Dear AGLSP Conference Participants and Attendees,

Welcome! On behalf of the Association and its Executive Board, and all the faculty, staff, and graduate student members of the AGLSP, welcome to our 2024 conference, streaming globally to you via our Zoom-based televisual machines—AI agents, cyborgs, and mischievous robots will also, no doubt, have a hand in making our annual event a grand success!

It is great to get a chance to connect with students, alumni, faculty, and directors from across the country, albeit electronically. Building on the amazing success of our San Antonio, Texas-based #biblioTECHa23, and our amazing San Diego, California-based #wonderlust24, we are back together LIVE here broadcasting via the AGLSP mothership at Rice University. Our focus this year is something we are calling “[AI]GLSP: Putting the ‘I’ in AI in the Age of Digital Cultures” and will be going down streaming live October 10-12, 2024.

We will again have a day of workshops for directors and program administrators from across the United States and Canada. The ideas will flow fast, and everyone should expect to take home some practical tips (maybe even some revelations and epiphanies) 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 Dean, Associate Vice President or better position a student to complete their degree. That first day of the conference program directors from Penn, SDSU, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Stanford, and more join forging 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 handholding. Whilst many of our programs are thriving, others are in constant threat of being shut down. Almost daily we are harassed existentially with tales of the “Death of the Humanities” and this, of course (and reasonably) does nothing for our well-being. Faced with these realities, AGLSP is where you can go to figure out pathways to better futures, and our amazing [AI]GLSP conference will emerge as the place to celebrate Graduate Liberal Studies, Cultural Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies with our workshops, presentations, and events. 

As I am in the last few days of my AGLSP presidency, (I term out a week after [AI]GLSP), I am somewhat wistful as I close this welcoming missive. The AGLSP transformed my MALAS program into a dynamic West Coast-based center for cultural exploration and interdisciplinary alchemy, and while I am sad to close this chapter of my administrative life, I also look forward to being a strong contributing program director as AGLSP evolves in the 21st century. Seeing and speaking with many of you during this great annual (virtual) meeting will bring me great joy, and I am really looking forward to hanging out with you next year when AGLSP celebrates its 50th Anniversary, October 2025, in Memphis, Tennessee. Rumors have it that the ghost of Elvis will be attending – I will be there to make sure that’s a reality.

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