Announcements & Committee Reports

Elections: vote!

May 3 Ballot opens

May 10 Ballot closes

Upcoming Events:

Pizza Pick Me Up: May 10th 1-3 pm in the ESA lounge. This will be an event for all who want to hang out, eat pizza, and talk about teaching. First-year students are especially encouraged to attend but all are welcome. Thank you to Erin Spampinato and Lindsay Lehman for helping organize.

Revels: May 12th 4 pm- ?!?!? in the English program lounge.

We could use your help in putting the Revels event together. We will be setting up the lounge on the afternoon of 5/4 and we will be putting food etc. out on 5/5.

Discussion:

List-serv administrator: Tracy Riley is handing over the administration of the ESA-L list to two new people.

“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.”

Any volunteers?

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. Alternatively, we could cancel one and spend money on booze instead. What do people prefer?

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 they are counted by the registrar. There may be more discussion about this next Fall, when the news comes in about how successful these measures have been. Any further thoughts?