Despite what institutions and departments are doing to make adjunct instructors feel valued and a part of the college community, there are always two groups: the full-time faculty and the adjuncts. To feel valued, what an adjunct instructor might need more than a mentor, a name tag, or even a raise in pay, is to be considered a professional equal…

Ideological tensions at the heart of conflicting philosophies concerning the role of English department studies in higher education generate such questions as: "Should courses in literature be required?" and "Is the ultimate goal of the English major a good job or a good karma?" The answers to these questions are important, as…

This book is a journal kept over 15 months from January 1987 to March 1988 by a tenured member of the English Department at Ohio State University (OSU). The book is an attempt to convey the quality and texture of life at OSU, with its ups, downs, and level places; its satisfactions, frustrations, and routines; its successes, disappointments, and…

Creative writers have moved into the mainstream of English departments without understanding or reviewing their own history, and without reconceptualizing graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs. Such a history can be constructed from sources in three areas: institutional history, creative writing history, and rhetorical history. An…

Recent departmental-level efforts at general education curriculum reform are surveyed. Discussion is given to English departments, which are well suited to lead general education reform, because they can learn from these experiences. (MSE)

Urges college English departments to take a direct interest in what happens in secondary school classrooms and to be prepared to offer pedagogical diversity in both preservice and inservice teacher training. (AEA)

Describes tactics and approaches used by an English department chair in dealing with faculty, administration, and internal faculty strife. (SR)

Considers and analyzes the findings of the Modern Language Association's survey of the changes from 1990 to 1994 in faculty size of doctorate-granting departments of modern language. (HB)

Presents the findings of the Modern Language Association's survey of the changes from 1990 to 1994 in faculty size in doctorate-granting departments of modern language. (HB)

This article details the process of implementing a sequenced information literacy program for two core English composition courses at Utah State University. An extensive needs assessment guided the project, leading to a curriculum design process with the goal of building a foundation for deeper critical thinking skills. The curriculum development…

Connections between stereotypical attitudes toward English studies and the apparent lack of integration in curricula and pedagogies make it useful to examine the "process/content debate." Representative voices in this debate have been strident: cultural literacy is paraphrased as expressing that it is not important what can be known, as…

Placements in English departments' internship programs are problematic when writing opportunities lack range and/or depth, but at the same time students often have excellent internship experiences despite limited writing opportunities. An examination of the designs and assumptions of the writing skills internship program in the English Department…

Because of consistent faculty involvement from its earliest stages, the writing assessment program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) represents a competent, fair, and useful procedure for the large-scale testing and evaluation of student writing. UMKC's assessment curriculum builds on the existing sequence of three composition…

There are three standard complaints given by teachers of freshman composition: (1) college freshman students are inferior to English majors and graduate students, or inferior to freshmen from when the teachers were in college; (2) the subject matter of a writing course is inferior to that of literature courses; and (3) those who teach composition…

In the many conferences, workshops, and panels for writing instructors the role of director of freshman English has been routinely ignored. The typical director does not even have a job description. But directors should interpret this lack of specifics to mean that they are not administrators set apart from faculty, but are engaged with faculty in…