Discusses the responsibilities of serving as English department head. Two main duties identified are (1) to preserve and expand knowledge and (2) to ensure the success of the educational mission of the department. The administrator is encouraged to maintain scholarly activities while being a student of departmental and institutional affairs. (DF)

Advocates the use of word processing equipment to assume routine English department typing chores such as preparing faculty vitae, responding to job applicants, and preparing scholarly articles. (DF)

Describes three criteria used by a college administrator to allocate faculty positions. Discusses ways for English departments to enhance their chances for faculty positions. Suggests that departments that can significantly enhance undergraduate education have the best claim on faculty positions. (RS)

Presents 10 concrete strategies for retaining faculty lines, strategies that respond to the new economic realities shaping institutions and at the same time preserve the vital heart of the academy. (RS)

Suggests that the increasing prevalence of the two-career couple on university campuses should be viewed as an exhilarating challenge rather than an unmanageable mess of contending views. (RS)

Describes several aspects of English faculty seminars at Gustavus Adolphus College, including a description of scheduling procedures; advantages gained for both the department and college; the range of presentations encouraged; and problems solved in order to sustain the seminars. (MM)

Argues that curricular revision (in the direction implied by widespread adoption of terms such as "canon" and "theory") has been accomplished with little overhauling, in large part by adding non-White, nonmale, nonclassical writers to traditional courses. Argues that reading new works is not the same as arriving at new…

Outlines current critiques of U.S. higher education. Describes the activities and findings of the Illinois state task force on assessment of language arts in the 1980s. Describes how Illinois State University's English department defined the goals of English majors and dramatically altered the curriculum. (HB)

Argues that adherence to rigid disciplinary boundaries of English studies will lead scholars to miss important occasions to advance their work and effect change. Attempts to redefine the integrity of English studies--to move it from an authorial and structural referential to an ethos committed to knowing, learning, and studying other forms of…

Focuses on the cultural geography encountered by those being interviewed at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention. Notes that interviews are conducted in hotel suites, hotel rooms, and in the interview area. Suggests that the drawbacks of the interview area are outweighed by the essential fairness and equal opportunity this setting…

Attempts to identify what makes a recommendation letter effective (and what does not). Presents several guidelines for different conditions and circumstances under which recommendations are frequently written. Concludes by suggesting not to write a letter if the writer cannot put him/herself in the place of the candidate, because the writer's…

Prepares two tables to illustrate how it is helpful to place worries about much smaller sums in the context of Miami University's overall academic budget; One table summarizes the academic budgets for every department during the 1997-98 academic year and a second contains the income-expense ratios for all Oxford departments over a five-year…

The reforms of both literary studies and composition are essential if English department wants to remain integral to the liberal arts curriculum. English studies integrates work in literature, language studies and culture with horizontally writing instruction and not hierarchically.

This study explores how group processes, such as group cohesiveness and group norms, influence an individual EFL learner's autonomy--their autonomous beliefs and actual autonomous behaviors. Questionnaires were administered to 152 Taiwanese university students from the English Department of a National Science and Technology University in southern…