English Division Meeting
Thursday, April 9, 2015
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
7-130
Attended: Randy Gordon, Susan Anderson, Holly Elliott, Nicole Valentino, Robert Schachel,
Chiara Ojeda, Crystal Smith, Dorothy Charron, Randy Blankenship, Aby Boumarate, Ashley
Miller, John Hughes, Susan Dauer, Mandy Mahaffey, James Thomas, Zach Hyde, Colleen
Dieckmann, Andi Michaels, Kevin Giordano,
I.
Announcements
 Visiting Author Reading Series
-Thursday, April 16 (7:00 PM - 8:30 PM): Cate McGowan (Bld. 3 Atrium)
 Novels from our colleagues are available in the bookstore:
-James Thomas: Ardor
-John Hughes: Twilight of the Lesser Gods
Killing Rush

Encourage students to complete the Student Feedback of Instruction on all fullterm, TWK and H2 courses before April 26th.

Valencia’s 46th Annual Commencement Ceremony will take place on
Saturday, May 9, 2015, at the CFE Arena at the University of Central Florida;
the processional will begin at 6:40 p.m., and the ceremony will start at 7 p.m. All
fulltime faculty scheduled to teach during the summer full-term or H1 term are
required to attend.
II. Updates
Library: Erich Heintzelman:

Randy Gordon announced that 156,000 books are currently available in
Valencia’s E-brary. These selections are more current than those in the Lib
guides, and are more secure. Books can be accessed through the Valencia
Reader link.
Textbooks: Susan Dauer

Susan Dauer reported that the Norton World Reader has been eliminated, as it
no longer matches outcomes of the current course. She also discussed the joint
committee meetings with Humanities and their department’s concerns that
students are not prepared (according to comments) for college level
reading/writing. Susan pointed out that the larger question of what constitutes
college-level writing is vague due to the lack of agreement as to what collegelevel writing means. She discussed the possible need for re-establishing what
we currently consider college-level in terms of writing and information
literacy. We also discussed the potential possibility of having a Comp II
prerequisite for Introduction to Humanities.
Writing Center: James Thomas/Jodi Brock

James Thomas announced that the Writing Center has recently hired two
consultants to implement the new training sessions. In addition, it is looking to
hire a third consultant.
Faculty Senate: Clay Holliday

Clay Holliday was attending a Senate meeting at the time of our division
meeting.
III.
CCCC Conference: Chiara Ojeda, Ashley Miller, and Randy Gordon:
 Chiara, Ashley, and Randy gave brief highlights of breakout sessions each
attended at the April CCCC Conference in Tampa, FL.
IV.
Teaching Innovation: The “Flipped Classroom”: Zach Hyde

V.
Zach Hyde presented an overview of the goals and challenges of a “flipped
classroom”. Zach reported that since employing this approach in his Comp I
course, his class lecture time has been reduced by 90%. He discussed some of
the current challenges as well as strategies he has used in the course this
semester.
Global Distinction: Aby Boumarate:

Aby provided an overview of Valencia’s new student program (INZ). He
reported that Valencia is the first to implements this program. In addition, the
program recently received $180,000 in funding from the state. He presented
the Global Distinction Orientation, which Aby created for the program.
*Today’s meeting will be the final meeting of the spring semester.