April 17, 2023 English Department Newsletter
Newsletter Editor Jane Weiss
College Council Meeting Tuesday 18 April 2023, 3:00 PM in U219-220
The College Council will meet on Tuesday 18 April 2023 at 3:00 in U219-220. Only members of the College Council may vote; All members of the campus community are welcome to attend and observe the meeting. Matthew Gartner writes:
I am writing to alert you all to some very consequential votes that are going to happen at next Tuesday’s meeting of the College Council. These votes on proposals to change Kingsborough’s constitution are the culmination of literally years of work to strengthen the system of shared governance decision-making at our college. If the proposals pass, we will have taken a big step toward creating a healthier culture of governance and a college that can more fully address the challenges we have before us. The proposals are meant to renew and revitalize College Council. By increasing transparency, accountability, and democracy, the changes will make shared governance at Kingsborough more equitable, responsive, inclusive, and effective. Any change in college governance has to be approved by two-thirds vote. That is by no means guaranteed. So this is an exciting and perilous moment. I urge all members of the college community to pay attention to what happens in College Council next week.
Nominations for University Faculty Senate
A message from Michael Sokolow: Beginning TOMORROW (Tuesday April 18 at 9:00 AM) we will hold nominations and then elections for Kingsborough’s University Faculty Senate representatives for the upcoming term. Online Nominations for three faculty Senators (term from 2023-2026) and 2 Alternates (terms from 2023-2024) will take place on Tuesday 4/18-Wednesday 4/19. A ballot with the names of the successful nominees will then appear in the Online Elections, which will take place next week on Tuesday 4/25-Wednesday 4/26. The issue of representation at UFS is crucial, because we have been informed by them that Kingsborough is gaining one additional seat due to the UFS formulary and calculations. Therefore although two Senators (Profs. Rick Repetti and Gordon Alley-Young) have expiring terms, we only have the opportunity to elect three Senators for the upcoming term. We also keep both Alternates (expiring terms are Profs. Tamara Bellomo and Mark Eaton). Specific instructions on how to participate and links to the nominations website will arrive in your emailbox over the next two days throughout the voting period.
Nominations for English Department Chair, P & B, Secretary, and College Council
Nominations for Chair, P & B, Dept. Secretary, and College Council are now open. The links to nomination forms have been sent to eligible voting faculty members’ KCC email addresses. Please note that the nomination period will close on Monday, April 24, 2023, at 12 noon. To view the lists of faculty members who are eligible to vote and run for Chair, P&B, and College Council, a document provided by Michael Sokolow, Chair of the College Council Legislative Committee, has been sent to voting faculty KCC email addresses. All eligible voters may run for Dept. Secretary, along with procedure guidelines. Please let Linda Holman, Tony Ianosca, or Christine Rudisel know if you have any questions.
Faculty Development Paid for Part-timers and Open to ALL– Matthew Gartner Helps Us to Think About the Challenge of ChatGPT! Friday, April 21, from 2pm- 3:30pm on Zoom.
A message from Hope Parisi, Faculty Mentor: Just as our conversations about the kinds of reading and writing to assign are opening, ChatGPT on the scene adds complexity to this process. We may find its availability drawing us back to asserting cautions, and supervision, around original writing versus too much paraphrase, or plagiarism. We may sense a growing disparity between writing done in class and writing submitted for evaluation. We are challenged to quickly adjust and respond, and again to see our assignments and pedagogies differently.
Join in for a faculty development session, paid for part-timers, on Friday, April 21, from 2pm-3:00pm (or 3:30pm for those who can stay). Matthew Gartner will join us to offer an informed and evolving-practice perspective on ChatGPT. (And for those interested in some source material, Matthew suggests Adapting College Writing for the Age of Large Language Models Such as ChatGPT and writing by Anna Mills.)
Zoom link:
Meeting ID: 879 3299 0165 Passcode: 291664 +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
Education, The Front Line in the Fight for Democracy: Stopping Education Censorship in Today’s U.S.: A Talk at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture on Sunday, May 7, 2023 at 11:00 AM
On Sunday, May 7, 2023 from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, Maureen Fadem will speak at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture: “The proliferation of state-level legislative efforts to impose educational gag orders must be understood urgently—and centrally—as a violation of student rights and academic freedom and as an attempt to mobilize fascism across the United States.” The event is open to the public and is hybrid, with in-person and online options.
KCC PSC-CUNY Meeting Thursday 27 April 2023 at 4:00 PM
Please join us for our next PSC Union Chapter meeting on Thursday, April 27th at 4:00 PM. Zoom information will be sent to PSC members’ email early next week.
Faculty Mentor and Support Hours in E219
Hope Parisi will be in E219 this semester, available for informal chats with new and experienced part-time faculty, and all faculty, on Wednesdays, from 1pm – 3pm, with more availability by phone or Zoom, along with Tuesdays as another on-campus day. Please come by this welcoming environment, on Wednesdays, if you’re on campus, or get in touch for a time convenient for you.
Composition Coordinators Spring 2023 Office Hours
Gregory Bruno
Tuesdays in C309B: 12:30-1:15
Wednesdays via Zoom: 10:30-12:30
Thursdays C309B: 12:30-1:45
Rachel Ihara
Tuesdays and Thursdays in C309B: 9:00-10:00
Fridays via Zoom: 9:00-11:00
KCC Information Technology Services Office
You can call KCC’s ITS Help Desk at (718) 368-6679 or email helpdesk@kbcc.cuny.edu 9:00–5:00 on weekdays. For Blackboard support during hours when KCC’s Help Desk is not available, call 1-646-664-2024.
Sending Email to Your Classes: Additional Ways to Do It
For KCC communications – with department staff, with students, with Annie – please use your KCC email address, not personal email accounts, whenever possible. You can send email to any or all of the students in your current classes by logging into CUNYfirst, clicking Faculty Center, and then the class roster; check the boxes in the column headed “Notify” to select individual students, or click “Notify All Students” at the bottom of the roster to send an email to everyone in the class. In Blackboard, you can send emails to all students or selected students by clicking “Send Email” in the course menu. The KCC IT office has also created email lists for each of your classes in Inside KCC on the KCC website, in the following format: SubjectClass.Number@groups.kingsborough.edu
For example, if you are teaching Art 100 and the class number is 123456, your email distribution list would look like the following: ART100.123456@GROUPS.KINGSBOROUGH.EDU
You can view email distribution lists for your courses by clicking Inside KCC at the top of the KCC website and selecting KCC Notices, Faculty and Staff Notices, and then log in to Inside KCC using your KCC email username and password; select Email Groups. You will see a table that will list all the courses you teach. You can also click on Members to view all the students that are enrolled in that particular course distribution list. You can send test emails to your students. If you do not see any courses listed or some are missing, please notify the IT Services office support@groups.kingsborough.edu Include these in your email: your EMPLID, the subject, the catalog number and class number for the courses that are missing. If there are students missing, please provide the same information above as well as the EMPLID for the student(s). Send this information to support@groups.kingsborough.edu . Requests will be responded and replied to within 48 hours.
In addition, KCC IT has added the student-provided cell phone number as part of the group email listings. You can send texts to the class or to individual students. The revised listing provides you with the student cell phone in case you need to get in touch with the student.
Campus Reopening Hub
For information about KCC’s reopening, visit the new KCC Campus Reopening Hub. You can find information about the reopening plan, mask policies, on-campus COVID-19 testing, Cleared4 campus entry passes, and visitor policies.
CUNY Alerts
To receive notifications by phone, text, or email regarding campus conditions, sign up for CUNY Alert by logging on to CUNYfirst. Once you have logged on, the CUNYfirst Main Menu will be near the top of the screen on the left side. Click CUNY Alert Subscription to sign up; you can update contact information at CUNY Alert Preferences. You can check KCC’s home page for updates about campus conditions.
A Note about the Newsletter
The next issue of the Newsletter will come out on Monday24 April 2023. Please send newsletter items by Friday, 21 April 2023 to Jane Weiss at Jane.Weiss@kbcc.cuny.edu. Please keep items brief (preferably 100 or fewer words). Longer items will be abridged. Items about publications and achievements are very welcome.
