[CW-Grad] MFA Procedural Information

[Adrienne Thomas]

Good Morning,

 

The following message has been sent on behalf of Professor Lutz.

 

Thank you.

 

Hello, all,

There seems to be some confusion about funding issues, and so I'm sending
this interim note.

We are holding a series of faculty meetings about the MFA program, in part
to respond to the Graduate Council's recommendations and the external review
report, and in part to make some more wide-ranging decisions about our
future as a program.  We will be holding a meeting with graduate students
soon as well.

In the meantime, we feel we should clarify a couple of procedural issues.

First, the hierarchy is as follows, from the Dean of CHASS down:

Dean Stephen Cullenberg
Assoc. Dean Georgia Warnke
Chair:  Creative Writing, Tom Lutz;Theatre, Eric Barr
Director, MFA Chris Abani
Grad Advisor: Creative Writing, Laila Lalami; Theatre, Robin Russin

Questions of procedure should begin with the Grad Advisors.

Questions involving funding should begin with the MFA Director.

The staff are charged with implementing decisions that are made by the
faculty, but they cannot make decisions about funding or the allocation of
other resources.  The staff implements decisions made by the faculty--thus
if you have a request involving an appointment or anything of an academic
nature, begin with Professors Lalami and Russin, and if you have a direct
funding request begin with Professor Abani.  If the faculty has already made
decisions about appointments or other resources, the staff can give you the
appropriate details; if you have a new request you can ask for a decision by
the director, who will either act on his own authority or take it through
channels to the chair, the faculty as a whole, or the Dean.  

We are in the process of rewriting the MFA handbook and other documents to
help make everything as clear and as aboveboard as possible; please bear
with us as we go through these growing pains.

One thing that everyone should know is that we all work under at least two
different schedules--one in which we do what we should be doing when we
should be doing it (making decisions about TAships, for instance), and one
in which we wait for the Governor, the legislature, the Chancellor, the EVC,
and the Dean to make their decisions in turn and let us know if we can, in
fact, do what we have decided we should do (and this usually happens well
past our original decision, often requiring a revision of those decisions,
based on, for instance, how many TAships we can actually award.)

As in any case in our communal life, if a student or faculty member feels
that their questions are not being adequately answered, or their complaint
or issue inadequately addressed, they should get in touch with the next
person up the hierarchy.  Thus if Prof. Lalami or Prof. Russin can't help
you, ask Prof. Abani; if he can't help, ask me or Prof. Barr; if we can't,
ask Dean Warnke; if she can't, ask Dean Cullenberg.  If he can't help,
you're probably out of luck, but you can still take your issue to the EVC
and Provost's office.

That said, we are here to help.

Tom Lutz for Tom Lutz, Eric Barr, Chris Abani, Laila Lalami, and Robin
Russin

 

Adrienne

 

Adrienne L. Thomas

MFA Coordinator

Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts

University of California, Riverside

900 University Ave

4145 INTS Building

Riverside, CA 92521

Voice: (951) 827-5568 

Fax: (951) 827-3619 

 

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