Meeting Minutes

ESA Plenary, Sept. 21, 2012, 2:00pm

Present: Tracy Riley (proxying also as Melissa Dennihy), Maggie Galvan, Mia Chen, Ashley Foster, Sara Ruth Jacobs, Becky Fullan, Anne Donlon, Lynne Beckenstein, Ian Foster (proxying also as Fiona Lee), Rasheed Hinds, Trace Peterson, Chris Eng, Tina Meyerhoff, Dominique Zino, Jason Nielsen, Marissa Brostoff, Paul Fess, Amanda Licastro (proxying also as Elizabeth Goetz), Paul Hebert, Kristin Moriah, Simone White, Velina Manolova, Charlotte Thurston

Number of voting members present: 24

Number of members present: 26 (ESA Co-chairs only vote in the case of a tie)

QCC and shared governance

The issue here is not really the threats themselves, but the problem of a misunderstanding around shared governance between faculty and administration.

But, what about the adjuncts?

Queens decided to create their own resolution because QCC feeds directly into Queens

Wed. faculty meeting at QCC—they decided to stand their ground.

Bronx CC has refused in the past…

BMCC dean asked about Pathways: if adjuncts would have to be transportable, essentially, would they be helped? No.

There are a lot of non GC-based adjuncts that would be easier to get rid of.

What does this threat mean in terms of governance and our role?

English grad students are still a relatively minor contingent of adjuncts. We would have to organize with adjuncts at all campuses at the campuses.

• ESA unanimously endorses the creation of an Ad-hoc Committee on Pathways & Adjunct Issues

Working through the resolution

Issue of shared governance is larger than CUNY…

What is the state of PSC’s lawsuit against Pathways? It’s underway, but not decided

• ESA unanimously adopts the Resolution In Support Of Queensborough Community College English Faculty To Establish Curricular Policies

Reportback from the Placement Committee

Been getting in contact with recent alumni. MLA Job List has been posted.

Another Placement matter

Should we push faculty to publish full placement information? How do we report on alternate academic careers?

There’s a blog post about how MLA reports, potentially inaccurately, job list information: http://www.alex-reid.net/2012/09/whither-the-mla-job-market.html

• ESA strongly endorses (by straw poll) that the English Program make full placement information more transparently available.

Reportback from ESA Conference Chair

Jason Nielsen passes out the CFP for the conference (ready to go far and wide) and explains the format of the conference, including alternate forms of presentation and calling for a committee to help read abstracts and also calls for conference chairs. They are thinking of the conference as interdisciplinary to be more inclusive.

Reportback from the Website Committee

They are currently designing a site for the ESA on the Commons with a private (documents) and public-facing (events, other public materials) for students. They want to make the site able to be user-driven with content.

Announcements on Upcoming Events to Attend

Diversity events next Friday for prospective English graduate students at 2pm and 4pm

Roderick Ferguson, exploratory job talk on Friday, October 5 at 4pm