The following minutes were unanimously approved as submitted on April 4, 2017.

Opening

The regular meeting of the DTSA was called to order at 3:20 pm on Mar 7 in Room 5409 by Sarah Lucie.

Present

Jennifer Thompson (President), Phoebe Rumsey (1st Vice President), Hansol Oh (Secretary-Treasurer), Sarah Lucie (Admissions & Awards), Margit Edwards (Professionalization Representative), Jared Pike(Graduate Council Rep and Alumni Engagement), Joseph Paul Hill (Curriculum and Exams Representative), Janet Werther (DSC Program Representative)

Absent

Elyse Singer (2nd Vice President), Kalle Westerling (Digital Initiatives Officer)

Approval of Agenda

JT motioned to approve agenda. SL seconded. Agenda was unanimously approved as submitted.

Approval of Minutes

JP motioned to approve the minutes. PR seconded. Minutes unanimously approved as submitted.

Reports

President, Jennifer Thompson

Thanks to Phoebe and to all who came to the theatre outing! It was a wonderful event.

Also thanks to Margit and Jean for organizing the professionalization event on funding proposals, and to Joseph for putting together all the information on grants. I think this is a great resource that we should continue to keep updated. There was also talk of gathering sample proposals together and putting them onto the resource exchange, which I think is an excellent idea.

Trivia night will be on March 28. Do reach out to folks in other cohorts to form a team, and be sure to RSVP so I can give the bar a headcount. I will go there today to try to negotiate the minimum, but I don’t anticipate their being a problem. Also feel free to invite friends—the more the merrier.

The conference is going well—we received 80 submissions, of which we accepted 50, most of whom have stated that they will be attending. We are working on putting lodging together for the faculty coming from out of town, so if any of you know of any great hotels with reasonable rates, let us know.

29 people voted for the amendment to add the International Students Representative to the board. 28 voted in favor and 1 voted against, so we are going ahead with the amendment. To that end, we will vote on adding someone to fill that position today. So far, only Eylul Akinci has expressed interest. In the next week or so I will update the constitution, and perhaps Kalle, you can help me upload it to the Green Room website.

Also, nominations are underway for next year’s board. Be sure to nominate folks yourself—and encourage others to consider serving on the board. So far only 3 people have filled out the survey.

First Vice President, Phoebe Rumsey

We had our theatre outing on March 5th – “Skin of Our Teeth” at Theatre for a New Audience. It was a wonderful time, we followed up afterward with drinks and snacks at the DSK Beerhall (continuing strangely with German Beerhall theme). 15 people bought tickets. 12 people showed up. Everyone paid up in a timely manner – PayPal helps. The choosing process/voting had about 9 submissions. Prices for tickets were 31$. Looking forward to trivia night, Questions are coming in, Jennifer and I will be compiling and adding etc. I have a consolation prize I will donate. I may consider an informal theatre outing in May to Natash/Pierre/Comet if folks are interested. The theatre outing should continue as seeing theatre together is great.

Second Vice President, Elyse Singer

Some Booth Award updates: We have secured the Cutting Room on East 32nd Street (http://thecuttingroomnyc.com/) for the Booth Award after-party (9pm-12am) and have hired DJ Amber Martin, a recommendation from Taylor Mac. Cabaret performer Salty Brine will MC. I requested and we received $650 in support from Public Programs. We also received $650 from DSC. I would still like to raise about $1K to make sure that event expenses are fully covered and would like to talk to the DTSA about approaching alumni to sponsor drink tickets (or “buy ads” in the program).

Currently, I am coordinating a meeting for the Booth Committee and will work with colleagues on marketing, artistic planning, fundraising, and production aspects of the event. One of the things that we will do at the first meeting is come up with a hashtag to pre-promote and also livetweet the event. I have been in touch with one of the GC’s Social Media Fellows (she reached out to me) and will stay in touch with her as we get closer to the event.

Secretary-Treasurer, Hansol Oh

In our last meeting I brought up Elinor Fuchs’s suggestion for a special lecture on play analysis based on her article “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet.” I discussed with Peter today and here are some updates:

Since the schedule for this semester is already pretty packed Peter suggested that we gear for late September—so we would be able to engage the new first-year students early in the semester. We can host the event either as part of next semester’s professionalization or as a separate seminar.

Admission and Awards Representative, Sarah Lucie

Offers have been sent out! The department has offered 7 students the graduate center fellowship, and so far 2 have accepted. We don’t have any tuition fellowships to offer this year, and there has been a bit of a confusing change regarding the Grad fellowships. Essentially, the program has 12 fellowship spots every two years, so if all 7 accept, then next year we will be able to make 5 offers. The seventh offer was made with the expectation that as least one person won’t accept. There are currently three students on the waitlist.

Many of the admitted students will be visiting campus for a luncheon on Tuesday, March 21. All members of the DTSA are invited to drop by the lunch in cafeteria on the 8th floor and meet the group, and talk up the program! Lunch is from noon – 1:30, and many of the prospective students will be attending Erika’s and/or Peter’s classes that afternoon.

Curriculum and Exams Representative, Joseph Paul Hill

The annual curriculum and exams survey was circulated to the DTSA board and Curriculum Committee Chair (Professor Erika Lin) for comment. The survey will be distributed to students within the next couple of days after final edits have been made.

Due to unreconcilable scheduling conflicts, the Curriculum Committee was not able to meet in person to discuss the Fall 2017 course offerings draft, so committee members were encouraged to provide online feedback. The final version of the course offerings will be made public after requested emendations have been considered and incorporated into course descriptions.

Beginning this semester, the Graduate Center will be moving to once-a-year scheduling in the hopes of improving forward planning. Because of this, the program’s Spring 2018 course offerings must be drafted, revised, approved, and submitted to the Provost by the end of January. To meet this deadline, the Curriculum Committee will be meeting at the end of March in order to discuss next spring’s courses. At that meeting, I will also present the results of our annual curriculum and exams survey, which will hopefully guide the planning discussion.

Professionalization Representative, Margit Edwards

We have had two successful professionalization events since last we met. First, IRB qualifications and Research Ethics discussed by Peter Eckersall and Dissertation Proposal discussed thoroughly by David Savran. The following week, we had the Fellowships and Grant Writing session with Jean Graham-Jones and Jennifer Thompson. AS mentioned above, Joseph P. Hill provided supplemental materials. These were both well attended and generated lots of good info and good discussion. The next event on March 16: Publish and Flourish!

Important things to remember: Must ask Kalle to change dates of rescheduled professionalization events. March 23 – Conferences and April 27 – Preparing for Teaching.

In meeting with Jean Graham-Jones, the job description for the Officer of Professionalization was discussed and determined that an updated and more detailed description is needed. She and I will draft something and submit it to the board for approval.

Digital Initiatives Officer, Kalle Westerling

Nothing to report.

DSC Program Representative, Janet Werther

Nothing to report.

Graduate Council Rep and Alumni Engagement, Jared R. Pike

The next meeting of the Grad Council will be held on Wednesday, March 15. I will have more to report after this meeting.

New Business

International student rep

JPH moved to vote for ad hoc committee for the International student handbook etc

JP seconded

Everyone voted in favor

JT moved to vote for Eylul as the chair of the committee and Fabian and Jennie as members of committee

Margit seconded

Everyone voted in favor

Old Business

Booth Award-fundraising

Productive discussion about fundraising possibilities

Fundraising through alumni is not feasible this late in the academic year

DTSA Board recommends making a request from CLAGS or selling program space

General discussion of Best Practices for Theatre Program Research Assistants

Concern for student interests in document

Announcements

Trivia Night and Prospective Student Lunch upcoming

Adjournment

SL move to adjourn. JT second. Unanimously in favor.