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<span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Hi all,</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">I've gotten a couple emails with questions about the new system. Hopefully this will answer those concerns. Please do email me if you still have questions.</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">If you want to have your review on the date that has been on the calendar since the beginning of the year, you can absolutely do that. I wrote in my last email that the review must be completed by the end of day March 21 (the review date in the calendar). Or you can schedule it earlier if that means having all committee members attend vs multiple meetings with individual faculty. This new system should give you more flexibility, not less. </span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Nothing is changing as far as reserving rooms. You are in the same situation, where you use the room reservation calendar. This is not something that I have managed in the past so there is no change there.</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">If you have a faculty member that is on more than one committee, that is something that will be managed in the same way that any other meeting with a group of people would be managed - ie in the event of a conflict, try another date. Doodle or calend.ly is how we normally find meeting dates that work for a group of people.</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Someone said that it seems that the task of scheduling the review is being put on the student instead of the faculty. That is correct. Sort of. Faculty members have never been responsible for arranging the review - I have done that. Unfortunately, that system is broken... (1) I typically send many emails to get responses from all of the students being reviewed, so the schedule is incomplete until close to the review. This is a problem, since students and faculty have told me repeatedly that they would prefer the schedule to be announced earlier. (2) Despite having the review date in the calendar prior to this semester starting, there increasingly seems to be conflicts for committee members. I have heard students' complaints about this and I have relayed them to faculty many times, but it seems to be unavoidable. Having individual meetings on a variety of days is not how the reviews should work. A date that works for everyone should not be hard to manage with a window of 4 weeks, which is the reason for this change. </span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Is the responsibility for arranging the meeting being placed on the student? Yes, it is. It is your committee and I do not see a problem with you taking on the scheduling of the meeting, once per semester. This is not me trying to reduce my workload - again, the change is to help you have FULL committee meetings instead of the piecemeal version that most of you have been getting. I will say also, that approximately half of the students in the last review have taken on the duty of scheduling the review because of faculty conflicts with the original dates. So for many, working with the committee to find the best date/time is not new - the difference is that everyone will be on the same page.</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Again, I do not know that this system is going to work, but I am hopeful that it will solve more problems than it creates. I understand the worry that it may not work, but please give it a chance and email me with your feedback during and after the review.</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Thanks,</span>
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<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;"><b>Rob Duarte</b> </span>
<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Associate Professor & Graduate Director </span>
<br><span dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Florida State University Department of Art</span>
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