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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
We wanted to take a moment to share with you some of the questions members had during our information sessions on July 15 and 16 and our responses. We share because we understand that not all our members could attend. This FAQ page is the result of these conversations.
What makes a good topic for a proposal to this Institute?
You can propose any topic you’d like as a professional in rhetoric, composition, literacy, and writing studies. However, there are several cues for refinement that might increase your chances of being a roundtable speaker. We encourage you to ground your proposal with area, exigence, role, and context in mind.
- What area—theory, pedagogy, administration, assessment—does your idea most closely align with?
- There is a box for this on the submission form.
- What is the exigence that your roundtable or individual proposal responds to?
- What role do you imagine playing during the roundtable?
- There is a box for this on the submission form.
- What context or situation do you imagine you and your roundtable partners performing in?
- Given the openness of the experience we have created, thinking about where you will be playing your roundtable can help ground your work. Consider the context of a public school board meeting, a department curriculum meeting, a teacher training session, a university writing board. These contexts can shape the way you and your colleagues might structure your roundtable.
- Even if you propose as an individual, it might be useful to name a context that you can bring to the discussion should you be selected as a speaker in a “chair-made” roundtable.
- Describing the context is optional, but you can see how it would ground the way you are thinking about your roundtable. This kind of grounding will help us make decisions.
- It is important to note that for individual proposals your context might not be the same as another’s context. Should two different contexts be placed in the same roundtable, you have a rich opportunity to work it out among yourselves.
How citational do I have to be in the proposal?
Please be as citational as you need to be in order to articulate the need for your contribution.
How might I best think about roles?
Think about the role as a disposition toward the exigence animating your roundtable and toward your fellow roundtable speakers. You may also choose to think about your role as demonstrating a way knowledge gets made.
We want to honor the various ways we make knowledge in this field. At some point we need a rhetorical gadfly to test our claims. At some point we need to be an empiricist to ground our theories in what writers might actually be doing. At some point we want to listen deeply and pose questions. Sometimes we need to assert the full weight of our accumulated, expert knowledge. And so on. We have offered some roles in our CFP and encourage you to define other roles you might play if these are not to your liking or disposition.
What if I can imagine playing multiple roles? Should I state that somewhere?
Please select the one role you are both comfortable and excited to play during your roundtable.
Creating roundtables for the Institute will be a labor-intensive process. We need you to support this labor by being direct in how you imagine things playing out. Such directness will help us make our decisions more efficiently.
What if I don’t care what role I play? I just want to propose something; can I propose without a role?
Please pick a role. No, you cannot submit a proposal without selecting a role.
I got invited to be a roundtable speaker, now what?
All invited speakers will need to take the following steps once they receive an invitation to participate during the Institute as a roundtable speaker:
- Confirm that you are committed to participate in this way.
- Begin refining your roundtable experience with your members.
- Attend one of the two roundtable Zoom sessions for support:
- September 18, 2024, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. ET
- September 19, 2024, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. ET
- Registration links will be sent to invited speakers as soon as decisions are made.
Do I have to propose something to be a part of the Institute?
No. Please attend as an audience member and come with questions, concerns, and other ways for you to engage the day’s events.
We have created multiple experiences for our members. You can
- listen well during the roundtable presentations;
- write and reflect on what you have heard during the 30-minute writing session;
- offer your voice via the smaller breakout sessions; and you can continue to a larger session “all chat” that concludes each session.
Bring your whole self as a participant.
What advice do you have for someone not sure if they want to submit an individual proposal or a roundtable proposal?
Do what you have time and energy for or what you are able to do between now and the submission deadline of August 9, 2024, before 10:00 a.m. ET.
We note that the planning stages are different for those who submit as a roundtable and those who submit individually. Roundtable folks have already begun the planning stage together and can now move on to the play and revise stages.
Individual proposers will have the added complication of needing to work with folks they may not have met before. While this makes things more complicated, we hope that individual proposers engage this in the spirit of fun and possibility and have good stress in trying to make it work.
How can I share my ideas with others in order to find like-minded folks to create a roundtable proposal with?
We have created a Google Doc where you can post your ideas and ask for collaborators. We also encourage you to use your listserv connections and social media to gather colleagues. Access the following link to share your mini call: Mini Call for Roundtable Collaborators.
How does “institution type” play into your decision-making process?
It is important to our decision-making process.
We can say plainly that we want to make sure those institutions are honored with formal speaking roles to the best that we can permit.
We want folks from two-year colleges, tribal colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), small liberal arts colleges (SLAC), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI), institutions that are part of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, highest reach output universities (R1), teaching universities, and private and public universities and colleges to feel welcomed to propose.
If you have not been invited to speak as a roundtable participant, we need your knowledge during the other events that occur during the day.
When can I register for the Institute?
We will send an email announcing that registration is open sometime in early/mid-August.
Who will be reading the proposals?
We, Antonio Byrd and Timothy Oleksiak, will be reviewing all the proposals and making final decisions.
Making decisions on the final speakers’ list is our responsibility as co-chairs. We might ask CCCC leadership or members of the Executive Committee to help us make decisions. We don’t want you to “guess what the co-chairs want.” Rather, help us understand the importance and need of your ideas. When in doubt, explain yourself but trust us to be as generous in our readings of your work as we can be, given the constraints that we are working with.
How should I spend my time during the Institute if I am not a roundtable speaker?
To be maximally involved in the Institute, you will
- Listen with care to the four roundtables (1 from each concurrent session).
- Write, reflect, and revise during the 30-minute individual writing time.
- Expand upon the ideas you’ve heard.
- Integrate the ideas you’ve heard into a project you are currently working through.
- Eat or drink as your body needs.
- Use the WC (toilet) as needed.
- Power nap.
- Go outside briefly for some air.
- Backchannel how cool everything is.
- Prepare for the smaller session breakout rooms.
- Actively engage during the smaller breakout rooms.
- Actively engage during the session “all member” chat.
- Join us for the final all-attendee Town Hall Meeting.
Of course, you are welcome to simply attend one roundtable. However, we hope that you join us for the all-attendee Town Hall Meeting at the end of the Institute.
Read the Call for Proposals for the 2024 CCCC Fall Virtual Institute
