Relates the experiences of the University of Illinois in establishing a freshman composition program taught by selected secondary school teachers, graduate students from other departments, and senior faculty members. (HOD)

Provides findings from a survey of English departments and the move from literature-based majors toward more majors in composition and rhetoric. Reveals substantial changes in English programs from 1987 through fall of 1992, confirming the growth of concentrations and course offerings in composition and rhetoric. (HB)

The department of English at West Chester University, Pennsylvania provides a laboratory for examining the situation of composition in a department that has documented its dedication to a unified study of English based on attention to reading and writing. The department adopted a "Statement of Coherence" that signals a dialectic: the…

Communication among teaching assistants can be as complicated as communication among full time faculty members, so that power relationships influence the rhetoric they use when they talk about being students, teachers, and professionals. Analysis of the political dimensions of teaching assistant interaction in the English department at the…

Among the changes that have characterized English studies over the past 25 years is an increase in self-reflection. The rise of various kinds of writing collectively labeled "theory" has influenced this move to scrutinize actions and motives. Composition studies have developed classroom strategies for asking students to reflect on their…

Responds to Richard Ekman's criticism of poststructuralism and discusses three strands of a poststructuralist English curriculum. (EL)

Discusses the teaching of literature in an instrumentalist or bureaucratic culture. Gives examples of instrumentalist influence in the English department at the University of Iowa: changes in department offerings, the emergence of a new departmental coherence, and the concentration of literary theory in the program of comparative literature. (EL)

Reflects over the changing status of college writing instructors and their relationship with those that teach literature in the English department. (HOD)

Reflects on being selected as the first female head of the English department. Discusses the selection process (done at a poker game), women's academic advancement, power, and job related responsibilities. (EL)

Points out that change in English departments will have the best chance if it comes through explicit analytic and goal- and strategy-mapping efforts; through open and sympathetic acknowledgment of anxieties, fears, and objections; and through the greatest possible clarification of misperceptions. Describes several models of change. (EL)

Reports the results of a study to determine why more Ph.D. graduates were not appointed as full-time faculty in arts and humanities. Finds that most often stated reason was that a non-Ph.D. had better qualifications. (AEA)

Lists for comparison the average of pre- and post-MA salaries and stipends per course paid by 68 universities. (CRH)

One educator with much experience as a teacher and director of composition at a state university believes that academia simply has to have independent writing programs. Her conviction rests on two issues: the nature of the curriculum and the professional/psychological well-being of writing/rhetoric faculty. The process movement in writing pedagogy…

Views the teaching of a traditional English curriculum and the development of extramural cultural programs as potentially equal contributions to the discipline of English and describes a wide assortment of extramural offerings provided by the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (AEA)

Advocates a "trust relation" between English department chairpersons and the English teaching profession, examined in light of the composition-literature tension, cultural appreciation, literacy, student diversity, meetings and associations, English teacher education, course improvement, graduate education, reentering adult students, English…