4-21 Minutes

ESA Minutes 4/21

Present: Kristi Fleetwood, Elissa Myers, Esther Bernstein, Erin Spampinato, Lindsey Lehman, Bradley Nelson, Janie Boynton

 

Announcements:

ESA Elections: are underway, thanks to Kristi and Sarah!

April 19 Nominations open

April 26 Nominations close

May 3 Ballot opens

May 10 Ballot closes

 

Revels: Will be scheduled for Friday May 12th, and will be a BYOB situation as in the Fall. Please think about setting aside time to help us set up on 5-11 and on the afternoon of 5-12.

 

-Note: Much later–after this meeting but before Revels–we realized that we were going to be allowed to use our money for booze, which also means we didn’t end up having as much of a budget surplus as we thought.

The ESA sound conference: It was a success! Members of the committee have written wonderful blog posts about the event, which you can read on the Center for the

Humanities blog:

http://www.centerforthehumanities.org/blog/scholars-find-harmony-in-discord-at-sound-studies-conference

 

Discussion:

Diversity Committee: Last year, the program agreed, in collaboration with ESA discussions and the Diversity committee which was then chaired by Kandice Chuh, that a new format was needed. It was decided that the faculty and students who are elected to the Diversity committee will each be assigned to another program committee. But, since last year when changes were proposed, nothing has been done to implement the new structure, as far as we know. The committee has not even met this year. How might we fix this problem?

 

Discussion about this: People suggest that by we could make the Diversity Committee more a of concern on all committees by having a diversity liaison on each other committee; these people will also be part of the Diversity Committee itself.

  • This will involve changing the election structure and making the Diversity Committee an exception to the 2-committee rule.
  • These new members of the committee will have the ability to/responsibility of writing a new description of what the committee does.

Labor Concern: We’ve solicited and assigned volunteers to first years to be ‘teaching mentors,’ but a student-member of the gc community raised a very good point that “Ideally, students would receive even nominal payment for doing this, and it might be a way to use extra ESA funds in the future.” Do we want to spend some of the ESA budget surplus this way? Is this a reason to recommend NOT continuing the program in the future?

 

  • Many people at this meeting disagreed with the idea that this kind of mentoring labor should be compensated, saying that it should not be considered work, but should be considered a voluntary contribution to collegiality and teacher support in the department.

Budget: Looks like we will have another surplus of around $500. How should we spend this? More travel grants of $100 a piece? To compensate mentors? To buy a another bookshelf for the ESA library? Other ideas?

 

  • Lots of discussion about using this money to support collegiality and support of teaching in the department
  • Decision to support teaching convo event by paying for 2 pizzas

-Also, see above note about budget surplus.

Paul Hebert has proposed a change to the bylaws. If it succeeds the language will move to the elections ballot for approval by the full ESA.  Basically, the proposal is that we remove language limiting the number of co-chairs to two.

  • Voted to put by-law change on the ballot.