Menu Close

English Department Meeting: Oct. 18, 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

  • Grab and Gab Thanks–Thanks to the following people who joined Gian at our 2nd English Grab and Gab event. We had about 50 undergraduate and graduate students attend the event.
    • Tim Hibsman
    • John Marsden
    • Gloria Park
    • Heather Powers
    • Todd Thompson
    • Matt Vetter
    • Emily Wender
  • IUP Expo Thanks–Thanks to Dan Weinstein who helped Gian cover the IUP Expo on Saturday, Oct. 16 (Gian covered the morning to meet with prospective majors and their parents and Dan covered the afternoon for general high school students and their parents)

Agenda Items

1. ENGL 101 Seat Shortage/English Curriculum Plans

  • We will have a full discussion of how to address the ENGL 101 seat shortage
  • Please refer to the documents in MS Teams

2. DEC Members Needed

  • The DEC has a large number of evaluations to do this year, but several current DEC members have to recuse themselves because they are being evaluated
  • This is shifting the burden of the evaluation writing to a very small number of remaining members
  • If you would like to assist with the DEC, please contact Curt Porter (DEC Chair) and copy Gian who will appoint you for the 2021-2022 academic year only

3. Student Evaluations for Fall 2021

  • If you wish to have student evaluations done for your courses, you need to email Autumn Shannon in the Dean’s office by Oct. 20

4. English Grab and Gab Events

  • 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. 29 Fri. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (Halloween Party!)
    • Dec. 7 Tue. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (Winter Party!)
  • We will have a pizza lunch for the next event
  • We need better faculty turnout for these events
  • For Spring 2022 Gian will set up a rotation list to share the responsibility for planning the get togethers
  • Please tell your students to attend
  • All English majors, minors, graduate students, and faculty and their friends are welcome to attend
  • Please attend yourself

5. AWA Stacking

  • AWAs restored for 2021-2022 thanks to work by ASPCUF
  • Dana Driscoll

5. Departmental Service

  • We have some key departmental work that needs to get done, but this is growing increasingly challenging with our declining numbers
  • We especially need to provide greater incentive to handle student focused events like the Grab and Gab and the weekend IUP Expos
  • Gian will be asking ELC to review our service needs to consider how we might be able to better allocate faculty service time
  • This will likely lead us to eventually need to revise our English Service Policy

6. Program Membership (Both Undergraduate and Graduate)

  • Again, with declining faculty members, we need to revise how we handle program memberships
  • Gian has been working on a draft of a new policy to provide better define membership in programs and required service for those programs
  • In particular, Gian has been working to simplify membership for anyone who wishes to participate in the graduate programs
  • Gian will have ELC review this proposed policy language and then we will have the department review it for possible consideration at a future meeting

7. Music Majors and English Courses

  • The APSCUF Curriculum Committee passed the change to the B.A. in Music which the Music Department had proposed
    • This happened before Gian could intervene further in the process
    • This should have limited impact on our department since these students are still required to take MUHI 102

Announcements

  • We will use the last few minutes of the meeting for any announcements faculty wish to make