Happy Friday! I hope week two has gone as well for you as it has for me.
As always, I have a wide variety of good and interesting news for you.
Scott has a new essay out. “Always, Blind, and Silenced: Disability Discourses in Contemporary South Korean Cinema,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Vol. 11, no. 3 (August 2017): 251-271. Go Scott!
You could check out this wonderful story written by Carol on Meara, our newest tenure track faculty member.
And there is this fun TBT Facebook post published by Lindsay. A great picture of Elizabeth on move in day at Alma College. Almost nothing has changed.
Except that Elizabeth has tenure now. And that is super-duper cool.
We are relaunching the Communication Studies Club. I have attached here a PPT slide that you can use in your classes to urge students to go to the inaugural meeting. There’s free pizza and, more importantly, opportunities for students to practice their communication skills! I am really excited about the possibilities this club brings our undergraduate students.
I am sure many of you saw the recent CLA call for award nominations. Think seriously about nominating yourself or others for these awards. TTT faculty, pay particular attention to the Faculty Development Award opportunities. Several of you have received this award and it can be a great boost to your scholarship.
A quick shout out today to our Special Faculty. You all are AMAZING. You are teaching dozens of classes for us this year from 100 to 300 level classes. You are remarkably skilled teachers and you bring your passion for the study and practice of communication to the classroom and the hallways every day.
As you probably know, you have representation in the CLA on the CLA Adjunct Faculty Committee. The committee brings your concerns to the college and the college chairs. For a number of years Kristin was one of the representatives. I also sit on the committee. It would be worth your while to navigate to the website to find your representative and learn about the committee’s initiatives.
Hey, did you know that we have a wonderful community? Just today I have heard a couple of stories that remind me this is the case. I won’t name names, but I learned that a couple of you, totally independently of each other have reached out to Dawn to thank her for her amazing work arranging travel. Another of you gave the office staff over a month to do some photocopying.
And then I was just in the kitchen cleaning my coffee making equipment, and Kristina came in. I asked how she was doing and she said good. And that she was taking over refrigerator cleaning duties. She pointed out that Gloria doesn’t use the refrigerator but that she always cleans it. Kristina and Ava her realized that wasn’t right. And now they are in charge of refrigerator duty. AMAZING! (Oh, and if you don’t put a name and date on your food, don’t be surprised if it is thrown away: the responsibilities of being in a community!).
Well, this is the kind of group we (usually) are. We remember that our front office staff work damned hard to make the rest of our lives work. We see jobs that need to get done and just do them. We teach well (all of us teach well, for each of us are in the final instance communication teachers regardless of our title). And we clean the refrigerator.
But we do more. Many of you saw the article in the Rocky Mountain Collegian about the crepe paper noose hanging in front of the dorm room Black student in Newsom Hall. You can find Joon Kim’s moving response published in the Collegian here. In the coming days you will see information about ACT Human Rights Film Festival program that is designed to directly engage the community in conversation about lynching, nooses, and racial violence. We build institutions like the AHRFF and the CPD so that we can respond well and quickly to these acts of violence.
Because that’s the kind of community we are. We practice small kindness like cleaning the refrigerator. And we address soul-rending difficulties like the continued destruction wrought by performances of white supremacy.
On that note, have a wonderful long weekend. I will be celebrating in spirit if not in body my father’s birthday and my parent’s 60^th wedding anniversary. Amazing!
Yours,
Greg