Sorry to be posting THE SAME post again, but something weird happened with the formatting on my “Happy New Year’s!” post when it got uploaded to facebook.  And…I am anal enough that I want a more readable copy on my FB page as well.  So…here ya are again!:

******original post******

2010.  Wow.

I can’t think of a decade that went by faster than this past one.  I’ve spent 7 1/2 years of the ’00′s in Pennsylvania.  That means that I have lived here longer than DC (3years), Oxford, OH (4 years), and almost as long as I lived in Syracuse (8 years).  Pretty wild.  And…what’s really got me thinking…of my 7 1/2 years at Kutztown University, I’ve been the coordinator of composition for all but two of those years.  That’s right…I’m one of those people who took on the reigns of writing program administration well before I was tenured.  I’ve been a tenured coordinator of composition for only a year and half.   Believe me, I was told all during grad school that taking on WPA duties before tenure was a bad idea.  Practitioners in our field also recommend strongly against it.  But, at the time it didn’t feel like there was too much choice if I was going to be able to help build our composition program–one of the key reasons I came to KU.

At the end of my second year, ten faculty in our department retired; one tenure-track faculty member got married and joined her husband on the West Coast; and, our then Chair decided to tell us during finals week that he had accepted a new job and would not be with us the following fall.  He even passed around pictures of his new house in Michigan.  I remember that moment as both daunting and exciting.  Daunting in that our faculty was gutted by almost a third and we had to scramble to elect and new chair and figure out how to staff all of our courses by the fall semester.  Exciting because many of those people who were retiring were the very faculty members who seemed committed to internal factionalism and personal conflict.  In one fell swoop, that dysfunctional departmental dynamic would be gone for the most part.  We had the opportunity to build a new, collaborative department.

Our coordinator of composition at the time decided to run for department chair.  She and I had talked about me taking over the coordinator position, but this would mean I would do so a year ahead of time.  I didn’t see any real alternatives, no matter how conflicted I was about my premature entry into the world of writing program administration. I can’t pretend that my first couple of years at the coordinator were easy.  It was a huge adjustment that was marked by my own, at times, ambivalent relationship to administrative work.  But, in looking back on these 5 1/2 years, I think I can say that I’ve been able to do some pretty good things here.

I think my biggest contribution has been to privilege growing the program.  This has meant: 1) prioritizing building a core faculty in composition and rhetoric; 2) cultivate intellectual spaces to support that core faculty and all faculty teaching composition; and 3) build an undergraduate (and eventually graduate) concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (the name came later, actually). Since I took over in 2004, we’ve hired three new faculty in composition and rhetoric and we are in the middle of hiring our fourth.  We’ve also converted a temporary faculty member–who is completing her PhD in composition and rhetoric–to a tenure-track position.  So, by fall 2010 we will have increased the number of comp/rhet faculty from three to eight.  Not bad.

In terms of creating an intellectual space, I started a reading group in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies that meets monthly to discuss current scholarship in the field.  Thanks to the great work of Amy Lynch-Biniek and the Composition Conference Committee, we’ve expanded our annual undergraduate composition conference to include students taking composition and rhetoric courses at all levels.  We’ve also brought in keynote speakers such at Keith Gilyard, Rosa Eberly, and Steve Parks–and this spring Susan Wells will be joining us.

We have also revised and added several new courses to the department’s offerings.  In my first year as coordinator, we added ENG 430 “Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions.”  Last year, we added my course ENG 316 “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy.”  And this past semester, we added ENG 260 “Issues in Composition and Rhetoric” (Lynch-Biniek) and ENG 274 “Women, Writing, and Rhetoric” (Cullum).  Linda Cullum also worked with Lisa Weckerle from Speech/Communications to update ENG/SPE 335 “Rhetoric of Literature.”  Thanks in large part to our Chair (and fellow compositionist) Janice Chernekoff, ENU 405 “Teaching of Writing” runs every semester and is a required course for all Secondary Education/English majors.  All of these new courses are part of our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies, which I expect to have cleared all the curricular hurdles by the end of spring 2010 semester.  It’s really been quite an amazing run so far.

Like anything else, I could also list the many things I wish I had done, done better, or didn’t do.  But, I’m pretty good at beating myself up about those things on a daily basis.  In the spirit of the New Year, I thought I’d cut myself a little slack, look back at some accomplishments, and remind myself that the work is worth it.  Now I can actually begin planning for the next step!

Hmmmmm….where can we go from here?

2010.  Wow.

I can’t think of a decade that went by faster than this past one.  I’ve spent 7 1/2 years of the ’00′s in Pennsylvania.  That means that I have lived here longer than DC (3years), Oxford, OH (4 years), and almost as long as I lived in Syracuse (8 years).  Pretty wild.  And…what’s really got me thinking…of my 7 1/2 years at Kutztown University, I’ve been the coordinator of composition for all but two of those years.  That’s right…I’m one of those people who took on the reigns of writing program administration well before I was tenured.  I’ve been a tenured coordinator of composition for only a year and half.   Believe me, I was told all during grad school that taking on WPA duties before tenure was a bad idea.  Practitioners in our field also recommend strongly against it.  But, at the time it didn’t feel like there was too much choice if I was going to be able to help build our composition program–one of the key reasons I came to KU.

At the end of my second year, ten faculty in our department retired; one tenure-track faculty member got married and joined her husband on the West Coast; and, our then Chair decided to tell us during finals week that he had accepted a new job and would not be with us the following fall.  He even passed around pictures of his new house in Michigan.  I remember that moment as both daunting and exciting.  Daunting in that our faculty was gutted by almost a third and we had to scramble to elect and new chair and figure out how to staff all of our courses by the fall semester.  Exciting because many of those people who were retiring were the very faculty members who seemed committed to internal factionalism and personal conflict.  In one fell swoop, that dysfunctional departmental dynamic would be gone for the most part.  We had the opportunity to build a new, collaborative department.

Our coordinator of composition at the time decided to run for department chair.  She and I had talked about me taking over the coordinator position, but this would mean I would do so a year ahead of time.  I didn’t see any real alternatives, no matter how conflicted I was about my premature entry into the world of writing program administration. I can’t pretend that my first couple of years at the coordinator were easy.  It was a huge adjustment that was marked by my own, at times, ambivalent relationship to administrative work.  But, in looking back on these 5 1/2 years, I think I can say that I’ve been able to do some pretty good things here.

I think my biggest contribution has been to privilege growing the program.  This has meant: 1) prioritizing building a core faculty in composition and rhetoric; 2) cultivate intellectual spaces to support that core faculty and all faculty teaching composition; and 3) build an undergraduate (and eventually graduate) concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (the name came later, actually). Since I took over in 2004, we’ve hired three new faculty in composition and rhetoric and we are in the middle of hiring our fourth.  We’ve also converted a temporary faculty member–who is completing her PhD in composition and rhetoric–to a tenure-track position.  So, by fall 2010 we will have increased the number of comp/rhet faculty from three to eight.  Not bad.

In terms of creating an intellectual space, I started a reading group in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies that meets monthly to discuss current scholarship in the field.  Thanks to the great work of Amy Lynch-Biniek and the Composition Conference Committee, we’ve expanded our annual undergraduate composition conference to include students taking composition and rhetoric courses at all levels.  We’ve also brought in keynote speakers such at Keith Gilyard, Rosa Eberly, and Steve Parks–and this spring Susan Wells will be joining us.

We have also revised and added several new courses to the department’s offerings.  In my first year as coordinator, we added ENG 430 “Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions.”  Last year, we added my course ENG 316 “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy.”  And this past semester, we added ENG 260 “Issues in Composition and Rhetoric” (Lynch-Biniek) and ENG 274 “Women, Writing, and Rhetoric” (Cullum).  Linda Cullum also worked with Lisa Weckerle from Speech/Communications to update ENG/SPE 335 “Rhetoric of Literature.”  Thanks in large part to our Chair (and fellow compositionist) Janice Chernekoff, ENU 405 “Teaching of Writing” runs every semester and is a required course for all Secondary Education/English majors.  All of these new courses are part of our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies, which I expect to have cleared all the curricular hurdles by the end of spring 2010 semester.  It’s really been quite an amazing run so far.

Like anything else, I could also list the many things I wish I had done, done better, or didn’t do.  But, I’m pretty good at beating myself up about those things on a daily basis.  In the spirit of the New Year, I thought I’d cut myself a little slack, look back at some accomplishments, and remind myself that the work is worth it.  Now I can actually begin planning for the next step!

Hmmmmm….where can we go from here?

Well, actually, the fall semester wasn’t delayed at all.  Only my post to this blog .

Welcome back everyone!  I have to say that  it was pretty incredible coming back this semester and having seven–SEVEN– comp/rhet faculty at our first meeting.  We’ve come a long way in terms of faculty hiring and program development in a very short time.  When I took over the Coordinator position, we had three comp/rhet faculty members.

There has also been a pretty rapid increase in student interest in upper-level composition courses.  ENG 430 Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions, went live in the Spring 2007 semester and this coming Spring, my new course ENG 316 Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy will be offered for the first time.  Amy Lynch-Biniek authored a new course, ENG XXX Composition and Rhetoric Studies which is making its way through the curricular process and will be one of the key courses for our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies.  Linda Cullum will be submitting her new course, ENG XXX Women, Writing, Rhetoric to the curriculum committees this semester.  In addition, our ENU 405 Teaching of Writing, continues to fill every semester with graduate and undergraduate students. Needless to say, we are excited about the direction our program is headed!

This semester I hope to get all our comp/rhet faculty up and running on this blog too.  This way you can hear from all of us…of different approaches to teaching, latest scholarship, thoughts on writing and rhetoric, musings, and random contributions to this little space.

I am going to leave for now…but will return soon!  Thanks for taking the time to check in.

OK…so, you may have been following my trials and tribulations trying to post my first podcast episode. Well, I think I’ve got the tech part of things worked out.

So, last week I was as CCCCs in San Francisco.  It was a great conference and our panel, Labor Rhetoric and Academic Organizing, went extraordinarily well.  We had a pretty packed room and it was a privilege to be presenting alongside such awesome colleagues: Mary Boland, Seth Kahn, Amy Lynch-Biniek, Rachel Riedner, and Eileen Schell (our respondent).  I was also quite pleased with the vigorous discussion following our papers.  That discussion continued on over to the Serrano Hotel for our CCCCs Labor Caucus Interest Group.  Truly a great way to cap off the day. 

As you may have seen, I decided to use this year’s CCCCs to enter the world of video blogging (vlogging) on our 

composition and rhetoric blog.  That was fun and has got me on a bit of a web 2.0 kick this week (don’t even get me started about Nings).  As I wrote earlier, I’ve got a rather ambitious tech agenda for the fall and I’ve submitted a tech request for some equipment that I hope will come through.  I also found out that I still have a small chuck of money from a Teachnology Grant I received a few years ago for WritersBlogK, a project I undertook with Aaron Barlow.  So, it looks like I’m going to pick up the Snowball after all!

In the meantime, I thought I would take the leap and try my hand at podcasting this week.  After a couple days of failure, I think I’ve finally got the hang of it.  Since I just presented a paper at CCCCs, I thought that would be a good test case.  So, here it is folks: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”  In addition to the paper I presented, I also included a bunch of “notes” that were in an earlier draft but had to be cut due to time.

CCCCs Paper: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”  Click the radio or the play button to listen.

 "Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures" [24:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (100)

Well, CCCCs here I come…rrr…actually not until tomorrow morning.  I’ve still got to finish packing, but it’s about time to call it a night.  

I’m quite excited about our panel and the labor caucus meeting for sure.  I’m also going to be playing around with blogging and podcasting from the CCCCs.  Blogging for sure.  Podcasting if I can get things up and running without too much hassle.  So, stay tuned.  Hopefully I’ll be able to cajole Amy, Mysti, Moe, Seth, Rachel, and others to post a little to our comp/rhet blog as well.  

In the meantime, here’s what I’m looking forward to:

NWS San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey, CA Zone Forecast: San Francisco County

Tonight…Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 30s to lower 40s. West winds 5 to 15 mph.  Wednesday…Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 50s to lower 60s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Wednesday Night…Mostly clear. Lows in the upper 30s to mid 40s. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Thursday…Partly cloudy. Highs near 60. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Thursday Night…Mostly clear. Lows in the 40s. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Friday…Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 50s to mid 60s. Friday Night…Mostly clear. Lows in the 30s to upper 40s.

CCCCs is in San Francisco this week!

Yup, in just a few days I’ll be joining my agitating (in a good way!) composition pals in San Francisco for CCCCs.  I can’t wait to get there!  Not only am I totally excited about my panel, I am looking forward to helping reignite the CCCCs Labor Caucus!  And, how convenient is this, the Labor Caucus meeting is immediately following our panel…hmmmm, how did that happen?

Here’s the full description of our panel…come out if you can!

Labor Rhetoric and Academic Organizing: Possibilities and Predicaments

Session: D.22 on Mar 12, 2009 from 3:15 PM to 4:30 PM

As a field, Composition/Rhetoric attends carefully to academic labor issues, primarily regarding contingent faculty. This session highlights the limits of this focus and advocates for further action towards labor equity/justice in academia. Speakers articulate an array of labor problems, ranging from the importance of composition theory in staffing writing courses, to the abuse of immigrant labor on college campuses, and call for more aggressive, multi-layered (curricular, departmental, university-wide) labor organizing in response.

Amy Lynch-Biniek:

“When Teaching Is Generic: Connecting Composition Theory to Staffing Practices”

Administrators devalue Composition theory in order to justify staffing practices. If knowledge of Composition theory is unnecessary, if teaching becomes a generic skill, then courses may be cheaply staffed with graduate students and temporary employees who may have little knowledge of Composition. Consequently, pedagogy is less likely grounded in strong theoretical rationale. I argue that one tactic in a larger strategy for altering labor practices and improving Composition teaching is reasserting the essential role of Composition theory to composition teaching.

Seth Kahn:

“‘If I Don’t Do It, Nobody Will’”: Writing Program Faculty Fulfilling Management Responsibilities”

Growing numbers of management and shrinking numbers of full-time faculty positions significantly impact Writing Program faculty and administrators in two ways: (1) the well-documented deflection of resources away from faculty; and despite growing numbers of managers, (2) Writing Program faculty/administrators doing more management work. This presentation analyzes the second point, contending that writing instruction and program administration suffer when faculty take on management responsibilities, and that academic unions need to take a stronger stand on enabling faculty to concentrate on faculty work.

Rachel Riedner

“Immigrant Labor and Universities”

While university communities are an imagined community of students and faculty engaged in the project of education, these communities increasingly include immigrant workers. Immigrant workers are constructed to be both inside and outside the university: inside insofar as they reproduce the conditions of education for the university community, and outside insofar as they are not imagined as part of the community. This paper argues that with contracting immigrant labor comes a contracting out of community responsibility, resigning service and immigrant employees to invisibility in educational communities.

Kevin Mahoney

“Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures”

In the 1990s, labor conditions and labor organizing in higher education took center stage in rhetoric and composition. However, the field has not sought to deepen that project significantly through explicit rhetorical instruction in labor organizing and advocacy. Focusing on higher education labor organizing, this paper argues for a curricular project connecting explicit instruction in rhetorics of advocacy, new undergraduate majors in comp/rhet, and the field’s investment in critical citizenship.

Mary Boland

“Contracting Competing Interests: Unionizing and the Preservation of Academic Freedom.”

More and more academic workers are looking to unions to preserve their professional integrity. Unionizing can pose problems because the guild ideology that justifies academic freedom runs counter to the egalitarianism that underwrites unionization. The risk is that we may unintentionally redefine the terms of work in a manner that undercuts academic freedom. I illustrate how unionizing can generate competing rights among classes of laborers and jeopardize faculty freedoms and suggest that compositionists are uniquely situated to help anticipate these pitfalls.

Respondent: Eileen Schell

Last week’s Composition Conference for First-Year Student Writers was an unqualified success! Over 150 230 students participated in the conference!

Amy Lynch-Biniek and Kevin Mahoney would like to thank the members of the Composition Conference Committee for helping make this event possible: Barbara Belejack, Tony Bleach, Liz Casner, Linda Cullum, Todd Dodson, Joanne Emge, Dan Featherston, Melissa Nurczynski, Carissa Pokorny-Golden, Patty Pytleski, Don McNamara, Rebecca Stewart, and Todd Williams. A special thanks goes out to Annette Christman, the English Department secretary, whose knowledge of the university and help has been indispensable.

Thanks to Janice Chernekoff, the Chair of the English Department, for her continued support of the conference; to Joanne Emge for helping bring the Foust Lecture and the Composition Conference together this year; to the Provost, Dr. Carlos Vargas for his moral and institutional support; and to LAS Dean, Dr. Bashar Hanna for supplemental funds to help bring Keith Gilyard to KU. Thanks to all of the faculty who have encouraged their students to participate in this conference as panelists and audience members. Finally, thanks to all the students who took a big step in submitting and presenting their papers. We welcome you to the conversation.