Newsletter Editor Jane Weiss
A Welcome Back Message from Annie Del Principe, English Department Chair
Welcome back to school and to the spring 2024 term at KCC! A few of us have already met our students, but most of us will be starting classes today and tomorrow. I wish you all a meaningful and productive term! Just a few quick things:
English department meeting March 5, 3-4:30, V219:
Please join us for our first official department meeting of the semester and faculty should make every effort to attend. As always, adjuncts are very welcome to join us, but I do not have a budget allocation to pay part-timers for attendance at these meetings. I will send out some meeting updates later today via the calendar event. Please do accept that event if you are attending the meeting.
Spring 2024 Syllabi
As always, please email a copy of your syllabus to Shelly Benjamin for record keeping. I prefer these records to be kept digitally, so please email a file rather than handing her a hard copy that she will have to scan. Thanks.
Call for applicants | Composition sequence co-coordinator:
As you know, Rachel will be stepping away from her role as composition co-coordinator after this spring term, and I put out a call for applicants for that position back in January. This is a reminder that applications are requested by March 25th. I’ve attached the role description again to this email, and my full email original email on this topic is pasted at the end of this message for reference.
Service Opportunity | English department awards liaison:
If you’re looking for some departmental service and you enjoy managing and giving awards, this role may be for you! After a few years of service, Greg has let me know that he’d like to pass along the role of department awards liaison after this spring. Greg is happy to orient our new awards liaison to the role. Please email me directly if you are interested in this role.
That’s it for now. I am looking forward to another great semester working with all of you!
English Department Office
Christine, Audrey, and Shelly are delighted that more of us are back on campus in person; in fact, they’re providing coffee and snacks, so stop by and visit C309! However, there are some start of semester tasks you can handle more efficiently through other means. If you have computer or account-related issues, please contact Instructional Technology directly (718-368-6679, helpdesk@kbcc.cuny.edu); to find out your room assignments, please check CUNYfirst, and if you run into problems with your room, contact Academic Scheduling at Academic_Scheduling@kbcc.cuny.edu or 718.368.5686.
Workload and Multiple Position Forms
If you have not already done so, please send your Spring workload and multiple position forms to the English Department immediately at Engworkload.kcc@kbcc.cuny.edu. You can find blank workload forms (and the handy 19-page Quick Guide to filling them out) at https://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/aa/forms.html
English Department Meeting
The English Department will meet on 5 March 2024 from 3:00-4:30 in V219. The agenda includes discussion of English 24 curriculum changes, changing course caps in online courses, and designing a shared structure for English program committees and program leadership selection: Literary Studies and Creative Writing. Since we want to have ample time for these discussions, Annie has made a request about announcements at the meeting. If you have a very brief announcement you’d like to make live, in-person at the meeting, please email Annie and let her know. If you have a somewhat longer announcement to make, please send an email to the department and make that announcement in writing. That way, you can provide as much detail as you like in your email, and we can reserve most of our meeting time together for agenda items. To email all members of the department, please send your message to “KCC-ENGDEPTFACULTY” in Outlook.
Upcoming English Department meetings are on 9 April 2024 and 21 May 2024, both in V219 from 3:00 to 4:30 PM.
Informational Video: Access-Ability Services (AAS)
A message from Christine Rudisel: The link below is for an informational video about Kingsborough’s Access-Ability Services (AAS). Please consider posting it on your course sites and/or including it in your syllabi. In addition to providing information about the services offered by the college, this video is a good way to remind students who need accommodations (or think they might need accommodations) to contact AAS at the beginning of the semester. As always, if you have questions about AAS, would like to discuss strategies for working with atypical learners, or have students who might benefit from registering with AAS, please feel free to contact me at Christine.Rudisel@kbcc.cuny.edu.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/17KBAKkUv_g?feature=shared
PSC-CUNY Chapter Meeting
Please join PSC-CUNY’s KCC chapter for our first meeting of the semester on Thursday, March 14th at 4:00 PM on Zoom. We have a busy semester ahead as our contract negotiations heat up – this may be the semester we settle our new contract! There is also renewed hope for some measure of budget relief from the City. The Zoom information will be sent next week to PSC-CUNY members’ KCC email addresses. As always, please feel free to reach out to Scott Cally, the chapter chair, or to Rick Repetti, our campus grievance officer, if you need the union’s help with anything.
A Note about the Newsletter
A message from Jane Weiss, the Newsletter editor:
The next issue of the Newsletter will come out on Monday 11 March 2024. Please send newsletter items by Friday, 18 March 2024 to Jane Weiss at Jane.Weiss@kbcc.cuny.edu. Please keep items brief (preferably 100 or fewer words). Longer items will be abridged. At the English Department retreat, many faculty members said they’d like to learn more about colleagues’ areas of scholarship, so if you would like to share what you’re working on, the Newsletter will welcome descriptions of your research and recent or upcoming presentations, publications, or performances.
