CandidateStatements

HW Faculty Council Candidate Statements (Fall 2016 Edition)

It is my pleasure to fulfill a request put forward by our current HWFC to share the statements of our three colleagues who have been nominated and agreed to stand for election to three-year terms on the Faculty Council. There are two open positions.

I share these in the order that I received them.

Kristin Bivens, Associate Professor of English

This past August, as I started my 10th year at HW in the English department, I took stock of various opportunities I had participated in and others I had not. For example, I served as CAST coordinator, along with Kamran Swanson, for 2016. As part of my CAST duties, I organized (along with Kamran) FDW in August and various CASTivities throughout the spring semester (and now, the fall semester). I think my biggest contribution has been hybridizing and digitizing CAST content and recording CASTpod interviews with and for HW folks.  I was happy to use some of the tech skills from my PhD in technical communication and rhetoric as CAST coordinator and for FDW.

Serving faculty as CAST coordinator was a gratifying experience, but when I was recently nominated for FC, I thought this was another opportunity to continue to serve faculty and faculty interests.  As we approach an important crossroads as a district and college (a new chancellor, a new contract, and re-accreditation), I would like to use my experience (spring 2016) working on an all-District team of English faculty to create a new writing placement. My experience called for skills of argumentation and persuasion to ensure the best writing placement test was chosen for our students. I think my experience on this all-District team will also contribute to serving as the criterion chair for integrity for re-accreditation, as well as your FC representative.

Megan Ritt, Assistant Professor of English

Those of you who know me know that I’m passionate about many things (including Game of Thrones, the Oxford comma, and french fries). Another subject I’m passionate about is teaching and the well-being of our students. A lot of what we can do for them is reliant upon not just our content-area knowledge but also our knowledge of education itself, our academic freedom, and our ability to share in the governance of our school.

I want to serve on Faculty Council because I want to put my passion to good use. As a teacher of argumentation, I will listen to the many disparate voices of our faculty and help us reach informed conclusions. Serving as CAST Coordinator in 2014 and 2015 helped me see the importance of being involved on the school-wide level. I am eager to learn from those who have gone before me and to help provide a voice for the faculty and by extension, our students. If I am chosen to serve on the Council, I’ll bring my passion for teaching, my writer’s ear, and my Oxford commas. Thank you for your consideration.

B. Kamran Swanson, Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy)

The Faculty Council is expected to represent the views of full- and part-time faculty, to support positions that preserve and strengthen the academic integrity of the institution, and to work with administration to foster an environment of shared governance. In my first three years of serving on Faculty Council, I have learned what it means to do this effectively, and I am excited to do so more frequently and effectively for another three years. I feel privileged to work among a community of experts, tremendously varied in their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. I believe that the best version of Faculty Council draws upon these differences, encourages rational dissent, and sets an example for our administration, our students, and our larger community, to exercise a government of free thinkers with competing views. I believe it is possible to do this without losing a clear voice, and I hope my various statements to administration and faculty have demonstrated this over the past few months and years. If reelected to Faculty Council, I intend to continue putting into practice that which I’ve learned before.

 

 

CAST Leadership Election This Week

Another week, another opportunity to voice your vote about an important leadership position at the college. This coming week (Monday to Wednesday, anyway) you’ll find another ballot in your mailbox, but this time for the election of a Chair for CAST (a.k.a., Center for the Art and Science of Teaching). HWFC’s Jess Bader (Art) asked me to post the following statements from the two worthy candidates, and so, with no further ado:

Megan Ritt

 

I am honored to be nominated to serve as CAST Coordinator for a second term, as CAST has always been near and dear to my heart. I’ve been an active member since I was hired full-time, and I have served as co-coordinator for 2014. In that role, I performed duties including planning and organizing meetings, coordinating with presenters, organizing the Make It Stick book club, maintaining the calendar for room 1046, and planning and organizing HW Faculty Development Week and TiE Day.

 

The best part of it all for me has been getting to know more of my colleagues in different departments while hearing about their own areas of expertise. I’ve also enjoyed the chance to introduce new programming ideas, like the bake-off and the many tours we were able to offer at FDW. Outside of CAST, I am a faculty member in the English Department, a member of the Developmental Education Committee and the Student Success Council, and co-chair of the Developmental English Committee. I also take part in mentoring new full-time faculty and reading student placement exams, and have participated in my department’s DEC and Rank & Promotion Committees.

 

If I am chosen to continue as co-coordinator in 2015, my goals for the committee are to increase the number of hands-on workshops offered and to offer more sessions that appeal to STEM faculty and adjunct faculty. Thank you for your consideration.

 

 

 

Kamran Swanson

 

I believe that the best way to facilitate professional development for faculty is to stimulate curiosity and the joy of learning by providing opportunities for stimulating and educational inter-disciplinary discussions on learning, teaching, and thinking. I plan to bring this to CAST by instituting a series of discussions, once every two weeks at a convenient time, centered on quality short essays in a seminar format, which discuss learning, teaching, and thinking in and from the humanities, sciences, math, and arts.  I am very much in support of Megan Ritt’s Spring 2015 Make it Stick book club, and I would like to see more of this in CAST’s future. My concern for a long time is that too much of our faculties’ non-teaching time is devoted to administrative-centered committees and task forces, and that there is insufficient support for bringing together faculty from across the disciplines to talk about the essence and highest goal of our occupation: education. I wish to place less focus on the various tools we use to accomplish that and more focus on the ideas and modes of thought themselves. There is great potential for us to learn about teaching from one another, and I do not think we have tapped it as substantially as we could. With this position and the dedicated release time, I would like to facilitate this. ​

Faculty Council Candidates: Personal Statements

Per request from Michal Eskayo, here are the candidates for HW Faculty Council. Voting is open all week–watch your mailbox for your ballot.

Hello faculty,

We are excited to present the three candidates who have been nominated for the Harold Washington College Faculty Council. Check out their bios, and be sure to vote next week. The polls will be open from Monday through Friday.

 

Luke Belz

I am writing to seek your support for my nomination as a Faculty Council member at Harold Washington College. Since the Fall semester of 2011, I have been a full time faculty member of the Mathematics and CIS Department and, as of Spring 2014, I was awarded tenure. I have taught a variety of classes ranging from Beginning Algebra up to and including Calculus. Also, I have participated on college wide committees such as the CAST and Curriculum Committees along with departmental committees such as the Developmental Education Math Committee and the Calculus Committee. Currently, I am on the District Wide Faculty Council. Each day I look forward to and enjoy working with my students and all my colleagues throughout the college. If given the opportunity to be a Faculty Council member, I would do my best to be the voice of all faculty members and address their concerns so that we can continue to maintain the high standard of education for our students.

 

Stephanie Burke

I am a photography instructor in the Department of Art and Architecture here at Harold Washington College. As a newly tenured faculty member at HWC, I am very interested in being an active member of our school community. I am the co-founder of the Fine Arts Integration Committee, the faculty advisor for the Council Of The Arts, HWC’s art club, and co-organize student programming on an ongoing basis, including the annual off campus student exhibition and the Arts Transfer Fair. I am looking forward to contributing to and learning from Faculty Council.

 

Phillip Vargas

My name is Phillip Vargas, and I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Sciences. I teach both general education courses and program level physics courses. I have been teaching at HWC since Fall 2010, and believe I have worked on many projects that have positively contributed to the college. What I have enjoyed most in working on these projects has been meeting and collaborating with other dedicated faculty members. I believe Faculty Council will offer additional opportunities to work with a committed group of faculty members toward improving the college and I would be honored if elected.