Volume 39:14

1. Announcements

We begin this issue of the Thursday’s Notes with the most spectacular news that our very own Cheryl Spector has received  the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina! This prestigious national award, now in its 24th year, honors college faculty, administrators, staff and students for outstanding work on behalf of first-year students and for the impact their efforts have on the students and culture of their institutions. Spector was one of 10 educators from around the country recognized for their work on behalf of first-year college students. Here in the Department we know Cheryl to be a fierce and indefatigable advocate for the needs of students in general, and of first year students in particular, so it’s especially great to see her get this important recognition on the national stage. Cheryl‘s work for first-year students includes such critical programs as Freshman Common Reading Program and University 100, as well as a year-round series of workshops offering professional development to faculty and staff who work extensively with CSUN freshmen. Now about that copy of Garbology — have you signed up for yours yet, or gone to a discussion group? All you have to do to get your free copy (assuming they’re still available) is commit to talking to at least one first year student next year. How about three or four? Try it — you might change a life. In the meantime, our warmest congratulations and gratitude to Cheryl, who has most certainly earned this award.

And here’s a big welcome back to Los Angeles Poet Laureate, Eloise Klein Healy, who is coming to read for us April 3rd, at 7:00 p.m. in JR 319. Eloise, who taught in this department in the waning decades of the twentieth century and founded CSUN’s Women’s Studies program, is an amazing Poet who has published numerous collections of poetry, including The Islands Project: Poems for Sappho (2007); Passing (2002), a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Prize; and Artemis in Echo Park (1991), which was also nominated for the Lambda Book Award. As an editor, Eloise is also active in the world of small-press publishing. She co-founded ECO-ARTS, a venture combining ecotourism and the arts, and in 2006 established Arktoi Books, an imprint with Red Hen Press specializing in the work of lesbian writers. She was the Grand Prize winner of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival Competition, and other honors include grants from the California Arts Council and the City of Los Angeles, residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Dorland Mountain Colony, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Eloise’s work has been featured in many anthologies, including The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (2001), Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (2001), and The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place (1999). After CSUN, Eloise went on to found the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles, where she won the inaugural Horace Mann Award. In 2012, she was appointed Los Angeles’s first poet laureate by mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. This promises to be a very special evening so do try to be there if you can.

Speaking of Eloise, on April 8, 2013, at 6:30 p.m., Red Hen Press will be sponsoring a reading at the Annenberg Community Beach House with her, Cecelia Woloch, and Nathalie Handal. Like Eloise, Cecilia is is a esteemed past member of our lecturer poetry faculty, and this evening, too, promises to be a very fine one. The Annenberg Beach House is at 415 Pacific Coast Hwy., Santa Monica, and it really is right on the beach, with a nice cafe adjacent. Admission is free, but parking is $3 an hour or $8 a day, unless you are 62 and have already purchased your senior lifetime beach parking pass available to any California resident for $2. If not, and you’re eligible, maybe now is the time.

Irene Clark, Dorothy Clark, Sandra Stanley and Nate Mills have been awarded 3 units of reassigned time by the COH Faculty Fellows Selection Committee for Fall 2013.  Congratulations and happy writing to all four of them!

Kate Haake will be giving a reading/talk titled, “Habits of Dreaming: Writing Into the Future,” at Santa Monica College on Tuesday, April 23, at 11:15 a.m. The event, which is free, will take place in HSS 165.

Mona Houghton and Kate Haake will be presenting with What Books Press at the Ojai Wordfest on Saturday, April 4, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. The event will feature readings from Kate and Mona, as well CSUN’s Ramon Garcia, and Rod Val Moore, of Valley College Karen Kevorkian, of UCLA, and with a special appearance of the artist, Gronk, who provides all cover art for What Books. A discussion of “Art and Writing” will follow the reading.

2. Reminders

If you didn’t order your graduation regalia, well, it’s too late now. But don’t let that stop you from coming out and celebrating our fabulous graduates on Wednesday, May 23, at 6:30 in the evening. Well, plan to be here early for our annual Reception and Awards Ceremony too.

Please take the time to vote in the College’s Spring Elections: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HUMN. You will be voting for the following: Faculty Senate, three Senators (two year term);  one Lecturer Representative (two year term); Advisory Committee; and one Academic Grievance and Grade Appeals Board (two year term). The election will close on Monday, April 22nd at 5 p.m.

And don’t forget, either the Academy of American Poets Prize Competition, now accepting submissions for the 2013 award. The winner will receive a cash prize from the Academy of American Poets and publication in the Northridge Review. One Honorable Mention will also be awarded. To enter, students should submit one to three poems, accompanied by a cover sheet with student’s name, address, phone number, email address and the titles of poems submitted to the English Department Office in ST 706. Poems may be any length or style. Names should not appear on the poems. All work must be typed and submitted in duplicate for judging. Submissions are judged anonymously. The winners will be announced during the English Department Commencement celebration. For more information please contact Leilani Hall, at (818) 677-3428 or leilani.hall@csun.edu, or Dorothy Barresi, at (818) 677-0911 or dorothy.barresi@csun.edu.

3. Opportunities

Assigned time for seeking assigned time — what could be better? Research and Graduate Studies has just announced the Grant Application Support Program and the Large Project Support Program, which provide  reassigned time to support seeking external grants. Faculty funded by this program will be required to submit at least one external grant application requesting at least $50,000, and to resubmit the proposal if the initial proposal is unsuccessful. Guidelines and forms can be found at can be downloaded from our http://www.csun.edu/grip/research/index.html.

Or, if you want to get a taste of the administrative path, Juana Mora will be leaving the College of Humanities Associate Dean position for other, not to say greener, pastures in GRIP (thank you, Juana, and we will miss you!), and here is your chance! Internal candidates (that would be you) applying for any position on campus (state or auxiliary) must apply through the myNorthridge portal. Once you log in to the portal, go to the Human Resources/Employee pagelet. Click on View Job Openings/Apply. You will see the open positions. Click on any position to see the full description. And good luck!

The California Pre-Doctoral Program is also looking for a director. For questions, details, and/or a copy of the position announcement, f you have any questions please contact, Dr. Christine Mallon, State University Dean, Academic Programs and Faculty Development, at cmallon@calstate.edu, or Dr. Bonnie Paller, current Rotating Faculty Director, at bpaller@calstate.edu.

West Los Angeles College seeks English instructors to teach as adjuncts who are experienced in teaching a variety of writing courses with an emphasis on foundation skills. Candidates must have experience teaching composition online as well as on campus, along with the following desirable qualifications: excellent oral and written communication skills; ability to instruct students with widely varying learning styles using a variety of successful teaching techniques, including creative innovative academic learning environments; demonstrated sensitivity to and understanding of the diverse academic, socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds of community college students, including those with physical and/or learning disabilities; ability to work with at-risk students and their challenges; and demonstrated record of employing technology in the classroom. Candidates must hold, at a minimum, a Master’s in English, literature, comparative literature, or composition; OR a Bachelor’s in any of the above AND Master’s in linguistics, TESL, speech, education with a specialization in reading, creative writing, or journalism; OR the equivalent. Please email Fran Leonard, Chair of Language Arts at Leonarft@wlac.edu.

Grassroots Campaigns is currently hiring Assistant Canvass Directors to run field campaigns on behalf of issue based organizations like Oxfam America, ACLU, The Nature Conservancy, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Job responsibilities include: recruitment, staff management, canvassing, and administration. After one year in the position, staff will have learned the basics of running a successful grassroots campaign, including, but not limited to, fundraising and donor recruitment, hiring and supervising staff and/or volunteers, and turf management.Positions last through August of 2014.Campaign hours can run 80-100 hours per week, including work on weekends. Annual salary for Assistant Canvass Directors begins at $24,000, with health care, paid training, vacation, and sick days included; student loan assistance is available.Positions are available beginning post-graduation, in cities nationwide. Students who are interested should apply directly to Loosi Azarian at lazarian.gci@gmail.com. Grassroots Campaigns is also hiring students for full time summer job positions. To find out more and to apply visit www.grassrootscampaigns.com/2013-summer-jobs-application/.

What Books Press, a Los Angeles collective of diverse literary and visual artists whose work often defies ready classification, will be holding its first open submission period in June and will be considering books of poetry. Check the webpage at http://www.whatbookspress.com for forthcoming details, polish up those manuscripts, and please help spread the word.

4. Achievements

Scott Andrews presented a paper titled “Ugido Wado, Mr. Roboto” at the Native American Literature Symposium in Minneapolis, Minn., last week. Although the title is an allusion in Cherokee to the Styx song lyric “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto” (Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto), the paper was about the 2011 best-selling novel Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson (a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma). At the conference Scott learned that his poem titled “The Wizards of Wall Street” will be published in a collection of poems titled 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. The poem was written for a blog project of the same name and can be found at: http://99poemsfor99percent.blogspot.com/2011/11/wizards-of-wall-street-by-scott-andrews.html

A large group of CSUN English Department faculty attended this year’s Conference on College Composition and Communication convention in Las Vegas, and a record number of TAs (five) presented papers at the convention. Irene Clark presented a paper titled “Genre Awareness as a Threshold Concept.” Ian Barnard organized a panel on “Objectivity?” and presented a paper entitled “The Resilience of Objectivity” as part of the panel.  Other panelists included Geghard Arakelian, whose paper was entitled “Patriarchy and Colonialism in the Writing Classroom: A Call for Resistance,” and Renee Moreno (CHS), who presented “A Celebration of Subjectivity.”  Ian also chaired a panel, “Remembering Adrienne Rich,” that celebrated Rich’s impact on and significance for the field of rhetoric and composition. Mandy Macklin presented a paper entitled “Language Diversity and the Public Prerogative: A Case Study of an Expanding FYC Program,” Jada Augustine presented on “The Public Value of Teaching Writing in an Intensive English Program: A Problem of Transferability to the FYC Classroom,” Naomi Carrington presented on “World Englishes and English Vernaculars in College Composition: Global Meshing as Standard,” Ann O’Bryan presented a paper entitled “Video Games in the Composition Classroom: Overcoming Sexism, Racism, and Violence,” Norma Aceves presented on “How I Came to Be a Rhetorician,” and Rachael Jordan presented on “Engaging in Digital Public Space: Facebook and Basic Writing Students.”