Greetings everyone,
Hope you are enjoying the early part of your summer break. Things are rockin' and rollin' here in Craig Hall. As many of you know, Siceluff is being vacated for renovations and the big move day was today. This move included our Basic Course Staff. Thanks to those of you who boxed up all your belongings and marked them accordingly. With John B's able assistance and direction, we got all the furniture, journals, and random items marked and boxed up yesterday for the move today. John's also been working hard these last couple of days to get the GA office in Craig 394 ready for the grad students this fall. I appreciate all your patience as we make this transition. I'm sure it will take a few months to get everything where we want it (including my office...what a pit!). Thanks also go to Karen for her great work in getting all the phone transferred as well as data ports and name plates for the offices. I'll send out another update later this summer when things get more organized.
The real reason for this email is to make some exciting announcements. Please be sure to congratulate these folks on a job well done!
Isabelle has been named the COAL Dean's fellow for graduate education and research. Isabelle will be working with the dean's office next year to coordinate research efforts and graduate program initiatives, all with a one course release. We know Isabelle will represent us well.
Randy #1: has graciously agreed to be acting director of graduate studies next year while Isabelle has her new appointment. "Second time around" Randy, as we like to refer to him, has been grad director before and so he knows the ropes quite well. He'll be teaching COM 601 this fall and working with all things graduate students.
Randy #2: was recently notified that his manuscript "How alumni narratives of intercultural competence can inform the scholarship of teaching and learning of intercultural communication" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Congrats Randy!
Robyn has been appointed Assistant Director of the Basic Course! She will be assisting John with administration of the COM 115 program. A few things she'll sink her teeth into are graduate assistantship mentoring, weekly staff meetings, and other duties as assigned. I'm sure everyone will give their support to Robyn as she embarks on this administrative journey.
Dr. Russell Keeling, Emeritus faculty member has recently been approved by the Board of Governors to be accepted to the Wall of Fame in the Plaster Student Union. He will be officially inducted at a ceremony October 10, 2008 at 3:30 in the PSU ballroom. I hope you will join me in attending the ceremony to support Russ for his "too many to count" accomplishments while a member of this university for 34 years.
Char and the fine folks at the CDR have recently announced the start of Missouri's first ever adult victim offender mediation program with the Greene County Prosecutor's office. You received an email about this earlier in May, but it bears repeating that this is a cutting edge program in restorative justice and our hats go off to Char and Heather and the rest of the many volunteers with the CDR! They want me to remind you that there are trainings coming soon for this program.
FREE VOLUNTEER TRAINING May 30 - June 1, 2008
The CDR is offering a two-and-a-half day victim-offender mediation training on May 30 - June 1. This training will prepare volunteers to mediate juvenile and/or adult victim-offender cases. Click here for more information. <http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderMediationTraining.htm>
Basic Juvenile Victim-Offender Mediation Training (Friday, May 30, 5:30 - 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 31, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sunday, June 1, 9 a.m. - noon)
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER
Click here to read more about the training <http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderMediationTraining.htm> or to register now! http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/VictimOffenderRegisterNow.htm. You can also read more about our Victim-Offender Mediation Program at http://www.missouristate.edu/cdr/JuvenileVictimOffenderProgram.htm
If you have other exciting news you'd like to share, please do by posting a COMMENT here on the blog for others to see and appreciate! Have a great summer!
Kelly
We had a faculty meeting Wednesday, April 30. At the end of it we realized it was the last one of the year. Can you believe it...we've completed an entire academic year together. So many accomplishments to recognize, so little time. Here are a few highlights:
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Isabelle was promoted to Associate Professor (and now bearer of the gnome)
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Eric was granted tenure and completed a record breaking debate season and now the "grand poobah"
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Debate Team finished finished 3rd in the NDT and received two top speaker awards from NDT and CEDA
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The CDR staff secured the adult victim offender program through the Springfield Prosecutor's office
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Our undergrad and grad students presented an impressive number of conference papers this year (it's probably a record)
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Faculty completed a successful year of conference papers and publications.
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We hired two new excellent faculty members (Heather and Stephanie)
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The BC staff and graduate assistants return to Craig Hall and the CDR gets great space downtown
Faculty Meeting Highlights
1. Faculty recommended promotion criteria for senior instructor. Eric moved the document be accepted, and Randy seconded. Based on the attached document, the guidelines were unanimously approved. Attached COM Dept senior instructor guidelines-revised.doc are the guidelines we approved (with revisions) and these have been forwarded to the personnel committee and Dean Adams. Both he and the Provost will review these guidelines and provide feedback to the department. At that time, the personnel committee will revise and then submit approved criteria to be included in the departmental guidelines.
2. We also approved a number of changes to the merit plan. These changes will apply to the 2008 calendar year for merit. These revised guidelines are provided COM Merit 04_30_08.doc (these weremoved by Gloria, and seconded by Isabelle). The vote to approve these changes was unanimous). To summarize, here are the following changes:
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Serving as a mentor to probationary faculty (5 points), or other faculty (3 points).
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Points for a 4 in teaching now 20, and 30 points for a level 5
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Points for a 4 in service now 15, and 25 points for level 5.
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While not included in the document, faculty were open to instructors moving some items from level 3 in service to achieve a level 4 or 5 in points.
3. Elections: our numbers were dwindling when time to elect for various committees. The university committees needed nominations, so a couple of you self nominated. I will forward those to the Provost. We needed to elect two new members of the merit committee. Randy is the returning member. I will submit a ballot to you of tenured faculty. Please choose two and the top getters will be elected for 2 year term (tenured faculty cannot refuse a nomination). Members may be re-elected to consecutive terms, but not more than two without the lapse of an intervening term. I also need a volunteer to serve on the COAL technology committee next year and I will be soliciting potential candidates if no one volunteers.
4. Updates
Banner changes are provided for reference COM Undergraduate Banner changes.doc. Please review them, they will go forward as is unless you have a concern.
All Siceluff occupants should have items boxed up and ready to be moved by Monday, May 26. Please identify boxes and furniture in one of three ways. 1) to Craig Hall, room XXX, 2) warehoused to keep 3) surplus. #2 means you want to keep the item but want to have it stored. #3 means you don't want it. All items will be moved from Siceluff to Craig during that last week of May.
If you want a wireless access account through the university, please let me know so that I can set it up for you. We will be adding an additional access point on the 3rd floor of Craig on the northeast corner for better signal.
The COM advisory council met last weekend. If you would like a summary of the meeting and other notes, let me know and I'll forward you the email minutes. I'm going to be asking you next fall for new member referrals. The council would like to grow to 25 members, currently we have 12.
That's all for now. Have a great rest of the semester and summer.
Kelly
In attendance: Galanes, Bauman, King, Waters, Craig, Kyle, Ireland, Walters, Morris (E), Bourhis, Dillon, Coltharp, Dudash.