by John McMahon

I. 5-year response to 10-year review

• Progress Report on 21 recommendations from external reviewers in 2008 review of the program: in-progress, in draft form
• Plan is to use this as clarification/emphasis on asking for resources (e.g,. central line American Politics hire after Prof. Piven retires; hire in IR (in IPE)
• Issues of discussion in report
  • Course offerings and role of consortial faculty
    • Some concern expressed that GC attempting to move away from having faculty from the campuses teach at GC
    • Fewer consortial faculty teaching at GC was true for budget reasons 1-3 years ago, but not the case now
    • Program enrollment numbers can maintain similar number and distribution of courses
    • Acknowledgment that program needs to do better institutionalizing process for recruiting, bringing in campus faculty to teach, get to know GC faculty and students, and eventually become consortial doctoral faculty
      • Obstacles: budgets, varying interest and relationships with the chairs of POLSC programs across CUNY
      • Currently, Core Seminar in program every year taught by faculty from a CUNY Campus (Prof. Majic this year, Prof. Feldman last year) with eye to adding them to doctoral faculty down the line
  • Need expressed to increase efforts to recruit MA students
  • Discussion over whether the 700-level/800-level distinction actually works in practice
    • Is there really a difference between the two? Often have 700-level courses with seminar papers
    • Program could make courses be worth any number of credits
      • Any adjustments would have to take into account what Fellowships will cover for international students and first year of out-of-state students before they get residency status
    • Student Reps asked to conduct survey of student body to gather data regarding experience and perception of 700/800-level distinction
      • Will take place in the Spring

II. Interim EO

• Appointment decisions for Interim EO position entirely run through office of GC President and Provost
  • Current EO and many faculty expressed frustration that this process has yet to be completed by GC administration
  • No formal process for GC administration
  • No formal mechanism for faculty or student advising
• Hopefully will find out soon
• Prof. Rollins leaves program for sabbatical mid-January

III. Spring events

• Resources exist for to invite speakers in Spring for talks on income inequality and related issues
  • May partly function as highly informal pre-recruitment situation to engage with potential future applicants for American Politics line once Prof. Piven retires
    • Upshot: GO TO THESE – may be chance for input down the line

IV. Gittell Professorship

• kind of a mess: 2 failed searches for Gittell Professorship
  • one problem: difficulty finding one person for different programs (POLSC, Sociology, Psychology) to agree on

V. Website

• Committee okays plan for semesterly review of student section of website to be conducted by Executive Committee student reps
• after argument/discussion, student research interests will not be added to student portion of website