English Department Meeting Agenda
- Meeting Date: 12/12/20
- Meeting Location: 307 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
“Go forth! Be brave! Be proud! Be true!”
- IUP English Professor Jane Leonard (1840-1925)
Retirement News
Congratulations to Dr. Lilia Savova who retired at the end of the 2019-2020 Winter semester after 28 years teaching English at IUP. Lily started at IUP in 1992. She served as our MATESOL Director for many years, traveled regularly to Washington, D.C., to recruit excellent Fulbright students for us, and worked tirelessly to help students improve their reading and writing skills. Lily also was a highly productive scholar, publishing many books and articles. Recently, she was Editor for the collection Using Textbooks Effectively and Co-Editor for The Lincoln Guide to ELT Materials Design and Development: Theory and Practice. One thing I loved about having Lily as a member of our department was that she always believed that every student could succeed and worked as hard as she could to help them achieve that success.
We will be holding a Retirement Party on Thursday April 9 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. in HSS 307 for Lily and Ben Rafoth (who retires in May).
Good luck to Lily as she begins a well-earned retirement!
Major English Newsmakers
A BIG congratulations on these outstanding accomplishments:
- To David Hanauer for winning a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for the continuing development of measurement tools and educational models for course-based research experiences in the sciences.
- To Mike Williamson for winning the Space Between Society’s 2019 Best Presentation Award
- To Dr! Debonair Oates-Primus for giving a wonderful and inspiring graduation speech at the IUP 2019 December University Commencement Graduate Ceremony; Debonair’s dissertation was directed by Lingyan Yang
Congratulations to the following English department members on their scholarly accomplishments:
- Tim Hibsman presented at the 2020 Scholarship of Teaching, Learning and Assessment (SoTLA) Conference
- Gian was invited to be a Spotlight Presenter at the 2020 Academic Chairpersons Conference
- Mike Sell has published an interesting new blog post on 1917 and the Emergence of Video Game Cinema
- Peter Sorrell presented at the 2019 MAPACA Conference; Peter also presented at the 2019 EAPSU Conference
- Matt Vetter and Jialei Jiang (Teaching Associate and CAL doctoral student) and Matt Vetter presented together at the 2019 Feminisms and Rhetoric Conference
- Matt and Oksana Moroz (CAL docotoral student) co-published an article in Composition Studies
- Emily Wender and Alicia DeMille (English Education ’18) presented together at NCTE 2019
Approval of Department Meeting Minutes
We will vote to approve Minutes from the English Department meeting held on:
- 11/21/19 (Thanks to Jean Nienkamp for taking minutes)
The minutes were circulated by email and will be shown at the meeting using the classroom instructor projection station. A limited set of copies will be printed, but please bring your own copy or review the minutes ahead of time so we can limit paper usage and printing costs.
Minutes Takers History
Thanks to our volunteer minutes takers:
- 9/19/19 Gian Pagnucci
- 10/17/19 Chauna Craig
- 11/21/19 Jean Nienkamp
- 2/13/19 Lingyan Yang
- 3/19/19
- 4/9/19
If we each take one turn writing minutes, then each person only has to do it more than once every 4 years or so.
Agenda Items
1. Chair Candidacy Question and Answer Session
- Gian Pagnucci is our one candidate for 2020-2023 English Chair
- Thanks to Brian Carpenter for coordinating the Q. & A.
- Thanks to Ramesh Soni who has agreed to be our APSCUF observer and conduct our Chair election using Qualtrics
- Please watch for the Qualtrics vote email
2. English Winter Party Success!
- We had another huge student and faculty turnout
- People ate 14 dozen cookies from Six Hand Bakery!
- Dean Asamoah brought his staff
- It was tons of fun, so…
3. English Valentine’s Day Party
- Event: A fun social event for all English Department Community members (English majors, minors, graduate students, Tenured/Tenure Track and Temporary faculty, Teaching Associates, staff, and friends!)
- Date: Friday Feb. 14
- Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
- Location: English Office Hallway
- Featuring: Cookies from Six Hand Bakery
- Lovvvve Poetry: Write and bring a valentine poem, if you would like
- Or just bring your valentine (but having a valentine is definitely not required!)
- Or just bring yourself to get a cookie! 🙂
- (You can even take a cookie for your valentine who will surely love it!)
4. Cell Phone Directory
- Gian, Dawnette, and Peggy need to have everyone’s cell phone number so we can reach you in emergencies
- We will NOT give your number to students or any other faculty without your permission
- If someone like the dean needs to reach you, Gian would text you first so you know you need to be reached
5. Fall 2020 Schedule
- The Fall 2020 schedule has been mostly completed
- Thanks to Dawnette Shellhammer and Peggy Kane for working hard and fast to get the schedule entered in time
- Thanks to Chauna Craig, Gloria Park, Veronica Watson, Dan Weinstein, Emily Wender, and Mike Williamson who all worked with me directly to help plan the schedule
- I try really hard to give you a good schedule that meets a lot of your preferences, but I can’t make everyone’s schedule perfect
- Enrollment issues, classroom space, and time and day limitations all impact the schedule
- The dean has requested some changes which impact online teaching
- We have a need to offer at least 1 B.A. majors course at 5 p.m. or later
- We also need to increase our options for online B.A. majors courses
- As our English major and minor numbers have declined, it means fewer majors courses are available for people to teach
- Gian will work with the Program Directors to make sure people get 1 graduate course OR 1 B.A. majors course during the academic year; anything beyond that is highly limited will be based on student programatic need
- Once Gian finalizes some outstanding schedule issues, we will post the schedule in Dropbox for everyone to review
- Once you learn your schedule, please check your room assignments by April 1st; we will not make room assignment changes in the fall AND not all room assignment changes can be honored
6. INSPIRE Program Reviews
- All degree programs at IUP are being reviewed in 3 phases
- Phase 1 completed in Fall of 2019
- Phase 2 will be Spring of 2020
- Phase 3 will be Fall of 2020
- In addition, our department 5 year program review will be in Fall 2020-Spring 2021
Phase 1 (Completed)
- English/Pre-Law, BA-Program put in moratorium (Dan Weinstein completed writeup)
- English/Composition & Literature, MA-Program put in moratorium (Mike Williamson completed writeup)
Phase 2 (Due Mar. 1)
- English/Comp & Appl Ling PHD (Mary Stewart working on writeup)
- English/Literature, MA (Mike Williamson working on writeup)
- English/Literature/Culture, BA (Dan Weinstein working on writeup)
- Tchg Eng to Spkrs/Oth Lang Graduate Certificate (Gloria Park working on writeup)
- English Grades 7-12 Certificate Post-Bac (Emily Wender is working on writeup)
- English/Composition & TESOL PhD (Name changed to English/Comp & Appl Ling PHD)
- English as a Second Lang, Graduate Certificate (Moratorium request sent to Senate)
Phase 3 (Due Oct. 1)
- English/TESOL MA (Gloria Park working on writeup)
- English/Writing Studies BA (Tony Farrington working on writeup)
- English/Literature & Criticism PhD (Veronica Watson working on writeup)
- English Education BS (Emily Wender working on writeup)
- English/MATE MA (Program in Moratorium)
- English/Film Studies BA (Program in Moratorium)
- English/Language Studies BA (Program in Moratorium)
- English/Lit, Text & Cultural BA (Name changed to English/Literature/Culture, BA)
7. INSPIRE Program Big Ideas
- Discussion of ENGL 121 and ENGL 202
8. Norming of Student Evaluations
- The podium and online evaluations are supposed to be made the same (update from Mary Stewart?)
- There is a move to norm student evaluation results which APSCUF is reviewing (Todd Thompson)
9. IUP Taglines
- It might interest you to know that IUP’s Marcom division has decided that IUP will not use a tagline (Grow Here was the Fall 2019 fundraising theme and Inspire Unlimited is the current fundraising theme)
- Marcom prefers to use specific details in their recruitment materials rather than taglines
- Gian learned this interesting fact from Simon Stuchlik who is the head of IUP Marcom (apparently other schools also use the marcom label)
- Perhaps IUP English could come up with its own tagline for our website and other materials
English Department 2019-2020 Goals
- Focus on Enhancing Our Team English Spirit
- Clarifying Workload Distribution/Equity
- Defining and Setting Department Priorities
- Improving Department Climate
Upcoming Events
English Valentine’s Day Party
- Event: A fun social event for all English Department Community members (English majors, minors, graduate students, Tenured/Tenure Track and Temporary faculty, Teaching Associates, staff, and friends!)
- Date: Friday Feb. 14
- Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
- Location: English Office Hallway
- Featuring: Cookies from Six Hand Bakery
- Lovvvve Poetry: Write and bring a valentine poem, if you would like
- Or just bring your valentine (but having a valentine is definitely not required!)
- Or just bring yourself to get a cookie! 🙂
- (You can even take a cookie for your valentine who will surely love it!)
Announcements
APSCUF Membership
- It is very important for all tenure track and temporary faculty to join the union. The cost is minimal as all faculty already pay roughly 90% of the membership due. But a strong union helps protect both temporary and permanent faculty. If you are not a member, please join as soon as possible.
- In addition, please consider joining APSCUF CAP which does lobbying for the union. This is the best way to influence legislators to support our concerns.
- Please remember to email Dawnette to get all English Department events and key meetings added to the department web calendar
- Please check the calendar before scheduling meetings to help limit conflicts
- TR from 2:00-4:00 p.m. is a common open time for tenure track faculty members to use for meetings
Additional Announcements
- If anyone has an important announcement, we’ll use the last few minutes of the meeting to cover this