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English Department Meeting: September 17, 2020

English Department Meeting Information

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

  • IUP English Professor Jane Leonard (1840-1925)

Image result for jane leonard iup

Thanks

  • To Dawnette Shellhammer and Peggy Kane (and the program directors listed further down) for helping Gian to get the Spring 2020 schedule done

Agenda Items

1. IUP Fall 2020

  • We got off to a great start
  • Students are happy to be here and/or remote and/or online
  • Positive virus cases have stayed pretty low
  • Please try to remain flexible with students and err on the side of believing any illness issues
  • A pandemic is not a good time to enforce strict attendance policies

2. COVID-19/Contact Tracing

  • If students mention feeling ill, encourage them to visit the IUP Health Center or their medical professional
  • Keep all medical information confidential
  • All positive test results are reported to PA Department of Health which then initiates contact tracing so that anyone who potentially came into contact with an infected person will be notified by email
  • Encourage self quarantining
  • Encourage full contact tracing reporting
  • Continue to encourage mask wearing and social distancing

4. Retrenchment

  • The current faculty retrenchment number is projected at roughly 132 (roughly 25% of faculty)
  • Staff are also being cut and/or outsourced
  • Some of the budget cou
  • The full faculty list, and possibly all cuts, should be known by the end of October
  • If you wish to send information to the Dean about other skills you have, you may do so
  • Departments and/or Colleges may be combined/consolidated but English will remain
  • There is going to be a lot of pain, but we are going to have to find a way past it
  • There are very likely senior IUP faculty who will step forward to save some retrenched positions
  • The required faculty/student ratio and non-faculty student ratio were set by the Chancellor
  • Some of the budget cuts are necessary to keep IUP from going bankrupt
  • Every week we keep students here and the dorms open helps student learning, student success, and student retention as well as the budget
  • Every student matters to the health of IUP
  • Every faculty member matters and Gian will do as much as he can to help keep all the English faculty

5. IUP Winter 2021

  • Gian will assign this shortly
  • Course offerings have been limited by the dean
  • Follows the Summer/Winter Rotation Policy (Committee Chair: Sharon Deckert)

6. IUP Spring 2021

  • Spring 2021 will be like Fall 2020
  • Freshmen courses (ENGL 100, ENGL 101, AND ENGL 121) will be Hawkflex (combination of in person with reduced student numbers and Remote/Distance Education)
  • All other courses will be Remote (primarily synchronous) OR Distance Education (asynchronous)

7. Scheduling

  • Options are being reduced
  • No extra courses floating around
  • Only offering the exact number of courses for which we have teachers (tenure track faculty and TAs)
  • But if a change occurs, this means it’s harder to rework schedules
  • People are often needed for extra BA major courses and graduate courses
  • At the same time, we have to meet students’ curricular needs, so you might not always get your top choices
  • Gian tries to prioritize people’s MWF, TF, Remote, and Online choices, but it just isn’t always possible
  • Gian consulted Gloria Park, Lynn Shelly, Mike Williamson, Emily Wender, Dan Weinstein, and Veronica Watson to do the Spring 2021 Schedule; Thanks for all their help
  • The schedule is built so that there are typically only 1 or 2 courses in any time slot
  • ENGL 100 and ENGL 101 courses are in short supply; for that matter, so are ENGL 121 and 202
  • More people will be needed to teach ENGL 100 in the future

8. Clearances and Title IX Training

  • We will again need to complete the online Title IX training
  • Please make this a priority because IUP administration is growing increasingly strict about compliance
  • The new training is super quick and easy and informative
  • If you are notified that you need to complete a Clearances check, please also do this as promptly as possible
  • If you don’t have the proper clearances to teach, you can be pulled out of teaching any 100 level classes (this has happened to people, so please no it can be a real problem and avoid getting stuck in this situation)
  • And yes, all of this may seem like a pain, but you’ll be glad you had some training when a student needs your help with a Title IX situation

9. Inspire/Department 5-Year Review

  • 5-Year Review pushed back to 2021
  • Inspire Phase 2 action plans needed
  • Inspire Phase 3 Plans needed
  • BA English Writing Track (Tony Farrington/Dan Weinstein)
  • B.S. in English Education (Emily Wender)
  • MATESOL (Gloria Park)
  • Ph.D. in Literature and Criticism (Veronica Watson)

10. Department Committees List

  • Brian Carpenter has run our elections and compiled our list
  • Gian did clean up on the list
  • We need a 2nd person to serve on the Elections Committee
  • The current list is stored in MS Teams

11. English Leadership Council (ELC)

  • Gian has appointed John Branscum and Bryna Siegel Finer to the ELC
  • Thanks to Bryna and John for taking on this important responsibility

12. Promotion

  • Gian is calling for a brief DPC meeting immediately after this meeting to elect a DPC Chair
  • If anyone is planning to go for promotion, please let Gian know

13. MS Outlook Calendar

  • We will be using the Calendar feature in MS Outlook
  • Check the English Department Group for events
  • Anyone can add to these events
  • Please be careful not to accidentally delete something
  • Zoom meetings can be scheduled within the MS Outlook Calendar

Announcements

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