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English Department Meeting: Apr. 9, 2020

English Department Meeting Agenda

“Go forth! Be brave! Be proud! Be true!”

  • IUP English Professor Jane Leonard (1840-1925)

Image result for jane leonard iup

Thanks

  • To Melanie Holm and Matt Vetter who have continued to run the Job Placement tutorials for our graduate students

English Newsmakers

Congratulations to the following English department members on their recent accomplishments. Some people were lucky enough to give presentations before all travel got grounded!

  • Dana Driscoll oversaw the creation of a new video promoting the Writing Center and other resources for IUP students
  • Dana also just published a Co-Edited book entitled Transfer of Learning in the Writing Center
  • Dana and IUP CAL doctoral alum (and former TF) Nadia Zamin also published an article entitled ““Self-Care as Professionalization: A Case for Ethical Doctoral Education in Composition Studies” in College Composition and Communication!!!!!
  • Mariah Fairley (CAL doctoral student) published an article entitled “Conceptualizing Language Teacher Education Centered on Language Teacher Identity Development: A Competencies‐Based Approach and Practical Applications” in the premier journal TESOL Quarterly
  • Jialei Jiang (CAL doctoral student and former TA) published an article entitled “‘I Never Know What to Expect’: Aleatory Identity Play in Fortnite and Its Implications for Multimodal Composition” in the premier journal Computers and Composition
  • Mike Sell gave a presentation entitled “The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War” at the Yale School of Drama
  • A great video was just posted on the IUP website featuring Matt Vetter talking about “Making a Better Wikipedia”
  • Matt also gave a keynote at Opencon Cleveland 2020!
  • Lingyan Yang gave a presentation entitled “Asian American Magical Realism in the Americas in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest” at the 2020 MLA Convention (this news item had come through recently)

Approval of Department Meeting Minutes

We will vote to approve Minutes from the English Department meeting held on:

  • 2/11/20 (Thanks to Lingyan Yang for taking minutes)

The minutes were circulated by email.

Minutes Takers History

Thanks to our volunteer minutes takers:

If we each take one turn writing minutes, then each person only has to do it more than once every 3 years or so.

Agenda Items

1. Today is the official IUP Day of Caring

  • IUP Cares
  • IUP Emergency Response Fund
  • For every IUP English faculty member who makes a donation to the IUP Emergency Response Fund, Gian will donate $10 more to the fund beyond his initial $100 donation
  • Please send an email to Gian to let him know that you have made a donation (including if you already did so)
  • Any amount is great, and if you are comfortable sharing the amount, Gian will keep that private but report back later the grand total of IUP Cares donations by the English Department; the dean would love to hear this news and, more importantly, all these donations will help IUP students struggling during the outbreak
  • #IUPCares
  • We are blessed to be working when so many others are unable to

2. University Planning Council (UPC)

  • Guests: Scott Moore and Paula Stossel (UPC Co-Chairs)
  • IUP’s proposed new student-focused strategic plan
  • Please see document forwarded from Scott
  • In a trying time, it is helpful to think about how we can best achieve our core mission: Helping IUP’s students to learn

3. IUP Pandemic Response

  • The Provost is still considering how Annual Reports will be handled this year so it is not clear if faculty will need to report their scholarly accomplishments the same as last year
  • Students may elect a Pass/Fail option for all courses after they receive their final grades for a course
    • English Education majors cannot use this option, so please explain this to them if you are advising them
    • A student getting an A or a B (or C or D for that matter) is not required to take a pass
    • Advisors should try to help students think about the ramifications of taking a pass in a course will impact their progress toward their degree
  • Student evaluations will be sent to students electronically for all courses where they are required (i.e. for probationary faculty and TF’s/TA’s) or were requested
    • The dean said he thought the student evaluations would be sent out in Week 13 of courses
    • The CHSS Chairs discussed why this is a problematic semester to evaluate, but the contract requires it and the Chancellor/APSCUF have not adjusted this requirement
    • Future personnel committees are urged to look at this semester as one with an * since the completion rate on student evaluations for online courses is typically extremely low
    • Students cannot be required to complete student evaluations, but you can urge them to do so
  • Please avoid scheduling time-limited activities (like tests) outside of your assigned class time slot since many students have required class session times in other time slots; activities outside your assigned class time need to be open-ended enough so that students won’t have to miss a required meeting for another course
  • IUP is requiring faculty to hold some type of online culminating activity during your regularly assigned Final Exam time slot; faculty should meet this requirement in whatever way best serves their students’ learning needs
    • If a student has a Final Exam time conflict with 2 courses, please email scheduling-center@iup.edu with the students’ name, banner ID, course, and CRN information and the scheduling center will resolve the conflict
  • There are reports of some faculty (hopefully not in English) piling extra work on students thinking they have nothing else to do
    • Please remember that most students are new to online learning, are stressed, may be dealing with illness or sick family members, may have lost their jobs, and may simply feel unable to do simple things like focus on school
    • Please be patient and understanding and try to help them succeed; students still need to do the work, but leniency on deadlines or adjusting expectations may help
    • You are all good teachers working in a challenging time, so please just help your students to learn as best you can
  • We will get through this

4. FERPA Information

  • Some questions have come up about FERPA
  • Do not send grades via email because IUP considers this a violation of FERPA; grades should be distributed through a secure method, preferably a LMS like D2L
    • ACPAC is reviewing this issue since IUP’s email system is actually highly secure
  • If you are talking to a student directly, via phone or zoom, they can give permission to anyone else in the room to hear the conversation; you should confirm with them that they are giving permission for others to hear
  • If a parent or other person wants to talk to you without the present of the student, you need to confirm that they have permission to do so; in such cases, you should explain to the student and/or parent how permission is given in the MyIUP system

5. 2020 English Writing Contest

  • Thanks to Jean Nienkamp for overseeing our 2020 English Writing Contest
  • Please return judged entries by April 27

6. Elections

  • We need to hold spring committee elections as well; Brian Carpenter is Chair of the Elections Committee and will set up these elections soon
  • We also need to vote on Temporary Faculty for the 2020-2021 academic year
  • Melanie Holm has been elected to an at-large IUP Senate seat; way to go Melanie!
  • Because of Melanie getting the at-large seat, we need to elect a new Senator to be our representative for English; volunteers are welcome!

7. English Leadership Council (ELC)

  • At the Tuesday meeting of the ELC, we discussed the membership of the committee
  • The ELC members decided to consult the department to see if any changes are needed
  • Thanks to the following ELC Members who have bee working on the committee all year:
    • Gian (ELC Chair)
    • Tanya Heflin (Elected through 2022)
    • Gloria Park (C&T Director)
    • Mike Sell (Fall 2019)/Matt Vetter (Spring 2020) (TF/TA Head Mentors, Appointed by Chair for alternating semesters through 2021)
    • Ken Sherwood (Elected through 2021)
    • Mary Stewart (LSE Assessment Coordinator, Appointed by Chair through 2021)
    • Veronica Watson (L&C Director)
    • Dan Weinstein (English B.A. Director)
    • Emily Wender (English Ed. B.S. Director)
    • Chauna Craig (Assistant Chair/Ex-Officio)
  • ELC official committee charge:
    • The English Leadership Council shall provide advice and feedback to the department chair on the day-to-day conduct of departmental business; it shall assist in maintaining open communication between the chair and major departmental programs and constituencies; and it shall develop recommendations to the department for policies, procedures and initiatives.
    • Under exceptional circumstances, the chair may call upon the ELC to develop and/or approve actions that would normally fall under the scope of the department governance.  These actions will be presented to the department for advice and consent, or will be reported to the department at the subsequent meeting for endorsement or modification. Policies and procedures may also be developed and presented to the department by other appropriate committees.

8. INSPIRE Program Reviews

  • Gian got the Provost to cancel 5 year program reviews and merge them with future Inspire Program Reviews for one streamlined process

Inspire 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)

Inspire Phase 2 (Proposals Being Reviewed)

  • English/Comp & Appl Ling PHD (Gian, Gloria Park, & Mary Stewart completed writeup)
  • English/Literature, MA (Mike Williamson completed writeup)
  • English/Literature/Culture, BA (Dan Weinstein completed writeup)
  • Tchg Eng to Spkrs/Oth Lang Graduate Certificate (Gloria Park completed writeup)
  • English Grades 7-12 Certificate Post-Bac (Emily Wender completed writeup)

Inspire 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)

Inspire Program “Big” (or a better word would be BAD) Ideas

  • The problematic suggestions about ENGL 121 and ENGL 202 remain under consideration, although we have not heard any more about these ideas

9. IUP English Retirements

  • We have 5 faculty members who have served IUP’s English Department well and true for many years. Below are these esteemed faculty, listed in reverse order of seniority. They will all be sorely missed.
    • Laurel Black (24 years of service; hired in 1996)
    • Judith Villa (24 years of service; hired in 1996)
    • Lily Savova (retired in Jan. 2020; 28 years of service; hired in 1992)
    • Tom Slater (30 years of service; hired in 1996)
    • Ben Rafoth (33 years of service; hired in 1987)
  • We were originally going to have a party for all the retirees today
  • Instead, we will postpone the party to the fall (let’s pray!) when we can all celebrate together in person!!!
  • Chauna Craig will coordinate collecting donations for retirement gifts
  • Susan Comfort will become our faculty member with the most seniority (hired in 1994), with Chris Orchard and Gian (both hired in 1995) rounding out the top 3 spots (but Gian still remembers when people used to call him The Kid!)

9. Parks and Rec Premiered on This Date in 2009

  • Need a new TV series to help you pass the time?
  • Try Parks and Rec which premiered back on April 9, 2009
  • It is a show about a government office led by super optimistic liberal Leslie Knope, who believes in the good government can do, but managed by conservative Ron Swanson, who hates big government and wishes the Parks Department could be run by Chuck E Cheese
  • The show is brilliant and funny, from the writers of the equally fabulous The Office

Announcements

  • Junior Year Review Deadline: April 14
    • Please send completed Junior Year Reviews to Sandy Greene in the CHSS Dean’s Office and copy Chauna Craig and Dawnette Shellhammer
  • Course Withdrawal Deadline: April 20
  • IUP English Writing Contest Judging of Entries: April 27
  • Healthy U Real Age Deadline: May 31

IUP English Google Calendar

  • 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