CPIC Update
CPIC launched the fall quarter with a plan to support PWR Fellows going on the job market. We respectfully lobbied Hume to allow Fellows to make appointments with consultants during our scheduled Hume hours. Hume agreed to this request, offering Fellows possible appointments, during Weeks 1 to 3. This was a positive shift, keeping with the way other post-docs at Stanford access Hume hours during the job-search season. CPIC has also continued our Works-in-Progress Writing Workshop for PWR lecturers and fellows, which is a launching pad to energize our writing practices and communities. As an inclusive project space, this Workshop is a gathering for people working on writing projects of all kinds. Those interested meet regularly in person and keep a virtual log for those who can’t participate on campus (Jan 24 was the most recent meeting. Early spring will bring another meeting date). CPIC looks forward now, at the mid year point, to the vision of hosting at least part of another Program Meeting, during Spring, in which we can share the often under-recognized but very real work that PWR instructors are doing outside of the classroom. Similar to last year, we hope to spotlight the valuable work being done in parenting, activism, elder care, scholarship across a variety of fields, and community engagement. Another goal of CPIC is to find time, most likely during Sept Sessions 2020, for the Equal Justice Society to return for a visit to our faculty; we’re currently discussing what this visit would look like. And as Winter Quarter entered the last few weeks, CPIC helped honor those on our faculty our newly promoted colleague by organizing a small celebratory aspect to our February Program Meeting.
LAC Update
LAC has worked this year to continue projects from last year, respond to lecturer requests and begin new projects. Building on LAC’s proposal for “Research Leave” from last year, the “Hume Writing Fellowship” was further developed and revised by sub commitment members (Chris, Christine, Sarah Pittock, Valerie and Becky) and brought again to administration. Administration supports the Hume Fellowship and sees the benefits for our teaching practice. They suggested a soft pilot in AY20-21 until approval/funding from VPUE opens up. JJ and Chris will work with Zandra on developing student facing/pedagogy-focused elements of the Hume Fellowship components further.
We have also taken a number of lecturer requests/suggestions to Marvin and Adam. For example, in the second meeting, LAC put together suggestions concerning the role of PWR lecturers in the career-track lecturer search in PWR. The suggestions implemented in the 2020 search include: combining the job talk and discussion, developing systematic way of collecting feedback and distributing titles of job talks beforehand. The changes offer ways to provide leadership with more comprehensive lecturer feedback on the candidate interview, as the search committee has especially valued feedback on candidates' pedagogies. Additionally, we invited Adam and Marvin to our January meeting to discuss issues most important to lecturers across cohorts including Senior lecturer advancement and budget issues. Following this meeting with leadership, the LAC chairs put together summary notes of the discussion with Adam and Marvin for cohort reps to send out to lecturers. LAC is committed to providing transparent communication between LAC and cohorts, thus each meeting a volunteer notetaker summarizes the cohort concerns and discussions to share with all lecturers across cohorts.
LAC is also in the process of starting new projects, largely in response to the requests submitted through your cohort representatives. For example, we are setting up a committee with CPIC to discuss a PWR-based Teaching Excellence Award. In addition, just recently, we have conducted a survey about lecturer concerns surrounding the shift to online teaching at the end of winter and beginning of spring quarter, the results from which we shared with leadership.
NACC Update
So far this year, NACC has been working on the following:
- Publishing the PWR Newsletter, in collaboration with the Associate Director and the ATS and in consultation with the CPIC committee
- Curating PWR’s social media presence by developing a unified social media plan. This also will involve innovating, updating and maintaining PWR’s Facebook page and Twitter feed and exploring the viability of expanding to other social media platforms
- Working on public identity and branding for PWR in conjunction with the Associate Director and the VPUE design team, led by Eric Van Danen, on the 4th floor
- Strategizing and implementing effective marketing for PWR Studios/Workshops, Notations and electives, in collaboration with the PWR Associate Director and Notation Coordinator
- Selecting, designing, and ordering swag for morale purposes, in conjunction with the Associate Director, Finance and Business Team, and the VPUE design team. One project for 2019-2020 might include NSC shirts for students, perhaps using a logo generated from a student contest
Specifically, NACC has re-designed the PWR Newsletter mailer (through MailChimp) and continued to produce a robust newsletter issue each quarter (so far, a September issue and a December issue. Our March issue is right around the corner…). We’ve also worked hard to develop a social media presence, creating a system for sharing the responsibility of account takeovers and guidelines for the types of posts that reflect the rigor, excitement, and collaboration of PWR. Lastly, we’ve worked in collaboration with the ATS to design a “PWR ON” sticker for our students. We hope to soon turn our attention to swag and marketing.
TTP Update
This year the Teaching and Tutoring Practices Committee has facilitated a Program Meeting visit by Dr. Julia Voss, whose talk focused on cultural positioning and capital in relation to student collaboration, information literacy and research practices. Concurrently, we’ve launched an Archiving Project that is focused on taking stock of the PWR teaching materials catalogues, with the ultimate goal of curating an archive that is user-friendly, cohesive and accessible; in support of that project, we are currently cataloguing existing syllabi, assignment prompts and student writing samples. In Spring Quarter, our goal is to revisit the Conference Pilot, making decisions around a potential follow-up project or a revision of the proposal for future implementation. We also continue to support the PWR newsletter’s “TeachingWriting” page by collecting teaching activities by PWR Instructors, and are working towards creating a Featured Scholarly Article showcase as well.
Pictured above: Members of the 2020 NACC Committee - from left to right: Tessa Brown, Jenae Cohn, Tom Freeland, Russ Carpenter, Christine Alfano, Shannon Hervey, Kevin Moore. Not pictured: Ruth Starkman, Emily Polk
