Tag Archives: faculty search

Dec. 2012 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes from 12/7/12 Executive Committee Meeting

(more or less in order of importance)

 

 

Course evaluations: They are happening!

  • We’ve worked on a number of drafts of the evaluations, getting lots of feedback from various faculty
  • The goal is to collect information that will be valuable primarily to students in choosing classes, but also helpful to the EO and faculty
  • There will be evaluations for this past Fall semester, which will be used as somewhat of a trial run to see how well the designed evaluation works, collect preliminary data, etc.
  • The current plan is that the results will be available online, potentially on the Political Science Student Representation website
  • Fall 2012 Course Evaluations were sent out to the student listserv last Friday, and by Margaret earlier today. The link is here.

 

New Fellowship program: will go into effect for incoming Fall 2013 class

  • A fixed number of students: 12, all of whom will receive funding
    • 9 “GC Fellowships”
      • expectation to be full-time students
      • 3 Tuition-only fellowships
        • directed to incoming students who have full-time jobs and/or other sources of funding
      • There was much debate about whether 12 is an absolute cap
        • President’s office and Provost’s Office say yes
        • Questions about whether we could add more if there weren’t fellowships attached, or if there was other money in one way or another
        • If there’s going to be any effort to admit more than 12, it will be on an individual, concrete case-by-case basis
          • More-or-less a consensus among the faculty on not wanting to make hypothetical challenge/request for flexibility
      • Our department has been at the 12 number give or take a few for the past couple of years
  • Process/logistics
    • The GC Fellowships will be a $25,000/year stipend, with NYSHIP, for a 1/1 teaching load (probably can be adjusted to a 0/2 or 2/0 depending on student and campus needs on a case by case basis)
      • Will probably be able to “bank” up to one year leave of absence
      • The Admissions Committee will be ranking all candidates and go down the ranked list to fill the 12 spots
        • MA students applying to the PhD program will apply like everyone else, and will essentially be like “new” people in the applicant pool
      • Will not lose department Grad B’s
      • There will be money (unclear from where?) provided to campuses to hire more adjuncts
      • MA programs will be used to “fill bodies in classes”
  • Concerns and Criticisms
    • Some departments (especially Sociology) has voiced concerns about the cap on the number of students
      • Especially if there is money at the department level to support more students
      • Concern that this will lessen the number of minority students
      • Possibility that this will make it more difficult for international students given visa-related and other restrictions they may be facing
  • We raised the (in our minds completely legitimate) concerns that many of you have voiced regarding the inequities that this creates: in addition to the current funded/no-funded stratification, there will now be another stratification where incoming students will be receiving $7,000/year more than current ECFs for half the work/year, not to mention the inequality created between incoming funded students and people without ECFs. The response was unsympathetic. The common responses included that this benefits us all in the long-run (reasoning: better students and a better reputation) and that isn’t a matter of great concern.
  • From the administration’s perspective, this is  a done deal in all regards.

 

Moving forward: this spring, EO wants to discuss the possibility of more strictly capping enrollment in courses

  • Concerns include too many students in some classes, too many students from other programs, too many MALS students
    • Possibility that non-political science students would have to “apply” to take (all?) (some)? POLSC classes
  • One potential problem is that if the department was to limit the number of non-political science students in POLSC classes, it might make it more difficult for us to enroll in non-POLSC classes.
  • Stay tuned…

 

Archiving of select dissertation proposals: per a request from the DSC, the department will (soon?) be implementing an online archive of select dissertation proposals

  • In attempt to collect only the “good” ones, this will be a decision made by each student’s committee at the send of the Second Exam
  • There was also discussion of adding a central database of titles of those currently working on dissertation
    • Perhaps they get added after passing Second Exam?
    • How to systematically collect for people who have already passed Second Exam?

 

Student Satisfaction Survey

  • We received results from the GC-wide student survey from this past Spring
  • EO and other faculty understood the data very positively (and there are some things to be positive about)
  • Also much to be concerned about in the report, which we plan to bring up at future meetings (discussion was cut off due to time constraints)
  • Data to be used in future professional development workshops and other areas
  • Still a question how public this data is going to be made – our hope is that at the very least all students have access to it
  • EO wants the raw data so that further, more refined analysis can be done to it

 

Career Development Office: A new Career Development Office will be opening in February

  • Will centralize letter-writing services (as opposed to using Interfolio)
  • May help with workshops on the departmental level 

 

Budget: Effect of Hurricane Sandy on budget is unclear

 

 

 

October Grad Council Meeting

by Sarah Kostecki and Kristofer Petersen-Overton

I. President Kelly
II. Provost Robinson
III. Prof. Rollins on curriculum and degree changes
IV. University Faculty Senate report
V. New business

I. President Kelly on the state of the university:
a. The budget is stable for now, though they’re keeping on eye on any potential cuts in federal funds, which would inevitably impact NY state and CUNY by extension.
b. The GC expects to continue with the new fellowship packages.
c. The GC residency is very popular; they’ve been getting more requests than can be accommodated and plans are being developed to acquire another location.
d. “Targeted” faculty hires will be made this year; CUNY hired more new faculty than any other university in the country (not exactly a surprise given the size of the consortium).

II. Provost Robinson had faculty vote to approve the 292 degrees awarded by the GC last semester. (Approved unanimously)

III Our own Professor Rollins made his debut appearance as Chair of the Curriculum and Degree Committee. President Kelly verbally expressed his approval of Prof. Rollin’s snazzy vest…

Four major changes were approved as well as one minor change:

a. Art History added a new specialization which will include courses in Western Civilization, Islam, and Byzantium. (Appoved)
b. Criminal Justice added a new course in the history of firearms. (Approved)
c. The MA program in Liberal Studies (MALS) added a new “emerging topics” course which will encompass a wide variety of current issues. (Approved)
d. The MA program in Liberal Studies (MALS) added a new specialization in Migration and Global Cities. (Approved)

And one minor topic:

a. The English department renumbered one of its courses. (Approved, with much laughter)

IV. The University Faculty Senate reported on the (legitimate) outrage over the Pathways initiative. Two lawsuits have been jointly filed (by the UFS and PSC) challenging the plan. Apparently the library is hosting some kind of event this Friday (Oct. 26) on open access research. No further information was offered, but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out for anyone interested. And the rules governing library employees are being changed to grant them greater representation in the UFS.

V. There was no new business to discuss to discuss.

Executive Committee Minutes, 9/21 Meeting

*Submitted by Joanna Tice, on behalf of your student representatives to the Executive Committee: John McMahon, Aleta Styers and Joanna Tice

1) New Graduate Center Fellowships: Announces major shift in the fellowship funding/structure, coming into effect for students entering in the 2013-14 school year
– The Enhanced Chancellors Fellowship will be replaced by a new fellowship (Probably called the Graduate Center Fellowship)
– Stipend increased to $25,000 annually + tuition remission
– Same 5 years guaranteed funding with 1 year RA position, 3 years teaching (reduced to a 1-1 teaching load, potentially transferable to a 0-2 or 2-0) and 5th year writing fellowship
– Purpose: to make GC fellowships competitive with other institutions.
– All PhD students NOT receiving a fellowship WILL be receiving a tuition waiver
– MA funding possibilities will remain the same (i.e., limited)
– This was accomplished by requiring a 25% reduction in funded PhD students, institution-wide. However, our department already accomplished that reduction in the last few years, so it will mean a reduction of only 1 or 2 PhD students at most for PS. This does not apply to MAs (if anything, MAs may be increased).
– THIS DOES NOT CHANGE THE FELLOWSHIP FUNDING AND STRUCTURE FOR ALREADY MATRICULATED STUDENTS

2) Composition of Entering Class this Fall: a substantial majority are Theory and IR students, followed by Comparative, American, very few in Public Policy, but those few appear very focused with research objectives already clear.

3) 1st Exam results: This year was one of the most successful years on record for successful completion of the first exam
– 25 out of 30 students passed their respective exams
– 13 students changed levels
– more people taking exams earlier
– faculty from two of the fieds commented upon relatively weak responses in some of the passing exams.

4) The Gittell Chair/Samuel’s Center Faculty Search: This search has been adjusted over the summer and the position would no longer be housed in the Samuel’s Center
– The Search is somewhat up in the air, as a permanent position has been offered but most likely this scholar will not accept (based on family situation) and thus the position will be offered to a number of visiting scholars until a match is found
– The Faculty Membership Committee is still actively pursuing an IPE line

5) Budget: Budget for the department seems stable – there will be no reduction in courses or entrenchment on hiring

6) Professional Development Workshop Planning: DEO (Rosalind Petchesky) announcement about planning process of student professional development workshop.
– Several students on the list serve have expressed interest in a workshop about the 2nd and 3rd exams. We brought this up with Professor Petchesky and she suggested that students interested in those topics suggest them on the Questionnaire sent out by the department last week (sent by Margaret on the 14th).
– If you are interested in a workshop on the 2nd or 3rd exams, please submit the questionnaire ASAP and write-in that request in the “other topics” section of the form.

7) Department Website Improvement: Joe is proposing to launch a committee to overhaul the website in the coming months. He will most likely need student volunteers to participate in that committee, if anyone has particular interest, you might let him know.

8. Changing of the Guard: Just FYI, Joe will probably be taking a sabbatical for half of next year and for half of the year after that. Apropos this, he spoke of the need to identify and train new a new EO and a new DEO to replace Ros