Sigma Tau Delta Members Present at Cincinnati Conference

Pictured above from left to right: Kennedi Ford, Nelofar Sultan, Prof. Deana Hueners-Nelson, and adviser for Sigma Tau Delta at DSU, Dr. John Nelson

On Mar 21 to 24, Sigma Tau Delta had an International conference in Cincinnati, OH. Two of DSU’s Sigma Tau Delta members, Kennedi Ford and Nelofar Sultan, went to Ohio to present papers that they had submitted for the conference, and to visit a few workshops while they were there.

This year was the first year that Ford had submitted anything, and she doesn’t regret it. “There was a lot of English nerd stuff, but there was also professional development stuff. They had workshops for [different areas of expertise]… It was really cool to see all the English nerds losing their s*** about Classic Literature, but it was also nice that they tried to make it applicable to real life too.”

“The [workshop] that Nelo and I went to together was for ‘Non-teaching Careers with English Degrees’…She went over how to present yourself and put a resume together.”

One of the main ideas of the workshop was “that you don’t need to look for those journalism or high school English teaching jobs. Every business, in some shape or form, needs someone to write for them and put it out there.” Ford, while already knowing this, was comforted by the fact that this was said by someone who already had a job outside of the traditional English careers.

Sultan went to a program so that she could get information for a class, “I went to this one workshop, it was called ‘Language is Power: The Power of Linguistics’ and I took a lot of notes. I have to write a paper on language and it was a lot of fun.”

There wasn’t enough time to go to everything that they would have wanted to. Ford, who is a fan of Frankenstein, missed a program because of the early session, “I think one that I really wanted to go to that I was upset that I didn’t get to was a panel all about Frankenstein; it was about the different adaptations and the analyses of those adaptations. I really wanted to go, but it was an eight a.m..”

While not at the workshops, Ford and Sultan were in sessions, presenting their papers. Sultan wrote her paper, titled “All Roads Lead to Freedom”, on Malcolm X and how she imagined he would’ve written to Siddhartha in letter form. “It was a nonfiction piece that I had written last year for one of my classes… People were really interested. There were five of us in the panel that I was in, and I got asked many questions.”

During the conference, members of Sigma Tau Delta go to events that others may not be allowed to, “my favorite part of the conference was presenting my paper, but my favorite part of the trip was watching the live production of Othello. We were so close to the stadium, we were third row and [Nelofar] was by Othello. I could hear him breathing.”

When asked about what she would tell someone interested in Sigma Tau Delta, Nelofar responded, “Submit a paper for Sigma Tau Delta and definitely go because it opens up your eyes to so many colleges and types of writings. I definitely recommend going to one of these conventions.”

There are currently 10 people in Sigma Tau Delta on campus, a pretty small group, though they are planning on doing an induction toward the end of the year. There are specific requirements to join, such as having an English major or minor, but if someone is interested, they can contact either Kennedi Ford or Dr. John Nelson.