[Sfts-faculty] internal review of Minor

[Weihsin Gui]

Thanks for sending us this report, Sherryl.

I'm new to SFCS, but I'm willing to share that Southeast Asian Studies
recently decided to discontinue our undergrad minor for reasons very
similar to the challenges listed in the SFCS report.

One other point to note that wasn't highlighted in the report is that -- if
I remember correctly -- student advising and administration of the SFCS
minor (like the one for SEAS) falls under the Multi-Disciplinary Unit
(MDU). As some of you know the staff in MDU have always been and continue
to be overworked and overstretched. That situation is unlikely to change in
the near future.

I think it's a good idea to discontinue the undergrad minor now and focus
on the graduate DE.

-- WG





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weihsin Gui (he/him/his) weihsing at ucr.edu <weihsin.gui at ucr.edu>
Associate Professor of English
University of California-Riverside
MLA Southeast Asia Forum mailing list <http://eepurl.com/hqu4cP>


On Fri, Apr 8, 2022 at 5:49 PM Sherryl Vint <sherrylv at ucr.edu> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> Please find attached the report from the internal review of the SFCS minor.
>
> We are required to give a response to this report by *April 25.* Please
> send me any comments you may wish to convey to the Committee on Educational
> Policy by then.
>
> They are recommending that the minor be discontinued, due to a lack of
> successful building of an undergraduate cohort, and the ongoing lack of
> resources on campus.
>
> As you may recall, after we restructured and renamed the minor in 2017,
> Nalo Hopkinson was to have taken leadership of this part of the program.
> She has since separated from UCR.
>
> A few years ago, when I was assigned to CAP, I also wrote to see if anyone
> wanted to do the Directorship work for the SFCS program overall, but no one
> wanted to. We continue to have no budget other than what the Director makes
> available out of personal research funds.
>
> If anyone would like to take over the Directorship now, I'd be happy to
> have someone else step up. In the absence of someone else wanting to do so,
> I'm happy to continue doing this work for the Graduate DE. GIven my service
> burden as Chair of English, however, I do not have the capacity to do any
> building of the Minor.
>
> If no one expresses an interest in taking leadership for the Minor, I'm
> going to reluctantly concur that the program should be discontinued. It has
> a lot of potential, but without anyone putting energy into it, it will
> continue to flounder.
>
> best,
> Sherryl
> Sherryl Vint (she/her)
> Professor and Chair, Department of English
>
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