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?
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As we get closer to the beginning of the semester, I expect that many faculty members–new AND returning–will be looking for ideas for their college composition courses. Those of you who have been around for a while might remember the faculty/student/grad student resources pages that I had on our old web site. Well, I am slowly but surely rebuilding them on our new site.
