{"id":561,"date":"2015-07-13T15:39:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T20:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/?page_id=561"},"modified":"2015-08-27T16:54:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T21:54:59","slug":"service-to-the-university","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/service-to-the-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Service to the University"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose I performed my first university service at my first Faculty Pre-Session in August 2010. \u00a0PhD freshly in hand and never having prayed in public before, I led the opening benediction. \u00a0I was grateful for the big wooden podium that made it impossible for anyone else to see my knees knocking. \u00a0ACU’s promotion of women’s participation in worship settings has been a wonderful blessing to me, a woman who grew up in churches of Christ where women sat quietly during the service. \u00a0I have since led prayer or read Scripture in several other faculty meetings, including the CAS Pre-Session in 2012 and 2013 (\u00a0CAS Pre-Session Email<\/a>). \u00a0My knees no longer knock.<\/p>\n

Service on Master’s thesis committees ties in to teaching and collegiality, as well, so I discuss some of the following in those sections of the portfolio, too. \u00a0I have served on two thesis committees and have recently agreed to be on a third.\u00a0 In 2011 I was privileged to be a part of Jeremy Hegi’s committee. \u00a0Jeremy wrote a missions history thesis for the Missions MA in the Graduate School of Theology on the early-20th-century missions enthusiast, Don Carlos Janes. \u00a0He did excellent work and has since gone on to begin a PhD at Boston University. \u00a0The other faculty on the committee were Dr. Chris Flanders, and Dr.\u00a0Doug Foster. \u00a0Both were dazzlingly knowledgable and also very kind and gracious, both to a new faculty member sitting on her first committee, and to the nervous defender himself. \u00a0I have included some emails relevant to the defense (emails re Hegi thesis<\/a>), as well as the formal remarks I drafted on the thesis for Jeremy (Hegi Thesis notes<\/a>). \u00a0I am also a part of Brittany Taraba’s thesis committee for her Master’s in Communication, together with Professors Lauren Lemley and Suzie Macoluso. \u00a0Her prospectus defense took place in the fall of 2014; she has not yet completed the thesis. \u00a0And most recently, I agreed to be part of a committee for Wesley Racca, who will be writing his GST thesis on trends in the conversation around gender roles in the three streams of the Stone-Campbell movement.<\/p>\n

Probably my most visible university service has been my three-year term on the College of Arts and Sciences Academic Council, from 2011 to 2014. \u00a0My time on the council was\u00a0a good introduction to the way shared governance works, as well as a nice venue for interacting with folks from other departments. \u00a0I particularly enjoyed getting to see some of the creative and innovative new courses that came\u00a0through our council. \u00a0I think particularly of Al Haley’s course on narrative in film and video games–such a fascinating idea, and I was also very impressed by the thoughtful discussion of the Christian dimension of storytelling and the gaming industry he included on his syllabus. \u00a0I think many of us are tempted to put a brief blurb about Christian perspective on our syllabi just to meet the requirement, so Al’s statement stood out to me all the more, and I’ve tried to consider that example when writing new course syllabi myself. \u00a0I also found the work on the CASAC to be very helpful to me as an advisor, because the need to regularly consult the catalog and degree plan guidelines to prepare for votes on new courses made me much more familiar with the ins and outs of our academic system. \u00a0I’ve included some emails that document my participation in the CASAC here: \u00a0CASACemails<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had a moment on the CASAC in the 2011-12 school year that really brought home the significance of shared governance through faculty councils and demonstrated that, sometimes, the best way to serve the university might be through disagreement. \u00a0When the administration decided to close the Ag major at ACU, a proposal to close the major came through our council for approval. \u00a0After talking with Dr. Ed Brokaw, the Chair of Ag\/Environmental Science and confirming that the department faculty did not want to propose the closing of the major, but were merely following the direction of the administration, we voted as a council not to approve the measure. \u00a0Of course it went on to the next council anyway, but it meant something to us to broadcast this reminder that faculty academic councils are not rubber stamps for the wishes of the administration. \u00a0I think that our support meant a lot to the Ag\/Environmental Science Department. \u00a0And through this process, as well as some of the other conversations that happened in faculty meetings during that financially shaky year, I came to better understand how the faculty\/administration relationship works at ACU. \u00a0I had this key realization: \u00a0all of the people, faculty and administrators, who are involved in these conversations–about curriculum, about strategic planning, about costs–are very intelligent individuals with fairly large egos. \u00a0Even though we are a Christian university and we have common goals, those shared characteristics do not always translate to agreement on academic and strategic issues, and they don’t have to. \u00a0Our refusal to approve the closing of the Ag major did not bring down the university, but it did encourage both us and our colleagues in Ag, and I’m glad to be on record voting against that measure.<\/p>\n

On the recommendation of my department chair, I haven’t joined another university-level committee yet. \u00a0I’ll focus this year on my book project, and intend to put my name forward for Faculty Senate or UGEC next year.<\/p>\n

My mentoring of Cooper Spruill in the McNair program in the summer of 2014 is another important university-level service. \u00a0I discussed my work in McNair at some length in the Teaching Section under Student Mentoring, so I will not recapitulate that here. \u00a0Hilary Simpson’s letter regarding my work with McNair is available in the Teaching Section, and also linked here: \u00a0Letter for Kelly Elliot<\/a>t.<\/p>\n

In the 2014-15 school year, I volunteered to help with the Undergraduate Research Festival by being part of the Abstracts Review Committee. \u00a0In this capacity, I read over all submitted abstracts that either hadn’t been reviewed by their departments or were on the fence in terms of ranking and gave an up or down vote on whether to accept those papers to the Research Festival. \u00a0It was nice to get a sense of the quality of research that was being submitted from beyond my department, and also easy for this mother of a toddler to do committee work from home via email! \u00a0Email documentation here: \u00a0Research-Festival-Abstract-Review<\/a>.\u00a0 I served as a judge for the Undergraduate Research Festival in 2014 and would like to fill that role again as my schedule allows. \u00a0Dr. Autumn Sutherlin’s support letter<\/a> mentions this service as well as some other areas of service and collegiality.<\/p>\n

I also serve the university by functioning as the faculty liaison between the ACU Museum, which is run by the Women for ACU, and the Department of History and Global Studies. \u00a0I began this role in the summer of 2013, working closely with Mrs. Jeri Orr and Mrs. Roberta Bender to establish a new internship with the museum, create an application process and guidelines for work, and recruit interns. \u00a0In the coming year, we hope to make the Mary Manly Internship with the ACU Museum a paid internship for the first time. \u00a0It has been really rewarding to work with the Women for ACU organization and to get to know Jeri, Roberta, and some of the other ladies at our annual intern appreciation dinners. \u00a0The internship is also a great opportunity for our history and history teaching students to get some professional experience on their resume while they pursue their studies. \u00a0(Relevant correspondance: \u00a0ACU-Museum-Internship<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Finally, I see my regular teaching role in the General Education Core as an important service to the university as a whole. \u00a0This is not just a teaching role that serves large numbers of students every year. \u00a0It’s also a role that requires more time and effort than other teaching positions because of the complexity of the curriculum, the logistics involved in team-teaching, and the work entailed\u00a0in our frequent Core faculty meetings, where we share ideas about readings, assignments, and exams, discuss alterations to common syllabus requirements, consider ways to adjust the curriculum to better fit the needs of Gen Ed and the university, and set up Student Learning Outcomes and other benchmarks so that Core meets standards of accreditation.<\/p>\n

>Next Section: \u00a0Service to the Department<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose I performed my first university service at my first Faculty Pre-Session in August 2010. \u00a0PhD freshly in hand and never having prayed in public before, I led the opening benediction. \u00a0I was grateful for the big wooden podium … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6436,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-561","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/561\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/kellyelliott\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}