In a personal narrative reflecting on 27 years of teaching, an adjunct faculty member realizes that she knows quite a bit firsthand about the adjunct. Judith Gappa and David Leslie, in their 1993 book, "The Invisible Faculty," state that budgets are balanced and classes assigned on the assumption that 20 to 50% of all undergraduate…

In January 1986, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) issued several recommendations with far-reaching implications for Virginia's colleges and universities, namely, "that all state-supported institutions of higher education establish procedures and programs to measure student achievement." By all accounts the…

Understanding the absence of composition in western Canada is predicated upon understanding the presence of composition in the United States, the only country in the world with a highly visible tradition of composition. This absence in western Canada, between 1900 and 1950, is largely a matter of appearance--composition in both countries was an…

This paper provides some ideas for those searching for positions in the academic field of English (with emphasis on rhetoric/composition) at small, state-supported liberal arts colleges. It presents information about how searches are initiated and conducted and how candidates might best present themselves while engaged in a job search. Included in…

Currently, many college and university English departments are reviewing the purpose of their departments. Are they still departments of literature? A writing program is best served by staying in an English department, with the caveat that the department move towards a cultural studies curriculum--the writing program within an English cultural…

Five universities in New York State (SUNY--State University of New York at Stony Brook, Syracuse, Cornell, Binghamton, and New York Universities--are involved in a 3-year project to better prepare graduate students to become teachers. The State University of New York, Stony Brook, English Department is providing graduate teaching assistants with…

Administering a writing program has never been easy, and the issue of political correctness has added a new dimension to this difficult task. At the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), a controversy began when a cluster of statues, presented to the school by the graduating class, was attacked as being sexist and racist. According to the…

A study examined the relationship between Writing Centers and Writing-across-the-Curriculum (WAC) programs--central to the study was a survey designed to determine how writing programs are generally organized in higher education and how effective the people administering them judge them to be. The survey gathered information from 26 writing…

Because the structure of a writing program establishes its content and values, a writing program should be integrated with other aspects of English studies to avoid being merely an add-on to the college English department. Several planning strategies can assist in promoting this integration. A writing program should involve all related campus…

Perceived influences of biology and English department heads were investigated using a discriminant analysis test of Biglan's model. Attention was directed to the influence of discipline versus the structural variables of department size, type of institution, and highest degree awarded. Questionnaires completed by 586 heads of biology and English…

Although workshops and a study by the English Department of the University of Montevallo (Alabama) led to the conclusions that writing should be taught from a process model and that writing consciousness needed to be raised throughout the curriculum, these conclusions did not adequately address several issues: (1) process is a teaching philosophy,…

To study grading standards and consistency within the English department, 1600 freshmen at Rockland Community College were asked to complete a uniform exit essay at the end of English 101. After developing criteria for grading the papers, members of the department marked their own papers and one other set. Eight months later, 240 of the papers…

The home mission of the University English department is the teaching of reading and writing, and its foreign mission is the "converting" to a higher literacy of those outside the English department, especially those who teach English in the high schools and other subjects at the college level. Potential high school English teachers'…

Little attention has been paid in composition journals and professional conferences to the practical problems associated with a writing program director's efforts to introduce an innovative composition curriculum within a traditional English department. A collaborative, problem solving approach to curriculum change is a practical way to proceed…

Discusses the relationship between research in writing (i.e., research in "composition" or "rhetoric and composition") and English departments. Attempts to clarify writing research, asserting that English departments do not understand or approve of this type of research. (MM)