Field Of Dreams

Peggy O'Neill

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780874214406
• eBook ISBN: 9780874214642
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

One of the first collections to focus on independent writing programs, A Field of Dreams offers a complex picture of the experience of the stand-alone. Included here are narratives of individual programs from a wide range of institutions, exploring such issues as what institutional issues led to their independence, how independence solved or created administrative problems, how it changed the culture of the writing program and faculty sense of purpose, success, or failure.

Further chapters build larger ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of stand-alone status, covering labor issues, promotion/tenure issues, institutional politics, and others. A retrospective on the famous controversy at Minnesota is included, along with a look at the long-established independent programs at Harvard and Syracuse.

Finally, the book considers disciplinary questions raised by the growth of stand-alone programs. Authors here respond with critique and reflection to ideas raised by other chapters—do current independent models inadvertently diminish the influence of rhetoric and composition scholarship? Do they tend to ignore the outward movement of literacy toward technology? Can they be structured to enhance interdisciplinary or writing-across-the-curriculum efforts? Can independent programs play a more influential role in the university than they do from the English department?

II
Beyond the Local
CONNECTIONS AMONG COMMUNITIES

7
LEARNING AS WE G(R)O(W)

Strategizing the Lessons of a Fledgling Rhetoric and Writing Studies Department

Jane E. Hindman

Even before the Wyoming Resolution and certainly ever since, compositionists have debated how we might improve the material conditions of teaching writing. Like the promise of the New World shone for many an immigrant, our vision of a legitimate discipline and—even better—a stand-alone department of rhetoric and writing seemed to guarantee the changes we'd longed for and knew we'd earned. In actuality, however, this dream of independence has been less than liberating for many. Some argue that the status of the profession has improved at the expense of the material working conditions of many professionals. While the discipline of composition studies has apparently survived its legitimation crises, the expertise and authority of a majority of its practitioners are persistently and willfully ignored on a massive, institutional scale.

Understanding the causes of and solutions to this seemingly incontrovertible split between the material labor interests and the more “academic” (that is, abstract as well as disciplinary) objectives is the goal of much recent scholarship. In the September 2000 issue of College Composition and Communication (CCC ), for instance, Joseph Harris considers the conflicting interests between “tenure-stream” faculty and adjunct, part-time, and graduate writing instructors or “comp droids,” a term Harris borrows from Cary Nelson. These lecturers, adjuncts, and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are the qualified teachers of writing whose status the Wyoming Resolution strove to improve. In reality, however, their labor has made possible the relative leisure of an upper-class type of scholar, one whom Harris calls—following James Sledd—the “boss compositionist” who's sold out his former peers. This “new” boss, Harris argues, is no different from the old boss: like the privileged literature professors before them, tenured writing instructors enjoy the luxuries of light teaching loads comprised of small graduate seminars while the “droids” bear the weight of undergraduate education.

In order to trace the cooption of writing instructors’ objectives, Harris refers to Jeanne Gunner's analysis of the Conference on College Composition and Communication's (CCCC) response to the Wyoming Resolution—from its original initiative and on through the 1989 “Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing.” Gunner demonstrates how CCCC rhetorically shifted the focus and values of the Wyoming Resolution and thus appropriated the resolve to improve instructors’ labor conditions, transforming it into a means for authorizing composition's growth as a disciplinary community, creating more tenure-track positions in composition, and—by implication perhaps—more independent departments of writing studies. Harris uses Gunner's warning about seduction that lures our attention away from present working conditions to note the folly in our destructive illusion that stabilizing the disciplinary status of composition studies will ultimately enfranchise all writing instructors.

Harris's warning is clearly well intended and relevant. So too are James Sledd's criticisms of boss compositionists who side with the interests of management and Jeanne Gunner's cautionary words to those “blinded by the allures of what might be called ‘MLA-like’ power and status” (108). Our continued professional and disciplinary evolution depends on our identifying the ways our professional commitment to improving working conditions can be and indeed have been co-opted. However, successful integration of the concerns of labor and legitimacy within composition requires us to avoid shortsighted, naive, or decontextualized analyses of how our efforts to improve working conditions and disciplinary authority are appropriated. I do not mean to imply that the critiques I’ve cited are categorically simplistic or restricted; yet, they do seem similar in their tacit assumption about the nature of the problematic shift from material to abstract concerns.

A careful examination of Harris's perspective on the origins of the inequitable caste system in composition reveals that assumption. Here are the alternative methods for improving working conditions that he presents: requiring tenure-stream faculty to teach first-year composition regularly; revising the first-year course so that it becomes less labor-intensive; “mak[ing] the training, supervision and review of adjunct instructors part of our own [i.e.tenure-stream personnel’s] regular work as faculty” (61); and creating departmental autonomy or at least “pressing for more direct control over staffing and curricula” (64). As we can see, a change in values and perceptions is as crucial to these alternatives as the changed behaviors they describe, for the problem—as Harris understands it—emanates from

the attitude of English towards composition in all its unconscious self-righteousness. For English does want full-credit for teaching composition, does want the full-time equivalents and graduate teaching assistantships and ethos of collegial responsibility that comes from such work. But English doesn't want to pay for it. This situation has led to a multi-tiered workforce. (60)

What particularly interests me in this analysis is its implication that getting out of English will provide compositionists and composition what they long for. Carried to its logical conclusion, Harris's diagnosis implies that creating stand-alone departments of composition will not only eliminate the multitiered instructional workforce and equalize ratios between full-time equivalents (FTEs) and salaries, but also enhance the collegial ethos of those who are responsible for the literacy of university students.

SEEING THE LARGER PICTURE: RECOGNIZING OUR UNTENABLE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

Because I am now—but have not always been—a tenure-stream associate professor in a stand-alone department—a department that seceded from English over seven years ago, I consider myself particularly well situated to assess these assumptions. Accordingly, one of my goals here is to interrogate this perspective on the sources of the continued inequitable material conditions in which we academic professionals labor. As I see it, Harris inadvertently creates another diversionary seduction, namely the temptation to blame English and its attitudes for problems in composition and/or to believe that we will or can be immune to the professional and institutional realities. Beguiled by this seduction, we imagine that creating a department of our own will be the answer. I can assure you it's not: neither English departments nor “MLA-like” power structures nor our own individual ambition for job security and position is solely or even collectively responsible for academia's persistent caste system and co-optive processes. The multitiered work force, as indeed the process of co-option itself, is a predictable outcome of the academy's institutionally sanctioned hierarchy. Gunner's explanation of how CCCC appropriated the concrete concerns of the creators of the Wyoming Resolution is, to my view, 100 percent accurate, but that shift from the material world (instructors’ concerns) to an abstract, self-authorized, professional (e.g., “MLA-like”) authority is not a shortcoming of composition or compositionists. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it is a definitive and inevitable feature of professionalization. The shift that works to authorize our field as a discipline establishes an authority that is part and parcel of our eventually being able to improve labor conditions for our professionals. In other words, it is a necessary (though often not very useful or even “right”) requirement of building a discipline. Building disciplinary authority is crucial to changing any material conditions within an institutionally sanctioned hierarchy structured on binary oppositions like these: theory/practice; research/teaching; knowledge/experience; discipline/subject; abstract/material.

I agree that achieving Harris's goal “to forge a more collective view of our work” (43), as well as the goals of the Wyoming Resolution and the CCCC's “Statement of Principles and Standards,” does depend, as he says, on our “turn[ing] more attention now to the institutional structures in which we work” (58). But we need to understand those structures within a larger context; we must further attend to the nature of the academy itself and of professional authority. It's clear to all of us that disciplinary status does not necessarily change material conditions, that only changed practices alter material conditions. But I fear that the changes in practice that Harris suggests will have no noteworthy or long-term effect on the inequities in a multitiered work force, for they do not address the institutional sanctioning of the hierarchy that creates them.

Thus, my second goal here is to identify the professional practices that perpetuate institutional hierarchies and undermine our local, material goals. I also hope to suggest innovative ways to construct new practices that address the hierarchical structures and values of the institution. To provide a local example and a common frame of reference, I offer the case of the stand-alone department where I’ve worked since August 1996.

A BRIEF STAND-ALONE HISTORY: SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY’S DEPARTMENT OF RHETORIC AND WRITING STUDIES

The origins of SDSU's Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies (DRWS) are typical—and not. As is usually the case, most of DRWS's initial tenure-track faculty, as well as lecturers and graduate teaching assistants, were formerly housed in English (the Department of English and Comparative Literature, DECL). Atypical, however, was the union of that group with other faculty formerly housed in an entirely independent and separate unit, namely the Academic Skills Center (ASC). ASC provided developmental writing, ESL, and math instruction to approximately one-third to one-half of the SDSU (incoming as well as transfer) student population; all other lower-and upper-division writing courses had been offered through English. The academic vice president, in response to a faculty team's review of the Academic Skills Center program, first suggested establishing a department devoted solely to composition and rhetoric. Many English faculty opposed this merger of ASC and English composition faculty, at times vigorously and resentfully; however, the proposal was supported by upper administration, particularly the dean of the College of Arts and Letters. In addition to detailing the benefits of a coherent composition program that would encompass nearly all student writing instruction from students’ entrance through their fulfillment of the upper-division writing requirement, the proposal specified that an independent graduate program and upcoming minor in rhetoric and writing would add to the academic status of the newly formed department. Originally presented to the vice president for academic affairs in December 1991 and revised in March 1993, the proposal was approved by SDSU's senate in spring 1993.

In fall 1993, DRWS officially opened it doors, elected its first chair, and began to establish priorities. The faculty consisted of the chair, four additional FTEs of tenure-track faculty and approximately thirty lecturers and sixty GTAs offering writing instruction. Tenure-track faculty collaborated with lecturers, whenever university policy allowed, in creating policy regarding evaluation and rehiring of the lecturers, but worked alone to develop departmental structure, as well as retention, tenure, and promotion guidelines for tenure-track faculty. During 1993 one of DRWS's tenure-track faculty members spearheaded the Freshman Success Program, an all-campus initiative to integrate writing instruction with content material from introductory courses in various majors typically taken by first-year students. Faculty teaching both the developmental and 100-level composition courses took an active part in curriculum design, scheduling, and program promotion of Freshman Success.

In fall 1994, DRWS hired a distinguished visiting professor to examine and revise the Lower Division Writing Program and develop the Teaching Associate Program. In fall 1995, that position, the director of the Lower Division Writing Program, became permanent when one of the original proponents of the stand-alone department accepted a position elsewhere. In academic year (AY) 1995–96, DRWS initiated its proposal for a graduate program, a proposal that—in light of English’s strenuous objections—DRWS was forced to revise substantially; the department also conducted another formal search when it was awarded an additional tenure-track position. That search actually resulted in two new assistant professor hires since another of the original tenured proponents of the department, the former director of the Professional and Technical Writing Certificate Program, returned to English.

At the beginning of AY 1996–97—the third year of its existence— DRWS supported six tenure-track FTEs. During that year DRWS's graduate committee rewrote the proposal for a freestanding M.A. program.¹ When that effort was approved, the same body constructed the subsequent M.A. program implementation plan.² During AY 1997–98, both of the new DRWS tenure-track hires and one additional tenured professor were recruited to work with faculty from other departments to create an interdisciplinary class cluster, the Integrated Experimental Core Curriculum (IECC). One of the DRWS assistant professors was asked to coordinate upper-division IECC efforts in spring 1998; the other taught in the first nine-unit IECC program during spring 1999 and was asked to serve as program codirector in fall 1999. The tenured DRWS professor was recruited to teach a nine-unit IECC course in spring 2000.

AY 1998–99 posed many challenges to DRWS. In fall 1998, the chair accepted a position as associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and thus the department's scheduled search for a new director of Technical and Professional Writing was quickly matched by a search for a new chair. The interim chair, the only full professor remaining in DRWS—who also served half-time in linguistics—took over in November 1998. DRWS's faculty was to be reduced even further when one tenured member accepted a postponed-once-already Fulbright sabbatical. And finally, Executive Order (EO) 665 additionally complicated the department's labor. EO 665's mandate that students complete developmental requirements within their first academic year resulted in more than five thousand students enrolling in DRWS. At that point, when DRWS became the largest university department in terms of student load, an additional tenured faculty member—hired in 1993 as a joint appointment in English and DRWS, but stationed at a satellite campus—joined DRWS to assist the interim chair and two lecturers with the overwhelming scheduling and lecturer hiring issues that accompanied EO 665. These same faculty began (and continue even now) to work with local schools to educate secondary teachers about the English Placement Test and the Entry Level Mathematics Examination; to meet with staff from other campus units (e.g., the advising center, test office, undergraduate studies) to coordinate on-campus responses; and to administer DRWS's agreement with San Diego Community College District to offer thirty composition classes and seventy-two mathematics classes on the SDSU campus during each academic year. These already heavily burdened faculty members joined the others conducting two search committees and promoting the graduate program in efforts to complete the self-study required for the department's first external review.

In fall 1999, two new hires—the chair and the director of professional and technical writing—joined DRWS, and the department underwent its first external review. Reviewers recommended additional tenure-track positions, an especially fortunate decision since the former interim chair was appointed faculty coordinator of the Teaching Resource Center, another tenured person took a semester's leave, and two tenure-track faculty resumed their agreement to teach at least one class annually in English. The department conducted yet another tenure-track search, this time for a coordinator of technology and pedagogy. During AY 1999–2000, the department's ongoing revisions of its upper-division curriculum resulted in a major revision of the primary upper-division writing requirement and two new technical and professional writing courses.

As of fall 2000, ongoing projects in DRWS included continuing to respond to EO 665, administering IECC, conducting another departmental search for a coordinator of upper-division writing, continuing to expand the Technical and Professional Writing Certificate Program, developing an undergraduate minor, lobbying for the still-pending approval of a stand-alone graduate program, and responding to the provost's campuswide initiative to revise and/or develop assessment practices.

MATERIAL WORKING CONDITIONS IN DRWS

As you can see in this whirlwind tour, DRWS's first seven years brought several new tenure-track hires. However, several tenured faculty also departed. In fact, of the original five proponents of the proposal for establishing an independent department, only one remains as an active member of the department, and her appointment fluctuates from zero to .50 FTE, depending on the semester. Only one fully active tenure-track faculty member has been with the department since its inception. It's important to remember that throughout the history I detailed above, as few as four and until fall 2000 never more than six tenure-track faculty members were available to share the work load. Thank goodness, highly qualified lecturers, many of whom had experienced considerable power and administrative responsibility in the Academic Skills Center or in coordinating GTA training in the English department, have contributed significantly to the administration of DRWS. In some cases, however, university policy dictates that only tenure-track faculty (e.g., for evaluation of lecturing faculty, teaching graduate courses) or only tenured or full professors (annual review of probationary tenure-track faculty, review of sabbatical and grant applications) are authorized to serve. In most cases, these faculty efforts are not recognized or rewarded.

Thus, and especially because of EO 665, the formation of DRWS has resulted in more work done by fewer faculty. Keep in mind too that all the efforts I’ve detailed here have been in addition to customary faculty duties. These traditional duties include, of course, teaching: three classes each semester for tenure-track faculty (with some of the faculty who administer programs receiving one or two course releases a semester) and five classes each semester for full-time lecturers. Of the very few lecturers who are granted 100 percent contracts, each receives one course release a semester for such administrative duties as assisting with GTA training (two lecturers); coordinating the assessment projects and a developmental portfolio grading project (two lecturers); hiring, training, and evaluating tutors (one lecturer); administering and coordinating the evaluation of developmental students’ proficiency exam (one lecturer); directing the developmental writing program (one lecturer) and gene...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. Local Scenes: Stories of Independent Writing Programs
• II. Beyond the Local Connections Among Communities
• III. The Big Picture Implications for Composition, English Studies, and Literacy Education
• Afterword: Countering the Naysayers—Independent Writing Programs as Successful Experiments in American Education
• References
• Notes On Contributors
• Index