Cultural rhetorics—as orientation, methodology, and practice—has made meaningful contributions to writing pedagogy (Brooks-Gillies et al.; Cedillo and Bratta; Baker-Bell; Cedillo et al.; Cobos et al.; Condon and Young; Powell). Despite these contributions, classroom teachers and writing program administrators can struggle to conceptualize assessment beyond bureaucratic practice and their role in assessment beyond standing in loco for the institution. To more fully realize the potential of cultural rhetorics in our classrooms and programs, the field needs assessment models that seek to uncover the counterstories of writing and meaning-making. Our work, at the intersections of queer rhetorics and writing assessment, provides a theoretical framework called Queer Validity Inquiry (QVI) that disrupts stock stories of success—a success that is always available to some at the expense of others. Through four diffractive lenses—failure, affectivity, identity, and materiality—QVI prompts us to determine what questions about student writers and their writing intrigue us, why we care about them, and whose interests are being served by those questions.

Members of the CCCC Committee on Globalization of Postsecondary Writing Instruction and Research drafted the following policy statement between 2014 and 2017. Composing the policy statement has been a key charge for the committee since its inception in 2009; the impetus for both the committee and the statement arises out of CCCC’s recognition that the processes of globalization influence all members of the discipline, including writing program administrators, teachers, students, and researchers. We hope that the definitions, guidelines, recommendations, and suggestions for further reading offered in the policy statement ultimately serve CCCC constituents in teaching, research, and outreach. The statement has also been published on the CCCC website.

Theorizing WPA expertise as problem-oriented, stakeholder-inclusive practice, we apply the twenty-first-century paradigm of transdisciplinarity to a campus WID Initiative to read and argue that data-driven research capturing transdisciplinary WPA methods in action will allow us to better understand, represent, and leverage rhetoric-composition/writing studies’ disciplinary expertise in twenty-first-century higher education.

This article offers a fuller account than we currently have of the complex, uneasy relationship between behaviorism and writing studies in order both to complicate our disciplinary historiography and to encourage writing scholars, teachers, and program administrators to articulate productive and unproductive understandings of writing behaviors.

Dear Colleagues:I am writing this letter amidst the splendor of a New England fall, a time of year marked by transition from a leafy and robust spring and summer to the inevitable, if brilliant, decline preceding the coming of winter. This fall feels different, however. The loss that fall signifies seems deeper this year, its reach extending back to early summer. I'm referring to the passing of our beloved and inspiring NCTE Executive Director, colleague and friend Kent Williamson. Those who were fortunate to have known and worked with Kent can attest to his singular qualities. A visionary with a clear grasp of the here-and-now, Kent, like no other leader that I've known, saw the Big Picture-he was the best strategic thinker that I've seen-while recognizing the importance of paying attention to the details. He also had the gift of leading while making it seem as if WE were initiating. In other words, Kent was a first-rate listener and believed with his heart and soul that no group can thrive without the full engagement and collaboration of its members. In his memory and with his spirit, the CCCC Officers and NCTE staff will attempt to carry on Kent's work to the best of our abilities. I know that he would expect no less. Now onto my report. . . .FinancesThis organization continued to make investment gains ($216,922) even as it went $120,411 over budget on operations. We ran a genuine loss last year, as spending exceeded income from operations. In FY15 there were a few areas that led to the loss. Membership dues, as an example, are declining. Feedback on the work of the organization was positive, but many could get all they need from CCCC without being members. In the end, we were $13,938 below projections on membership dues.Ultimately, we need to focus more on strategic items based on our vision. We have $2.29 million in the contingency fund, but spending it wisely requires careful planning and making choices.Activities for FY16:* In addition to extending our substantial investment in access and equity ($32,829 for the PEP program to provide registration/support to contingent and adjunct faculty who need help to attend the CCCC Convention), we earmarked up to $3,000 of spending to match funds raised from the membership to provide a CCCC Contingent Faculty Travel Assistance Fund for convention attendance, and $3,000 to support the Chair's Scholarship Fund.* Now that the 5% amount from our contingency reserve is over $120,000, the FY16 budget splits that amount between research grants selected through an open application project (at least $100,000), and the cost of developing a database of graduate and undergraduate writing programs. This makes our investment in member research larger than it has been any year except for FY15, while also providing funds to build a renewable resource of benefit to students, faculty, and program administrators alike.* We included videotaping of member interviews and advocacy training across the convention.* We again provided $8,000 in funding to support a CCCC Policy Fellow position. This person has been working with our DC office to help coordinate follow-through actions in support of reports filed by our new state-based network of higher education policy analysts, and has provided research summaries and expert testimony/insights drawn from professional practice on public policy issues of concern to our organization. The funding provides a small honorarium ($3,000) and travel fund ($5,000) to help support these activities. The CCCC Policy Fellow is selected by the CCCC Chair and Secretary-Treasurer.* Under publications, we extended a third year of funding to support a CCCC Social Media Coordinator. This person works with staff as an independent contractor to both produce online events/discussions of interest to CCCC members (on the Connected Community and across other online social media platforms as well), and to more readily connect members to each other in social media contexts. …

This article draws on qualitative research conducted as a part of a writing program assessment to examine the relationship between assessment, valuation, and the economics of first-year writing. It argues that the terms of labor in first-year writing complicate practices of valuation and the processes of consensus building that have become common in assessment models. It explains that if assessment is to be situated at a site and represent the work that happens there faithfully, it needs to account for how power, the economics of staffing, and differing ways of thinking about writing education necessitate struggle and the acknowledgment and representation of dissonance.

This essay revisits and expands on Gary A. Olson and Joseph M. Moxley’s 1989 article “Directing Freshman Composition: The Limits of Authority” by looking at revised notions of writing program administrators’ work and authority in 2012. Whereas the original essay surveyed only department chairs, our study includes data from both department chairs and directors of first-year writing to explore issues of authority. The essay complicates Olson and Moxley’s notion of authority, distinguishing among power, authority, and influence, and examining how they inflect the work of directors of first-year writing. In addition, common assumptions about the connections between WPAs’ tenure status and authority are re-examined in light of survey results.

Exploring language practices, beliefs, and management in a first-year writing program, this article considers the obstacles to and opportunities for transforming languagepolicy and enacting a new multilingual norm in U.S. postsecondary writing instruction. It argues that the articulation of statements regarding language diversity, co-developedby teachers and program administrators, is a valuable step in viewing and constructing the classroom as a multilingual space.

This article argues for and models an approach to writing program assessment that relies on study of the writing practices of program graduates as a way to inform revisions in curriculum and teaching practices. The article also examines how conducting such assessments can help nondisciplinary publics understand the nature of composition studies.

We argue that the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, with its dual emphasis on literacy and occupational skills, can serve as a new model for writing classrooms and writing program administrators. We further contend that the “contact zone” classroom should be replaced with community-based “federations.”

This article defines applied rhetorical work as integral to the intellectual work of writing program administration and asks our professional organizations to classify it as such within our position statements. With a specific case, it offers a generative framework for representing and assessing the work’s scholarly commons for professional review.

As writing-program administrators and faculty are being called upon more frequently to help design and facilitate large-scale assessments, it becomes increasingly important for us to see assessment as integral to our work as academics. This article provides a framework, based on current historical, theoretical, and rhetorical knowledge, to help writing specialists understand how to embrace assessment as a powerful mechanism for improved teaching and learning at their institutions.

I. Theorizing Our Writing Programs 1. Ideology, Theory, and the Genre of Writing Programs, Jeanne Gunner 2. Breaking Hierarchies: Using Reflective Practice to Re-Construct the Role of the Writing Program Administrator, Susan Popham, Michael Neal, Ellen Schendel & Brian Huot 3. Writing Programs as Phenomenological Communities, Thomas Hemmeter 4. On the Road to (Documentary) Reality: Capturing the Intellectual and Political Process of Writing Program Administration, Karen Bishop 5. The Writing Program Administrator and the Challenge of Textbooks and Theory, William Lalicker 6. Re-Examining the Theory-Practice Binary in the Work of Writing Program Administrators, Linda K. Shamoon, Robert A. Schwegler, Rebecca Moore Howard & Sandra Jamieson II. Theorizing Writing Program Administration 7. Administration as Emergence: Toward a Rhetorical Theory of Writing Program Administration, Rita Malenczyk 8. Beyond Postmodernism: Leadership Theories and Writing Program Administration, Ruth M. Mirtz & Roxanne M. Cullen 9. Theorizing Ethical Issues in Writing Program Administration, Carrie Leverenz 10. Program Administrators as/and Postmodern Planners: Frameworks for Making Tomorrow's Writing Space, Tim Peeples 11. Opportunities for Consilience: Toward a Network-Based Model for Writing Program Administration, Diane Kelly-Riley, Lisa Johnson-Shull & Bill Condon 12. Writing-Across-the-Curriculum: Contemplating Auteurism and Creativity in Writing Program Direction, Joseph Janangelo 13. Reconsidering and Assessing the Work of Writing Program Administrators, Duane Roen, Barry M. Maid, Gregory R. Glau, John Ramage & David Schwalm 14. Developing Practice Theories through Collaborative Research: Implications for WPA Scholarship, Jeffrey Jablonski 15. Theorizing Writing Program Theorizing, Irwin Weiser & Shirley K Rose

After reviewing my career as a teacher of composition and literature and as a writing program administrator of writing across the curriculum, I discuss the potential of poetry across the curriculum as an important tool for writing “against” the curriculum of academic discourse. When they write poetry, students often express meaningful thoughts and emotions not readily available to them in disciplinary languages and contexts.

Review of the book Kitchen Cooks, Plate Twirlers, and Troubadours: Writing Program Administrators Tell Their Stories (edited by Diana George).

Composition (at its best) and feminism work against the grain of conventional institutional practices. Both challenge assumptions and seek to transform ways of thinking, teaching, and learning. Both are complex, containing different agendas and different voices. Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words is a feminist project that boldly places at its center differences among women. Topics discussed include American history, politics, language, racism, pedagogy, contingent labor in the teaching of writing, e-mail behavior, and the need for educational and institutional reform. Teachers, graduate students, program administrators, and feminists will find valuable the critiques, theoretical as well as personal, contained in this unusually honest and thought-provoking volume.

With this collection of essays, the concept of writing program administration as a significant expression of scholarship comes of age. Featuring the insights of many prominent composition scholars and writing program administrators, this book has a dual message. First is that writing programs represent a different presence in the academy, one that can pose a critique to accepted practices and elicit institutional change. Second is that WPAs can creatively use this different and liminal status to help writing programs resituate themselves at the center, rather than at the margins, of their institutions. Divided into three sections, the book's first features essays on defining the differences between writing programs and other, more familiar academic units; the ethical dimension of writing program administration; technology's place in writing programs; and the critical role of two-year institutions. In the second section, four veteran WPAs suggest ways to build liaisons with other members of the campus community. The book's final section reflects on how writing program administrators can imagine their work both to make it possible to accomplish and to make its differences understandable and appreciated by those who judge WPAs. Resituating Writing is a resource that will help composition specialists locate their scholarship and teaching within broad political and intellectual frameworks. It provides persuasive evidence of the unique scope of the WPA's work for other administrators whose decisions affect writing programs. And it is particularly relevant for graduate students as they prepare for their own future responsibilities as teachers and administrators.

I recently attended a conference previously unknown to me and to most college English faculty: The Assessment Forum of American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). (I was there to give a paper on measurement of writing ability and on evaluation of writing programs.) The experience of that conference ought to have been routine; after all, I have directed a variety of large-scale writing programs and I have been speaking and publishing on writing assessment for over fifteen years; I have also spent many years as chair of an English department and as a writing program administrator. But experience of hearing papers and discussions at that conference was not at all routine; it was both troubling and enlightening, as well as quite new in unexpected ways. My first reaction to sessions on writing measurement at AAHE was that I had entered a new world. The papers not only made different assumptions about writing than I, as a writing teacher, writer, and researcher, normally make, but came out of a wholly different scholarly community of discourse, one that calls itself the assessment movement. The references were entirely unfamiliar, procedures were different, and approach to subject struck me as insensitive to what writing is all about. But all of these differences seemed to center on way people spoke (and hence thought) about measurement: I was in a foreign country, language was different, and that difference changed everything. I had entered a new discourse community in a field in which I was a well-published specialist, and none of my knowledge or experience seemed to matter. And yet discourse was about measuring writing ability and evaluating writing programs, that is, about what has (however accidentally) become my specialty. I felt disoriented. When I returned home from AAHE I found a flier from Jossey-Bass, publisher of my 1985 book, Teaching and Assessing Writing. I don't expect book to appear on every flier marketing division puts out, but this little