October-28-2019-Minutes
Minutes
The Academic Senate Committee on Senate Committee on Cultural and Archival Resources met on October 28, 2019 12:15pm (A508)
Committee Members in Attendance:
Attending: Wenli Guo, Adam Luedtke, Cary Lane, Nathaniel Sullivan, Mirna Lekic, Kathleen Pecinka, Heather Huggins, Laura Cohen, Faustino Quintanilla, Susan Agin.
Not Attending: Jose Osorio
Liaisons in Attendance:
Business:
The meeting was called to order at 12:15pm
Minutes from May 2, 2019 approved, pending correction of Rosemary Zins’ last name spelling.
Reports from cultural center directors:
KHRCA - Laura: current exhibit titled Turtle Island -- art on mass atrocities and genocide. Response has been really great. Opening well-attended -- up through May 2020. Community tour in spring semester, also one of the artists will be here in the spring, plus one film related to the topic in spring. Thinking of what to do for next year. Then passed out NEH thing. 160 students attended the artist one. 2 more events coming up -- racism, nativism. Also flyer on event with Queens College commemorating Kristallnacht -- hate symbols, Celtic cross, other new far right symbols, and also a scholar coming to talk on why we frame Native atrocities as genocide. One thing to raise is we’re looking for your support in coming up with ways to get the word out with faculty about what’s going on and that students attend. We talked about faculty communicating with faculty. Peer to peer communication. Spread the word. Cary: English department has kept old liaison system where there is one faculty member assigned to each cultural center. Wenli brought up CETL. Rosemary said she’ll find out who would be the new contact person. There will have to be a search, etc. to find a replacement. CETL connects us and faculty.
Art Gallery: Faustino: Eve Clone, circula paintings from Taiwan (get info from brochures). Also films every Wednesday during club hours, Dec 12 we will have an international film festival - short films from South America - first time we’re doing it at this college. Dec 20 we’ll have another exhibit - collages - Miriam Birman, professor here for many years. Do a memorial before he passes away. A portion of his work will be donated to the college. He has cancer. Get more info from brochures. Goya exhibition we were planning for April and May has to be postponed until the end of the year due to budgetary reasons -- postponed to October/November 2020. Trying to get the permanent collection out by Christmas -- Africa -- Arthur P. Bourgeois. They also have a research library for African art and photography (COULD BE GOOD FOR TEACHING RESOURCES TAB!!! -- add to website -- also film series every Wednesday during club hours). Wenli asked about event calendar. Directors submit it to marketing office -- QCC brief and CUNY brief are separate processes. We are better known in Europe than Queensborough. Wenli: we should try to showcase things that have been done or things that are coming up. Rosemary says that we’d want to work with CETL. Wenli stressed importance of CETL as a hub and knowledge source. Rosemary talked about KHC as facilitating NEH to get faculty involved. Those types of examples we need to get up onto the website -- and coordinate with CETL. Rosemary said to use my Amy Traver example for website. Faustino talked about bringing the Academies to the art gallery. One example: chemistry of restoration. Another example: linking Common Read to Holocaust Center. Cary: SWIGS, FIGS, and best with grants/incentives. Rosemary brought up how much release time costs in terms of grants. She was curious because of College Foundation, which currently goes mostly towards emergency student needs.
She could raise the idea for the future, anyway. Wenli brought up CETL funding. She got a grant once. Cary thinks in November there’s a meeting for grant funding, where that could be pitched. For instance, adding a cultural center component for PSC Grants. Grant office. Put link to grant office for Teaching Resources (Wenli asked me). Rosemary wants to get concrete examples from various departments -- why someone from biology might want to consider doing something with KHC, or Art Gallery, or Performing Arts Center. Give her examples. Susan: where does math, physics, nursing, play a role in the theater? For us, it’s very hard to play to a wide audience of faculty. It’s been most useful to select one faculty member to collaborate with each semester, and then that person tells someone, and that’s helped with them being able to spread the word, but we’ve been able to connect with a new person each semester, and that’s enabled us to connect with more people. Examples would be helpful too (Rosemary) so for Susan to tell us and tell Rosemary and put it on website, etc. Physics and chemistry of theatre. Makeup, lights, fire, everything is extremely deliberate. There were a number of semesters we had faculty do testaments, we have those videos, those can be put on the website. They are on QPAC WEBSITE (LINK TO THAT FROM OURS!!!!!!)))). Philip Ronconi would have access to all of them.
QPAC – Susan: we don’t have a theatre right now. We are producing events out of the trunk of my car. Yesterday was our 4th event of the season. 3 of the 4 events have been sold out. The loyalty of everyone is incredible: patrons, sponsors, etc. One of the things we haven’t touched on is how vitally important external support is for the college. QPAC is inward-facing; how the arts play a role in students lives’ etc., but the external support is also important, because that’s how the college gets money, how capital projects get funded, etc. We have an obligation to get involved with external community. During a time our theater is essentially closed, we were essentially allocated $500,000. That’s the kind of support the college is getting from legislators and others. It’s important for us to balance that. The new venue is 8-9 months from opening, which is very exciting. Construction isn’t handled locally, so you’re working through a 3rd party, but they are working pretty much on time. You can connect with people who wouldn’t normally be coming to campus or interested with what’s happening on campus. We are seeing new people at every event, and it’s certainly increasing the scope and reach that Queensborough has out there. We have lots of events that are going on. We have various programs, afterschool, senior, student-based, club hours, dance workshop (85 students signed up for that; runs for a number of weeks in Fall and a number of weeks in Spring). Different majors, they come together, really nice to see that kind of collaboration. We’ve had the most success with these service learning projects: where do math, physics, and chemistry play a role in the theater? We introduce students to different ways they can make a living via theater jobs. There are hundreds of students who interact with the performing arts center (most often dance or theater students). They (as well as Art Gallery) both have student interns.
Chairperson’s report:
Wenli -- Chair’s report and updates from the Academic Senate Committee Chairs’ meeting
We learned how to use new CMS.
I will clean up and add things to it. We can wait on the first 2 until the spring, but we want to cover items 3-5 now. #3 -- teaching resources. That’s one of the things we’ve been talking about. Pedagogical examples, etc. to put on the tab, CAR website.
Work on changing guidebook.
Assess: we can do in Spring.
Website: I will clean up and straighten up the website. And the focus would be on Teaching Resources.
New Business and Distribution of Tasks:
Focus on guidebook, plus teaching, pedagogy, collaboration with CETL, others. Teaching Resources besides what we talked about -- anything else? Maybe we can categorize it by cultural centers? Send examples: testimonies (Philip Ronconi) or examples, projects between faculty and centers, anything that could go on our website.
Change our website to replace Shannon with Cary as liaison.
Heather: ask our departments for examples to share in terms of adding to Teaching Resources.
Cary – STEAM: accounting class to calculate reparations for the Holocaust survivor. Heather: HIP. GDL is a great collaborative HIP conduit. How to make things more visible. Filming talks. How we can advocate for getting more things out there. We succeed more when we document and showcase the ways our campus engages with the community. The artists were moved and overwhelmed at the first event but it wasn’t filmed, unfortunately. There were even student curators. Faustino: we have the ambassador of Taiwan, dancing, theatre, magic, that is better propaganda than anything we can put on the bus.
Susan mentioned that Queens Public Television will cover those things if you reach out to them. They’re filming us on Sunday. CUNY TV also.
Laura brought up how you don’t get support from parts of the admin unless you can show a direct link to enrollment.
Wenli asked about external funding. Rosemary said let’s focus on faculty interest. That’s about substance. Heather -- we watched the videos and it really helped our stuff. Scaffolding. We need to be clear about what these centers represent for us.
Cary: bring new president to this room so we can make sure ample priority is on this. Leadership needs to understand what we bring to the table here and how it elevates the college.
Heather: we could also gather testimonials from faculty on student-centered learning.
Cary: that could be part of the “assessment” (specific charge from Steering Committee).
Wenli: read over the guide. We have 9 members. Maybe we can assign sections to people. I can do that.
Meeting adjourned at 1:45 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Adam Luedtke
Committee on Senate Committee on Cultural and Archival Resources, Secretary
Minutes typed on October 28, 2019
