I want to welcome you all to the new year. If you don’t know me, my name is Robert Lestón, and I’ll be serving as Director of First Year Writing this year. I’ve been at Tech since 2009 and I’m a specialist in Rhetoric and Composition.

I want to invite you to come and see me in my office Namm 511 if you have any questions, want to talk about teaching, or just to chat. I’ll be here Tues, Wed, and Thursday, and many Mondays too. I’ll be around quite a bit, so don’t hesitate to come by.

We are beginning to start some projects concerning part time faculty, so I’ll be sending some updates soon as well as putting them on the First Year Writing Open Lab site, which can be found here. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/fyw/

I’d like to invite all of you to attend our first First Year Writing Committee meeting, which will be held Sept 27th at 1 pm, during club hour. We are hoping that there some part timers are interested in participating in the decision making processes that take place concerning the two composition courses. The point is that you all teach the classes and we should be able to have discussions concerning the issues that matter to you, and that you should be involved in the decision making processes, if you desire. We completely understand if you are not able to come, but I want you to know that you are welcome if you can. We are particularly interested in having input concerning textbook selection, OER development, as well as curriculum development. All part timers are more than welcome.

I am trying to get a reading/discussion group started in order to build a community of like minded teacher-scholars who are interested in rejuvenating our culture and delivering the best education we can to our students. Unfortunately, for this semester, there will not be any funds to support such an initiative, but it is one of my goals this semester to try to find a way to compensate those who do wish to participate for their time. I have been speaking with some other constituencies and making some progress. If you are available or interested in attending such a group, I think you could make a significant contribution to the intellectual life at City Tech. Who knows, you might benefit as well and make some new friends. If you have second, please fill out this very brief interest form. It’ll take you to a google doc, and you can fill it out in just a couple of minutes.

https://goo.gl/forms/KM1nCWEFRLeAF87H3

Robert