{"id":216,"date":"2014-12-09T14:11:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T14:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/?p=216"},"modified":"2014-12-10T08:35:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T08:35:32","slug":"the-department-by-the-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/2014\/12\/09\/the-department-by-the-river\/","title":{"rendered":"The Department by the River"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned earlier in the Tale of Two Departments<\/a>, there are two Departments of English here in Turku. Situated as we are on the University Hill, our department is known as the Department Up the Hill, while our \u00c5bo Akademi sister department (right at the brink of the river Aura) is known as the Department by the River.<\/p>\n

This year we have been determined to increase cooperation between the two units. Among other things, this means that we encourage our students to complete optional studies in the other department, allowing this way a wider selection of special fields. <\/p>\n

On Halloween in October, we hosted a guided tour of the TY campus to the \u00c5A students and staff. On an exceptionally sunny and bright December afternoon, it was finally our turn to make a counter visit to the \u00c5bo Akademi campus.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG\"<\/a>
\nIt\u2019s Christmas time at the English Department by the River.<\/i><\/p>\n

The \u00c5A Department\u2019s intern Annette Byskata and doctoral student Adam Borch greeted us at the entrance hall of the Arken building, where most of the \u00c5A Humanities\u2019 units are located. They directed us first to the second floor of the building and into the \u00c5A English Department\u2019s corridor. We got to see where the Department office is located, but also learned that it will be moved soon because of changes in the admin staff. Also, we saw the Department\u2019s three main lecture rooms (Helikon, Kramer and Donner), and sat down at the Kramer hall to meet the staff, hear about their teaching and to learn how to browse the \u00c5A website.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG\"<\/a>
\nOur guide, Annette Byskata, at the Arken lobby.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Head of the Department, Brita W\u00e5rvik, welcomed us to the tour and introduced us to the \u00c5A syllabus. Anthony Johnson, Jason Finch, and Stuart McWilliams gave us more detailed info on the Department\u2019s literature courses. Signe-Anita Lindgr\u00e9n, the SLA expert of the department, talked about the teacher track of the Department, while Martin Gill discussed the Department\u2019s culture-oriented teaching. Finally, Brita introduced the discourse studies related courses available. During the Q&A with the staff, we discovered practical facts: e.g. that the \u00c5A term is divided into quarters differently from TY (something to consider when taking their courses!). Also, many of their courses last only one quarter, where as our courses typically last two quarters. These kind of differences may allow flexibility for TY students wanting to complete courses in a schedule different to ours.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG\"<\/a>
\nThe \u00c5A staff introducing their curriculum.<\/i><\/p>\n

After meeting the staff, we were ready to continue with our tour. The next pit-stop was the Humanities library on the first floor of Arken. The librarian Maria Lass\u00e9n-Seger greeted us at the library entrance and talked to us about the library customs and about the history of the building, which was originally a factory. In fact, the first Finnish tractor was built there! Maria took us to see the linguistics and English sections of the library\u2019s collections before sending us off to the next stop of our tour, the Asa building.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG\"<\/a>
\nMaria Lass\u00e9n-Seger urges the TY students to use the \u00c5A libraries, too.<\/i><\/p>\n

In the Asa building, Annette and Adam first guided us to the IT centre of \u00c5A on the first floor, humorously named \u201cthe Oracle\u201d. Rumour has it that occasionally the helpdesk\u2019s instructions are as ambiguous as the oracle\u2019s advice in a well-written Greek comedy. Finally, we stopped by the course book library in the Asa building, where the students had the possibility to activate their TY library cards for \u00c5A use.<\/p>\n

Warm thanks again to the staff of the Department by the River for inviting us and for organising such a fun and educational tour for us!<\/p>\n

Text by Anna Kalpio
\nPhotos by Anna Kalpio & Adam Borch<\/i>
\n
\"abo1\"<\/a>
\nThe TY group ventures from Arken to the Asa building.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned earlier in the Tale of Two Departments, there are two Departments of English here in Turku. Situated as we are on the University Hill, our department is known as the Department Up the Hill, while our \u00c5bo Akademi … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18,17],"tags":[26,11],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-studies","category-teaching","tag-interesting-places","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}