The popularity of technical writing and communication has caused many colleges and universities to scramble to hire qualified tenure-track faculty members. So-called lone ranger candidates are often lured to workplaces in which they are the sole technical writing faculty members by promises of autonomy and the ability to develop programs in ways, and at a pace, that would not necessarily be possible at other institutions. This article explores challenges faced by several such lone ranger faculty members and outlines survival strategies that may help lone rangers sustain and build their technical writing programs.

Preview this article: Review: Adjunct Faculty in Community Colleges: An Academic Administrator's Guide to Recruiting, Supporting, and Retaining Great Teachers, edited by Desna L. Wallin, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/33/3/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege5125-1.gif

This position statement was inspired by the “Position Statement on Graduate Students in Writing Center Administration” (endorsed by the International Writing Center Association on November 17, 2001). A purpose of the document, to borrow language from the graduate student position statement, is to “[suggest] an ideal set of conditions,” and it is written with the “intention of improving working conditions” within the two-year college writing center. Ultimately, though, its main purpose is to help community college writing centers establish a collective argument in defense of what we do.

This article discusses employment of part-time faculty at the community college level, including historical reasons for their current status, alternatives to this status, and specific steps to change it.

Tracing the literature on writing conferences during four tension points in higher-education enrollments--the 1890s, the 1930s, the 1950s, and the 1970s--the author suggests that conferences have been championed primarily at those moments when students were both more numerous and more diverse, an urge countered, however, by faculty working conditions. Looking at the present, then, he argues that the need for conferencing and the pressures that preclude extensive one-to-one work seem an amalgam of these earlier eras and continue to threaten the teaching-learning ideal that conferences represent.

Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the Managed University exposes the poor working conditions of contingent composition faculty and explores practical alternatives to the unfair labor practices that are all too common on campuses today. Editors Marc Bousquet, Tony Scott, and Leo Parascondola bring together diverse perspectives from pragmatism to historical materialism to provide a perceptive and engaging examination of the nature, extent, and economics of the managed labor problem in composition instructiona field in which as much as ninety-three percent of all classes are taught by graduate students, adjuncts, and other disposable teachers. These instructors enjoy few benefits, meager wages, little or no participation in departmental governance, and none of the rewards and protections that encourage innovation and research. And it is from this disenfranchised position that literacy workers are expected to provide some of the core instruction in nearly everyone's higher education experience. Twenty-six contributors explore a range of real-world solutions to managerial domination of the composition workplace, from traditional academic unionism to ensemble movement activism and the pragmatic rhetoric, accommodations, and resistances practiced by teachers in their daily lives.Contributors are Leann Bertoncini, Marc Bousquet, Christopher Carter, Christopher Ferry, David Downing, Amanda Godley, Robin Truth Goodman, Bill Hendricks, Walter Jacobsohn, Ruth Kiefson, Paul Lauter, Donald Lazere, Eric Marshall, Randy Martin, Richard Ohmann, Leo Parascondola, Steve Parks, Gary Rhoades, Eileen Schell, Tony Scott, William Thelin, Jennifer Seibel Trainor, Donna Strickland, William Vaughn, Ray Watkins, and Katherine Wills.

Over the past thirty years, has flowered as a discipline in the academy. Doctoral programs in abound, and its position in the pantheon of academic fields seems assured. There is plenty of work in composition. But what is the nature of that work now, and what should it be? James Slevin asks such probing, primary questions in Introducing English, an overdue assessment of the state of by one of its most respected practitioners. Too often, Slevin claims, representations of take the form of promoting the field and its specialists, rather than explaining the fundamental work of and its important consequences. In thirteen thematically and methodologically linked essays, Slevin argues toward a view of the discipline as a set of activities, not as an enclosed field of knowledge. Such a view broadens the meaning of the work of to include teaching and learning, a two-way process, creating alliances across conventional educational boundaries, even beyond educational institutions. Slevin traces how emerged for him not as a vehicle for improving student writing, but rather as a way of working collaboratively with students to interpret educational practices and work for educational reform. He demonstrates the kind of classroom practice - in reading accounts of the Anglicization of Pocahontas - that reveals the social and cultural consequences of language and language education. For good or ill, writes Slevin, composition has always been at the center of the reproduction of social inequality, or of the resistance to that process. He asks those in the discipline to consider such history in the reading and writing they ask students to do and the reasons they give for asking them to do it. A much-anthologized essay by E. B. White from The New Yorker is the site for an examination of genre as social institution, introducing the ways in which the discourses of the academy can be understood as both obstacle and opportunity. Ultimately, Introducing English is concerned with the importance of writing and the teaching of writing to the core values of higher education. Composition is always a metonym for something else Slevin concludes. Usually, it has figured the impossibility of the student body - their lacks that require supplement, their ill-health that requires remedy. Introducing English introduces a new figure - a two-way process of inquiry - that better serves the intellectual culture of the university. Chapters on writing across the curriculum, university management, and faculty assessment (the tenure system) put this new model to practical, innovative use. Introducing English will be necessary reading for all those who work with composition, as well as those engaged in learning theory, critical theory, and education reform.

Critical theorists often attack economic capitalists for focusing excessively on profit. But critical theorists are themselves capitalists—cultural capitalists—and they also pursue profit: in the form of publications, promotions, enhanced reputations, tenure, and course releases. Economic capitalists typically use profit for constructive reasons: as a form of audience analysis and as a way to create the wealth that enables other people to work, to have specialized jobs (including professorships), and to raise families. Profit is an integral part of the communication of economic capitalism, and the profit motive helps capitalists create safer products and usable professional communication.

The author proposes a different way to phrase the problems that public colleges and universities face in the current economy. He argues that it is now crucial to the long–term financial well–being of public institutions of higher education to improve the working conditions of instructors in writing programs, precisely because of the relationship between those programs and the students who are the universities’ major stakeholders and future donors.

Abstract This article reports United States salary data from the April 2003 survey of Society for Technical Communication members who identify themselves as educators. It provides analysis of salary data based on type of institution, rank, tenure status, experience, education level, sex, and age. It also reports on benefits, administrative responsibilities, job satisfaction, and program size.

Analysis of the academic job market in 2002-2003 reveals that 118 nationally advertised academic jobs named technical or professional communication as a primary or secondary specialization. Of the 56 in the "primary" category that we were able to contact, we identified 42 jobs filled, 10 unfilled, and 4 pending. However, only 29% of the jobs for which technical or professional communication was the primary specialization were filled by people with degrees in the field, and an even lower percent (25%) of all jobs, whether advertised for a primary or secondary specialization, were filled by people with degrees in the field. Search chairs report a higher priority on teaching and research potential than on a particular research specialization, and 62% of all filled positions involve teaching in related areas (composition, literature, or other writing courses).

Preview this article: The Rhetoric of "Job Market" and the Reality of the Academic Labor System, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/66/2/collegeenglish2830-1.gif

This article argues that the small school context has been a relatively unexamined or under-examined context for technical and professional communication program development. While graduate program development holds a large share of the field's attention in recent national forums, growth in graduate programs is a consequence of demand in the job market among mostly “teaching” schools. Thus, the field must consider how well we are socializing new Ph.D.s into the values and the real work of institutions where they will find employment. Toward this end, this article articulates three mediating forces of program development in the liberal arts and humanities settings of small schools: 1) interdisciplinarity and flexibility are lived dynamics of small schools; 2) the campus-wide privileging of writing and communication skills presents ongoing opportunities for curricular initiatives and program development; and 3) compression of decision-making structures leads to more involvement of/with administrators and units across campus.

Abstract The material conditions in which most writing classes are taught-by an adjunct, who has little or no job security, is poorly compensated, and is isolated from colleagues-cannot be conceptualized as merely an "adjunct problem." This so-called "adjunct problem" cannot be separated from the ethics of the university and its faculty, from the principles of the discipline and its pedagogies, or from the responsibility of this particular adjunct and her future career decisions.

Review Article| October 01 2002 A Slightly Sentimental Journey through the Company of the Academy E. Laurie George E. Laurie George Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2002) 2 (3): 439–442. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-439 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation E. Laurie George; A Slightly Sentimental Journey through the Company of the Academy. Pedagogy 1 October 2002; 2 (3): 439–442. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-439 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2002 Duke University Press2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: Mentor in a Manual: Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure You do not currently have access to this content.

Review Article| October 01 2002 A View from the Outside Keith Waddle Keith Waddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2002) 2 (3): 434–438. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-434 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Keith Waddle; A View from the Outside. Pedagogy 1 October 2002; 2 (3): 434–438. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-434 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2002 Duke University Press2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: Mentor in a Manual: Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure You do not currently have access to this content.

Review Article| October 01 2002 Who Wrote the Book on Tenure? Love, War, and the Pursuit of Job Security Jennifer Maier Jennifer Maier Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2002) 2 (3): 431–434. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-431 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jennifer Maier; Who Wrote the Book on Tenure? Love, War, and the Pursuit of Job Security. Pedagogy 1 October 2002; 2 (3): 431–434. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2-3-431 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2002 Duke University Press2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Argues that the situation of adjunct instructors, particularly those who piece full-time employment from part-time appointments, is appalling and that there is responsibility to be meted out to all the various interests connected to the academy that benefit from it. Explores how adjunct instructors and graduate student can make decisions about their careers based on the prevailing conditions of employment.

gnes Varda's recent documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse explores the modern parallels to the ancient practice of gleaning leftover produce from the fields in the wake of the harvesters. Among the most fascinating individuals Varda comes upon is a young man rescuing spilled fruit and vegetables after a farmers' market in Paris. The man is extremely knowledgeable about the nutritional content of each item; has, in fact, a master's degree in chemistry; makes his living distributing free papers and advertising flyers outside train stations; and as his avocation teaches French to the Senegalese immigrants who share the housing project he lives in. Varda shows one of his classes. He is in love with teaching, has drawn charts with a vast number of careful illustrations of words, has an enchanting rapport with his students. But he does not get paid for his teaching: he has organized his classes for free. He is a gleaner, a rescuer of those who have nothing wrong with them but have been passed over by the system. Varda admires him. Traveling across France like a migrant agricultural worker, making a documentary with a hand-held digital video camera, she is la glaneuse of the film's title. For all the usefulness of their work and the joy they have in it, undoubtedly these gleaners-Varda, the French teacher, and others in the film-exist at the margins of their professions and their society. But for all the marginality of their financial existence, the film makes clear that they have chosen their paths thoughtfully and are happy doing what they do. Ghosts in the Classroom, a recent book of essays by adjunct instructors, makes clear that there are many college teachers in the United States who glean the developmental and introductory classes, lead a marginal financial existence, and are not at J a me s Pa p p is associate director of MLA English Programs and the Association of Departments of English. Most of his writing focuses on issues of university teaching and administration, but he has also published on literature, folklore, and translation and has an article forthcoming on Hungarian revival architecture in communities inside and outside Hungary. He is currently editing a collection of papers on the research of teaching in language, literature, and rhetoric.

he history of relations between composition and literature has involved a vexed tangle of misunderstanding and hurt.Both fields would benefit if we could think through some of the vexations.That's what I'm trying to do here.But I won't talk about the most obvious problems: political and material issues of power, money, and prestige.These matters cannot be ignored, but I will mention them quickly and pass on.Composition has been the weak spouse, the new kid, the cash cow, the oppressed majority.When writing programs are housed in English departments, as they so often are, teachers of writing are usually paid less to teach more under poorer working conditions-in order to help support literature professors to be paid more to teach less under better working conditions.I'm hoping that these material vexations might be starting to recede just a bit now-as composition gets stronger and more secure, as writing programs find they can prosper outside English departments, and as literature itself struggles because of weak support for the humanities (not to mention frequent attacks on "professors" and all of higher education).Even the virus of relying on part-timers and adjuncts is increasing in mainstream literature, too.I ask only that we not forget how hard it will be to get past the deep legacy of anger, hurt, and guilt.I won't even address the much-discussed question of whether writing and literature should marry, stay married, or divorce.

Addresses the climate of disappointment that characterizes English studies generally and composition studies--particularly writing program administration (WPA). Considers that the context of disappointment is shaped by a number of overlapping factors including: the widely perceived job market collapse in the humanities; the national abuse of adjunct teachers of first-year writing courses; and the general devaluation of the humanities.

CCCC Committee on Part-Time/Adjunct Issues, Report on the Coalition on the Academic Workforce/CCCC Survey of Faculty in Freestanding Writing Programs for Fall 1999, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 336-348

Preview this article: Report on the Coalition on the Academic Workforce/CCCC Survey of Faculty in Freestanding Writing Programs for Fall 1999, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/53/2/collegecompositionandcommunication1454-1.gif

reative writers exist as a group both inside and outside the academic community. Inside academia, the pursuit of creative writing as a graduate degree specialization is typically associated with the M.FA. However, another option, the Ph.D., also exists. I am the recipient of a Ph.D. in English with emphasis in creative writing, alternatively called the Ph.D. in English with creative dissertation. Like many of my colleagues who hold this degree, I also have an M.FA. in creative writing. I entered graduate school as a master's student to become a better writer, and a better scholar. While I was there, I also developed the desire to become a teacher. Told that the M.EA. was not sufficient for a university teaching position (without the all-important multiple books that many positions require), and without significant training or opportunity from my M.EA. program in teaching, let alone in the teaching of creative writing, I entered into a Ph.D. program in English/creative writing with hopes that this program would teach me how to teach in my field. But as a graduate student who did not know which way she might turn (teacher or writer? could I be both?), I was puzzled by the lack of attention on the part of my university to the pedagogy of my field. I took seminars, completed language and oral and written comprehensive examinations, and defended my dissertation-a booklength collection of poems-but heard little about what it might mean to enter a university teaching position, or what teaching creative writing as a professional writer/ teacher might involve. I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones: I took a graduate course in the teaching of composition and then taught composition, feeling well-prepared; I then taught creative writing, feeling less prepared, as a graduate student and postgraduate lecturer. This valuable experience allowed me to recently secure a tenure-track position teaching composition and co-directing a composition

Examines (1) job opportunities available for PhDs in creative writing as contextualized within the larger English Studies job market; (2) arguments for and against training such candidates to be university teaching professionals; and (3) training that might better prepare these candidates for both more productive, successful university teaching careers as well as more productive, successful undergraduate creative writing classrooms.

we read Michael Murphy's article, Faculty for a New University, we were surprised and troubled by the story about adjuncts that Murphy purports to tell. Murphy's argument, that a substructure in rhetoric and composition exists but remains invisible and that to recognize such a substructure would cost universities little, is based on a notion of universities that has not existed in most places for a very long time, if ever. Murphy's idea of a teaching track that supports full-time faculty research is based on a conception of a university at a handful of research institutions. Schools that train graduate students, produce the bulk of scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition, and grant PhDs are about 7 percent of the total number of universities in this country (Phelan 76). To make an argument about adjunct work and adjunct labor without considering the other 93 percent of us seems to us to be thoughtless, at best, and unethical, at worst. The other aspect of adjuncting that Murphy leaves out is, of course, gender. As Theresa Enos writes, When a field has been feminized and when a disproportionate number of its workers are female, that field is devalued and is subject to both disciplinary and gender bias (43). As the latest report on Women in the Profession indicates, women are still more likely than white men ... to obtain jobs in lower-paying institutions .., and they tend to linger

Preview this article: Tenure and Promotion in Rhetoric and Composition, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/52/1/collegecompositionandcommunication1411-1.gif

I argue that we need to acknowledge how the material interests of part-time and adjunct teachers, graduate assistants, tenure-stream faculty, and administrators can come into conflict in composition in order to negotiate fairly among them. I then call on bosses and workers in composition to form a new class consciousness centered on the issue of good teaching for fair pay. I discuss how the culture of academic professionalism militates against such a consciousness, and I propose three ways to forge a more collective view of our work: involving faculty at all ranks in teaching the first-year course, devising alternatives to tenure as a form of job security, and pressing for more direct control over staffing and curricula.

Challenging the common assumption that the rise of an instructorate unsupported to do traditional forms of research will necessarily result in an exploited academic labor force, inferior teaching, and the final triumph of anti-intellectualism and bureaucracy in academia, this article explores the ways in which the “teaching substructure” existing now in composition and rhetoric has already begun to contribute substantially to the intellectual vitality and institutional standing of the discipline.

(2000). At the century's end: The job market in rhetoric and composition. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 375-389.

I value Gypsy Academics and the compassionate way in which Schell combines a feminist and materialist analysis of the historical and economic conditions that have led to the exploitation of adjunct faculty, the majority of whom are women. - College EnglishFully two-thirds of all part-time teachers in English studies are women, many with no permanent faculty standing, no benefits, no job security, and little or no chance for promotion. How does the feminization of writing programs affect the newly formed discipline of rhetoric and composition? Gypsy Academics and Mother-Teachers illuminates the complex gendered ideologies that surround writing instruction--drawing on feminist theories of women's work, Marxist theories of class and labor, sociological and economic studies of part-time academic employment, and personal interviews with part-time women writing faculty. Eileen Schell contends that part-time faculty members' interests and contributions have been underrepresented in our research narratives and professional histories in rhetoric and composition. Her book attempts to revalue practitioner knowledge and to reclaim the voices and perspectives of part-time women writing instructors as a vital part of the history and growth of rhetoric and composition as a discipline. Both a theoretical and practical study, Gypsy Academics and Mother-Teachers not only theorizes the structures of gender and labor in writing programs; it also offers administrators, theorists, and practitioners ideas for improving the working conditions and professional status of part-time writing instructors.

American literary life has been enriched over the past generation by habits of criticism practiced at Amherst College during the tenure of William H. Pritchard. These essays, which were commissioned as a tribute to Pritchard, celebrate his fortieth year at Amherst and demonstrate the breadth of his influence in the fields of theory, criticism, and pedagogy. The occasion of forty years of teaching at Amherst by William H. Pritchard, the renowned critic of Frost, Jarrell, and many others, has generated a remarkable collection of essays by former students, colleagues, and friends. The essays themselves are a spectrum of contemporary criticism, ranging from classroom memoirs to analytic essay in criticism to assessment of the state of academic letters today. These contributions, a tribute, by reason of their very range, are a salute to the breadth of William Pritchard's circle of literary acquaintance. Under Criticism demonstrates the fine persistence in certain manners of approach and habits of focus that go, among that circle, under the name of criticism. Drawing foremost on their engagement with the literature before them, Christopher Ricks, Helen Vendler, Patricia Meyer Spacks, Neil Hertz, David Ferry, Paul Alpers, Joseph Epstein, and Frank Lentricchia-as well as fifteen other critics and men and women of letters-reinforce Professor Pritchard's prescription that in order to have a hearing, the critic needs to keep listening.

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.

Offers seven brief descriptions of class projects and assignments used successfully in writing classes of all sorts, from first-year composition classes to business communication to computerized writing labs.

Many of today's telecommuters are knowledge workers who require substantial communications to perform their jobs. The research presented investigates the nature of communication links between individuals in two work groups comprised of both telecommuters and nontelecommuters. Communication network analysis is used to map the communications in the groups and identify blocks of individuals. Blocks are groups of individuals with high levels of communication linkages among them. Work setting, gender, job type, tenure, and number of telecommuting days are investigated as potential factors in determining individuals' membership in blocks. There appears to be a tendency for telecommuters to communicate more with other telecommuters as well as for females to communicate more with one another. However, only job type was statistically related to block membership. These results indicate that there is a limited impact of telecommuting on the communication structure of work groups, which should reduce potential concerns of telecommuters about being left out of the office network. They should also reduce managers' concerns about having knowledge transfer and assimilation of corporate culture differences between telecommuting and nontelecommuting employees.

Reviews three books: Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry, by Donna Qualley; Gypsy Academics and Mother?Teachers: Gender, Contingent Labor, and Writing Instruction, by Eileen E. Schell; Reflection in the Writing Classroom, by Kathleen Blake Yancey.

Reviews six books: Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work, by Jane Maher reviewed by Judith A. (Jay) Wootten; Your Choice: A Basic Writing Guide with Readings, by Kate Mangelsdorf and Evelyn Posey reviewed by Lynn Summer; Constructing Knowledges: The Politics of Theory Building and Pedagogy in Composition, by Sidney I. Dobrin reviewed by Julie Drew; Academic Advancement in Composition Studies: Scholarship, Publication, Promotion, Tenure, ed. by Richard C. Gebhardt and Barbara Genelle Smith Gebhardt; Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition, ed. by Gary A. Olson and Todd Taylor; Writing for Academic Publication, by Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley reviewed by Cynthia Simpson.