LLW Department Meeting: Aug. 23, 2024

Take a Campus Walk

A bunch of us did the ACUE Diversity training this summer (I recall seeing posts by Chauna Craig, Gloria Park, and Marveta Ryan-Sams in the course). ACUE is a national training organization for faculty. The course was very informative, and I hope we can draw on some of its principles as we build our new department.

 

One of the best things I got from the course, though, was someone who said, each semester

 

IUP’s 148th Year

• IUP’s Department of English has been producing students with first rate reading and writing skills for all those years

English Department Meeting Information

• Meeting Date: 09/20/23
  • Meeting Format: Hybrid–In person in Leonard Hall Room 306 and Zoom
  • Melanie Holm will monitor the chat for any issues we need to discuss
• Zoom Meeting Link: https://iupvideo.zoom.us/j/7243571701?from=addon
• Meeting Minutes Takers
  • September 2023 Minutes Taker: Bryna Siegle Finer
  • October 2023 Minutes Taker: Todd Thompson 
  • November 2023 Minutes Taker: Dan Weinstein
  • February 2024 Minutes Taker: Matt Vetter
  • March 2024 Minutes Taker: Emily Wender
  • April 2024 Minutes Taker: Mike Williamson
  • September 2025 Minutest Taker: Lingyan Yang
  • October 2025 Minutes Taker: John Branscum (as we return to the beginning of the 4 year minutes rotation!)
  • We forgot to take minutes at our April 2022 meeting; sorry about that oversight
• Next Meeting: Oct. 18 Wed.: Department Meeting 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
  • Guest: Paula Stossel to talk about Student Success and the IUP Navigators
  • Discussion English Mission Statement and English Tagline
    • “Go forth! Be brave! Be proud! Be true!”–IUP English Professor Jane E. Leonard (1840-1925)
  • Please send Gian and Melanie any items you want included on future department agendas. I’m happy to include any items anyone wants to discuss.

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Important Dates & Information

English Community 2023-2024 Events Calendar

Next Event

• Sep. 26 Tue.: English General Advising Session & Pizza Party! (4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. in Leonard Hall 116)

Recent Events

• Sep. 6 Wed.: English Fall Semester Kickoff (11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in the English Department suite)
• Sep. 15 Fri.: New Growth Arts Review (NGAR) Launch & Pizza Party (4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. in the English Department suite)

APSCUF Zoom Meeting

• Tonight! (Sep. 6 Wed).: 6:00 p.m. on Zoom

DETC Tentative Deadlines

• Fall Observations Due: Nov. 14 (Mon.)
• Spring Observations Due: Feb. 27 (Mon.)
• DETC Digital Documents Due: Mar. 6 (Mon.)–Send via email attachment to Reena Dube and Gian
• DETC Printed Documents Due to Reena Dube: Mar. 6–Place in a manilla folder with your name on it
• DETC Evaluation DRAFTS Due: Mar. 20
• Thanks to DETC Chair Reena Dube and DETC Members Brian Carpenter, Chris Orchard, and Tony Farrington
• On the plus side, we only have 4 people up for 5 year evaluation this year!

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English Start of the Academic Year Updates

Big Thanks!

• To John Marsden for his many years of service as English Assistant Chair
• Thanks to Mike Williamson who served as Director of the M.A. in Literature and M.A. in Composition and Literature Programs

English Leadership Changes

2023-2024 Sabbaticals

• As always we will have some people on sabbatical this year. I’m listing the faculty members’ names here so you will know why you might not be seeing them on campus. We hope all of these faculty all have very productive sabbaticals and return to us energized and ready to dive back into our department’s work.

2023 Fall Sabbatical

• Matt Vetter

2024 Spring Sabbaticals

• Todd Thompson

New Teaching Associates (T.A.’s)

Welcome to our new T.A.’s.

Composition and Applied Linguistics T.A.’s

• Isaac Adubofour
• Sayed Ahmadi
• Dalia SeifAllah

Literature and Criticism T.A.’s

• Erick Marco Ramos
• Kaitlyn Sass
• Zeeshan Siddique

New Temporary Faculty (T.F.’s)

Welcome to our new T.F.’s.

Composition and Applied Linguistics T.F.’s

• Arwa Alshehri
• Willa Black
• Andrew Yim

Literature and Criticism T.F.’s

• Yahia Tahat
• Nada Tayem

Teaching Mentors

Thanks to our Teaching Mentors who are helping our T.A.’s and T.F.’s to do a great job this year:

• Chris Orchard (Spring 2024)
• Gloria Park (Fall 2023)
• Curt Porter (Spring 2024)
• Mike Sell (Fall 2023)
• Bryna Siegel Finer (Fall 2023 and Spring 2024)–Special thanks to Bryna who agreed to take on mentoring of all the Temporary Faculty as part of her work as IUP Director of Undergraduate Writing

Fond Farewells

To our wonderful colleagues who recently retired/departed:

• Jean Nienkamp (who is off to a well deserved retirement)
• Veronica Watson (who is now Chair of English at Old Dominion University)

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Agenda Items

1. Volunteers Needed

ELC

• One person to serve on the English Leadership Council (preferably a person who has not had a chance to serve before)
  • Duties include attending monthly ELC meetings and representing other members of the department
  • Please email Gian by Friday Sep. 22 if you wish to serve on the ELC

EAPSU

• One person to serve as the IUP English Representative to the English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities (EAPSU)
  • Duties include attending the annual conference, giving the department a brief report, and coordinating selection of an IUP English student nominee for the EAPSU annual award
  • The EAPSU 2023 Conference will be held at Kutztown from Oct. 13-15
  • Our IUP English representative will be reimbursed for their travel expenses to attend the annual conference
  • Please email Gian by Friday Sep. 22 if you wish to serve as our EAPSU Representative
  • Thanks to John Branscum who served as our EAPSU Representative for many years

APSCUF

• One person to serve as the Alternate for APSCUF Representative
  • Duties include attending monthly meetings (on Thursday afternoons) if one of our elected representatives cannot attend and giving a brief report
  • Please email Gian and Tanya Heflin by Friday Sep. 22 if you wish to serve as the APSCUF Alternate
  • This person would need to be elected to the position
  • Thanks to Susan Comfort and Mike Sell who serve as our 2 elected department APSCUF Representatives

2. Upcoming Staff Support Changes and Hiring

• Our primary maintenance worker, Linda, is retiring on Oct. 6
  • Please make a contribution to a retirement gift for her (this is optional but $20 would be a nice amount)
  • Give donations to Melanie Holm in 405A Leonard Hall
• Missy Bair, who provides primary secretarial support to our department and 5 others, will retire at the end of the fall semester
  • The Dean has been told this position will be replaced
• Debra Bacco, who provides graduate program secretarial support to our department and to the CAH Dean’s Office, will retire in June 2024
  • No word has been given about this position
• The Writing Center also continues to have no secretary to replace Dana Minser who transferred to the School of Graduate Studies and Research in spring 2023
  • Dana Driscoll was told this position would be replaced, but it has not
• Our Temporary Faculty have only been hired for Fall 2023; Gian continues to ask about having them hired for Spring 2023 as soon as possible, but no decision on Temporary Faculty hiring for Spring 2023 has yet been made by IUP administration
• Gian continues to also ask about tenure track hires for English, but no decisions or process for hiring tenure track faculty has been provided by IUP administration

3. 2023-2024 Travel Funding

• $300 for tenured faculty members
• Travel must be pre-approved by the dean (but any conference presentation or attendance should be fine)
• Teaching Associates and Temporary Faculty should apply to IUP’s School of Graduate Studies and Research for travel funding

4. Current/Upcoming Votes

• The Qualtrics vote on Emeritus status for Jean Nienkamp and Veronica Watson is going on now. Please vote ASAP!
  • Thanks to Dan Weinstein for writing Jean’s nomination letter and to Mike Williamson for writing Veronica’s nomination letter
  • Nomination files can be found in the Emeritus Applications folder in M.S. Teams: 2023 Emeritus Applications
• Vote to approve Marjorie Zambrano from the Dept. of Foreign Languages to teach ENGL 842: Cross-Cultural Communication
• Thanks to English Elections Committee Members Tanya Heflin and Ken Sherwood for coordinating our votes

5. Shift English Majors Courses to All in Person?

• Some people have suggested that it might strengthen English major community to have all English major courses taught in person
• Current Breakdown of English Major Course Offerings for Spring 2024 (this matches our typical offerings)
  • 5 BA MWF Courses–2 courses run opposite each other
  • 3  English Education Courses MWF
  • 5 BA TR Courses–2 courses run opposite each other
  • 4 Online Courses
  • 2 ESL Certificate Online Courses–The ESL Certificate Program is an Online Program, so all of these courses MUST be delivered online
• To shift to all in person courses, we would need 2 MWF and 2 TR courses
• Because we have maxed out the number of people volunteering to teach MWF, we would need to institute a rotation system to cover the courses: people would get to teach a majors course MWF one semester and TR the other semester
• Gian is asking the English BA Program Committee to review this idea
• Any changes to how we offer courses would go into effect for the 2024-2025 year since the Spring 2024 schedule is already set and would require too much work to change at this time

6. Discussion of Liberal Studies Revision

• L.S. Proposal Highlights
  • Being overseen by Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Liberal Studies Director
  • 3 English faculty are serving on the Liberal Studies Revision Committee (Chauna Craig, Bryna Siegel Finer, Melanie Holm)
  • Reduction to 40 credits
  • First Year Seminar Experience (3 credits)
  • Second Year Experience (1 credit)
  • Built around knowledge areas not courses
• 3  Proposed Models
  • Choose from a range of electives (sort of a choose your own adventure)
  • Choose from a focused area (about 9 credits of electives)
  • Professional Credentialing (up to 3 credentials)
• Knowledge Areas
  • Written Communication Category–ENGL 101: Composition I/ENGL 103 Composition I Accelerated (3-4 credits)
  • Creativity Category–ENGL 121: Humanities Literature (3 credits)/Could be other categories
  • No clear spot for ENGL 202: Composition II
  • No limit on using the same prefix
• Provost’s Timeline
  • Curriculum Proposals in Fall 2024
  • Launch in Fall 2025

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Announcements

• We will finish the meeting with any important announcements

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Take an English Colleague to Lunch!

• Enough business!
• Let’s head to the North Dining Hall for lunch!