Volume 39:11

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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/.

Interested in improving your chances for a Research, Scholarship, and Creativity grant? Consider attending the College of Humanities session  on Monday, February 18, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the CIELO conference room. Bring your ideas and questions for this informal Q&A with Breny Mendoza, Shelley Bartenstien, and Teresa Morrison. When you are enjoying your three units of release time to do “your own work,” you will be glad you attended.
Gina Lawence, from AGSE, has set up a blog to facilitate communication with graduate students. The blog can be found at http://englishgradliaisoncsun.blogspot.com. Please help spread the word about this important development – and consider contacting Gina if you have some information you want to get to grad students fast!
If you know current or prospective students planning to attend CSUN in Fall 2013, please encourage them to apply for one of the Alumni Association’s fourteen scholarships. Eligibility is available in three categories: First Generation, Legacy, and Graduate. Applications will be accepted online beginning March 19. For more information, please visit the Alumni Association website at https://www.csunalumni.com/default.aspx?page=Scholarships.
Stephanie Satiie’s latest solo piece, Silent Witnesses, based on interviews and conversations with Child Survivors of the Holocaust, will be presented as part of The Whitefire Theatre’s SoloFest 2013 on Friday night, February 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and available now through Brown Paper Tickets on the InterAct Theatre’s homepage, www.interactla.org, You can also call the number on the Interact Homepage at 818-765-8732, or Stephanie at 818-904-1194. Please come out and support this important work.

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

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced this year’s competition for Awards for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. This program supports research of value to humanities scholars, students, or general audiences. Designed to be flexible to suit your needs, guidelines allow you to define your audience, type of research, award period, and full- or part-time research preference. The award provides a stipend of $4,200 per full-time month, with a maximum of 12 full-time months ($50,400). Part-time stipend may be taken for up to 24 months. Proposals must request a minimum of two months’ full-time stipend or its equivalent. This is a highly competitive program, with an average funding rate of 6% of submissions in the past three years. The deadline for proposal submissions is April 16, 2013. For complete guidelines, please see the announcement page at http://www.neh.gov/grants/research/awards-faculty-hispanic-serving-institutions.
Teaching next year, anyone? If you are interested in applying to teach University 100 in fall 2013, application information is now available on the webpage: http://www.csun.edu/afye/Teaching_University_100.html.

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.