Sunday, March 10, 2013

Petition and Preamble

Sign the petition at 
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/mark-ari-petition-for-tenure-line.html

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Petition

We, the undersigned students, alumni, and parents of the University of North Florida and Faculty, petition President John A. Delaney; Provost; Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Barbara A. Hetrick; as well as Associate Deans A. Samuel Kimball and David Fenner; and English Department Chair Brian Striar.

Please consider promotion of Mark Ari to the tenure line.

Preamble

March 11, 2013

University of North Florida

Dear Faculty, Alumni, Students, Parents, and Friends,

For those who are unaware, Mark Ari is a full-time Senior Lecturer at the University of North Florida, whose contract is renewed on a year-by-year basis. The intent of this petition, as expressed above, is to respectfully request the UNF leadership to consider Mark Ari’s credentials, service, and accomplishments as grounds for a special case promotion to a tenure line in the English Department.

For so many UNF students, Professor Ari is one of a handful of career and life-defining professors. His dedication to his students is unmatched, as is represented by his recently winning an Undergraduate Teaching Award for the third time since he became eligible to receive the award as a full-time instructor in 2006. Professor Ari has deep knowledge of his subject matter, as well as extensive involvement and promotion of his field through publications and editorial duties. Further, he has built a large and active literary community at UNF, a community that brings together students and faculty from across many disciplines and which ties students to UNF even after they graduate.

Professor Ari is a teacher par excellence, with the ability to inspire students to become active participants in their educations and to grow exponentially in their creative and academic writing abilities, all while acquiring the skills and knowledge that will lead them into successful careers after graduation. Professor Ari is an irreplaceable teacher and mentor.

We would like to submit this petition by April 8, 2013 to the Office of the President, The office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the English Department. Please forward this petition broadly to UNF students, alumni, faculty, parents, and other members of the UNF community.



More Information

1. Biography
2. Is Mark Ari tenurable?


1. Biography

Along with UNF students, Mark Ari founded and continues to serve as Editorial Advisor to the literary journal, Fiction Fix; edits EAT, a publisher of digital albums and audio chapbooks which includes the highly regarded EAT Poems series; and directs River House, the University of North Florida’s virtual writer’s house. He publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Among these are two chapbooks: Bloodshot and Blue, a collection of poetry (Stony Brook Free Press) and Deathfoot Ha! (Stroker Press) His novel, The Shoemaker’s Tale (Zephyr Press), received high praise in international trade and popular periodicals like the New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, Na’amat Woman, The Jerusalem Post, the Association of Jewish Libraries, and others.

He is a performing singer-songwriter and has written and performed three one-man shows: Flatbush Serenade (premiered at the Maryland Theater in Hagerstown, MD), Blue Babies (premiered at the Paramount Theater, Wilkes-Barre, PA) and Songs for the Waste Laboratory, (premiered at The Living Theater, NYC).

His paintings have been exhibited in group and solo shows in the United States and abroad, in such venues as Westbeth Gallery (NYC), Broome Street Gallery (NYC), the Southern Vermont Art Center, El Jueves Galleria (Seville, Spain), the Giralda Center (Seville, Spain), and Gallerie La Pantographe (Lyon, France). He has been awarded three fellowships the MacDowell Colony, two from the Ragdale Foundation, and one each from Fundacion Valparaiso and the Ucross Foundation.

He has won three Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Awards and a Distinguished Advisor Award at the University of North Florida, as well as two DRC Professor Empowerment Awards from the UNF Disability Resource Center.

2. Is Mark Ari tenurable?

With an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, Mark Ari holds the terminal degree recommended by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, accepted by the accrediting organization of UNF (the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools), and upheld by departments of the vast majority of colleges and universities across the U.S.


For further information regarding the recommendations of these organizations and schools, as well as the American Association of University Professors’ recommendations on converting contingent faculty appointments to tenure line, see the “Background information."