Jessie, Bret, Belinda, Sarah, and Bethany have just been accepted to present at the 2019 Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference in Baltimore. This national conference features panels that represent innovative and top-notch rhetoric and composition programs from around the country. Here's the panel topic:
Many Hands: Collaborative Writing
Program Administration as Inclusive Practice
These panelists will discuss the collaborative and inclusive administrative style that supports the vertical writing model at Appalachian State University. Serving 5,000 students a year, the rhetoric and composition program is steered by a committee that intentionally refutes the hierarchy of tenure while striving to avoid exploitative laboring conditions. Seeking to authorize the diverse voices of all faculty at all ranks without sacrificing the need for program uniformity, this writing program is guided by many hands moving in many directions. Speaker One will discuss the Rhetoric and Composition Institute, which is an annual, two-day conference at ASU that features workshops led by national scholars from around the country as well as workshops led by internal faculty. This professional development conference exposes faculty to the best practices of leading scholars in the field while simultaneously celebrating the innovative practices stemming from within the program. Speaker Two will discuss the assessment strategies of our first-year writing course, including a multi-year assessment project aimed at aligning knowledge transfer with the program’s ethos. Speaker Three will discuss serving as a composition course coordinator to the FYW course and the process of transitioning to themed sections. This paper will outline two lines of inquiry that inform this process: 1) best practices that authorize individual pedagogies without sacrificing the integrity of the course, and 2) contextual knowledge that supports our transition. Speaker Four will discuss the process of moving sections of our second-year course online. Speaker Four will situate our process within the context of other programmatic developments and share how our progress thus far aligns with our program ethos. Speaker Five will discuss the program’s ongoing commitment to Inclusive Excellence. Informed by theories of diversity and inclusion, TT, VAP, and graduate students are collaborating to conduct a self-study that asks as its fundamental question: how/does the RC program currently practice inclusive excellence? This assessment aims to establish directions for future professional development and curriculum design with the ultimate goal of becoming campus leaders of inclusive excellence. Ultimately, this panel seeks to contemplate the philosophy of radical inclusivity that underscores our program’s collaborative labor practices as well as many of our pedagogical approaches.
This is a big deal, so please congratulate them when you see them!