Studies career paths of doctorates, examining the actual employment patterns of English PhDs 10 years after finishing their degrees. Discusses the many career paths of this cohort of English PhDs; characteristics of respondents; career paths within and outside of academe; satisfaction with current employment and value of the PhD; advice from PhDs;…

Discusses the role of an English department chair within the modern university. Presents 10 useful lessons for a chairperson who is trying to make a department's case to the administration. Concludes that talking successfully to administrators requires avoiding a "them-versus-us" mentality and being willing to think collectively and creatively…

Attempts to make effects of fiscal constraints better understood in the hope of finding optimal solutions to critical difficulties faced by academic institutions. Suggests a new emphasis in graduate training on teaching. Points toward ideal changes in the structure of higher education but attempts to keep recommendations practical. Discusses the…

Shares thoughts about a recent teaching experience that may speak to two current and related issues of importance to English studies, those of part-time and adjunct staffing and of the full-time faculty's responsibility for and involvement in the design, supervision, and instruction of lower-division courses. Considers the reintegration of tenured…

Presents the annual coding of positions listed in the October 2001 Modern Language Association (MLA) "Job Information List." Notes increases in the number of English as well as foreign language positions. Presents numerous additional findings. Includes 10 tables and 5 figures of data. (RS)

Presents the experience and concerns of a black graduate student in an English department. Considers that diversity and mentoring help create an optimum psychological environment in which the black graduate student can be productive. Concludes that a diverse student body fosters diverse scholarship and allows for paradigm shifts that stimulate new…

Focuses on the changing relationships between males and females in the National Council of Teachers of English from its inception to the present. Discusses changing relationships between the sexes in English departments, including graduate students and faculty. Describes differing approaches to the job of teaching, and recommends in general giving…

Claims a consumerism model manifests itself in first-year composition programs. Discusses the academic situation generally and English Departments specifically to explore how the current reform movement clashes with postmodern values in this discipline. (NH)

Literature anthologies are part of the furniture of English departments. Like the putty or gunmetal-gray file cabinet that one might have gotten new or used, they are not a showpiece of academic decor, but it would be hard to imagine work spaces without them. Indeed, they are omnipresent, amassed on the shelves of campus bookstores, weighing down…

In the current climate of accountability, action research is one way for teachers to evaluate instructional changes designed to improve assessment results. It may become increasingly common for administrators to mandate teacher involvement in action research, yet few studies have been conducted in such settings. This article focuses on one middle…

Women who wish to assume full voice in their writing have no choice but to raise questions regarding their status and the status of creative writing within the academy. Tillie Olsen and Elaine Showalter have documented the bias in texts taught at the university in which women have little place, if at all. The effects are devastating: if the voices…

The accomplishments of Janet Emig constitute perhaps the most influential contribution to the study of how humans compose discourse and how teachers should help them. Her background prepared her for her initial goal of becoming a medical doctor, but she determined to study literature because of its enduring interest to her. As a graduate student…

A graduate student who was the only composition person in a two semester teaching seminar experienced the dilemma of defining and establishing that identity in the midst of a classroom struggle between cultural studies and literary theorists on one side and creative writers on the other. The factious teaching seminar mirrored the fact that English…

The trajectory of an English professor's scholarly interests has always involved emotion. From the simple question she asked herself during her graduate study (what do we feel?), she moved to the beneficial psychological effects of writing, then onto empirically identifying the emotions involved in writing, to discussions of social emotions, to an…

A pilot project in portfolio assessment was carried out at Northwest Missouri State University by the English department for the general proficiency assessment which the administration had requested. The portfolio was designed around the central feature of the second semester composition course: the research essay. Besides the research essay, the…