HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Enjoy family, friends, food, and festivities. And a well deserved break to you all!
1. Announcements
CSUN students, Lauren Levitch, James Medina, Kelly Moreno, and Kim Sanders have founded a new Northridge Creative Writing Circle, with Professors Martin Pousson and Leilani Hall as Faculty Advisors. The NCWC recently won approval for funding from Associated Students and University recognition. The founding officers now would like to invite all interested CSUN students to join, undergraduates and graduates, all majors and minors, and all genres. The group will focus on enriching and enhancing the creative writing community in the program, in the department, and in the wider University. The officers will stage their first event and meeting on campus in December and will announce a full schedule of events and meetings for Spring 2012. Any interested student may contact Lauren Levitch at lauren.marshall.751@my.csun.edu or Kelly Moreno at kelly.moreno.98@my.csun.edu. Kudos to all! And please spread the word.
The Dean has asked us nicely once again, please, please to fill out our Digital Measures information. Information on how to get started can be found here http://www.csun.edu/csm/digitalmeasures.htm.
Please let your students know that the deadline for submitting to the upcoming CSUN student research symposium, will be Friday, December 9, at 5:00 p.m. Oral and poster presentations will be limited to 70 and 60, respectively, and accepted on a first come, first served basis for the Friday, February 24, 2012, event. The purpose of the symposium is to highlight student achievement by showcasing the research and creative activity being conducted by undergraduate and graduate students across all academic disciplines. The symposium format permits a 10 minute oral presentation or a poster presentation. There are separate undergraduate and graduate divisions for each of the following categories: Behavioral and Social Sciences; Biological Sciences; Business and Economics; Creative Arts and Designs; Education; Engineering and Computer Science; Health, Nutrition and Clinical Sciences; Humanities and Letters; Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Based on the recommendation of the judges, cash awards are presented to the outstanding oral presenter and runner-up in each category for both the graduate and undergraduate divisions. For the poster session, a cash award is given to the outstanding undergraduate and graduate student. Please encourage your students to apply soon. The application maybe be downloaded at http://www.csun.edu/grip/graduatestudies/events/documents/Symposium_Application.doc.
Calling all part-time and lecturer writers—Wordriver Literary Review, out of UNLV and dedicated to the poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction of adjunct, part-time, and full time instructors is looking for work and accepts it year round. Send all submissions as Word (doc) attachments to wordriver@unlv.edu, and include your name, address, phone number, and email address in the body of your email, as well as a short bio listing your teaching affiliation and prior publishing history. And please note the genre (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction) in the email subject line.
2. Reminders
Don’t miss the 28th Annual CSUN POWWOW this Saturday, November 26, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Come enjoy the American Indian dance and music, children’s craft activities, arts and crafts vendors—and, frybread! Free admission. All drums welcome.
And the Faculty Retreat is coming up too. Please mark your calendars for this important annual event, to be held on January 17 and 18, 2012, here on the CSUN campus. This year’s retreat, “Painting on CSUN’s Canvas,” will be free of charge and feature opening and closing plenary sessions, an array of workshops (including a special track for new faculty) and a poster session. Lunch will be served on both days with a special opportunity to network with your colleagues at the Orange Grove Bistro on Tuesday evening. Newer faculty members and lecturers are especially encouraged to take advantage of this excellent opportunity to learn more about the CSUN campus, the culture, and to connect with one another to help us paint the CSUN canvas with your artistic vision. Registration deadline: Friday, December 9, 2011, at http://www.csun.edu/senate/retreat.html. Please contact Heidi Wolfbauer (heidiw@csun.edu<mailto:heidiw@csun.edu>) or call the Faculty Senate Office (X3263) if you have questions.
The deadline for submitting textbook orders for Spring semester has come and gone. And while you’re frantically trying to put them together, please do whatever you can to keep costs down.
Speaking of books, the library is adding. Kimberly Embleton, English and Humanities Librarian, is encouraging faculty to email her with any book titles they would like to see in the library collection at Kimberly.embleton@csun.edu. The sooner the better—orders must be in by the end of March.
There’s a new Incomplete protocol coming, courtesy of a recent Executive Order from the Chancellor’s office. Beginning with Spring 2012 grading, faculty assigning an Incomplete grade will create a written contract describing the conditions required for removal of the Incomplete ). To document the process, instructors should create the contract in both electronic (SOLAR) and paper forms. Faculty should continue to file the “Incomplete Request” and “Extension of Time to Remove Incomplete” forms with their departments. Both paper and electronic forms will be required.
And on Thursday, December 8, don’t miss Bobby Lopez’s and our awesome graduate students’ culminating literary scholarship fair, to be held as an Open Classroom in JR between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. There will be refreshments, light shows, multimedia spectacles, and lots of academic work to check out. Please come celebrate the following students and their work: Arthur Case, Robert Danielak, Jason Freudenrich, Pierre Morcos, Melissa M. Morehouse, Linda Olson, Joseph Roberts, Daniella Soleimani, Tiffany Wampler.
Somehow, I missed this earlier in the semester, but it’s never too late to help students. CSUN now has a brief, helpful, web-based survey they can take to help them decide whether enrolling in an Online class is a good match for their skills and learning preferences BEFORE they enroll in it. You can go directly to the survey here: http://studentvoice.com/csun/studentonlinereadiness. Or, for more information, send them to the Announcement at the top of the UNIV 100 webpage at http://www.csun.edu/univ100/.
And for all of you planning to go out of the country to exotic locales on University business, don’t forget to pick up your Mandatory Foreign Travel Insurance. This is a complicated business, so if it applies to you, just be sure to ask ahead of time what you need to do. And have safe and happy travels while you’re gone.
If, however, you plan to stay at home and catch up on your reading, is your first choice always to make a beeline for College English or College Composition and Communication? Jackie is thinking of canceling our (costly) subscriptions, and both are available online. But if you can’t bear the thought of going without the nice hard copy in your late night soak, let her know—and try to keep the copies dry.
3. Faculty/Staff/Student/Alumni Achievements
Dorothy Barresi has a poem, “The Last Poem,” in the 50th Anniversary Issue of Crazyhorse this month
On Friday, November 18, Kent Baxter delivered a presentation, entitled “Building Academic Language in a School-University Project,” at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Chicago.
An article entitled “Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability” by Irene Clark and Andrea Hernandez has been published both online and in The WAC Journal. It can be accessed online at the WAC Clearinghouse site (November 2011).
Kate Haake (me) published a (personal) essay, “Dyptich: Chrysalis, Prayer,” in the Fall 2011 issue of Crazyhorse.
Brian Palagallo’s poem, “Winter’s Road,” nominated by Dorothy Barresi and selected by the Dean, will be featured on the College of Humanities holiday card. Here, we’re the first to enjoy Brian’s lovely evocation of the season ahead:
Winter’s road held in
trees bared and ended;
sprouting eternity between
journey and spirit ascended.
Michael Schofield’s memoir of raising his daughter Jani, who suffers from child onset schizophrenia, will be published by Crown (Random House) next August 7th. It will be called January First: A Child’s Descent into Madness and Her Father’s Struggle to Save Her.
Jack Solomon has published the seventh edition of Signs of Life in the USA, a thoroughly revised edition of the most widely adopted popular culture reader in the country. It is Jack’s fourteenth book publication.
Danielle Spratt presented “Beyond the Window-Sash: Walter Shandy’s Spectacles and Momus’s Glass” at the annual East Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies on 5 November, 2011 at Penn State; the paper was on a panel on eighteenth-century optics and literature. Danielle also has an article “Gulliver’s Economized Body: Colonial Projects and the Lusus Naturae in the Travels” is forthcoming in Studies for Eighteenth-Century Culture, 41 (2012): 32-54.
Compiled by Katharine Haake, Associate Chair