Menu Close

English Department Meeting: Sep. 21, 2021

English Department Meeting Information

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

  • IUP English Professor Jane E. Leonard (1840-1925)

Image result for jane leonard iup

Thanks

Thanks to the following people who covered our new English major orientation while Gian was taking his son off to college:

  • John Branscum
  • Tim Hibsman
  • John Marsden
  • Heather Powers
  • Dan Weinstein
  • A number of English Education students

Welcome Back

From their 2021 Spring Sabbatical:

  • Ken Sherwood
  • Mike Williamson

2021-2022 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.

2021 Fall Sabbatical

  • Chris Kuipers

2022 Spring Sabbaticals

  • Emily Wender

English Leadership Changes

New IUP Director of Undergraduate Writing

  • Bryna Siegel Finer (with thanks to Lynn Shelly whom Bryna is replacing in handling Liberal Studies English director duties)

Agenda Items

1. English Office Entrance

  • The key code pad on the front door is not yet in use
  • Use your office key to enter the English Department suite if it is locked
  • After about 2 p.m. there are no maintenance people in the building so keep your office door locked
  • If you are leaving after that time, please lock the front entrance door

2. English Grab and Gab Events

  • Thanks to everyone who took part in our first Grab and Gab Event
  • We had about 100 students attend and they loved it!
  • We will continue to have a department community building event the first Tuesday of each month (from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the department office suite)
  • These events are listed on the department M.S. Outlook calendar
    • Oct. 5 Tue. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
    • Nov. 2 Tue. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
    • Dec. 7 Tue. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (Finals Week)
  • We will have coffee and donuts at the next event
  • A volunteer is needed to get the food
  • Please tell your students to attend
  • All English majors, minors, graduate students, and faculty and their friends are welcome to attend
  • Please attend yourself

3. Advising

  • Dan Weinstein, Emily Wender, and Gian met to redistribute advisees more evenly
  • In most cases you will continue to work with your current advisees
  • In some cases you have been given new advisees
  • We want everyone invested in our department’s undergraduate and graduate students
  • Everyone has been assigned at least 1 major
  • The new maximum number of advisees is up to 7 (a few people are above that but should move to 7 by the end of the year)
  • Missy Bair has entered the new advising assignments
  • Please check MyIUP to see who your advisees are and send them an email to make sure they know you have been assigned as their advisor
  • Since the English B.A. and English Education programs will be merging this year, people need to be ready to advise either type of major
  • Advising checklists are in M.S. Teams
  • Dan and Emily will assist with questions
  • Registration begins October 11
  • Please meet with your advisees before giving them their registration PIN numbers

4. IUP Advise and DegreeWorks

  • Guest: Erin Conlin of the History Department is the IUP Advise Coordinator
  • She is going to give us an overview of IUP Advise
  • IUP Advise is especially helpful for creating a record of meetings with advisees and for sending warnings to advisees if they are having problems
  • DegreeWorks is best for doing a degree audit of a student
  • If DegreeWorks is acting strange (which it has been lately), try running a WhatIf and choosing the student’s major; that seems to override the problem
  • We have complained to the Registrar’s Office about these problems

5. Music Majors and English Courses

  • Most Music Majors take MUHI 102: Music and Literature
    • This course fulfills both their fine arts and literature requirements
    • Music majors take MUHI 102 instead of ENGL 121
    • The course focuses on literature that has links to music, such as the famous story “Sonny’s Blues”
    • It’s how the music majors stay within the 120 credit degree limit
    • We have been teaching this course for over a decade since Gail Berlin was chair
    • Dan Weinstein has graciously agreed to take the lead on teaching this course
    • The course is team taught with a Music faculty member
    • We offer 2 sections of this course, capped at 30 students each, with each faculty member earning 1.5 credits per section for a total of 3 credits
    • The course is typically offered TR with the English faculty member teaching on one day and the Music faculty member teaching on the other
  • Music also offers a B.A. in Music which they have asked to update
    • This program has about 6 majors in it (there were 11 more in Spring 21 who were seniors)
    • Currently these students take MUHI 102 and 1 more English course from (ENGL 210, 215, 225, 226, 340, and 398)
    • This was an arrangement Gail Berlin worked out years ago
    • The music majors do not have the ENGL 122 pre-req required for the other courses nor do they have any preparation in advanced literature study
    • This causes the students problems when they register
    • John Levey of music, in conjunction with Music Chair Matt Baumer, reached out to Gian about this issue in Spring 21
    • Music has asked to drop this requirement and only require MUHI 102 to bring this program in line with all their other programs
    • Because faculty have consistently complained about class size increases and English majors are already having problems getting into our majors courses themselves, Gian agreed to this request because it means majors courses are slightly less full
    • This was a mistake; the proposed change needs to be voted on by the department
    • If we wish to keep the requirement, we need to drop the pre-reqs for the advanced classes or make MUHI 102 count as a pre-req for them

6. English 101 Seat Shortage

  • We need to discuss seat shortages for Spring 22

Announcements

  • If anyone has an important announcement, we’ll use the last few minutes of the meeting to cover this