Notes from English Dept. Meeting of 9/3/19

College Information Day

As we’ve done in the past, the English Dept. has volunteered to set up a table on College Information Day. The event is September 19, from 10:00-1:00. We need two things:

  • Volunteers for the table. Please let me know (gkemble@yccd.edu) what times you can be there. (In the past, people have signed up for at least an hour at a time.)
  • Stuff to show off. In the past, we’ve displayed textbooks and anthologies, flyers about the English program in general, flyers about specific programs (e.g., Flumes, the student publication). Students especially like to see work that our instructors have published, so please drop off a copy of any work you’ve had published.

Scheduling for Spring 2020

The process:

  • I’ve sent out the Part-Time Staffing Survey for Spring 2020. If you are a part-timer, look for the email with the link to the survey. (If you did not get the email, you can use the link above–but please also let me know, so we can hunt down why you didn’t get the email.)
  • At the same time, I’m finalizing a couple of minor issues with Walter.
  • Then we’ll reserve classes for the cohorts (Puente, First-Year Experience)
  • Then, full-timers will sign up in order of seniority. We’ll use One Drive for this.
  • Then I’ll work on the jigsaw puzzle of scheduling part-timers. That earlier-mentioned email explains more about how that works. (Again, if you didn’t get that email, let me know.)

We also discussed the possible need to increase the number of ENGL 1B and/or 1C courses, given the increased number of ENGL 1A courses. We’re flying blind, but David Perez (the counselor assigned to our dept.) suggested we poll our students later in the semester to see how many of them plan to sign up for 1B or 1C. I’ve made a note to myself to figure out how to coordinate this.

Curriculum Update Work

I sent out a document outlining some work that we need to do with our curriculum and degrees. You can refer to that for details. There are some minor additions to it, but the most significant info involves assigning the work to update the curriculum. (If your name is not on here, but you want it to be, please contact the people whose names are there; I’m sure they’d appreciate the help.)

  • 1B and 1C – Cassandra and Kyra
  • 30A and B – Condrey (he has asked for someone to join him)
  • 31A and B – Kiara
  • 34 – Condrey (it’s pretty much done)
  • 36 – Condrey and Zack (also pretty much done?)
  • 40A and B – Kiara and Shawn
  • 46A and B – Jukes and Carrie

As was noted in the meeting, our curriculum is in pretty good shape. We don’t expecting that revisions will need to be extensive. We just need to be sure that the curriculum is clean — that textbooks are up-to-date, all fields are filled in, that courses aligned with C-ID are still aligned, etc.

That’s it for now

We ran out of time before we got to the Program Review information, but I don’t expect to have some of the data we asked for until the next meeting anyway.

Speaking of the next meeting: please mark your calendar for September 17.