March 7 2023 English Department Newsletter
Newsletter Editor Jane Weiss
English Department Office
The beginning of the semester is an extremely hectic time in the English Department office, whether on campus or virtually, and there are fewer staff members than there used to be. Christine, Audrey, and Shelly are eager to help us, but they can only do their jobs if we all cooperate. 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. Please avoid sending students to the department office (virtually or on campus) with problems. If it is truly urgent, write a note or email explaining exactly what the problem is, and what action you are hoping the English Department can take to resolve the problem. Please be aware that overtallies are not permitted in English courses, and students should not be sent to the English Department office to request overtallies.
Workload 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) here.
A Message from Annie del Principe, Interim English Department Chair
A message from Annie:
Dear All,
Welcome to the Spring 2023 semester! I hope you’ve had time to rest and restore this winter and are returning refreshed and ready for a new term.
After 22 years of teaching at Kingsborough, in one role or another, I find myself in the position of learning all new things in the two weeks since you elected me to serve as interim chair. This semester, my goals will be simple — to learn and understand the systems already in place in the department and to learn from those who’ve been operating those systems for years; to try to listen to and learn from each interaction; to learn one new thing (nearly) each day about how to do this job well; and to start to notice places where we might, in future, want to make some changes together.
The purpose of this welcome email isn’t to share any sort of “plan” for what’s to come this semester. I would like any plans we make to emerge from our collective vision. Instead, I just want to share some basic information to help us get started. For the time being, my plan is to work in-person on campus in C309 — with an occasional trip to C303 for some focused time, if I need it — on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9:30-4 (or thereabouts — longer on department meeting days). If I find that I need another on-campus day this term, I will make some changes to my family’s schedule and add a third day on campus, but I’ll just see how things progress this term. Please do stop by to say hi and to chat on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I haven’t seen many of your faces IRL in too long! On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays I will work from home.
I’ve attached the minutes of the last department meeting to an email announcing the next department meeting, along with a brief sketch agenda for our upcoming department meeting on March 14th from 3-4:30. If you’d like to add something in the “announcements” section of the meeting, please email me directly, and I will add the item before the meeting. Both of these documents will also be available on the meeting event on our shared English department calendar.
Later this term, I would like the department to elect someone to take a turn as the department’s secretary. I’ll work to draft a description of the duties for this position and will circulate them before the May elections meeting. Of course, if the nominating committee is opening to organizing future nominations and elections, I will work with them to coordinate nominations for this role. However, for the time being I’m asking for a volunteer to take on the role of interim secretary for our meetings this term. For now, this role will involve simply taking minutes for department meetings and circulating them in a timely manner after each meeting. Please email me directly (reply, not reply all) if you’d be willing to serve and take on this short-term position for the department.
That’s it for now. Let’s have a great semester!
Warmly,
Annie
English Department Meeting
The English Department will meet via Zoom on Tuesday March 14, 2023 at 3:00. The agenda will include approval of the previous meeting’s minutes and the agenda, and discussion of Fall 2023 course modalities, election guidelines and the nominating committee, and our hopes and visions for the English Department’s future. Zoom links will be sent before the meeting.
Composition Coordinators Spring 2023 Office Hours
Gregory Bruno
Tuesdays in C309B: 12:30 pm – 1:15 pm
Wednesdays via Zoom: 10:30 am – 12 :30 pm
Thursdays in C309B: 12:30 – 1:45 pm
Rachel Ihara
Tuesdays and Thursdays in C309B: 9:00 am – 10:00 am.
Fridays via Zoom: 9:00 am – 11:00 am
Faculty Development Sessions for College Composition
A message from Rachel Ihara and Greg Bruno: Over the winter, 15 faculty members met to discuss issues related to student success in English 1200/12A0. We reflected on factors affecting student performance in our classes and identified some strategies to try to address those issues. Participants committed to trying out one or more of these during the spring semester and to take some notes about what they observed.
We’d like to share these ideas with the rest of the department. If you can attend one of the following sessions, you’ll get a chance to hear what your colleagues came up with and what they’re working on this semester. This may give you ideas for things to try out in your class and/or you may have ideas of your own to offer.
Rachel will be leading a session on Friday, March 17th, from 2-30pm. Here’s a zoom link for that session.
Greg will share the same information the following week, on Friday March 24th, also from 2-3:30. Here’s a zoom link for that session.
Faculty who participated are invited to attend to discuss what they’re working on. Everyone is invited to come to listen and participate. This project is funded by CUNYCentral as part of an effort to support developmental education reform, including co-requisite classes. Part time faculty will be paid at their non-teaching rate.
PSC-CUNY Kingsborough Chapter Meeting
A note from Scott Cally: Welcome back to our spring semester. We will be holding our first union chapter meeting of the spring on Tuesday, March 7th at 4:00 PM. The Zoom link has been sent to PSC-CUNY members’ KCC email addresses. We will have updates on the Medicare Advantage plan, our recent labor management meeting and the beginning of our contract campaign. Please save the dates for our next meetings this semester: April 20th and May 23rd. Both will be at 4:00 and via Zoom.
KCC Spring 2023 Faculty and Staff Convocation
Save the Date! Faculty & Staff Convocation will take place Thursday, March 16th at 2:30 pm in the MAC Rotunda.
CUNY Open Pedagogy Fellowships
A message from Shawna Brandle: On behalf of Open Education KCC, I am writing to invite applications from interested faculty members for participation in the Spring 2023 Open Pedagogy Fellowship. Open Pedagogy is an evolving practice, but can be briefly characterized as “the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. It is a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation” (Introduction to Open Pedagogy, UTA Libraries, https://libguides.uta.edu/openped).
The KCC Open Pedagogy Fellowship serves as a teaching and learning development opportunity for Kingsborough faculty and students. The goal of the fellowship is to introduce faculty and students to the worlds of open education and open pedagogy, and to encourage faculty and students to employ these practices in their educational work.
Faculty fellows will meet three times in the Spring semester to discuss readings on open and critical digital pedagogy, as well as explore and examine existing open educational tools and platforms. Meetings will also include time for fellows to receive feedback on their open pedagogy projects, discuss their progress, and plan for their piloting in the following semester or module. The Spring 2023 meetings are tentatively scheduled as follows:
Friday, March 31st (Orientation & Introduction to Open Pedagogy)
Friday, April 21st (Open Educational Tools and Platforms)
Friday, May 26th (Open Assignments and Creative Commons Licensing)
During the fellowship, faculty fellows will create and openly license a set of open pedagogy assignments, teaching resources or learning tools and share their work in CUNY Academic Works. Two Open Pedagogy students will potentially participate in all meetings to ensure student perspectives are a central part of discussions. Students will work with faculty members to provide advice and feedback on their open pedagogy projects. Both student and faculty fellows will be responsible for blogging their experience in the fellowship blog on the CUNY Academic Commons. We encourage applicants to explore the site further for details on the kind of work that the fellowship might entail.
Participation is open to all instructors at the college, and faculty fellows will receive a stipend of $1,000 upon completion of the fellowship, and the deposit of their open education projects into a selected repository.
To apply to participate in the Open Pedagogy Fellowship, please complete the form here by Friday, March 24. If you have any questions, please email KCC’s Faculty Coordinator of Open Education, Professor Shawna Brandle, at shawna.brandle@kbcc.cuny.edu.
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 https://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/ 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.
Good News
Daniel Perrone’s My English PhD dissertation defense is on Thurs. March 23rd at 2 PM. It will be live streamed (and probably recorded as well). Here is the Zoom link. Dan has sent the introduction to his dissertation to department members since his topic – academic freedom – is of great interest to many of us, and is extremely timely now. Congratulations, Dan!
A Note about the Newsletter
The next issue of the Newsletter will come out on Monday 13 March 2023. Please send newsletter items by Friday, 10 March 2023 to Jane Weiss at Jane.Weiss@kbcc.cuny.edu. Please keep items brief (preferably 100 or fewer words). Longer items will be abridged.
