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1. Announcements

Welcome back to another fast-paced and intellectually stimulating semester at CSUN! We at the Thursday’s Notes’ News Desk are happy to publish this bottom-heavy issue, as the last section showcases the many achievements of faculty and students over the winter break. This issue also highlights many opportunities that we hope will contribute to future achievements to be published in Thursday’s Notes.

2. Reminders

The annual CSUN Competition for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Awards provide faculty the opportunity to receive a mini-grant of up to $10,000 or 3 or 6 units of reassigned time to pursue their
scholarly and creative interests. The deadline for submission of applications is 5 p.m. on Monday, March 2, 2015. Faculty may download the guidelines and application materials from the website: http://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/2015-16_RSCA_Application_F.pdf.

3. Opportunities

Frog Tutoring is looking to hire part-time student tutors to work with students in the community. To learn more about Frog Tutoring, please visit their website: http://frogtutoring.com/.

CSUN’s Office of Institutional Research is offering a new opportunity for faculty who are interested in student success! The new Learning Habits Faculty Fellows program offers 6 units of reassigned time in 2015-16 as well as support for student research assistants (see attached RFP). For more information, please email janetoh@csun.edu.

The Oklahoma Review, an online journal published by the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Cameron University, will be accepting submissions in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry until October 15. Submissions may be sent via email to okreview@cameron.edu. If you have any questions, please email Dr. Bayard Godsave at bgodsave@cameron.edu.

4. Achievements

The Fall 2014 Awardees celebrated at the English Department Holiday Party are:

Hannah Lien (Eva Latif Award) for her essay “The Adult: The Real Children of Treasure Island.”
Angeline Olliff (Eva Latif Award) for her essay “Pierre’s Progress.”
Danielle Orozco (Oliver Evans Award) for her essay “Otherness in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: Transnational identity and the Orientalism of U.S. Cold War Discourse.”
Shetachai Chatchoomsai (Linda Nichols Joseph Scholarship)
Jeannie Chen (Linda Nichols Joseph Scholarship)
Jesse Clemens (Linda Nichols Joseph Scholarship)
Eugenia Coronado (Linda Nichols Joseph Scholarship)
Bruce Millstein (AnnaMarie Peterson Morley Scholarship)
Aryana Shokat-Fadai (Philip E. Love Scholarship)
Jacqueline Thornock (William L. Wilson Scholarship)

Brandon Krause and Jessy Cruz, English undergraduate students, have both accepted paid positions with the organizations where they served as interns (through the English 494 course). Brandon is now an associate writer with Great American Group in Woodland Hills, and Jessy will be a community representative, working with parents and students at Project GEAR-UP LA. We wish them the best in their new positions.

Nicole Gant, an English Department graduate, will receive a Heroes in Education Award on Jan. 29 from LAUSD Board of Education President Richard Vladovic. The award description states, “The principals and staff from each school in Board District 7 will be asked to nominate one individual to be commemorated at the event. Honorees could include a community member, an involved family member, teacher, staff, or any individual who has assisted in creating opportunities for student’s success or supported school-sites in any way.” Nicole teaches at Port of Los Angeles Charter High School.

Cody Deitz, one of our graduate students, had two poems accepted for the forthcoming issue of Literary Orphans, titled “Concrete, Twin Towers Jail,” and “New Religion.”

Sarah Todd-Balderas, a CSUN English Department graduate, has written an article that will appear in the February issue of California English. “Three Books Changed Everything” is about fostering a love for reading in her classroom.

Congratulations to these fine past and present students!

Dorothy Barresi’s long essay-review “Divided: Brain Theory and the Poem’s Story” will appear in the Spring 2015 issue of The Gettysburg Review. New poems, “Tenderness” and “What Those Who Qualify Receive,” appear in the current issue of New Ohio Review, and “The Lie” and “The Old Soul” appear in the two most recent issues of Nothing New, a graphic arts zine that her son’s UCLA arts collective publishes monthly (take that, peer review police!). Three of her poems will appear in the forthcoming anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond: “Security,” “Poem to Some of My Recent Purchases,” and “Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles.”

Anthony Dawahare chaired a session, “Tillie Olsen and the Location of Hope,” and presented at paper on Tillie Olsen at the MLA Annual Convention in Vancouver.

Martin Pousson just sold his new novel, Black Sheep Boy, to Rare Bird Books for hardcover publication in Winter 2015 as their flagship fiction title. A selection of stories from the novel received a NEA Fellowship in 2014. One of those stories, “Altar Boy,” will be published in the upcoming issue of Five Points, and another story, “The Fox in the Trap,” will be published next month in StoryQuarterly.

Jack Solomon (along with Sonia Maasik) published the eighth edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Bedford/St. Martin).

Elyce Wakerman’s new novel, A Tale of Two Citizens, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. For information about the book, see: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Citizens-Novel/dp/1631580140/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422318881&sr=1-1. For Elyce’s author page, see: amazon.com/author/elyce-wakerman.