Monday Messages

Audience

Monday Messages (MM’s) go to all tenured and tenure track faculty, all the emeriti, and all the academic titleholders listed here except the postdocs. A small group of administrators also receive the MM’s.

Rationale

MM’s  from the Dean of Faculty Office are a simple, low-overhead approach  to  keeping the faculty informed. We use it for regular DoF business such as announcements that relate to university lectures and the Faculty Senate as well as for classroom-related reminders that deal with semester start, semester breaks, and semester wrap-up. Events that address campus climate issues will also be highlighted. Doing this weekly obviates the need for random crisis-driven messaging. Faculty are typically overwhelmed with emails so unless we attempt to control messaging many important missives end up in the trash unread. Thus, there is a  “less is more” philosophy associated with the MM’s.

Rules

Submitted items for inclusion can only be a sentence or two long and should be submitted at least one week in advance to deanoffaculty@cornell.edu. Embedded in the message should be links to online resources that can be used by readers who require more information. Please provide both text and links.  Provide clear time and place information as appropriate. Ordinary department talks and club meetings are not of interest. Events/documents that have broad audience appeal, which speak to Faculty Senate concerns, or which help the campus empathize with alternative points of view are of interest. Here is a sample item:

Think about sponsoring a Messenger or University Lecture. There is substantial funding to bring in world-class scholars. Nomination deadline for Spring 2020 visits is September 20.

Have a 1-pager for the Faculty?

Suppose you have a 1-pager that describes some important event or program of interest to the faculty. To  maximize readership we recommend that you (a) post the 1-pager on your website and (b) send us  an MM  item that includes  a link to that posting. Requests to use the DoF listserv with  the intention of sending the faculty a 1-page email will be considered but you have to argue why that is preferable to the MM approach. 

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