Convener Job Duties-

Mary Starke on Convener Job Duties Posted 12/10/03

Henry, I have compiled this list on a rolling basis over the past few weeks in odd moments. Due to the pile of term papers I still have to grade, I have not had time to edit it. You will, therefore, find

would be better to get our ideas in ASAP in whatever form our limited time resources allowed, rather than take the time over intersession to edit and polish the list.

I'm also sending a copy of this list to Sandy because I want the extent of the dangers inherent in the idea of eliminating the convener position to be clear. That move would decimate the psych program.

I also believe that if the program is allowed to continue its growth, we are eventually going to be looking at something, in the case of the psych program at least, that requires close to a fulltime administrative position (aka "chair").

1. The constant hiring (usually two to three new FT Temp Faculty per year + 4 new tenure-track positions in 3 years, and between 10 - 15 adjunct-taught courses per semester) are perhaps the most time-consuming duties. The retirements, medical leaves, illnesses, deaths and requests for leave of absence/ sabbatical have been speeding up in recent years, and will increase even more in the coming years with the aging of the faculty, at the same time the program has been growing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, many of these hires involve finding someone in mid-December to teach four fully enrolled courses (@30-35 students) for the following January. For the past three Decembers, I have had to find one to two temp. faculty to step in at such short notice. Doing a good job at hiring, even for a faculty member who may be here for anywhere from one semester to three years is a time-consuming process: find someone who can honestly take the position (i.e., someone who is not already committed to another fulltime job they intend to keep while teaching at Ramapo fulltime, interview him/her over the phone, bring him/her in to teach a sample class, follow up on references, get the person oriented to Ramapo so s/he is up and running by the end of Jauary.

I'll outline the process involved when it is not an emergency hire: get three faculty to agree on which five of 30-85 applicants look most promising, make up one set of questions to be used for all the

interviews, schedule conference call interviews with these individuals for a one-hour interview (we have done 8 one-hour phone interviews for the Developmental Psych this semester because two of the people we interviewed subsequently dropped out and we wanted to bring at least three people to campus whom we felt were qualified. This is followed by bringing 3 candidates onto campus (and arranging for and sitting in on a sample class each one teaches and a research presentation each one gives, scheduling each one to meet with the dean, hiring committee, and other psych faculty, making arrangements for hotels, transportation, meals, and so on). The hiring committee must then reach consensus, make an offer, juggle timing for a response with other offers the candidate may have, go to the second-choice candidate if necessary.

Get applications (again 30-85) downloaded and copied for committee members, file incoming letters of recommendation, publications, and other material applicants choose to send through the mail. Answer questions and assist with problems caused by the on-line application system.

Inform unsuccessful candidates 5-11 of them by phone, the others by mail, that the position has been filled includes drafting ads, seeing that they don't get too many errors when they are "edited" by our out-sourcing design consultants before being placed, making sure they get placed in a timely manner in publications where they will do some good (APA Monitor, NOT NJ Star Ledger or Chronicle) and trying to encourage applications from minority applicants, chairing search committees (twice within the past two years and going for a third) which includes coordination of review of approx 100 applications by 3 committee members, cajoling committee members (and oneself) to get through the processes outlined in the paragraph above during the busiest times of the semester for faculty who teach three to four courses (that includes the convener and chair) , arrange meetings w/ VPAA/Provost, Dean, Human Resources, make job offer, sidestep questions about salary and benefits, reassure the successful applicant multiple times over the next month and a half that the contract will be sent out, get the new hire a mentor, make sure they get training in advisement from Academic Services so they can be assign up to 40 advisees and figure out what the requirements for graduation are vis-avis Gen Ed, school core, and the far-from simple requirements of the psych major and answer hundreds of e-mails that a new faculty member rightfully initiates (exam copies, requirements for syllabi, e-mail addresses, ID cards, parking stickers, choice of textbooks )

changing release time assignments and preferences for teaching non-psych courses in some cases), three to five FT Temporary faculty, and 10- 15 adjunct courses, especially when the system involves asking faculty what (and when) they

3. choosing which of the 135 graduating seniors will receive the awards we offer (usu the 3 Carol Schaeffers, the Lee Sennish, and the outstanding psych students in SSHS and TAS), choosing the student for the Carole Campana award

4. responding to requests for info or review regarding the library collection, admissions numbers, institutional advancement ("illustrious alumni")

5. putting together and updating copy for the college catalog-psych program description, psych major changes requirements w/ a fair amount of frequency e.g., adding or dropping courses from one of the 6 categories, changing prerequisites, changing faculty, and so on)

6. ditto for the Website (I wrote a 20-page document called "Frequently Asked Questions About the Psych Major" for example and must update the "List of Courses That Satisfy the Fieldwork Requirement"

8. dealing w/ Academic Affairs (on new software for inputting courses and faculty teaching schedules, instituting enrollment management tools to make sure students have prerequisites for the courses in which they register)

9. making up agendas for monthly (and sometimes twice monthly and for one semester, weekly) psych meetings (and everyone wants to get on those agendas from Office of Specialized Services to Director of the Education Program to the Dean of Enrollment Management to VPAAs and Provosts, and so on)

10. Making sure we have minutes for each psych meeting and they are kept on file

11. forwarding psych gp resolutions to various committees (e.g., SBR, ARC, new courses, changes in program e.g., we dropped the BS in Psych that TAS used to give, release time requests for Faculty Development and Career Development, votes on new courses, new programs-Neuroscience, and so on)

13. Writing letters to advocate hiring for each (temp & tenure track) faculty member we hire

14. Writing letters of recommendation for temp faculty when they leave us (for their next permanent job after three years )

15. Insuring (i.e., making assignments) that faculty teaching is observed and write-ups submitted for untenured faculty, adjuncts, temporary faculty, reappointments, faculty up for tenure, promotion, and career development (we don't have enough tenure-track faculty to do this unless each of us begins doing several each semester. In the past few years, I have had to use Temp faculty as observers, and even then, it is quite a job to keep nagging overworked faculty (4 courses @ 30-35 students) to complete the observations, much less the write-ups. The list has been running to about 11-15 observations that must be completed each semester and now we have the new requirement for an observation every semester for temp faculty! (We tend to have 3 to 5 temp faculty each semester, a dozen or so adjuncts., and an increasing number of untenured faculty who are up for reappointment each year, plus the observations needed for promotions, career development, student complaints, and so on.

16. Responding to requests for info about the psych program and its requirements from prospective applicants to the college (i.e., high school, transfer, and returning for a second BA or additional major or courses for certification e.g., Substance Abuse, Teacher Education), prospective psych majors who are Ramapo students, high school teachers, and so on

17. Signing Major Declaration cards for new majors and making sure they are assigned to psych advisors

18. Supervising high school psych courses (e.g., Suffern High & recent inquiry from Teaneck High & other inquiries) w/ whom we have liaisons or contracts: reviewing syllabi and textbooks, assigning a faculty member to visit & give lecture once per year, coordinating the campus visit of the instructor and her students (assign faculty member to give lecture, coordinate with library tour, lunch, Admissions Off ice Director & campus tour guide), assigning faculty member to read final exams on an irregular basis

19. Make decisions about transfer courses, summer courses (Off-campus Study Permission forms), Study Abroad program courses, and (lots of !) students who need special waivers or other arrangements for partial coursework (usually fieldwork) they have completed at another institution

29. Investigate student complaints about individual faculty-adjunct, temps, and tenured faculty (often involves sitting in on classes as well as going back and forth between student(s) and the faculty member and going over student evaluations, syllabi, papers, exams

30. Deal with irate students (and increasingly, parents of students) who realize that they will not be able to graduate "on time"

31. extramural requests from psych programs at other institutions of higher ed to fill out questionnaires on Intro course (content?, one semester or two?), Statistics (two different institutions recently), Research Methods (multiple requests), lab facilities, evaluating a psych chair who was up for promotion (they wanted an unbiased opinion from someone with expertise in this person's research area: read his journal articles)

32. requests from graduate students at other institutions-usually they need subjects for their research/ dissertation (review their research project and find support )

33. requests from parents for psych majors to work with their developmentally delayed children/offspring (a dozen or so per semester)

34. request for general or specific info about the psych program from high school students wondering about whether to apply to Ramapo, college students wondering about transferring, transfer students in the process of transferring (course equivalencies), transfer students who are trying to enroll in psych courses (during the summer, during the intersession break)

35. requests like the recent one from Sam Rosenburg regarding Democracy Projects: list of agencies in the community for which psych students do volunteer work-the 8 field placement courses we have each use different agencies (one of mine lists over a dozen agencies); VPAA/ Cahill Ctr have made similar requests in trying to come up with comprehensive lists of experiential learning opportunities

36. requests from VPAA regarding dissemination of multicultural/ global info in psych courses (i.e., how doe the psyc curriculum address the college mission statement

37. continuous new duties (like last night's addition of phone tree allocation for college closings

39. filling out forms for fellowship/grant programs for which faculty have to document their duties and hours

40. disseminating info (regarding scholarships, research programs, post doc opportunities, calls for papers, conferences, grants-fr government agencies, Amer Psychol Assn, other institutions of higher ed, other scholarship agencies e.g., Social Workers of Bergen County, to name only one

41. dealing with Academic Services screw-ups e.g., an extra 15 students in Substance Abuse for spring 2004: hire a new adjunct (they made an error in cross listing TAS and SSHS courses, and then tell the new adjunct that he has 30 students, not 15 as they opened up the new course, e.g., 30 students enrolled in Fieldwk w/ Adults instead of 15 (they rolled over caps from a document more than 5 yrs old), ask psych faculty to accept extra students in Adv Topics courses because there are half as many senior seminars as are needed ( and assure each anxious-about-graduating senior who walks in, e-mails, phones, puts notes under my door, that they don't have to take a senior seminar next semester, and then explain to students who took Adv Topics last semester why they do have to take a senior seminar-Academic Advisement's decision-and no, it's not unfair get psych gp discussion and vote (two years ago) that Adv Topics will not be used to satisfy requirement for Senior Seminar in the future when the college does not have enough SS sections

42. rule on course equivalencies for Study Abroad programs (including answering to students who stopped by my office twice-once when I was in class and once on one of my off campus days-and explain why unlike the conveners of their friends' majors, they cannot make this request on a Wed. and expect their answer on Fri. despite the fact they have not given me the course description, course number, discipline etc. of the courses they want to take

43. deal with individual student problems regarding substitution for requirements or getting into closed classes; the same student often makes the same request to me by e-mail, phone, snail mail, and then I also have to respond to the other people to whom this student has made the same request: the dean, the secretary, the parent, their psych advisor, and Academic Advisement Office.

44. deal with irate parents whose offspring cannot graduate "on time" because they are closed out of classes, they have not passed required courses, the courses they wish substituted for a requirement are not adequate: this week I had a father who was probably on his college football team in my office who kept looming over me as he twice refused to sit down, another time I told a father that if he continued yelling at me, I would have to hang up the phone on him-he continued yelling, I hung up on him; he called back and apologized. Another mother wanted her daughter to pass a course she had failed because the daughter had a(n undocumented) learning disability. Or just deal with parents (or spouses) who contact me on behalf of their offspring (spouses) for no particular reason-the offspring are too busy?

45. Keep a list of and forward recommendations to Alumni Office for "illustrious alumni" they can showcase in various college documents or ceremonies. This means compiling reports from faculty who write the letters of recommendation for graduate school, positions, and so on. (Five-year reviews always want to know what our graduates are doing, and getting/ maintaining this info is a time-consuming job. Ideally, there should be phone follow-ups to find out where students were accepted into grad school and which programs they are attending.

46. discuss the "ideal" size of the major with one VPAA and two provosts one-to-one, at meetings with psych faculty, with other deans and faculty over and over and over

47. redo psych course enrollment figures by hand for the past five years because Institutional Research cannot deal with cross-listed courses so that a course is listed as having only 15 students (in SSHS) when it actually has 30 students (15 more enrolled in TAS). Soothe the ruffled feathers of the (very competent) person in Inst Resch who does not want to retract her figures and complains that the software is not capable of handling the problem

48 deal with insurance for fieldwork students at community agencies (no, it's not just my course; other psych faculty have contacted me with similar requests for their agencies); get copies of insurance policy, answer questions regarding insurance

49. assign faculty mentors to a constant stream of new faculty members 3 tenure-track and 4 FT temps in the last 2 years

50. answer questions for those new faculty from how to get desk copies to parking stickers to policies and procedures on Independent Study courses and for which committees they should volunteer

51. make decisions about recipients of (new) scholarships e.g., the Carole Campana Scholarship in concert with Institutional Advancement (and representatives from other disciplines such as Social Work)

52. answer inquiries from additional high school that would like to offer a psych course that will be accepted for college credit at Ramapo, ditto Advanced Placement standards (what is the lowest grade that is acceptable)

53. Supervise and deal with information gathered from survey of psych majors regarding concurrent enrollment in minors, satisfaction, etc

54. discuss, and deal with all-college inquiries (deans, committees, faculty assembly) about neuroscience major

55. liaison with the TAS "psych convener" and things that go on at TAS unit Council meetings that affect the psych major or faculty

57. learn how to access and work with (upgrade password each year) the People Administration on-line application program, help applicants who cannot get it to work, get faculty who have been hired (new adjunct, 2 temps) to fill out on-line applications, deal with Affirmative Action regulations regarding search processes and fill out their paperwork (how many Hispanic women applied, were interviewed by phone, in person?)

58. return calls and e-mails of applicants who want to tell me why they are supremely well-qualified for positions we are advertising or have questions about the positions confirm that I have received their applications, letters of reference, letter from their senator. A competent secretary or assistant would be supremely helpful here. I can't ask the unit secretary to do this as she is so overworked as is.

59. draft and get into the APA Monitor ads (this is the fourth one in three years) for psych lines. The process needs 13 signatures, some of which are impossible to get in a timely manner as the administrators involved are not very sympathetic to the difficulties of finding competent faculty. This involves getting that ad into the APA Monitor by August 9th or Sept 9th at the latest. With a great deal of hard work and constant pestering, I finally managed to get that ad in by Oct. 9th this year. (In the past it has gone in Nov. 9th which means we cannot complete the winnowing down of (30-86 applications) to the five applicants who will be interviewed (for one hour) by phone until Dec., the worst month for faculty on the hiring committee who also teach 4 courses with 30-35 students. We cannot then bring the three finalists to campus for day-long interviews (give sample class, give research presentation to psych faculty, meet with hiring committee and other psych faculty, meet with dean-and formerly, VPAA) until March (or even April) so that by the time we make offers to our first-choice candidate,

s/he has already had to decide on offers from other institutions. This is a problem guaranteed to result in our inability to be competitive in attracting for high-quality minority (or any other kind of) faculty.

60. get info from AA and others on best ways to attract minority applicants for faculty lines

61. figure out how to replace faculty who are awarded outside (or internal) grants for release time, fulltime, parttime, immediately, retrospectively -find adjuncts, request replacements from dean/Provost, and so on

62. figure out how to replace faculty that are drafted to be VPAA, College Seminar Convener, dean, ass't VPAA, Middle States Report Coordinator, and so on

63. fight about and figure out how to replace faculty who teach an unholy number of credits for graduate programs (there's more than one faculty member), the Education Program, the SSHS Core, the Gen Ed program (including senior seminars and College Seminar), and so on

64. figure out how to accommodate the demand for psych courses from non-psych majors (Gen Ed courses that triple count, Intro)

65. meet with students who work fulltime and can only meet in the evenings and address their complaints about "inadequate' course offerings in the evening program (and rule on their requests for exemptions from required courses because they work fulltime or cannot afford child care)

66. deal with OSS regarding their students and problems in finding fieldwork placements for them (read that as "find fieldwork placements" for them)

67. meet with (and correspond a whole lot first)OSS director and staff reading discriminatory attitudes of psychologists towards students affiliated with OSS

68. get subjects (or supervise a web pool) for psych faculty who need them for their research

69. sit on and conven IRB for research proposals by faculty, students, outside graduate student

70. review courses, course descriptions, prerequisites for each new catalog review copy for new psych brochures

73. meet with new presidents, new Provosts, to discuss the program's problems constantly draw up new figures and draft requests for more psych lines, argue for FT replacements rather than adjuncts

75. ditto for library collection and encourage psych faculty to submit purchase requests

78. review (syllabi) and articulation agreements with other institutions; request changes to syllabi when appropriate, continue to review syllabi as students ask for transfer credit, keep Admissions Office files up to date on course equivalencies

79. meet with Task Force on Grading when they have questions regarding "grade inflation" (which does not eixist0 in fieldwork courses. Prepare materials for them: revise their figures, syllabi, requirements, term paper handouts, supervisor evaluation forms

80. share my fieldwork materials (contract letters, time sheets, syllabi, term paper handouts, oral presentation handouts, evaluation forms, end-of-semester letter, student inventory, and so on) with newfaculty hired to teach these courses (3 new faculty in the last year or so)-keep in touch to assure quality control

81. deal with students who repeat their requests for the (same) off-campus study courses-these usually have to do with taking on-line courses where the host institution does not proctor exams on campus: find or agree to Ramapo proctors and conditions for the courses. (When the student fails to complete or follow through on the course, a new proctor must be found for the following semester.)

82. getting funding for, finding speakers for, giving transportation & honararia to speakers for colloquium series (we had about 6 during one semester

dean; join in getting "old" secretary moved to another unit as she was useless for getting any of the necessary work done for SSHS faculty and programs. Make case for, find, and supervise a competent student aide to do psych program work in place of incompetent "old" secretary-all faculty had problems with her, but psych program, as usual, really needed a competent secretary more than other programs due to its size

84. advise junior faculty on which committees they should serve, whether they need to get more research/publications done in preparation for promotion or tenure applications, review those applications and make suggestions, give advise on whether they should teach courses like senior seminar, get involved in study abroad programs, and so on

85. initiating and leading discussions at psych meetings on pedagogy and curricular review: We have had all the faculty who teach required courses in the program share their syllabi, assignments, exams, handouts, textbooks, and so on. We began with everyone who teaches Intro, then the faculty that teach Research Methods, then Advanced Topics, and fieldwork courses. (We have not finished with the fieldwork presentations). This way we know what our colleagues are doing, can get some standardization of requirements and content across sections of the same course, and use peer pressure to make changes, and share pedagogical techniques and philosophy. I would like to finish the fieldwork presentations, continue with the faculty who teach other courses where multiple sections are given-involving the adjuncts who

Multicultural and Cross Cultural, Child Psych, Developmental Psych, and so on. The problem is that administrative "stuff" always has deadlines, and therefore it is almost impossible to continue with this curricular and pedagogical review. One one-hour meeting (or even 1 1Ž2 hour or 2-hour meeting) per month is not enough meeting time.

87. I am hoping to review the levels of courses (100-, 200-, 300-level and so on) with a view towards better vertical integration in the curriculum (e.g., prerequisites, content learned) and prerequisites

88. I already did get faculty to agree to prerequisites for all 300-level courses, but these should be fine-tuned

89. find a way to get students to complete Research Methods in their sophomore year, so that upper-level courses can truly be upper-level.

90. go to bat (i.e., poll faculty on their use-type and amount-- of the assistant, summarize the results of that poll and present them to Eric) for faculty who use the paid lab assistant (TAS wanted to take him away from psych faculty to service other programs); we ended up keeping him for psych on a halftime basis to service the labs for those faculty who use him.

91. articulation agreements with other programs-Eric has recently inquired about a cooperative agreement with Physical Therapy-which would use many psych courses for their students and give our students the opportunity to streamline their course of study

graduate program in psych (get psych faculty feedback first, of course), but administration is unwillingness to grant the (faculty and administrative) resources for it. (They expect it to be a money maker, but don't want to hire faculty until they are sure it will be a money maker.)

92. There needs to be some way to force psych students to come in for advisement so that they understand they cannot just sign up for whatever psych course they can get into. They need to plan ahead so that they are not in the convener's office during their "last" semester complaining that they can't graduate because they didn't know Research Methods, Advanced Topics, and fieldwork courses are never offered during the summer or intersession semesters and we can't guarantee to give a section of Research Methods, fieldwork, Advanced Topics during the evening every semester. They can't expect to take these course during their last semester (as almost all of the fieldwork courses have prerequisites, and when sections of various courses are closed e.g., Fieldwork with Children, they will be expected to take another one of these courses for which they may not have the prerequisites). There are some dishonest ways students deal with getting into the psych

example, I have found that students with higher priority registration times sign up for courses they have no intention of taking so that they can later drop the course at the same instant their friend (a junior or a senior with less seniority) adds the course. This means a student who has been trying to get into this course for many semesters cannot get into it even during their last semester at the college (i.e., there are juniors who are in these hard-to-get-into fieldwork courses because their friends held the place for them or because they are registered with OSS, while graduating seniors cannot get into the course. One example is Fieldwork with Children; even when we offer two sections of that particular fieldwork course, (i.e., there are 30 seats available, many graduating seniors are closed out because juniors get in there

first.) Understandably, there is great demand for this course because of the Elemntary Ed students who can use their teaching practicum hours to double count for the 60 fieldwork hours they must work. Perhaps we should eliminate that double-counting

or find some other way to insure that only graduating seniors get into the course or explain to students that other fieldwork courses are just as relevant to their future teaching career? (We offer 6 sections of fieldwork each semester, Next semester we'll offer 7 due to an error in class caps promulgated by Academic Affairs. We cannot have only clinical psychologists with a specialty in children or developmental faculty on the psych faculty, and this is not a course we can "adjunct" out or even give to a temp faculty member easily.

or VPAA offices. That means begging the deans of SSHS, TAS, and AB for it. (They have been forthcoming, but their funds are limited.) Asking Student Services for it. Again, how many times can one go back to them?

2. the daily handling of student, parent, and faculty problems 3. the liaisons with Linda Padley's office regarding catalogs, course descriptions, and prerequisites

4. the liaisons with Academic Advising regarding individual student problems, changes in the curriculum, etc.

5. liaisons with the All College committees regarding curriculum, grading distributions

6. contacts and replies to the President, Provost and/or VPAA, and their assistants

7. the personnel issues (release time, sabbaticals, reappointments letters, hiring, etc.)

8. adjunct evaluations and hires (annual class observations and mentoring)-with Diana's invaluable assistance

12. dealing with "assessment outcomes" issues and all the people all who need answers on those issues

13. contacts with Carol Schaefer regarding the annual Schaefer scholarships (number, amount of money, negotiating about which students receive them, sending out the paperwork on the students

14. the liaisons with Mitch Kahn and the College Foundation regarding amounts, recipients, numbers of students, etc.

17. replies to prospective and incoming students regarding the psych program at Ramapo

18. advisement issues, follow-up on advisement duties, handling errors in the SIS and college software on advisors--Diana will hopefully continue with assigning students to advisors, posting those records, and forwarding major/minor declaration cards to the Registrar's

20. liaisons w/ Robbie Saif concerning graduation problems for psych majors or minors

Group of 15 fulltime faculty and 10-15 adjunct faculty per semester-constantly changing group as result of release time for sabbatical, , resignations, retirements., temp. leaves (e.g., for dean, VPAA, ass't VPAA, Mid States accreditn, etc.) -distrib over 3 schools-approx 500 students

1. Meet with individual students and assess completion of their psych major reqs.: at least 3 students per wk-notify Advsmet Ctr of these rulings & keep student files updated e.g., whether indep studies/co-op ed courses fulfill fieldwork and/or cat 6 req. e.g., whether transfer courses fulfill var. psych cat. reqs. and/or whether they count towards the 39 cr of psych req.

Follow thr on policy changes/votes/decisions made dur these mtgs. W/ dean, VPAA, all-college committees; maintain pertinent files and records

3. Shepherd annual process of choosing students for awards in psych e.g., Outst Stud in SSHS/TAS-2/yr., Carol Schaeffer awrd -e.g., 3 @$4000, Lee Sennish award. Follow up on paperwork and recommendations for students: get list of graduating seniors , make up and distribute application forms, devise voting scheme, notify students, get them to write thank you notes to Carol Schaefer, get them to show up at Honors Convocation, write short bio for dean to introduce them at Convocation, find out if they have applied for national honors society

5. Negotiate teaching schedules every semester so that all 6 categs. are covered, also Intro, Resch Methds, fieldwk courses, Adv Topics courses, Lrng, Cognit & Teachg courses for educ certific.-for day and evening programs-changes due to teachg in other discips/grad crses (e.g., Soc Is, Col Sem, Sr. Sem, teacher educ certific), release time due to SBR, Career Development release time, sabbatic, temp duties e.g., VPAA, dean, ass't VPAA, check sched for accuracy thr all the revisns-in hard copy & on web; mk corrects. As necess esp for categ designats.

6. Supervise/chair hiring committees-approx 1 fulltime per year (Hyman, Sisco, Paley, Catalio