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.

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

This collection of twenty-five brief papers is based on a vital premise: that when classrooms become places where teachers engage in close-up studies of what learning is and how it happens, better teaching and learning result. Teacher-researchers, defining and studying educational issues at the classroom level, with the active help of students and colleagues, tend to see themselves in more productive ways, developing greater self-confidence and autonomy.

Susan Wyche-Smith, Shirley K Rose, One Hundred Ways to Make the Wyoming Resolution a Reality: A Guide to Personal and Political Action, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Oct., 1990), pp. 318-324

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