Describes the author's department goals with three main principles: to build departmental community, to harness rather than dissipate energy, and to address multiple audiences simultaneously. Discusses how she communicates to the college as a whole what the department does well and finds ways in which caring for the department's interests might…

Describes a program that gives first-year students the chance to have a small course, 15 to 20 students, taught by a full-time faculty member on a special topic conceived by the professor. Notes that their program set an implicit parallel of time and value between teaching at the most advanced and at the most introductory levels of the curriculum.…

Discusses how the author learned to make a research assistant (RA) a part of the administrative package. Shares her ambition to make available good teaching editions of out-of-print novels by Victorian women writers. Suggests coediting new editions of a literary text with RAs and/or post-doctorate students. (SG)

Explores some historical reasons why, academic freedom and tenure notwithstanding, retaliation against Writing Program Administrators (WPA) remains rather invisible as well as rather commonplace. Suggests that there is a good deal of historical connection between many WPAs' and writing teachers' present job circumstances and the circumstances that…

Suggests that English departments have seen their power to shape the identity of their members diminish. Argues that an important part of the preparation of future professors takes place in a master-apprentice setting strengthened by an economic atmosphere that encourages students fearful of getting jobs to identify with those faculty members…

Offers a case study of how the English department at Mary Washington College constructed over a period of years a credible process for assessing its undergraduate major. Explains and critiques that process and the procedures the department has come to use. (TB)

Notes that four computers and writing specialists and one librarian who had found work in a variety of nontraditional, nonteaching positions were asked to meet at LinguaMOO and talk about their careers. Contains a version of that conversation as edited for print purposes, and the annotations and responses made after the fact by the participants.…

Illustrates four points relating to community college students. Emphasizes relations to writing and relations to the humanities. Considers four points including: the class as golden age; interaction with students that seems at first monumentally bad but that leads to meaningful resolution and change; holding "ourselves" as educators accountable;…

Considers that ever since distance learning technology has enabled colleges and universities to offer courses to students who might otherwise not be able to earn college credit, resistance has emerged on pedagogical or fiscal grounds. Notes that most students in distance learning composition classes indicate that they would participate in such a…

Expresses concern that the future of English is a matter of dwindling importance except among English professors. Suggests English professors need to confront the growing irrelevance of English to the major developments in many institutions. Suggests the future of English may depend in part on what professors define, and defend, as the value of…

Discusses the anxieties, problems, and advantages of a merger between the English department and foreign-language departments at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. Overall, the new Languages and Literatures department is stronger than its two component parts were formerly, in part due to the merger and the recruitment of excellent junior…

The Best Practice Research Scholarship programme (BPRS) was one of a series of initiatives designed by the English Department for Educational Studies (DfES) between 2000 and 2003, to support teachers' continuing professional development. Each year, around 1,000 Scholarships of up to 3,000 British pounds each, were awarded to serving classroom…

This essay offers a history of a basic writing course that began at a public ivy campus in the 1970s. Relying on principles of universal design and on insights derived from his school's studio program about ways the institution's selective functions can impact curricular matters, the author describes how the basic writing course was merely…

Based on his department's experience with curriculum change, the head of the English department at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) concluded that curriculum change must be local, incremental, and unending. A consequence of the claim that curriculum change should be local is that proposed changes must be consistent with local realities--and…

English is the second-largest major at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington). Students may choose one of three emphases within their major: literature, creative writing, or professional writing. Puget Sound's professional writing program has grown gradually and slowly over the last 11-year period to include an array of 10 professional…