By Molly Ryan. Mentorship in the field of writing studies is broadly understood to be an essential facet of disciplinary matriculation, but its features are sometimes slippery to define. Indeed, mentorship is difficult to concisely describe and more challenging still to enact in practice. When it does take root, however, both mentor and mentee are aware of the power and benefits of this sometimes-elusive dynamic. In my own experiences both in my MA and PhD programs, my exceptional mentors entered my life through what sometimes felt like serendipitous chance, as in, I was (luckily) in the right place at the right time to meet them. I know too well how lucky I am to have them as my guides, colleagues, and sometimes even friends, but even as a grateful recipient of the best-case scenario for mentorship, so to speak, I find myself continuing to reflect on how we as a field might better scaffold the dynamic of mentor/mentee.

By Meghan Hancock. I came to Threshold Conscripts: Rhetoric and Composition Teaching Assistantships—as I think many of us would—with vivid memories of my first semester teaching first-year writing. I felt some panic and anxiety, of course, at the very idea of a teaching role, but I was also struggling to reconcile the conflicting roles I carried. As Laura R. Micciche puts it in the Foreword to this collection, I was “not-quite teacher and not-quite student,” but was, nevertheless, asked to take on the important role of introducing students to college-level writing (xii). The anxieties and learning moments brought about by these intersecting identities make graduate student instructors of composition a rich and vital population to study, and yet as this collection consistently argues, the field of Writing Studies needs more scholarship examining their experiences. It is this gap that Threshold Conscripts, edited by William Macauley, Jr., Leslie R. Anglesey, Brady Edwards, Kathryn M. Lambrecht, and Phillip K. Lovas, addresses in its collective works that closely analyze the lived experiences of graduate RCTAs (rhetoric and composition teaching assistants) as they attempt to balance their multiple roles as teachers and students.

Gitte Frandsen Kiernan, Julia, Alanna Frost, and Suzanne Blum Malley. Translingual Pedagogical Perspectives: Engaging Domestic and International Students in the Composition Classroom. Utah State University Press, 2021. My first encounter with the concept of translingualism was in a graduate seminar where Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur’s Language Difference in Writing: […]

Megan McIntyre Abstract In response to a growing awareness of the oppressive foundations of educational institutions, literacy educators have turned to antiracist, culturally responsive (Alim and Paris; Paris), and equitable teaching and assessment practices to combat the inequities (colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) on which our institutions are built. According to scholars including Geneva […]

Raffaella Negretti, Hans Malmström, and Jonathan Weidow Abstract In this program profile, we describe the development of an integrated, genre-based writing curriculum in first-year engineering physics at a technical university in Sweden. The curriculum aimed at supporting undergraduate students develop disciplinary literacy and an understanding of the exigencies that different scientific genres fulfill, with a […]

Kristina Quynn Abstract CSU Writes supports researchers as writers across their career span at Colorado State University. The program emerged in an already rich writing ecosystem that includes a Writing Center and the WAC Clearinghouse. Since 2015, CSU Writes has helped thousands of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students write more regularly, skillfully, and with […]

Caitlin Martin and Mandy Olejnik Abstract Composition, rhetoric, and writing studies (CRWS) as a field has historically recognized the importance of mentoring for graduate students, but there can be a disconnect between learning theory and how mentoring occurs in practice. In this article, we argue for a more systematic approach to graduate student mentoring that […]

This article presents students’ experiences with hybrid grading contracts through a thematic analysis of data. We specifically focused on students’ perceptions of the grading contract’s role in improving their writing skills, issues of fairness, labor, and stress. We argue that the stressful conditions of COVID-19 illuminate the benefits and drawbacks of contract grading, especially regarding fairness and equity, when used at institutions that predominantly serve working-class students. This article can serve as an example of how graduate teaching assistants can use hybrid grading contracts in writing classrooms. We conclude with recommendations for instructors on how to adapt grading contracts to meet the needs of the students and suggest a future research agenda to examine grading contracts and stress levels.

While graduate students’ struggles with isolation, self-doubt, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, anxiety, depression, and burnout are well-documented (Morrison-Saunders et al.; Stachl and Barranger), few writing programs directly address their emotional wellbeing (Russell-Pinson and Harris). Drawing on our backgrounds as a therapist and a writing and yoga instructor, we adapted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), contemplative practice, and embodied pedagogies to develop WriteFest, an intervention program that supports graduate students’ wellbeing while writing. In WriteFest, we developed a supportive community and deepened students’ mindful awareness of the physical and mental experience of writing. Through CBT, we built on this foundation of awareness to help students identify and reframe unhelpful belief systems, recognize strengths, and develop self-efficacy (Beck). Our theoretical frame and curriculum are valuable for readers in multiple contexts, as our materials could become a unit within a course or a workshop series offered by a graduate school, student counseling center, or academic support unit.

Mental health challenges, notably anxiety, disproportionately affect graduate students, with research indicating a 41% prevalence rate compared to the general population (Evans et al.). Academic writing anxiety (AWA) stands out among these concerns, correlating with lower grades, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (Martinez et al.; Daly and Wilson; Goodman and Cirka). Traditionally, AWA has been viewed through a cognitive lens, neglecting its complexity. To address this, we conducted a comprehensive survey gathering both quantitative and qualitative data on graduate students’ AWA experiences. Our analysis of student narratives unveils how academic cultures alienate marginalized students, fostering impostor syndrome and AWA. We advocate for integrating mindfulness-based and contemplative pedagogies within feminist and anti-racist frameworks (Mathieu and Muir; Inoue; Graphenreed and Poe) to catalyze transformative change amid this pressing historical moment.

University students can become overwhelmed and hopeless as they pursue their final capstone writing projects. They are also navigating trying times of overlapping crises such as poverty, environmental decay, and war. To address these challenges, our Capstone Writing Groups (CWG) are designed to develop students’ writerly competence and enhance global citizenship traits of wisdom, courage, and compassion by utilizing contemplative and sōka strategies. Our group sessions focus on “good” writing, time management, and self-care strategies. The findings indicate that our writing groups enhanced participants’ writerly identity, writing skills, and critical reflection. They also fostered sōka global citizenship traits. We advocate for contemplative approaches and sōka global citizenship education to provide a human touch to supporting student writing.

In a recent survey completed by 84 graduates of rhetoric and composition PhD programs at various phases of their career, a majority of respondents reported that their graduate programs provided excellent guidance when it came to teaching but insufficient guidance toward scholarly publication. An analysis of survey responses suggests that scholarly publication is troublesome because it marks the transition from student to scholar and because prior knowledge of “school genres” can impede learning of scholarly genres. Furthermore, the liminality novice scholars experience in transitioning from student to scholar evokes anxiety and feelings of impostor syndrome for many. This suggests that mentorship should help emerging scholars develop strategies for recontextualizing genre knowledge in response to diverse rhetorical situations in order to navigate the emotional strain that accompanies the recontextualization process in high-stakes situations.

In this program profile, we describe the development of a new track in Science Communication (SciComm) for an existing Professional Writing minor offered by an independent Writing Program. We identify the international and local exigencies for improving SciComm; the resources needed for this new track—both those already in place and those created; the three lines of SciComm theory that underpin the course designs; and the challenges and opportunities we have identified. Throughout, we offer examples of specific assignments and activities that may interest readers who are considering incorporating more SciComm approaches into their courses and/or programs.

Research on writing pedagogy education (WPE) emphasizes the importance of engaging graduate student instructors (GSIs) in mindful reflection about their own practices and about composition theory. Little research, however, has explored what we learn from a systematic, empirical investigation of GSIs’ reflective writing. In this article, we describe a writing assignment we created for a graduate composition theory course that required GSIs to connect their own beliefs and experiences with the theory they read. We analyzed 60 essays to learn how new writing teachers understand and use composition theory. Our analysis shows that GSIs rely on three discursive patterns to write about theory (we call these cite-comment , cite-apply , cite-engage ) and adopt three orientations towards theory (using theory to explain prior beliefs and maintain a teacherly identity , to solve classroom problems and shore up a teacherly identity , and to accept uncertainty and become a reflective teacher ). We discuss connections between GSIs’ discursive strategies and their theoretical orientations. We conclude by sharing how we have revised both this assignment and our training program to help GSIs better engage theory as they reflect on their own experiences. Finally, we explore the implications of what we learned for WPE broadly.

This article explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Specifically, the article discusses: (1) redesigning writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curriculum theories and practices; (2) revisiting threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) reconsidering notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers’ personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) reconceptualizing writing major curricula in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts. In short, we argue that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole. In addition to our theoretical discussion of the value of engaging with WIL frameworks in writing studies, we introduce our multi-institutional, transnational study of how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up.

This study includes interviews with 70 undergraduate students enrolled in online or hybrid first-year composition (FYC) classes at one of four universities in the United States and analyzes students’ perceptions of digital peer review. Arguing that the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework is a logical heuristic for examining writing studies research, this study finds that synchronicity might be more significant than modality with respect to the ways that peer review is able to achieve social, teaching, and cognitive presence. Overall, this study suggests that synchronicity is a common thread woven throughout each of the CoI presences as a potential way of alleviating negative evaluations of and achieving a learning community through peer review. Data further suggest that hybrid and online students conceptualize relationships as creating a sense of community that is work-based rather than friendship-based, that students might not be aware of or able to foresee ways that peer review applies to other writing contexts or classes, and that instructors could better prepare students for peer review in classrooms and beyond.

The discourse-based interview (DBI) allows researchers to explore writers’ tacit knowledge. This article describes how we taught and learned to adapt a DBI-based interviewing process through the reflections of both the professor and two graduate students in a graduate-level course, Field Methods in Technical Communication. By participating in a large-scale research project focusing on how online PhD students viewed their education post-graduation, current graduate students learned about planning, conducting, and analyzing interviews. The authors reflect on how they not only learned qualitative methods, but how the experience made them feel like part of a research community (as well as an academic community). Taking a dialogic approach, the professor and both graduate students weave narratives, reflections, and the voices of their participants to share their experiences in uncovering tacit knowledge using a DBI-inspired process.

Empirical methods to evaluate undergraduate pedagogy have become quite common in the field of composition studies. Reflection on and evaluation of graduate pedagogy in the field is much less common, however. In this article, the authors suggest that scholars in the field endeavor to develop pedagogical methods for graduate education, while also proposing one such pedagogical approach. The first author developed an approach for the graduate course History and Theories of Composition using an adaptation of Teaching for Transfer pedagogy. With the help of his graduate student co-authors and with interviews from experienced graduate instructors and additional graduate students, the research team further developed this pedagogy to be more effectively applied to graduate courses in composition studies. We believe this approach may be one among many to use, and we encourage other scholars to further develop this method and to develop alternatives.

Drawing on qualitative data gathered from interviews with twelve doctoral students in a composition program at a mid-size public university in the Northeast United States, this article documents graduate teacher-scholars’ conceptual understanding of translingual pedagogy in the context of college writing instruction. I analyze and describe the possibilities and challenges confronted by prospective composition teacher-scholars in implementing translingual pedagogy and conclude the article with a discussion of implications for mentoring programs, WPAs, and TAs.

Current paraphrasing instruction in the composition classroom may ironically promote “knowledge telling” source use, such as patchwriting. We argue for an approach to source use instruction that teaches paraphrase as a spectrum of task-dependent rhetorical skills ranging from knowledge telling to knowledge transforming. We encapsulate and test the effectiveness of this approach in a series of interactive videos. These videos present a rhetorically-grounded framework for source use instruction, including think-aloud protocols that demystify how reading processes can be used to critically engage with source content. We validate this approach with two different demographics: Non-Native English speaking graduate students and First Year Writing students. Findings suggest our approach, compared with a workshop that used ‘traditional’ fear-of-plagiarism tactics, helped NNES students better recognize knowledge transforming as a task-dependent option and understand the process of note-taking to transform source texts. In contrast, the traditional workshop promoted knowledge telling behaviors.

This article reports survey and interview research on how graduate student instructors (GSIs) across the United States navigate the boundaries of disciplinary expertise that define their work as students and teachers. The disciplinary backgrounds of GSIs in this study influenced their experiences with formal writing pedagogy education and their teaching practices. GSIs imported content, mindsets, pedagogies, and skills and expertise from their home disciplines into the FYW classroom and exported practices and dispositions from FYW into their own work as graduate students. I suggest how writing pedagogy educators might reframe preparation experiences to recognize the disciplinary boundaries GSIs work across and to repurpose these boundaries as sites for richer professional development and writing instruction.

This article seeks to answer two questions: what kinds of expertise are needed to lead an effective dissertation boot camp; and how can those outside the graduate student’s discipline support their writing? Drawing on four years of application data and post-camp interviews, I reveal how writing process knowledge—similar to that described in the scholarship on first-year composition—is a fundamental reason dissertators seek help from the boot camps. Ultimately, the article argues that the importance of writing as a dissertation-related threshold concept should be clearly stated and understood across all disciplines: doctoral researchers continue to learn and practice writing. As part of broadly accepting this threshold concept, it becomes clearer that those trained in writing pedagogy and its theories are best situated to lead the most helpful writing-process style boot camps.

This program profile describes a globally focused cocurricular writing program led by faculty, staff, and graduate students from academic affairs and student affairs. Revisiting the program’s first two years, the authors (three graduate students and a faculty member) assert that writing-oriented learning activities within Texas Christian University’s (TCU) GlobalEX program were productively positioned to enable students to engage with other cultures and hone skills for becoming intercultural navigators. Drawing on a similar approach from Fernando Sánchez and Daniel Kenzie to apply Michel de Certeau’s ideas about tactics in cultural work, our program profile identifies important features shaped by this program’s cocurricular context that can be productively drawn upon both in non-course contexts and in curricular spaces. These include writing reflectively within flexible structures arranged to support learning through progressive stages; capitalizing on multimodal composing genres conducive to collaboration; and situating writing in public contexts without the individual pressure of grades.

This article profiles three new graduate instructors in a PhD program in literature who are teaching composition for the first time while enrolled in a teaching methods course. I argue that understanding graduate instructors’ prior beliefs about literacy has the potential to make practica instructors more sympathetic to the complex identity-based and ideological negotiations new graduate instructors must undertake in their first year of teaching while also pointing to ways to facilitate this work.

This article presents data from a 2013 survey of students enrolled in a longstanding rhetoric and composition Ph.D. program at the University of Louisville (U of L), a mid-sized public institution in the American South. The survey collected data regarding graduate students’ perceptions of language diversity in the context of their professional development as composition teacher-scholars. It interprets the data in relationship to what Yasemin Yildiz has described as the “postmonolingual condition” of 21st century Western social life: a field of tension between monolingualist ideology and increasingly visible multilingual practices. Drawing from student recommendations, it suggests ways this program, and others like it, can leverage students’ positive perceptions of and attitudes toward multilingualism to norm language differences in its mainstream rhetoric and composition graduate curriculum.

This program profile describes an initiative to meet the college reading and writing requirement for undergraduate students in a premedical program at St. George’s University (SGU) in Grenada, West Indies. Two courses were developed in response to concerns that the existing curriculum was not meeting the specific needs of premedical students. The existing courses were literature-based and provided minimal feedback or other opportunities for development. Additional concerns involved a varied range of abilities among students that was not being addressed, large class sizes, and lack of investment on the part of premedical students. Solutions include the incorporation of a task-based curriculum focused on the medical profession in order to increase engagement, division of students into small cohorts with small teacher/student ratios, integration of skill building into all activities, and implementation of process writing to allow for intensive feedback and student development.

Recently, rhetorical genre studies scholars have challenged the field to de-center the study of genre as artifact to focus on the conditions that surround, inform, and constrain how those genres get used by writers: the genre uptakes. While prior research has begun to identify many of these consequential influences, these endeavors would benefit, I argue, from an emic, writer-oriented method that follows what writers perceive has impact on genres from a longitudinal and trans-contextual perspective. To that end, I extend previous research by introducing lifeworld analysis to the study and teaching of genre uptake. Lifeworld analysis, I argue, centralizes uptake, uptakes over time, and the background life from which uptakes are formed, as salient for literacy development. To support this claim, I present a lifeworld case study of one student (Ron), an electrical engineering major and participant in local and online maker culture, who I followed over four years of his undergraduate curriculum, from general education and discipline-specific courses into an online and local community makerspace. Ron’s case reveals the interplay between maker-consciousness and encounters with engineering and general education writing, highlighting how maker culture became a core scene of uptake for his performance of school-based genres. This lifeworld analysis shows the porousness and malleability of spheres of writing activity as well as the consequences of such perceived malleability for writers. Ron’s case grounds my introduction of an uptake awareness pedagogy: an attempt to help students recognize and strategically draw from expanded and often taken-for-granted temporal, spatial, and perspectival histories of their prior genre uptakes and those uptake histories.

In this interview, James Porter talks about his professional career and what he sees as the contemporary challenges for the field of rhetoric and composition/writing studies. Throughout the exchange, Porter discusses his administrative concerns with the state of rhetoric in the field, the ongoing struggles with graduate education, the complexities of online writing instruction, and the potentials of programmatic collaboration. The interview concludes on a personal note about Porter’s scholarly trajectory, his collaborations, the fruits of his labor, and his advice for emergent scholars in the field.

Drawing from a five-year longitudinal data set following thirteen college writers through undergraduate writing and beyond, we explore the impact of students’ emotions and emotional dispositions on their ability to transfer writing knowledge and on their overall writing development. Participants experienced a range of emotions concerning their writing, but those emotions could be broadly categorized as generative, disruptive, or circumstantial. Students managed these emotions in different ways, with some approaching their learning less emotionally (rational interpreters), others moreso (emotional interpreters), and a final group using metacognitive practices to manage their emotions (emotional managers). Our results suggest that metacognitive concepts of monitoring and control are keys to students’ navigation of the complex emotional landscape of writing in higher education. Our discussion posits ways that faculty can help students become emotional managers and work with students’ emotions in the classroom, and it suggests further avenues for research.

In 2013, the Graduate School at North Carolina State University launched Thesis and Dissertation Support Services, a rhetorical, genre-based approach to assisting students with their graduate writing. Through a description of the program’s founding, goals, and first year of services, we summarize this genre-based approach that is informed by the work of Carolyn Miller, John Swales, Charles Bazerman, and Michael Carter. The goal of the program is to offer services to students writing theses and dissertations that will improve the quality of the work, increase degree completion rates, reduce time to degree, and, above all, develop life-long scholarly writers who are prepared to undertake the writing necessary to be successful in their careers. The theoretical concept of genre system provided a conceptual basis for achieving these connected goals, and each of the workshops, seminars, or other events that we host focuses on a single genre, a genre system, or subgenres related to graduate education. This profile describes our approach to the services through a description of our institutional context, core offerings, and a summary of reflections and lessons learned after a year of offering these services, concluding with recommendations for other writing program professionals who may want to establish similar support for graduate students and a summary of changes to our program after one year.

In the U.S., international enrollment trends have increased the pedagogical imperative to address multilingual graduate student writers’ linguistic needs/growth in the process of their developing disciplinary expertise. In the context of this internationalization effort, what can two disciplines—Applied Linguistics and Composition—constructively offer in terms of a pedagogical approach to address such growing institutional demands? With regard to the various ways in which these disciplines approach the teaching and learning of disciplinary expertise, what might a research-informed English for Academic Purposes (EAP)/Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) curriculum arc look like and how might multilingual graduate writers respond to such an integrated pedagogical trajectory? Further, to what extent might such a curriculum be able to balance evolving student needs and institutional expectations for students’ linguistic development? This program profile examines the potential of Tardy’s 2009 model for building genre knowledge among a specific student population: first-year multilingual international graduate students enrolled in a "bridge" program at George Mason University. In addition to describing the practical work of enacting Tardy’s model at the program and course levels, the authors detail the results of a related study aimed at exploring students’ development of genre knowledge over the course of the bridge year. Results point to the complexity of designing and implementing an EAP/RGS-informed course structure which values the intersectional nature of disciplinary knowledge development and suggest the need for such an approach to explicitly foreground the visibility of language teaching, learning, and assessment in order to ease student anxiety around both language and genre development.

In Carolyn Miller’s Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre, she revisits her assertion that genres are cultural artifacts and questions the nature of the relationship between micro-level, individual speech acts, and macro-level genres and systems. To demonstrate this relationship, I analyze meta-genre accounts of the dissertation posted on the Writing Program Administrator (WPA) listserv, a forum for Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). Within this discourse, I identify transitional threads —moments when the discussion shifts, which show the relationship between micro- and macro-level interaction on the listserv as well as constructions of the dissertation within Writing Studies. CMC highlights how micro-level speech acts aggregate and are impacted by macro-level culture, and it showcases the heterogeneity inherent in the rhetorical community of the listserv.

In this profile we describe changes to the composition program at Missouri University of Science and Technology, prompted by the hiring of the university’s first writing program administrator (WPA). We describe our efforts to implement evidence-based best practices in undergraduate writing courses in a context where very little program specific evidence was available. We also describe how challenges of effecting change at a university largely composed of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students has meant that many of the changes have been framed by the spirit of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives. Several new methods of assessment have been introduced to the program, including instructor feedback, student surveys, and skills tests. Allowing assessment to drive standardization has begun a process of measuring the transfer of student knowledge we believe other departments will find interesting. We close by outlining unresolved issues and ongoing challenges as the program moves forward.

Drawing on the stories and words of GTAs themselves, this article works to complicate our narratives of GTA resistance within practicum courses by situating this resistance in the larger process of identity formation and graduate school. I explore the way that GTAs’ dual roles as students and as teachers intersect with teacher preparation, particularly practicum courses. Finally, I offer suggestions for teacher preparation programs that stem from my study, my experience, and the scholarship in the field.

In 2004, the University of Kansas (KU) launched an interdisciplinary Graduate Writing Program as part of a larger initiative to reduce time to degree rates and increase degree completion rates. Serving both domestic and international students, this program employs a rhetorical genre-based approach in a series of courses organized around the genres of graduate school and beyond. In these Graduate Studies courses, students become ethnographers of the research and writing practices of their disciplines while writing their own texts and developing their professional identities. In addition, the Graduate Writing Program fields a Summer Writing Institute and offers workshops for students. The program supports departments and faculty members through consultations and workshops on such topics as how to mentor graduate writing. This profile—part program description, part theoretical construct—outlines the history and structure of the program as well as the academic and cultural challenges that graduate students and their mentors face. It argues that rhetorical genre studies is ideally suited for teaching graduate writing and supporting students as they create their professional identities.

This program profile describes how a writing center embedded within a major school of business negotiates its unique positionality. Tracing both the successes and shortcomings of a writing initiative tasked with improving the school’s quality of writing, the profile offers a number of insights on both WAC and writing center work, including how to enact curricular change, encourage faculty to incorporate writing into their classes, maintain programmatic continuity with frequent turnover of graduate student administrators, and consult effectively with undergraduate students. Several sites of analysis are addressed, as the initiative seeks to remain committed to its mission while encountering various challenges.

As a teacher, writer, administrator, researcher, theorist and philosopher, Louise Wetherbee Phelps has contributed to the construction and design of the discipline of composition and rhetoric at all stages, from its foundation in the 1970s to the eclectic dwelling in which we reside today. Louise is shaping the future of the discipline as well, mentoring and educating the next generation of scholar-teachers. She is invested in teaching and committed to cultivating stimulating intellectual engagement in composition and rhetoric. Louise’s former students often refer to her as a matriarch of the field, recognizing that her work has been foundational and highly influential. She has worked to bring recognition to rhetoric, composition, and writing studies on a local, national, and international level in such efforts as creating a stand-alone undergraduate and doctoral program at Syracuse University and securing our status as a legitimate discipline. Recently retired after a career spanning more than 30 years at Syracuse University, Louise has yet to slow down. In fact, she might be busier now than ever before. This interview takes you on a tour of the multiple, converging pathways Louise has traveled throughout her career as well as the new pathways she is forging in retirement. She discusses her work as a consultant, professor, and writer as well as the state of writing studies in the U.S. and in international contexts. She also provides insight into what constitutes a scholarly identity and how we might understand more holistically our own academic work and the work of others.

Although student veterans comprise just four percent of the population of undergraduate students, this number is expected to grow as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to come to a close (“Out”). In recent years, higher education has become increasingly concerned with accommodating this emerging, diverse, and vulnerable population of students. This review essay discusses two Web-based initiatives that advocate for and about student veterans transitioning to higher education : In Their Own Words, Montgomery College Student Veterans and From Combat to Kentucky . Specifically, this review essay discusses how these two digital projects provide educators, administrators, and students (both civilian and veteran) the invaluable opportunity to hear the unique experiences and needs of student veterans in higher education. Hearing such stories can contribute to teachers and students’ learning practices by fostering identification with student veterans, despite our differences, while affording teachers and students a way of increasing our understanding of military culture and its large role in our nation’s present, past, and future cultural contexts.

With a particular focus on the preparation of teaching assistants, this profile details the recent transition to a standardized English 101 curriculum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). More specifically, the profile details theoretical and practical incentives for the move, as well as political and logistical challenges encountered by Writing Studies staff in conceiving and implementing the new curriculum. The profile ends with a discussion of the perceived benefits of standardizing English 101 at SIUC and, presumably, by extension, in the context of similar institutional contexts.

This essay explores some of the challenges for the discipline of rhetoric and composition implied by the growth in undergraduate writing majors. Through six narratives from junior faculty at five different institutions, this work explores the ways in which these new faculty were, or were not, prepared for the challenges of developing and implementing new writing majors. Finally, the authors discuss ways in which those who are currently working in undergraduate degree programs can help to provide the intellectual and scholarly materials necessary for graduate programs to more thoroughly and specifically prepare future faculty for their work on undergraduate majors.