Annual Report 2022-2023

Publications Committee

Annual Report for 2022-2023

Membership/officers

• Patrick Byers (Social Sciences), Chair
• Geasor, James (Marketing)
• Sushma Teegala (Biology), Secretary
• Roumen Vragov (Business)

Liaisons

• Stephen Di Dio (Marketing & Communications), President's Liaison
• Emily Diana, Student Representative
• Philip Pecorino (Social Sciences), Steering Committee Designee
• Julia Rothenberg (Social Sciences) CoC Designee

• Patrick Byers (re-elected as chair for 2023-2024, reappointed by the senate to serve on the committee for another 3-year term starting Fall 2023)
• James Geasor (reappointed by the senate to serve on the committee for another term, up to three years pending retirement plans)
• Melida Sanchez (Foreign Languages & Literatures): New member as of Fall 2024
• Sushma Teegala (re-elected as co-secretary for 2023-2024)
• Roumen Vragov (elected as co-secretary)

Membership Composition Changes

• Mathieu Sassolas: Served on the committee during Fall 2022, but left Queensborough thereafter.
• Wenli Guo: Currently on leave of absence, but will return and continue serving on the committee for the 2023-24 year.

• Patrick Byers (re-elected as chair for 2023-2024, reappointed by the senate to serve on the committee for another 3-year term starting Fall 2023)
• Sushma Teegala (re-elected as co-secretary for 2023-2024)
• Roumen Vragov (elected as co-secretary)

Committee Meeting Dates

• The committee met on 2/17, 3/16, 4/21, and 5/19

• During the 2022-23 academic year, the committee completed two major projects and is continuing ongoing work on a third. These are as follows:
  • The committee has published a report that provides editorial suggestions for the newly revised departmental tenure and promotion guidelines. The recommendations encourage departments to provide clearer and more standardized guidelines, both in terms of content and formatting. This report is available on the publications committee website.
  • The committee published a report providing editorial suggestions on the faculty handbook. The recommendations involve issues of clarity/ambiguity, inconsistency, and broken links. The report provides a comprehensive set of such recommendations for each section of the faculty handbook. The report is published on the Publications committee website.
  • Committee members identified the need to make a large number of small edits to the college website to correct broken/dead/incorrect links, mislabeled pages, etc. Such issues with the website persist because they are of a “one-off” nature and because it is not entirely clear who has the responsibility for addressing them. The committee met first with Adam Volin, discussing these issues and planning ongoing collaboration with the Department of Web Services as they begin their own project of overhauling the website. In May, Patrick Byers met with Dean Arthur Corradetti to begin planning the development of a more streamlined protocol for making changes to the website.
• In addition to these major projects, the committee’s work also included the following:
  • For several years, the committee has been considering a draft faculty handbook compiled by Philip Pecorino. The draft augments the existing handbook with additional information written by Philip along with notes drafted from a faculty development workshop on reappointment, tenure and promotion for pre-tenured faculty (Spring 2016). The committee has assessed this draft handbook for several years, considering whether to recommend its publication to the senate. In lieu of making such a recommendation, the committee decided in the Spring of 2023 to incorporate any relevant sections of the draft handbook into our set of editorial recommendations for the current faculty handbook.
  • Student representative Emily Diana raised a concern over insufficient promotion of student events on campus. James Geasor subsequently attended a student government meeting to advise members on how to more effectively publicize events in ways that are consistent with college policies.

• Recommend to the Academic Senate policies and procedures pertaining to College publications including the college website: Partially completed--With collaboration from Arthur Corradetti and Adam Volin, the committee is in the process of developing a more effective (streamlined/standardized) protocol for making minor updates to the website. Recommendations will be made to the senate once this has been completed.
• Receive information on the college website and all publications associated with the College or bearing the College name, and report this information to the Academic Senate: Partially completed--at the end of the Spring 2023 academic year, the committee completed a set of editorial recommendations for the recently-published departmental tenure and promotion guidelines. This document, which has been posted on the Publications Committee website, will be announced to the senate in the Fall 2023 semester.
• Serve as an advisory group for the college website and publications associated with the College: Completed
• Serve as an editorial board for the Queensborough Community College Newsletter, Community Calendar, the Faculty Handbook and other handbooks, and other publications of this nature: Completed

Recommendations for Next Academic Year

• The committee will continue to meet with Arthur Corradetti, Adam Volin to develop a system for making minor one-off changes to the website. We will meet with Stephen Dahlke to discuss the possibility that the committee might itself make these editorial changes, which would require changes to the committee charges/bylaws which currently limit the committee to making suggestions.
• The committee will report its editorial recommendations on the departmental tenure and promotion guidelines and the faculty handbook (currently published on the committee website) to the senate.

Acknowledgments

Respectfully Submitted,

Patrick Byers

Committee on Publications, Chair