CAS Meeting Minutes

 

Friday, February 2, 2018

Dogwood Room

 

The meeting was called to order by the Chair, Prof. Marti LoMonaco at 3:32 p.m.  There were 49 faculty members present.

 

Proxies were held for

Laura McSweeney by Shannon Harding

Amanda Harper-Leatherman by John Miecznikowski

Eileen Reilly-Wiedow by John Miecznikowski

 

 

1.    Announcements from the Chair and other Faculty

 

·      Prof. Schwab made the following announcement:

 

“I am happy to announce that the School of Communication, Arts and Media is organizing an Undergraduate Conference entitled, Converging and Emerging Media to take place on Saturday, September 22, here at Fairfield. We are delighted to share the news that our luncheon keynote speaker will be Savannah Sellers, co-host of NBC’s news program “Stay Tuned” for the Snapchat platform.

 

The Conference Planning Committee members include:

Adam Rugg (Communication), Patrick Brooks (Visual and Performing Arts), Michelle Farrell (Modern Languages and Literatures), and Matt Tullis (English).

 

The Preliminary call for Abstracts will go out later this month to all colleges and universities in Connecticut and Westchester County. We will encourage presentations that explore the connections within and between the following areas:

 

Communication, Strategic Communication, Media Relations, Public Relations, Art History and Visual Culture, Film/Television/Media Arts, Graphic Design, Music, Studio Art, Theatre, Digital Journalism, Creative Writing, Professional Writing, World Cinema, Digital Humanities, Digital Essays

 

Preliminary Session Titles include:

 

1. The digital essay-moving papers from the page to the screen

 

2. The power of podcasting

 

3. Truth, Fake News, and The Invisible Hand of the Algorithm

 

4. Media/Art/Performance and Technological Change

 

5. Global digital activism: Participation or Passivity?

 

6. Meet me in IRL ;)?”

 

 

Preliminary Session Titles with comments:

 

1. The digital essay-moving papers from the page to the screen

-show your piece

-explain your process (story boarding, how did you do it, what did you do previously, how did the digital essay change the conversation

 

2. The power of podcasting

Digital storytelling/ cinematic narrative

 

3. Truth, Fake News, and The Invisible Hand of the Algorithm

Trust, Credibility, Who do you trust and who do you listen to

Media hybridity, Cross platform and how bringing forms together what has changed

 

4. Media/Art/Performance and Technological Change

Technologies in technology, Digital platforms and Augmented reality—their impact on creativity and the arts

 

5. Global digital activism: Participation or Passivity?

-New Technologies and democracies, online activism global, public spheres

-Algorithms shape which communities exist, which ones can form, they present an allusion of who they are

-Algorithm shapes taste, shapes

-Democracies

-Ethics-build up vs. the shred

-Virtual Reality and Building Community?

 

6. Meet me in IRL ;)?

Online public sphere, gathering spaces, community through online spaces,

Is participation in media participation?

 

            What does it mean to be completely in a virtual space?

What does it mean for story telling?

FOMO, Presence, and Digital removal

Physicality and Materiality

 

 

 

·      Associate Dean Petrino announced the Fairfield University Excellence in Teaching Award for Adjunct Faculty for the 2017-2018 academic year.

 

The Fairfield University Excellence in Teaching Award for Adjunct Faculty is an annual award recognizing truly excellent teaching by part-time faculty.  The award was established through a gift from an adjunct faculty member (who is ineligible for the award).

 

This Teaching Award continues in Fairfield University’s Jesuit tradition of academic excellence, critical thinking, and concerns for justice and the search for greater good.  It affirms the partnership that exists in the classroom between students and instructors helping each other fully develop their human potential.

 

In recognition of the differences between undergraduate and graduate teaching, two award recipients will be selected – an undergraduate adjunct faculty member and a graduate adjunct faculty member.  Each award recipient will receive $1000 and the honor of a joint reception with their department members, professional acquaintances and family.

 

Criteria

To be considered for the award, adjunct faculty members must have completed at least ten semesters of teaching at Fairfield University, not necessarily consecutively.  They must display a passion for their material and a contagious enthusiasm in their teaching.  Their love of learning and seeking of understanding must be fundamental to their teaching style.

 

Nomination Process:

1.     Department Chairs and adjunct coordinators submit nominations, in writing to their Dean.  Nominations should include a letter of endorsement detailing why the nominee is worthy of this award.  In addition, the nomination needs to include complete student evaluations for the most recent four semesters; the inclusion of student feedback and other forms of recognition of excellence as a teacher is encouraged.

2.     Deans will then write a letter of support for the nominee and forward the nominations to the AVP for Academic Affairs.  Malone@fairfield.edu, CNS 300, by March 31, 2018.

3.     The selection committee will then review all nominations.

 

Selection Committee:

The Selection Committee comprises of the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs (Secretary to the Committee), a Director of the Center for Academic Excellence, winners of the award from the previous year, one Associate Dean and one or two faculty member(s) from the Faculty Committee on Non-Tenure track Faculty.

 

Award Recipient Notification and Recognition:

The Award winners will be notified in April 2018 via letter from the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs.  The recipients will be recognized by a joint reception in May 2018.

 

·      The Arts and Sciences Planning Committee wants to remind all College Faculty about the College-wide Student Awards.  The College-wide awards will be given in four categories (Humanities, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Visual and Expressive Arts).   All entries are due on Monday, March 26th.   The CAS Student Awards Ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, April 24th at 6 p.m. in the Barone Campus Center. 

 

·      The Archery Club is in need for a faculty advisor.  If you are interested, please contact Prof. LoMonaco.  The Archery equipment is in the bike room in Mahan Hall.

 

 

2.    Approval of the December 13, 2017 Meeting Minutes

McClure/Van Dyke.  No corrections were offered.   

42 in favor.  0 against. 7 abstained.

 

 

3.    Introduction of Assistant Dean Saadia Rafiq

 

Dean Greenwald introduced Saadia Rafiq, who began as an Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences on January 3, 2018.  She joins us from Long Island University where she worked as an Academic and Career Counselor.  Before that, she worked as an Assistant Director of Student Employment at New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury Campus.   

 

Saadia holds a double Master of Arts in Politics & International Studies and World History from Long Island University, and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Journalism from the State University of New York of New Paltz.

 

Saadia has experience in student counseling, faculty and staff training, career development and program planning.  She is already handling student crises and advising students in the Dean’s office. 

 

 

4.    Research Minutes

 

Elizabeth Boquet:

 

I am a Rhetoric and Composition scholar, which is a sub-field of English Studies. A through-thread for my research involves considering the relationship between language and power, specifically literacy and power. Much of my work follows from the premise that literacy serves a gate-keeping bureaucratic function and does not, contrary to popular opinion, necessarily support entry or access to information or opportunities for disenfranchised populations. I look at the relationship between literacy and violences (both direct and symbolic), and I consider the ways that peers especially can intervene as literacy brokers. 

 

My current research is in the emerging area of the rhetoric of health and medicine, with a focus on the rhetoric of error in reporting catastrophic patient outcomes.

 

 

John Miecznikowski:

 

I am an inorganic chemist. 

 

Specifically, I am interested in preparing and characterizing metal complexes that have the potential to serve as catalysts for biologically relevant reactions.   I use clues from Nature when I design and synthesize the metal complexes.  One project I am working on involves synthesizing and characterizing a series of copper(I) complexes.  These complexes will be screened for moving an oxygen atom from one molecule to another.  I am currently writing a manuscript that describes the synthesis, and characterization analyses of these complexes, which behave like a see-saw in solution.  With a collaborator at the Rochester Institute of Technology-National Technical Institute for the Deaf, we have computationally modeled these complexes and have a mechanism that supports how the metal complexes act like a see-saw in solution.  Another project involves synthesizing and characterizing zinc(II) and cobalt(II) complexes which function as synthetic models for liver alcohol dehydrogenase in humans and animals.  We are screening the cobalt complexes for the ability to catalyze specific reactions.

 

I mentor undergraduate and high school students in my research. Since 2007, I have mentored 33 students in my research laboratory.  These students are involved in all aspects of the scientific research process.  Each semester, I work with 2-5 students as co-discovers in my research, and I work with 1-3 students in my laboratory every summer.

 

Maggie Wills:

 

My research takes up various health related discourses that foster, or challenge social, physical, mental and spiritual wellness.

 

In my published edited volume, I proposed a model of health communication inclusive of the spiritual, and each chapter examined a particular healthcare concern and the way in which mindfully tending to spirituality promoted healing.

 

Another project focuses on chronic Lyme disease and co-infections. In this work, I engaged in ethnographic research of The Greater Hartford Lyme Disease Support and Action Group. I conduct ongoing interviews with patients, activists, and medical professionals to unpack the complex discourses in play. Those affected by this devastating disease seek validation of their struggles, and work to effect change through communication on a personal level, and at the local, state and national levels.

 

Most recently, my work focuses on my service-learning course, Alcohol, Addiction and Culture. Forty students, mainly communication majors, engage with forty senior high school health classes and 500 students in all. I’m analyzing the way in in which an animated community partnership is transforming discourses related to alcohol use and abuse not only for the high school seniors, but for our own Fairfield students. 

 

 

5.     Remarks from the Dean

 

The Dean welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

 

We are seeing a pattern in the research minutes and that is students are really engaged with faculty on research projects.  The Dean is mindful of the time that is needed to carefully mentor students and is appreciative. 

 

There are several items the Dean wanted to share. First, the Dean is working with Advancement to produce a detailed list of funding opportunities for the College.  The College, as far as the Dean knows, never had a funding booklet that they can hand to a donor or the major gift officers.  The College, therefore, has missed out on a lot of opportunities. The Dean is meeting with several donors and he is hopeful that we will be seeing results soon—as alumni love Fairfield and the College.  In addition, the Dean has been meeting with program officers at foundations.

 

The Dean’s office will be asking faculty to submit updates on their activities.  Specifically, faculty will be asked to list their presentations, academic conference papers, published research articles, submitted grants, and funded grants. The goal would be to create an internal newsletter so we get to see what is happening in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Dean would like the important research faculty do to not be hidden. 

 

            The Dean’s Office is working on yield efforts. The University admits a large number of undergraduate students, but the yield is not as high as we would like to have, especially in the natural sciences.  The students who choose other schools over Fairfield have expressed one reason for this is that we don’t offer undergraduate research opportunities.  This isn’t really true. But, as there is no place on the College of Arts and Sciences website that talks about research opportunities with Faculty one can understand. Therefore, we are working to solve this by making such efforts more visible.

 

The College of Arts and Sciences needs also to increase the support for undergraduate research.  We need to extend faculty mentoring undergraduate research beyond the sciences into to the arts, social sciences and the humanities.  In order to accomplish this, the College will need more money, more resources, and more space.    Many Faculty in the College are already mentoring undergraduates in research projects.

 

The College of Arts and Sciences is working with marketing to develop a series of videos to highlight student research opportunities.  Potential students check videos posted on-line on college websites.  The College of Arts and Sciences wants to make sure that potential students are seeing the best version of what is happening in the College of Arts and Sciences.  The Dean wants to send video film crews to tape live action shots of students working with faculty.

 

In order to potentially increase the admitted student yield, the Dean will be speaking at several admitted student events on campus.

 

The College of Arts and Sciences wants to ensure that offices, spaces, and laboratories will be refurbished in the next phase of renovations that will be happening on campus. 

 

There is also conversation of having a new academic space on campus.

 

The Dean has been meeting with groups of students.  The CAS students have a sense that the student support areas such as the Office of Career, Leadership and Professional Development and the Career Fairs that are held on campus are meant for students in the professional schools.  The Dean’s office is working on a series of things to enhance and customize the career events for CAS students.  The perception is that the Career fair is not for students from the College of Arts and Sciences.  This is a false perception. The College did not develop the skill sets needed for students to take advantage of the career fair.  There will be customized resume and Linked-In workshops available for students in the College.  We need to remember that accounting firms have Communications Departments and hire Communications majors.    The Assistant Deans in the College of Arts and Sciences will support this important work.

 

Many students complete internships in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Each Department handles internships in a different way.  We need to determine how the Office of Career, Leadership and Professional Development will deal with the logistics of the internships and how Faculty can deal with the academic side of the internships.  We also need to work with the Office of Career, Leadership and Professional Development to develop a database of the mentors and opportunities are available.

 

Students need to connect with alumni and learn about their career paths.  The College of Arts and Sciences will work with the Alumni Office to make connections with alumni and our current students.  Departments should develop relationships with former students and invite them to return to campus to talk to current students.

 

 

6.     Budget update from the Dean

 

The Dean announced that there will be changes going forward with respect to budgets.  The quality of education isn’t fully explained in the current budget process, rather, it is just a dollar amount.

 

 The Dean is having conversations with the Provost regarding the budget for the College of Arts and Sciences.  The College submitted a larger budget request for the 2018-2019 academic year, larger relative to the one that was submitted for the 2017-2018 academic year.  We made clear justifications and the budget has a direct impact on recruiting students and improving quality.  These are investments, not expenses. 

 

This year, there was a template request for new faculty lines in the College of Arts and Sciences.  The Department Chairs had a conversation collectively.  The Dean then had a conversation with the Provost and he made a case for his request for new lines.  There are lots of requests but only a finite amount of money, but he is hopeful.

 

 

7.    Assessment update from the Dean

 

The Dean has been thinking a lot about assessment.    His sense is that The College of Arts and Sciences did assessment only for the NEASC Accreditation review.  We are missing the opportunity to have meaningful assessment within the disciplines.   Some departments have done complete revisions. We need a way to capture these revisions that ensure that we are providing instruction and education of the highest quality.  We will use the assessment results to request resources and to improve and to deliver the education that is related to our mission. 

 

We need to simplify assessment to make it manageable.  The Dean took a template used by a number of  institutions and customized it for our institution. It is needed. When NEASC came, the reviewers asked for assessment data from the College the only way to see it was by reading the annual reports from the department.   We need to have better system to capture assessment data.  One way we will use assessment data is to define quality applications in each discipline.   Without having the assessment data, we are missing out on a way to sell the quality of our academic programs. We will present this data to parents, and the finance office and potential donors.

           

The enrollments in the College of Arts and Sciences are in good shape.  We are the largest enrolled unit in the University.

 

The Dean is confident that we will get good proposals through the curricular innovation grant program.

 

The Dean then asked if anyone had questions.

 

Prof. Boquet stated that the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty voted a year ago to establish the four schools.  Could you give us an update how the schools are working, and whether there are things that will come to the faculty with regards to governance?

 

The Dean responded that he has been meeting with the Directors of the four schools.  He finds it useful to work with the schools.   The schools are in the College governance document, but they don’t have power to do anything.  What is the best use of the four schools?   The Directors gather ideas, funding requests, space issues, facilities issues and work with the Chairs in their area.  The directors also organize alumni events and conferences.  Isn’t the college too small to have four schools?  Do the faculty see that?  Do the departments see that?  Should we have schools?  Should we vote to dissolve the schools?  We have to wait and see the how the schools evolve as it is too soon to make decisions.

 

Prof. Epstein asked if we should think about preparing a career fair that is meant for the students from the College of Arts and Sciences and stressed graduate school opportunities.

 

The Dean mentioned that the career fair includes Graduate Programs.  Some of the students the Dean spoke with thought that the Career Fair was meant for students from the Dolan School of Business.  Some students do not know where the Office of Career, Leadership and Professional Development was located.  The Career Center reports that students go to the Career center too late and do not take advantage of the Center soon enough.    The College of Arts and Sciences needs to get involved to help our students with Career planning in a more systematic way.

 

Prof. Carolan asked the Dean about President Nemec’s impression of the College of Arts and Sciences.

 

The Dean responded that the President is optimistic about the College. He is impressed by the work that we do with students. And, he understands the issues we face. He has encouraged to think about ways to improve our programs, present our successes and explore facilities need.  The Dean encouraged faculty to continue inviting the President to events.

 

Associate Dean Sauer reminded everyone that the Curricular Innovation Grants are due on February 21st.  He also reminded everyone that the “Art of the Gesù:  Bernini and his Age Exhibit opened yesterday at the Fairfield University Art Museum.

 

 

8.    Adjournment

 

Motion to adjourn (Carolan/Primavera).  4:42 pm. 

 

 

Respectfully Submitted,

 

John R. Miecznikowski

Secretary of the College of Arts and Sciences