English Department Meeting Information
- Meeting Date: 04/15/21
- Meeting Minutes Taker: Tanya Heflin
- John Marsden will monitor the chat for any issues we need to discuss
- Since we are taking minutes at the meetings, we will not be recording meetings unless there is some pressing need to do so
- Zoom Meeting Link:
- End of the Year Get Together
- May 6 Thursday 5:00-6:00 p.m.
- English Department Minutes Takers Archive
“Go forth! Be brave! Be proud! Be true!”
- IUP English Professor Jane Leonard (1840-1925)
Congratulations
- To Chris Kuipers on being awarded a sabbatical for Fall 2021
- To Emily Wender on being awarded a sabbatical for Spring 2022
Big Thanks!
- To John Marsden, Dan Weinstein, and Emily Wender who have all helped me meet with prospective English majors and their families this semester (there’s yet another meeting tonight at 7 p.m., in fact!)
- Thanks to Blane Dessy who has given a generous donation to create an endowed scholarship: The Blane Dessy Scholarship for English
- The paperwork has just been finalized; This scholarship will be used to support English majors studying myth
- Blane’s donation also funded creation of the new Myth Collaborative space in our department atrium
- Funds from Blane’s donation will also support publication of a myth-focused journal, Arestia, speakers, and related activities
- Mike Williamson and Melanie Holm will serve as Co-Directors of the Myth Collaborative
- A grand opening of the new space will be video taped in April for dissemination
Agenda Items
1. Department Suite Information
- There is no cleaning staff in the building after about 3:00 p.m.
- If you are working in your office in the late afternoon/evening, please lock the door to the office suite as you leave
- There have been some vandalism issues in HSS 306 and elsewhere, so we need to be more on guard about security
2. Graduation
- IUP is holding in person graduation for Spring 2021
- There will be no departmental graduation ceremonies
- There will be multiple official graduation ceremonies at the KCAC with students limited to 2 guests each to ensure social distancing
- Students and their families had strongly advocated to have this opportunity
- There will be a Graduate Student Commencement on the evening of Fri. May 7
- There will be multiple Undergraduate Student Commencement Ceremonies on the day of Sat. May 8 (with one for CHSS)
- Masks are required
- Regalia is not required, but faculty will be asked to stand to be recognized during the ceremony
- Regalia is required for faculty who are hooding dissertation students at the Graduate Student Commencement
- Faculty need a ticket unless they are hooding a student
- Please submit your name to Dawnette by NOON tomorrow (4/16) if you want to attend graduation
3. LSE Seats Shortage
- We will discuss the documents Gian has placed in MS Teams dealing with the ongoing shortage of seats in our LSE courses
4. Foreign Language Requirements
- We will discuss foreign language requirements for the English B.A. and English Education programs
- Our English Education Program currently requires students to earn a total of 122 credits; this needs to be reduced to meet a PASSHE mandate that no program exceed 120 total credits
5. English 5 Year Program Review
- Our department is up for 5 year review in 2021-2022
- This is very timely given our departmental concerns
- We need to review all our programs in light of our current faculty resources
- Each program will get up to 5 pages to discuss it’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)
- Great news: The Inspire Process has come to an end
- We can use the Inspire documents to help write about each program
- Outside evaluator visits can now be done virtually
- We will need names of 3 potential outside evaluators
- Please send suggestions for potential evaluators to Gian
Announcements
- If anyone has an important announcement, we’ll use the last few minutes of the meeting to cover this