Describes the art of effective English departmental administration in a difficult time of budget constraints, calls for accountability, and intellectual turbulence. Considers the effect on departmental management of sustained scholarly interest in oppositional stances, powerlessness, and marginality. (HB)

Describes how the task of leading an English department has changed over the past 25 years. Considers the delicate yet essential task of the department head to provide leadership and vision for an entire department. Relates the general problems of English departments and specific problems in graduate education with diversity and difference gone…

Describes the author's experiences during the 1970s while he was a graduate student; at that time, he knew almost nothing about community colleges. Presents a profile of the author's institution, Westchester Community College in New York, and the faculty search process that the college now uses. (PA)

Explores issues, problems, and procedures involved in large English departments which use portfolio assessment and where part-timers and full-timers need to collaborate in this process. Offers recommendations involving the relationship of part-time and full-time teachers in such programs. (SR)

Describes the experience of teaching at a community college (Kellogg Community College, Battle Creek, Michigan) and the realities of being the Chair of a community college English department. Concludes that teaching in a community college is for the committed "teacher-citizen" ready to become involved in creating a better institution…

Examines the restructuring of first-year composition at Iowa State University. Discusses the exodus of tenure-track faculty from first-year composition in the late 1970's and early 1980's; why upper administration is now mandating tenure-track faculty's return; why the department of English is cooperating; and potential risks in cooperating or not…

Involving graduate teaching assistants (GAs) in the development and implementation of rubrics has many benefits. GA involvement increases their sense of ownership of the rubrics and makes it more likely that they will regard the rubrics in a positive light. GAs have insights about the students whose work will be evaluated by the rubrics; and, as…

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…

An internship program, created by the English Department at Saint Cloud (Minnesota) State University, is designed to respond to the current need for an improvement in the workplace literacy of many American workers. The internship and concurrent colloquium provide a crucial link between theory and practice, enabling learners to reflect critically…

New fields of English study are developing their own canons, their own majors, and their own departments: Black studies, Caribbean studies, women's studies. Yes, all scholars in English read Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Derek Walcott, but do they read them alike? Are the places of these works in the literary tradition the…

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…

While tenure-track faculty begin their careers with some sense of what they will teach, what they will earn, and how they will be promoted, lecturers are not allowed such assurances. In the early days, lecturers in the English Department at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) taught basic composition courses, four per semester unless they were…

College composition instructors have the opportunity to take a step toward meeting the needs of a pluralistic society by defining a developmental writing curriculum that incorporates the same strategies that characterize the mainstream writing classroom. The "cognitive deficiency model" that characterizes most instruction in…

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…