGLSP is where you can go to figure out pathways to better futures. I joined AGLSP when my MALAS program was on the point of being closed, and now, thanks to the interventions of the gods and the savvy advice of my fellow directors, we are fully funded and growing. I won’t lie and say it is ALL owing to AGLSP, but I would be dishonest as well if I did not give our very special consortium a tip of the hat for the countless ways it has helped me to enrich our graduate students and faculty in my program.

As we did last year, our amazing home office at Rice and our AGLSP Board will manage operations. Many of you may be presenting or moderating and we thank you for putting yourselves forward to contribute this year! We will continue to make it 3 great days but have continued to refine our program to enable all of you to grab more time for those informal conversations that ultimately prove valuable even as the conference continues to be a place to celebrate Graduate Liberal Studies, Cultural Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies with traditional workshops, presentations and events.

Thanks for braving a still sometimes challenging travel environment and being part of the 2023 San Diego Conference.
I am looking forward to seeing and speaking with many of you during this great annual meeting.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. William A. Nericcio

President, AGLSP; Director, MALAS  

BA, U Texas, ’84; MA, Cornell ’86; Ph.D ‘89

Assistant Professor, UCONN, 1988-1991

Professor, SDSU, 1991-2023