Minutes 5/5
Present: Catherine Engh, Kristi Fleetwood, Paul L. Hebert, Jason Nielsen, and Sarah Schwartz (through Facetime).
Announcements and Committee Reports:
Reminder that the ESA Elections are open and that they will be closing on 5/10. Sarah and Kristi will hopefully have the results out by 5/12.
Pizza Pick Me Up on May 10th presents problems since the people who were going to organize it are no longer going to be near the GC on those days. Discussion of whether or not we should just order pizza for revels set up and forget the Pizza Pick Me Up on the 10th. Ultimately, decided to keep the PPMU and possibly order pizza for set up.
Revels: May 12 starting with the Poetics event at 4. Sarah strongly urged us to promote the Poetics readings before Revels begins.
Discussion:
List-serv: Tracy Riley will no longer be able to administer the ESA-L. He sent in a brief description:
“This is the kind of job that, once it’s set up, usually requires only a few minutes a month. Although the volunteers need to be responsive to email requests, responding to those requests usually involves just a few clicks on the computer. The list has never been moderated in any way. The administrator just approves people who request to subscribe and, occasionally, will manually subscribe individuals or report problems (e.g., subscribers randomly being dropped from the list). And the role does not require visiting the GC, so students who have completed coursework can easily keep it up.”
It is suggested that Kristi and Esther, as the new Co-Chairs, take over the responsibility, letting the ESA-L become part of Co-Chair duties. Since Esther was not present, Kristi has agreed to discuss this with her outside of the meeting and get back to the ESA.
Budget: After we decided collectively to spend the budget surplus on communal events (like the Pizza Pick me Up), we learned that we can now spend that surplus on booze for revels. We had planned two communal events, which we could still do. Suggested that, we could cancel one and spend money on booze instead. Since the budget is larger than anticipated, it was decided to keep one of the events, Pizza Pick Me Up, and spend the extra money on booze for revels.
Other Items: There was discussion at the Executive Committee about what to do about course cancellations going forward. One change that has been made to ensure minimum enrollment in all courses is a reduction of maximum course enrollment from 12 to 10. Another, ongoing suggestion is to recommend that professors create courses with a broader appeal. There is some desire to ensure that consortium students register by the pertinent date, so that the registrar counts them. There may be more discussion about this next Fall, when the news comes in about how successful these measures have been. Through a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of these ideas and their ability to be impactful in the long run, the meeting decided to continue this discussion in the Fall, allowing the committees to emphasize a need for preventing course cancellations. It was suggested that the English program sponsor an MA path to allow more classes and a larger budget for the department.
