The SILCS office reopened for business on September 1st, and so far we have been busy helping last year’s SILCS students with their GREs and graduate school applications. We are grateful for the long list of graduate programs who have already offered to waive their application fees for our students, and to the Educational Testing Service for letting our students take the GREs for half price. The costs of applying to graduate school can certainly add up, and we are glad for the contributions of these programs.
SILCS Director Paula Krebs recently wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education. In the article, “Doctoral Diversity in the Humanities Won't Be Achieved by Chance”, Dr. Krebs writes about the lack of students of color in doctoral programs, what is being done to change that, and what more can still be done.
A 2007 MLA report on the status of African-Americans in English showed that, for example, over the past 30 years, no English department other than Howard University's has produced more than six African-American undergraduates who have gone on to Ph.D.'s. In fact, most departments that have sent an African-American on to get a Ph.D. in the past three decades have done just that: sent a single student.
In the next few months, we will be helping our student apply to graduate school, meeting with the Group for Underrepresented Students in Humanities Education and Research at the University of Delaware, and opening up for applications for SILCS 2011. We will also be in Los Angeles for the Modern Language Association convention on January 6-9, 2011. We hope to see you there!
Sunday morning dawned bright and early with a trip to 
Monday morning was the first day of classes, despite the holiday. Dr. Robyn Warhol-Down of The Ohio State University joined SILCS once again as the instructor. On Tuesday, Dr. Dagmawi Woubshet of Cornell University gave a lecture to the students on his research.