Administrative Questions
Who are Kim and Jamie?
Kim Smith (kimberly.smith@qc.cuny.edu) is the Academic Program Coordinator and Jamie Arizmendy (jamie.arizmnedy@qc.cuny.edu) is the Office Assistant in the English Department. Jamie is generally your first stop if you are having issues with paperwork, scheduling, or any other onboarding task or process.
How do I get paid?
If you’re on a fellowship from the Graduate Center, your compensation is part of the 5-year fellowship you already have. QC MFA graduate instructors are paid as part-time instructors through Queens College and need to fill out the appropriate paperwork through QC HR in order to get paid. You get paid every other week on Thursdays.
How do I get my office and office key?
Kim and Jamie assign offices to all faculty if you are on campus. Part-time faculty are in shared offices with 2-3 other instructors. Part-time faculty also have access to the communal FYW office space in Klapper 632. In Fall 2021, all 110s are scheduled to be online so you will not be assigned an office until you teach in-person, which will likely be Spring 2022.
How do I get a QC faculty email address?
Your QC faculty email address, which follows the format <firstname.lastname@qc.cuny.edu>, is part of your CAMS account. (If you are currently a QC graduate student, you will still need this email account since it designates you as faculty and grants access to campus-wide and university-wide email communications reserved for QC and CUNY faculty.) Once you’ve activated your CAMS account, you can log into the MyQC portal to access many useful forms and links that can help you navigate campus and the QC bureaucracy. We strongly recommend using your QC faculty email address for QC-faculty related work and communication; if you prefer not to, then make sure that you check your QC faculty email address daily or set up email forwarding to your most-used email account.
How do I communicate with my students?
Through CUNYfirst, you’ll have access to your “Faculty Center” where you can find your class assignments and roster. If you look at the roster, there is a button you can use to email all students. A Blackboard class management site is automatically created for each class you’re teaching at QC; this can be accessed through this portal using your CUNYFirst login. You can also email all the students in your class via your Blackboard class site. Your class roster in CUNYFirst and your Blackboard class site will be available to you after you’ve activated your CAMS account and the Registrar has linked your class.
How does the English department office communicate with me?
Please confirm with Jamie that the English Department office has your preferred email address so they can add you to the department listserv and the various faculty email lists that the department uses for communication. There is generally a steady stream of emails from Kim and Jamie so if you aren’t receiving anything from them, you’ll want to check in. The Department also runs a Slack workspace. If you’re not already part of the Slack workspace, contact Amy or Chris for a time-sensitive link.
What email address should I use?
Since you will be working as part of the QC faculty, it’s a good professional practice to adopt the QC faculty email account, which ensures that you don’t miss important emails from the English Department and QC or CUNY administration. Additionally, QC requests that you do so to protect you from potential harassment or accusations of harassment.
Teaching Questions
What is English 110 and First Year Writing?
English 110 is the first course in the writing sequence at Queens College. For more information, check out the FYW program page on the English Department site and the guide to first year writing; both of these pages concisely explain the program to undergraduate students.
What’s the curriculum of 110?
The Teaching English 110 website for instructors provides model syllabi, sample lesson plans, course goals, and other curricular materials. Bookmark it and refer to it regularly since you can quickly get answers to most, if not all, of your questions there.
Do I need to stick to the model syllabi?
We ask that all new instructors choose one of our model syllabi for their first semester. In particular, we strongly recommend teaching from either the Cultural Representation and the Media syllabus, the Monsters syllabus, or the Language and Literacy syllabus. Why? Because these syllabi are the most scaffolded i.e. they provide new instructors materials for every class session and offer the most detailed breakdown of how to effectively teach and manage a section of English 110. In the teaching practicum, you’ll be discussing how to develop and revise your selected syllabus to fit your own teaching interests and style. That said, we recognize that some of you have taught before so we’re happy to be in conversation with those of you who have taught before and discuss how your previous syllabi can be revised to meet the goals of the Queens College First Year Writing Program.
What’s the conference hour?
At QC, ENG 110 classes meet twice a week for one hour and fifty minutes each class session and the conference hour is the last half hour of each class meeting. What this means is that after one hour and twenty minutes, the class session technically ends and instructors then use the following 30 minutes to work with designated students individually and in small groups.
Faculty Development Questions
What kind of faculty development is required of part-time instructors?
FYW offers part-time instructors a range of faculty development opportunities that foster conversations around emerging writing scholarship and best-practices in the field. These might take the form of hour-long faculty development workshops, peer groups built around specific courses, or semester-long collaborative and compensated working groups. All faculty development will invite you to draw on your own experiences in the in-person or virtual classroom and ultimately aims to equip our teaching community with knowledge and tools that will build our confidence and enhance our work as instructors. From Fall 2021, under the terms of the current PSC-CUNY union contract, part-time faculty will be expected to participate in at least one hour of faculty development each semester. More information about this will be provided at the start of the Fall 2021 semester.
What other kinds of faculty development are available to me?
Faculty development workshops are regularly offered by QC’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Beyond this, you should regularly check your QC faculty email account throughout the semester to learn about other (sometimes paid) faculty development workshops that are available to all QC or CUNY faculty.
Questions about Working in QC English
Can I attend English Department meetings and events?
Adjunct faculty are very much a part of the English Department! All faculty are invited to English Department meetings, and you have voting rights, which is unique to Queens College. Department meetings are held each month during the Spring and Fall semesters (usually on Mondays) during the free hour (12:15-1:30 p.m.). You’re encouraged to attend whenever possible. Every semester, the Department also hosts a faculty seminar–a series of faculty workshops in which faculty members present their scholarship-in-progress. If interested in attending – or presenting your work! – look out from emails about this when the semester begins. Lastly, you will regularly receive emails about upcoming events that you are welcome to attend – or even contribute to – as an English faculty member. We particularly recommend that graduate instructors attend the job talks of potential faculty members so they can get a sense of that kind of talk for their own job market opportunities.
What kinds of classes can I expect to teach while a graduate instructor at QC?
The majority of classes that a graduate instructor will be assigned is English 110, which is our first year writing course. If you’re a GC graduate instructor, you’ll almost always teach English 110 for your first 3 semesters, English 130 during the spring of your second year, and a combination of 110, 130 and general education literature classes during your third year. MFA graduate instructors almost always teach English 110 in your first semester, and then a combination of 110, 130 and creative writing classes for the remainder of their teaching time. You have a better chance of increasing the variety of your teaching experience if you teach two classes a semester. Almost every first year student takes English 110 in the fall so the teaching assignments during fall are heavily weighted towards that class, with more variety in the spring.
Will I be able to get adjunct classes after I graduate?
We assign courses to QC MFA graduates for a limited time after graduation, usually one year. Because the GC program is longer and students often work on their dissertations for several years, graduate instructors working on their PhDs do not have a set cut-off date after their fellowships end. We prioritize those who:
- can teach English 110 and English 130
- can also teach in another area and
- have consistently participated in faculty development and contributed to the FYW program and the English Department.
As a program, we provide opportunities for part-time instructors to be involved in curricular and policy development and to run faculty development so you have experiences beyond the classroom that will make you a good candidate for teaching jobs outside of our department.
