Nominations

I had a ballot delivered to me yesterday—with my name on it. I'm one of three finalists for the UTPA Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. The winner is chosen by a vote of all faculty. If I win, I get an honorarium (not sure how much -- the paperwork didn't say), a nice siny line in my CV, and I then become the university's nominee for the state-wide Minnie Stevens Piper Award.

I also got a ballot in the mail to elect the new councillors and executive committee for the International Society for Neuroethology. It's as though someone up there has decided, “I don't care that you're a Canadian living in America, you're going to vote for something!”

;;;;;

But that was yesterday. Today was good because I submitted a grant proposal, this time to a new program called SOMAS. It's not for a lot of money, but every little bit helps. This was just the first of several that are coming up. In the next two and a half months, I have three big grant deadlines for the National Science Foundation that I'm trying to meet. One deadlines early December, the other two in mid-January. The ones in January will be tough, since the university slows down so much between semesters.

But I'll worry about that tomorrow. Lots of writing to do!