1. Announcements
Happy news! Announcing the arrival of the latest member of our academic family: Sabrina Lucia, born to Lisa Riccomini Clancy and Garrett Clancy on Friday, February 1. Weighing in at 7.3 pounds and measuring 19 1/2 inches in length, Sabrina is beautiful and mom, dad, and baby are healthy and happy. Congratulations to the new family!
Please join Cheryl Spector next week on Tuesday or Wednesday (Feb. 19 or Feb. 20) from 2-3:15 p.m. for “Course, Interrupted: Handling Problem Behaviors in Your Classroom.” For details, see http://www.csun.edu/afye/course-interrupted.html.
Coming up: “Introducing Student Health 101, CSUN Edition”: a faculty-staff tour of this customizable digital magazine for CSUN students. March 7 (Thursday) from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in CIELO. Details and more information at http://www.csun.edu/afye/Student-Health-101.html.
And while we are thinking about student health, it’s worth checking in on online resources available through University Counseling Services. These include two new training sessions for dealing with students who are showing signs of emotional distress and/or adjustment issues (one for the general population, one for veterans), each of which takes between 45-75 minutes and can be done in the privacy of your own office. Other online resources include handouts with the following titles: Assisting Students in Distress; See Something? Say Something!; Responding to Disruptive or Threatening. For more information, please see http://www.csun.edu/counseling/faculty/.
Faculty Development is now offering two Spring funding opportunities: the 2013-14 Judge Julian Beck Learning-Centered Instructional Project grants, which provide funds for projects that promote student learning, and new support for faculty who plan to attend teaching conferences. For more information, please see http://blogs.csun.edu/faculty-development/category/grants/.
Also of interest from Faculty Development, check out the following events: a showcase of the archives related to social issues in Juarez for use in teaching and research, a workshop on handling problem behavior in the classroom, a bonus event on getting help with your grant proposal, and a not to miss session on doing assessment for the right reasons. For more information on these, and other upcoming events, please see http://blogs.csun.edu/faculty-development/category/events-and-programs/.
2. Reminders
Don’t forget, tomorrow’s (February 15) Lecturer’s Meeting, which will be held from 3 to 5 pm., in the LNJ Room (JR 319).
As previously announced, the annual CSUN Competition for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Awards is coming up (along with the workshops noted above to help improve your chances!). Open to all full-time and part-time faculty and designed to provide the opportunity to receive a mini-grant of up to $5,000 or 3 units of reassigned time to pursue scholarly and creative interests, the deadline for this year’s competition is of applications is 5 p.m. on Monday, March 4, 2013. Proposal guidelines and application materials are available at http://www.csun.edu/grip/research/forms/. For more information, faculty may also contact the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects at x2901.
Also not to be forgotten, the upcoming nominations for CSUN’s 2013 Faculty Awards. The deadline for nominations is February 22; supporting materials will be due March 22. The awards honor:
*Outstanding Faculty (up to 2 awards, $1,700 each)
*Distinguished Teaching, Counseling, or Librarianship (up to 3 awards, $1,200 each)
*Preeminent Scholarly Publication(s) ($1,200)
*Exceptional Creative Accomplishment(s) ($1,200)
*Extraordinary Service ($1,200)
*Visionary Community Service-Learning ($1,200)
Details, including nominating procedures and forms, are available at http://www.csun.edu/senate/awards.html Questions maybe be directed to the Faculty Senate Office, X3263, or heidiw@csun.edu.
3. Opportunities
If not next year, maybe this summer? The Pasadena City College Upward Bound Program has openings for the summer program. The six week program runs from June 24 thru August 2. Applications – including letter, resume, references, and recommendation – must be completed by March 18. For more information, please contact Heba Griffiths, Director, at hpgriffiths@pasadena.edu.
DASH Literary Journal, based out of the California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics and organized through the joint efforts of the Creative Writing Club (CWC) and the undergraduate and graduate students of the department, is currently soliciting submissions for its first annual poetry contest. Interested students may submit up to three poems, maximum 33 lines each; name and contact information should appear on a separate cover sheet only. The contest fee is $10 (… or $15 for contest plus one-year subscription to DASH), with checks made payable to DASH Journal; the deadline is March 1. The winner will receive $1000 and publication in DASH; all finalists will also be published. For more information about DASH please visit: http://dashliteraryjournal.com/ or the CSUF Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics webpage: http://english.fullerton.edu/publications/dash.asp.
The CSU Long Beach Graduate Student Association has issued a call for papers for its second annual conference, Re/Inventions, a conference created and organized by students for students. This year’s conference takes the topic, “Hysteria,” which embraces a wide variety of topics. All graduate students and advanced undergrads are strongly encouraged to submit a paper or presentation, including but not limited to the following topics: the Rhetoric of Hysteria, Mass Hysteria & Mob Mentality, the Evolution of the Comic Spirit, Comedy as Cultural Critique, Interrogating Mental Illness, Subversive Stand-Up, Queer Bodies & the Wandering Womb, Pedagogical Practices & Emotional Excess. Additional information can be found at http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/english/2013conference/, or an Facebook, or email at EGSA.CSULB@gmail.com. But be quick, the deadline has been extended to February 15.
4. Achievements
The next installment of Robert Chianese’s essays on Earth Art has just been posted on the on-line version of the American Scientist, for March/April. Enjoy at http://www.americanscientist.org.
Second year TA and soon to be MA, Geghard Arakelian, has been accepted into UC Davis’s doctoral program in Cultural Studies with a structured emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition, as well as the Cultural Composition and Rhetoric doctoral program at Syracuse. Congratulations, Geghard!
Linda Rader Overman’s article “Ekphrastic Narrative: A Genre Focalizing Image And Text,” has been published in the refereed International Journal of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 5, No. 6. It may be accessed at http://www.universitypublications.net/ijas/index.html.