Notes the author's experiences that led him to gravitate toward educational partnerships. Notes that partnerships signal an answer to the discontinuities in curriculum planning and in general awareness within and among institutions; and hint at the absence of communication (let alone planning) between educators at the university and college level…

Considers the wide variation of first-year composition programs and if they do indeed vary so widely. Considers what the programs have in common. Asks if it would be possible to articulate a general curricular framework for first-year composition, regardless of institutional home, student demographics, and instructor characteristics. Presents a…

Suggests that when the university devotes itself to "excellence," it substitutes, for a vision of what should be taught, a contentless measure, a bureaucratic concept that extends the range of managerial control without presuming to make judgments about content. Suggests that English departments should try to design sequences of courses that are…

Describes the efforts of a college English department to redesign its English curriculum. Includes a curriculum outline and descriptions of specific courses. (AEA)

Describes curriculum review at the State University of New York, Oswego, where faculty and administrators tried to develop an English major that would preserve the best traditional practices and institutionalize innovation. Concludes that curriculum revision would not have moved forward without the Modern Language Association-Fund for the…

Contains a scripted interchange between three caricatures (the zealous reformer, the harried committee chair, and the skeptical administrator) concerning a project for curriculum reform in a college English department. (TB)

Reviews the growth of business and technical communication courses as college courses in universities. Documents the move to "professional" communication in English departments. Explains why technical communication dominates "professional" communication. Argues that faculty who teach business communication in business schools…

Considers how in most small undergraduate English departments the people in a department are its curricular future. Suggests that a department would do well to examine itself as a sociological community. Describes how the catalyst for change in Dickinson College's English department was the increasing pressure from the college's faculty personnel…

Recounts the process and narrates the steps taken by the English department at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, in its major renovation of its outdated English curriculum. Describes the working conditions of the department and the newly devised curriculum. (HB)

Dramatizes the give and take that accompanies any attempt to get an English department to speak with one voice and arrive at a consensus regarding curriculum revision. Provides details of the curriculum reform process undertaken at the University of Oregon. (HB)

Two education professors conducting research on the curriculum planning at a high school near Boise (Idaho) found that their status as observer and/or participant in discussions among teachers, administrators and parents made things more difficult. Usually in ethnography it is assumed that the hard part is to achieve insider status--to be accepted…

Discusses the process of writing as a way of learning and "Writing across the Curriculum Programs." Outlines the program developed at Williamson High School in Alabama that successfully trained the English department to serve as consultants to the school in developing such a program. Includes two figures and references. (MD)

Provides an interim report on the present state of the undergraduate English curriculum and the English major. (SRT)

Outlines the controversies that began as the English Department at Louisiana State University tried to revise the departmental curriculum. Raises important questions for any department to consider as they undertake a similar revision. (HB)

Considers how in the 1990s most English departments have altered curricula to accommodate the explosion of the canon, the emphasis on cultural studies, the arrival of new technology in writing and literature classrooms, and the varied learning styles of students. Discusses how many of these changes have been patches rather than substantial…