If you’re planning to take the 599 thesis tutorial course in spring 2016 you should check your email now. I have just today sent out the comprehensive examination to everyone I have listed as entering the 599 in the spring (everyone who has not already completed the exam, that is). You must successfully pass the exam in order to be able to enter the 599 course. So if you’re planning to take the 599 course in the spring go check your email now and verify if you’ve received the exam. I sent it to whatever accounts you have on record with the college, so you might see the same email in multiple places. Please read the email fully and reply to it immediately to confirm receipt. The email as well as the exam attachment include thorough instructions and the due-date. If you’re reading this and (a) do not see any exam awaiting you in your email inbox, and/or (b) do not see a 599 section on your spring schedule yet, you should contact me at cloots@mercy.edu to clear this up.
Category Archives: Useful Program Info & Tips
A Word on Advising, Support, and Resources
Let’s make sure everyone knows the support structure in place here at Mercy. First, although each of you are (or should be) connected with advisors in the Student Services offices, as the program director I am the faculty advisor for all students in the MA program. Your Student Services advisors are the people who likely contacted you when you first began the program (people like Jennifer Mack, Krystal LaDue, others). You can reach out to them or me or all of us with questions about course selection, your progress toward the degree, or anything else. The main phone for Student Services is (888) 464-6737 (check the website for their hours, all Eastern time). As always I’m at cloots@mercy.edu or less likely at (914) 674-7423.
The College’s Office of Accessibility is the place to contact if you need to discuss or register any accommodations.
We also have an office of Counseling Services for those in need.
The Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) provides tutoring and other such assistance. The CAE provides assistance to our online students as much as to our on-campus students, and has online tutoring facilities in place, so don’t hesitate to contact the center when working on papers for your MA courses. Sometimes your professor might require that you contact the CAE to get help with your writing. Professor Steven Witte is the contact person for the online tutoring, so you can contact him at switte@mercy.edu if you need further help.
Mercy has extensive online library resources. All of you have already been or soon will be using these to some degree, as each course (except perhaps for Creative Writing) requires some form of research paper. You should also always be reading beyond your course syllabus and doing independent study of further readings in support of your syllabus readings. You can find a wealth of sources through the online library portal. The JSTOR and MLA are the two primary databases for literary research, though there are others you’ll find in there. Additionally, Mercy has digitized versions of many scholarly books. To search the ebook selection use the advanced search option for the library catalog and under “format” select “EBook.” Then search away and check-out/download any useful books you find.
Your professors will provide their own contact information in each of their courses, and you can also obtain contact information at the end of the Graduate Student Handbook accessible in the left-hand column of this blog.
Okay I think that covers the basic online support structure in place here at Mercy College. Hope you’re all getting up and excited for another semester, which starts soon… Best, -CL
Where the Want-Ads Are: Job Listings for College Teaching Positions
All of you are here in the program because of your love for literature and academic study, and for many of you that intellectual enrichment is the point, is the reason why you pursue the MA. Some of you, though, are also here with career hopes. This post is for that latter group. There are a few “industry” job sites which you should know about, and some words of advice I can give you about hunting for jobs in the field. Read on, if interested:
First, be aware that the MA degree qualifies you to apply to most full-time junior college/community college professorships, and to adjunct (i.e. teach part-time) at most senior/4-year colleges. I say “most” because though I’ve never encountered a situation where the MA didn’t qualify you for these things, I’m sure that there are some exceptions somewhere out there in the world. In most cases though you’ll see in want-ads that community colleges require the MA in English for English professorships, same for senior college adjunct pools. To apply to full-time English professorships at senior/4-year colleges, the terminal degree, meaning the PhD, is required; except, upon occasion, for creative writing positions for which the MFA is sometimes considered the terminal degree. Even that’s changing though.
Side note: the term “adjunct pool” refers to the pool of adjunct professors any particular college keeps on file, and from which it draws teachers each semester to staff many of its courses. Few institutions have enough full-time faculty to staff all their courses, and so most institutions rely (sometimes heavily) on adjunct professors to teach a significant portion of courses each semester. Some people adjunct to gain experience for when applying to full-time positions or PhD programs; some do it to provide a stimulating supplement to some other job they might hold; some do it as a secondary income source for a household; and some actually adjunct “full time” by which I mean they put themselves into multiple institutions’ adjunct pools and so weave together a full-time schedule each year teaching across different colleges.
So, where does one even begin to search for any of these teaching positions? The most popular and common job site is probably the Chronicle of Higher Ed. The Chronicle is the most popular news source for college academia, and maintains a popular job-board which I’ve linked there. Another popular site is Higher Ed Jobs. Both of those sites are free to use, and have a variety of search features which allow you to rarify your search, including by geographical region. A third site is the Job information List of the MLA however be advised that this is a paid subscription site. Those are the big three national job boards.
Additionally, all sorts of less centralized boards exist, and these you just have to discover by searching. For example California maintains the most brilliant example of a dedicated state-specific community college job board, the CCC Registry. And some institutions don’t necessarily post every job opening on the big national boards, but rather just post them on their Human Resources website (see for example Occidental College’s current faculty openings listed only on their HR site). Oftentimes calls for adjuncts will only be posted on a college’s HR site, and no-where else. Other local job boards exist, for example the California State Careers job board which lists all faculty openings in the Cal State system, some but not all of which are cross-listed on the national job boards. My examples are from California since that’s my old state, the one I know best, but the point is you should search the national job boards and also just do detective work and search around your state and local college websites to determine what more local job boards might exist near you. Always look for the Human Resources section of any college’s website; that’s almost always where they either list their job openings, or list a link to relevant job boards for their institution.
Here’s a final way to go about the job search, particularly in terms of adjuncting: the cold call. Many institutions don’t even post want-ads for adjuncts on any board or even on their HR site because it’s relatively common practice for people interested in adjuncting to simply put together the paperwork (a cover letter and a curriculum vitae, which is not the same thing as a resume) and cold-call a department or program head (or whomever does the course staffing, which you’d want to determine beforehand through your detective work). It’s not inappropriate to approach, either in person or through email/phone, the staffing person of a dept./program and simply present yourself for consideration for future adjunct work.
One last thing to explain is the annual hiring cycle. Full-time professorships for 4-year colleges typically post in the fall semester, starting in September. Community college professorships usually post in the spring semester, as early as January or February. Adjunct calls will post year round. Anomalous timing happens so it’s always good to keep an eye on the boards year-round if you’re in the job hunt. For example there’s often a small burst of job ads at the end of spring, early summer, which bespeak unsuccessful earlier searches they’re now trying to fill quickly prior to the start of the fall semester. Faculty positions almost always begin in whatever is the next/upcoming fall semester.
Okay, in a future post I’ll go into the difference between a curriculum vitae, or CV, and resume. For now, that’s your overview of how to search for a college teaching position. Best, -CL
The New Wait-list Feature
You may have noticed the new wait-list feature available in the online course registration system. Some of you probably know more about how this works than I do, from your first-hand experience with it, but this is what I’ve been told: when a course is filled to its seat-cap you can opt to sign up for the course’s wait-list. The order in which you get on the wait-list matters. If a seated student drops the course, the person atop the wait-list will be notified (via email I would imagine, and using whatever you’ve indicated is your “preferred” email address) that the seat is open. You are NOT auto-enrolled in the open seat; you must actively go in and enroll in the course as you would for any other course. It’s simply that the recently opened seat is reserved for you for a limited time. I’m still trying to determine exactly how long that is but I believe it’s 24 hours. If you do not claim the seat within the time-limit, the next person on the wait-list gets notified and now has the chance to take the seat. If that person doesn’t claim the seat the system keeps going down the list, notifying each next wait-listed person, until either someone claims the seat, or no one does, at which point the seat becomes open to anyone. I’ll correct this information as I learn more about this new procedure, but this is my current best understanding of how it works. -CL
Degree Conferral Procedures
Grad Advising has been pretty reliable about informing students nearing degree-completion of when they need to apply for graduation, and how to go about doing so, but now and then a few students slip through their net and end up missing the appropriate deadline. The procedures, dates, and links are all in the Graduate Student Handbook (always accessible as a downloadable PDF through the left-hand column of this blog). Just for simplicity I am also linking right here the page explaining degree conferral procedures. So for example, as that linked page reads, students for whom the fall semester will be their last should submit their conferral application by October 15. Students ending on the traditional schedule, following the end of a spring semester, would need to submit the conferral application by February 2. -CL
End of Semester things:
Hi all, as we end the spring semester I’d just ask everyone to keep in mind things such as the way an incomplete “I” works as a temporary grade replacement (follow the link to the earlier blog post). That isn’t just for people who might be incurring and I now, but for those who incurred one recently. Those must be corrected within a year, or there is no way to remedy the incomplete. For those planning to take the 599 final tutorial course in the fall, now is the time to secure your thesis mentor from the faculty in the program, and to take your comprehensive exam. Read up in the Graduate Student Handbook or around this program blog for more on all of those. Reach me at cloots@mercy.edu if you have any questions or need help.
Just a word about the Graduate Student Handbook.
To any current students, or curious potential students checking out the program blog, please just note that the program’s Graduate Student Handbook is available for download right there in the left-side menu of the screen. It’s the second item down beneath the link to the College’s official program webpage. It contains tons of information about the program, about the requirements, about the courses you need to take, about how you enroll in the 599 final thesis tutorial course, about how and when you take your comprehensive exam, etc. Check it out!
Interested in Joining the English Honors Society, Sigma Tau Delta?
If you’re interested in joining Sigma Tau Delta which is the English Honors Society click here to open up a letter from the Chapter Sponsor/Coordinator here at Mercy College, Dr. Kristen Keckler, detailing how you can join. Dr. Keckler will also be teaching the graduate creative writing course over the summer, fyi. So read that letter if you’re curious and follow the instructions for how to join. Contact Dr. Keckler at kkeckler1@mercy.edu if you have any questions about this. Best, -CL
Regarding some changes you might see to course numbers for Spring 2015:
Hi everyone, I don’t yet have the info on when the spring registration opens (when I do find out I will post the date and precise minute it opens here on this blog). But I will share with you in the next blog post the seven courses we will be running for the Spring 2015 semester. First though, as some changes are scheduled to be implemented before the spring, let me here share with you some information about what you might see, and why.
Currently the curriculum and requirement structure looks like this:
- ENGL 500: Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism (required)
- ENGL 501-502: British Literature pre-1700 courses
- ENGL 503-504: British Literature Post-1700 courses
- ENGL 505-509: Eligible as electives
- ENGL 510: Theory and Practice of Expository Writing (required)
- ENGL 511, 512, 513: American Literature
- ENGL 514: Major Author Shell (in which runs any new author-specific course on an experimental basis
- ENGL 515 Topic Course Shell (in which runs any new course on an experimental basis)
- ENGL 516: Thesis Seminar (required)
As you can see, all of the courses are tightly packed together from 500 to 516. This has worked well up to now but moving forward we wanted to open up the numbering a bit so that the curriculum could grow, and so that related courses would remain close to one another while doing so. The Registrar has allowed us to expand our graduate catalog range throughout 500-599. In the spring, then, catalog numbers and groupings will look like this:
- ENGL 500 stays the same.
- ENGL 505-510, and 517, are now together considered the “Writing and Literary Forms” grouping.
- ENGL 514 and 515 remain as shells in which to run experimental courses. Courses running with these codes will default to electives, or can, as applicable, be slotted to work for degree requirements. So for example the Afropolitanism course running as a 515 in the spring will default to an elective, but I can easily (and am happy to) make it count for a Literature Group 2 requirement in the new structure (see below), or an American requirement in the old structure. Sames goes for the spring 515 James and Lawrence, which I could make count as either a Group 1 or Group 2 requirement (again, see just below for an explanation of these two groups). Substitutions like that can happen simply by asking me.
- ENGL 521-540. Literature Group 1. Courses in Group 1 will tend toward British and European literature but not be bound by this, and can involve other literatures as well. And no course in this group is necessarily bound by era anymore. So a course such as Tragedy can cover materials from Classical to Modern eras and still make sense within this grouping. (The existing ENGL 501, 502, 503 and 504 will be renumbered to fit into this group as ENGL 521, 522, 524, and 526).
- ENGL 541-560. Literature Group 2. Courses in Group 2 will tend toward American literature but not be bound by this, and can involve other literatures as well. And so courses that study Caribbean literature, or which mix American and Japanese literature, might fit well in this group. (The existing ENGL 511 and 512 will be renumbered to fit into this group as ENGL 541 and 542).
- ENGL 561-598. Courses with these numbers will be eligible for electives.
- ENGL 516 Thesis Seminar becomes ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis Tutorial. Other than the number and title the course functions in exactly the same way as it always has. In this way the culminating course in the program is 599, the last course in the graduate level 500-599 course number range.
The ten-course degree audit, meaning the chart of the 10 course requirements you would need to fulfill to complete the MA degree, will look like this:
- ENGL 500
- ENGL 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, or 517
- ENGL 521-540 (any course in this range)
- ENGL 541-560 (any course in this range)
- ENGL 521-560 (any course in this range)
- Elective (any course from 501-598)
- Elective (any course from 501-598)
- Elective (any course from 501-598)
- Elective (any course from 501-598)
- ENGL 599
There will be some adjustments behind-the-scenes here during the change-over as I go through your transcripts and make notes on how your courses work toward your degree. As I’ve said, you will lose absolutely nothing, and will if anything find your progress to the degree easier and filled with more choices. As a final note, all of this is contingent upon these changes actually being implemented in time for spring. We have been told that it will. Your graduate advisors won’t yet know about this or how it will play out, so you should contact me with any questions. Cloots@mercy.edu.
The Incomplete “I”:
Sure, you thought this was going to be about the strangeness of the ego and the I, but instead it’s just a post about the “I” grade-placeholder some of you sometimes get. Let me explain here all about the “I.”
An “I” is something that a professor might give to a student temporarily in place of a final grade. The “I” signals “incomplete” and is not therefore a real grade of any credit or GPA significance.
It can only be given in cases where a student has met all attendance requirements and completed most of the other course requirements, but for some reason was unable to complete some of the written work by the final semester deadline. Typically in graduate English an “I” might be given to a student who completed most all course work successfully and on time except for the final term paper. In these cases the student may contact the professor and politely request a temporary “I.” Even in such situations, a professor does not have to grant the temporary “I” and rather often gives a real final course grade (A through F) based upon the student’s semester of work. It is not a student’s right to be granted an “I.” The granting of an “I” should be a special and rare event as it causes issues which extend beyond the semester and into future semesters. Students should never presume that an “I” will be granted and should aim to complete all work during the semester so as to avoid the issue of the “I” even being raised.
In the rare cases where an “I” is granted the student must complete the missing work which led to the “I” and submit that work to the professor as soon as is possible. As a general rule the work should be completed and submitted before the start of the next semester. The ultimate time limit for turning a graduate level “I” into a real grade is 12 months. But again, consider that if you’ve left unfinished work until the 11th month you’re now having to research and write on topics which you were studying almost a year ago, and you’re now asking your professor to consider work related to a course from almost a year ago. Again, in the rare event that you do need an “I” and are granted one by your professor, please be diligent and remedy it prior to the start of the next semester.
If the incomplete “I” is not remedied within the twelve month limit it cannot be turned into a real grade. In that case it remains a permanent “I” on the transcript and the student receives no credit for the course.
It is the student’s responsibility to be wary of the time limit for remedying an “I,” to submit all missing work to the professor within that time limit, and to maintain a record of the timely submission of such.
If you have any further questions about this, feel free to contact me at cloots@mercy.edu.
Program Director's Blog for the Mercy University MA in English Literature Program 