We are thrilled to introduce this 20th anniversary issue of Reflections. Our tenure as coeditors has taught us a great deal about the journal, the growing subfield of community-engaged writing, and the pleasures and pitfalls of editing a biannual publication. As we embarked on editing this issue, we assumed we would learn a lot about the journal’s history, but we could not fully appreciate what that meant until we began to review submissions. The first round we got were in response to a call for articles directed mainly to those with a close association with the journal—former editors, contributors, board members, reviewers—or whose own career paths were influenced by reading it. These articles and several interviews, shorter pieces, and a dialogue provide valuable perspectives on the journal.

Review of The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission by Herb Childress.

This is the story of my first attempt to write myself into labor activism in higher education. As an untenured teacher protesting retrenchment and increases in class sizes at a public university, I explore the risks inherent not only in directly addressing critique to management, but also in publicly posting that critique via blog and Facebook. I note the potential protections of public writing at a unionized school, and discuss the surprising benefits of even small actions for a culture of labor consciousness.

Rejecting the conventional academic wisdom that tells us to “put community-based programs and partnerships on hold or on the side until we achieve tenure,” I resolve this day to hold my multiple subjectivities together by remaining holistic, committed, concerned, connected, and compassionate, but most importantly, centered in the constellation of my community. I will not be (re)moved. I will not be situated in an Academic Siberia – cold, isolated, alone, without connection, without story, without experiential memory. Upon traversing the borderlands of the Academy, I cling to my bundle – the intricacies and nuances of my personal landscape, my contested identity, and the artifacts of that contestation, recognizing that validation and reward lies in the confluence of Civic Engagement and Holistic Academic Practice—the meta-language of significant contribution.

In recent decades, higher education has increasingly relied on contingent faculty to teach multiple sections of composition courses with low pay and few benefits. Administrators have argued that institutions need these faculty to protect tenure-track faculty in times of financial difficulty and to manage fluctuating enrollments. When Hurricane Katrina forced universities and community colleges to declare financial exigency or force majeur, contingent faculty were the first to be terminated. However, their dismissal did not protect tenured and tenure-track faculty. Moreover, without contingent faculty, the Xavier University English Department successfully managed to staff composition classes in the first semesters following Katrina, a period of uncertainty and fluctuating enrollments. This success shows that the employment of large numbers of part-time faculty cannot be rationalized. Furthermore, faculty should strive to integrate part-time colleagues into the academy, and administrators should follow the example of departments which have successfully converted part time positions into tenure-track appointments.

This article examines the implications of service-learning educators’ commitments to community literacy for professional development in higher education. It places stories of professional development in composition studies within the context of community literacy needs and of broader debates about tenure and promotion practices. The article proposes a set of questions that challenge compositionists to draw on community-based work to redefine professional development in rhetoric and composition studies.