ESA Meeting
February 8, 2016, 5:00pm
Room 5409

Agenda

• Approve minutes from 12/16 ESA meeting
• Committee Reports
• Announcements/Discussion:
  • MLA recap: MLA program events were huge successes!  Tremendous thanks to Mario and Elizabeth Decker, and to the Alumni Committee. We’ll give a detailed debriefing, and discuss ideas for future years, to build on this year’s successes.
  • Budget: We have a nice sum left from the fall semester! Discussion of projected spring budget.
  • Grad Center/CUNY-wide issues: PSC contract and potential strike authorization vote, tuition increases, budget crises, and recent grad-junct organizing efforts. Conor Reed organized a meet-up for English students to discuss these issues, immediately following the ESA meeting.
  • Editorial Committee & website: The Editorial Committee will continue to work, over spring semester, on updating and creating materials for the ESA website. They welcome suggestions regarding what specific materials would be useful (e.g. prospectus guides, job interview resources), and which guides should be prioritized.
  • ESA Travel Grant: General update.

• Discussion and Vote: After ESA elections in the spring, all newly elected committee members will attend a meeting where the details of their responsibilities will be discussed. Outgoing committee members will attend as well, to facilitate continuity and to ensure that all the progress the ESA has made is not lost due to changeover of committee members.

• Open floor to any other topics for discussion.

MEETING MINUTES:

Present:

Esther Bernstein & Meira Levinson (Co-chairs), Hilarie Ashton, Kaitlin Mondello, Paul Hebert, Jason Nielsen, Conor Tomas Reed, Colin Macdonald, Patrick Smyth, Liz Goetz, Becky Fullan, Alexander Baldassano, Christina Katopodis, Bradley Nelson, Catherine Engh

• Approved minutes from 12/16 ESA meeting
• Announcements/Discussion:
  • MLA recap: Co-chairs presented a tentative list of recommendations for future MLA event and suite coordination, to be presented to faculty after ESA and/or students on Placement Committee have reviewed and approved it.
  • Budget: Waiting to hear from DSC about spring budget. Live current budget available on ESA Commons.
  • Grad Center/CUNY-wide issues: PSC contract and potential strike authorization vote, tuition increases, budget crises, and recent grad-junct organizing efforts. Conor Reed led meeting directly after the ESA meeting, and efforts were begun. See ESA listserv for details on February 22 meeting to draft resolution.
  • ESA Travel Grant: Application opened at noon, and at the time of the meeting (5pm that same day), there were several applications. Alumni donated $1450 last year earmarked for this travel grant. We anticipate awarding 14 grants of $100 each, with the remainder rolling over to next year’s travel grant fund. Awards are made in order of application time, with students above year six prioritized.

• Unanimous vote: After ESA elections in the spring, all newly elected committee members will meet with outgoing committee members to discuss details of their responsibilities and to facilitate continuity. Unanimous vote to make this “handover meeting” mandatory beginning Spring 2016.

February 2016 ESA Committee Reports:

Executive Committee
Short-term Effects of the Budget Shortfall on the English Program:
GC has a $4 million shortfall for the year 2015 and has a projected $51 million shortfall for 2016.

• For Spring 2016 Academic year, EOs asked to decrease the number of courses offered from last Spring.  EOs directed to cut courses cut by appointed faculty (not central-line). As a result, four courses were cut for Spring 2016.
  • A question was raised, in response to this report, how it was decided which courses to cut aside from considerations of college-appointed faculty vs. central? Response was that the EO tried to cut courses that could be moved to other programs (e.g. MALS), so as not to lose the course entirely – a strategy that many other programs (aside from English) employed as well. Question was then raised whether such courses were cross-listed; answer was that they were not, although English students could still take them.
  • Another question was raised: are students being told that courses may be cut? Response was that yes, it’s been noted generally, and that students are being encouraged by the English program administration to register, even for partial credit, for courses to help ensure that courses run (i.e. to help prevent courses from being cut due to under-enrollment).
• Curriculum Committee is reviewing courses for Fall 2016 (in effort to avoid overlap and to avoid last-minute cancellations)
• Mario sent a letter to President Robinson on December 7, 2015 pertaining to the GC’s response to the budget crisis and how it adversely affects appointed faculty. Twenty-eight additional members of the GC faculty, mostly EOs and Certificate Program Coordinators, signed the letter. President Robinson has acknowledged the letter but has not formally responded.
• Dissertation year fellowships are cut significantly (40 will be awarded, down from 90)

Report on December 2015 Emergency Budget Meeting:
President Robinson called an emergency budget meeting with Executive Officers in December.  During this meeting, President Robinson proposed programs create MA degree programs as a way to generate revenue for the GC, help fill under-enrolled courses and aid in maintaining the number of course offerings. Professor Robinson suggested that MA programs could be interdisciplinary but warned they should not compete with MA programs at the senior colleges. Many questions were raised about this proposal:

• What are ethical issues of creating MA programs to make up for a budget shortfall? Or having more MA students that may want to apply to the PhD program for limited spots?
• To what extent is this really about a budget shortfall or changing the identity of the GC?
• Would programs have control over shape of possible MA programs, including deciding on students admitted?
• Would funds actually come back to individual programs?
• How would program culture be affected by creating, in effect, a two-tiered system?
• What would the difference be between these programs and MALS (MALS is increasing enrollment and already has interdisciplinary tracks, including DH among others)?
• What are the space issues to consider? The GC has a limited room space.
• Executive Committee representatives noted that members of the executive committee emphasized that there may be value in this MA idea separate from financial concerns – if we can offer a compelling, specialized MA program in one of our areas of strength (e.g. Queer Studies, Digital Humanities), that might be a worthwhile idea to consider in its own right – but for the sake of offering a unique, specialized program, rather than for the sake of trying to make up a $4 million budget deficit. (The point was basically: even if we reject this idea as a feasible monetary solution, the idea itself may hold intellectual/educational potential for our program.)

Report on MLA:
The English Program paid for a suite at MLA with open hours hosted hours by students and faculty.

• EO reported that the Program sponsored events were “well-attended”
• ESA voiced the need for streamlining communication between faculty, students, and administration when preparing for future Program-sponsored student support at MLA.
• ESA also suggested partial travel compensation (to be capped based on Program budget allowances) for future co-chairs (or representative students), in order for them to travel to MLA and assist in running support/programming.

Other Business:

• Approved Leave of Absence for Professor Kandice Chuh (2016-2017 Academic Year)
• Approved recommendation to make Professor Felicia Bonaparte a Professor Emeritus.
• Announced that Robert Reid-Pharr will be a visiting professor at Harvard in Fall 2015

Recruitment
The Recruitment Committee met in January to discuss the March 11 Open House event for admitted students. We solicited the ESA listserv for current students willing to serve as contacts (thank you to everyone who responded—a great e-turnout!) and have recently called upon the listserv once again for volunteer panelists for the March 11 event; looking specifically for 5th student panelist, ideally someone who hasn’t yet had a chance to participate in such events. We will meet again at the beginning of February to finalize event plans. The event will now be a full-day event, including lunch and a drop-in/coffee hour or two, for professors and students to mix and mingle informally, all before the 4pm official open house begins. Mario will speak, as well as Esther on behalf of the co-chairs, and Nancy.

Faculty Membership
The Faculty Membership Committee met on Feb. 5th and decided to go ahead with two searches. The first search is in African American/ African Diaspora Studies and the second is British Modernism. In terms of the first search, the committee will read materials from three candidates and will reconvene in a month to schedule one or more talks in Fall 2016. In terms of the second search, the committee has decided to move forward with the job talk for a candidate in Fall 2016.

Diversity
We have not met at all this semester, and our meeting at the end of last semester was cancelled due to scheduling issues. So there is nothing to report, currently, though if there are ideas and issues other students want to carry back to the committee, we are happy to do that. In response to question from the co-chairs, committee will publicize the various areas within the committee’s work and how the committee has divided this work.

Elections
Nothing to report from the Elections Committee this time; we will begin planning for this spring’s election later in February.

Editorial
The Editorial Committee is soliciting suggestions for new student guides; they met in the beginning of Feb and discussed how this might be implemented (e.g. dividing up different content-projects among themselves and working on those simultaneously). The question they’re facing now is where to start – i.e. which content area(s) to prioritize. Suggestions they’ve received so far via email include: a guide to the prospectus process; a guide to post-5th year funding options/resources; a guide to the job-market process. During the ensuing discussion, a suggestion was also put forth for a guide for first-year teachers; the suggestion was then made that this might work better as a live forum/discussion, possibly after an ESA meeting, with the goal of providing a safe space for students to ask their peers any/all questions re. first-year teaching. Esther asked the Editorial Committee if they discussed revising/updating existing guides, such as Orals or Comps; others in the room added that this would also be a productive project – although it would make sense to hold off revising Comps guides, given the impending changes for next year.

Curriculum Committee
Curriculum met Feb 3; main business was comps.  Mario was firm that nothing can be put in place this year.  We ran through the last proposal in light of feedback (mostly faculty concerns).  The committee has to meet again and will then issue a revised proposal. The feeling was to expand the book essay to 18 pages covering five books, to add an actual (ungraded) in house conference for students to give their conference talks, and to provide offers of reader feedback meetings to all successful students. (The EO, as in the past, will meet with unsuccessful ones.)  There was some hope that comps work could be voluntarily integrated into coursework, especially the required course.  Workshops might offer more assistance, as well as the new TLC.

Questions raised at the ESA meeting included concerns over the in-house conference. Would this conference be open to the public? to GC members? to anyone in the English program? to first years and faculty who are grading? How does this address the purpose of removing anxiety created by a timed test?

Library
Still no stamp or bookmarks, but there is a sign-out book you fill out by hand when borrowing a book – and someone checked out books! Yay! A question was raised whether the Library Committee could add language dictionaries to the library; Christina (the Library Committee representative present) responded enthusiastically and said the committee would email the listserv asking for dictionary donations. Two dictionary pledges (French and Italian) were made at the meeting. Library committee also expressed thanks for Nancy’s continued support in directing student donations of books to the ESA library.

No report:
Friday Forum, Placement, Website, Admissions & Financial Aid, Conference, Course Assessment, Alumni