Welcome & News To All Members of Languages & Literatures Units

Administrative Staff and Services are continuing to improve! In order to serve all of you better, we have been working to improve the admin website: http://langlit.ucdavis.edu/. You will find our staff directory—complete with office hours, contact information, and expertise; in addition to fill‐able and downloadable forms pertinent to leaves of absence and business reimbursements. We hope you find this site useful as we continue to make information and ourselves accessible to you, despite furloughs or other reductions in time. If you have any suggestions for items that you would like to see available electronically, please let us know!

Space Acquisition in 2010 will provide additional space to all units within the Languages & Literatures umbrella. We will acquire the 1st and 2nd floors so that Sproul Hall will be home to all our constituents.  This means we will not have off‐site offices for T.A.s or Tutors for our students to try and find and the campus will no longer have to pay rent for space outside of the university boundaries. Having all the space in Sproul Hall is a positive result of the administration's efforts on our behalf—and bodes well for our immediate comfort and future prospects in the university!

The Space Move will occur in 2009‐10 and we can expect the moving to begin in Spring 2010 and be completed by the end of Summer 2010.  In planning this space acquisition, Tracy is meeting with the Department Chairs and Program Directors to best expand or situate our units within Sproul Hall. The overarching plan is to provide additional space where it is desperately needed and consolidate academic programs all on one (in some cases two) floor(s)—with minimal disruption to current program placement. It is anticipated that the administrative staff will consolidate their services to the 2nd floor which will allow the academic program shifts to occur on floors 3‐9. The 1st floor will house overflow TA offices, programming support, the 18th Century Journal, and other similar offices.

Program Website Upgrades can occur with zero or minimal expense... Classics recently redid their website with the help of Geoff Stratton (L&L Programmer), and it is receiving a lot of positive feedback.  They were able to use available resources such as free web templates provided by the university and copyrighted material (with prior permissions) to greatly enhance their presence on the web: http://classics.ucdavis.edu/. Spanish also updated their website using the same resources in an effort that began in Spring 2009 and was recently completed: http://spanish.ucdavis.edu/.

Personal & Medical Leaves do require prior approval from your Department Chair, Program Director, and/or Supervisor. For academic personnel, leaves for 7 days or less, the Department Chair or Program Director can approve; leaves for 7+ to 30 days require the Dean’s approval; and beyond 30‐days requires the Vice Provost’s approval. Please keep these timelines in mind when submitting paperwork regarding any leaves of absences. Thank you! For policy information, please see: http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/leaves.cfm.

The Accounting Office is providing a new component to the MyTravel system—Connexxus! This system is designed to allow travelers to make their own travel arrangements. There are a few steps to complete to make it functional for you which can be found here: http://langlit.ucdavis.edu/new-connexxus-travel-program.

Business Office mailboxes for reimbursement forms, receipts, and other documentation will be located in 5th flr mailroom (514), for drop‐off. These will be checked daily and the Business Office will be turning them around within 5 days, provided all of the receipts/documentation have been received.

Weekly Teas, hosted by Religious Studies, will occur on Tuesdays, 3:15—4:15pm in 912 Sproul. Stop by and meet some of your Sproul colleagues in a nice tradition being promoted by our RST friends. Dean Owens Brown Bags will be held periodically during the quarter with the first one October 7, 2009, 12‐1:30 in the University Club. All faculty are welcome to attend as discussion on budget, teaching, and other issues of interest are raised.

The Language Learning Center in the basement of Olson is a valuable resource for all members of the Languages community. As a new academic year is starting, please take a look at the workshops, activities, and technological resources available to you at LLC (http://llc.ucdavis.edu)!

Upkeep of our Common Spaces is always a challenge as the "busyness" of the year takes hold. We do have limited student assistant support but if all hands/users help out with keeping our common use areas tidy (copy rooms, lunch areas, whiteboards in seminar rooms—especially after each use, etc.), this will be much appreciated by all—thank you!

From the Administrative Staff to you—"Have a great fall quarter!"