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CCCC Statement against War Crimes

June 2022

All forms of injustices—particularly those caused by warfare, climate injustice, crimes against humanity, and/or political instability brought on by colonization—threaten educational systems and the safety of students and teachers everywhere. As a community of scholars committed to social justice who teach students and work with scholars from around the world, it is time to broaden our attention, both individually and collectively.

CCCC stands in solidarity with those students and teachers whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by war, by crimes against humanity, by political instability, by climate injustice, and by famine. We see you in US writing classrooms, in refugee settlements, and in your own communities and schools where you face danger daily, and we thank you for your commitment to learning even in the face of physical violence, knowledge suppression, and linguistic imperialism.

CCCC stands against injustice wherever literacy learning and students’ access to education are threatened. This demand is inclusive of students and scholars around the world, of all those who must cross borders at great risks, and of all who teach, study, write, and speak under traumatizing conditions.

Today, we stand in solidarity with our colleagues and students in and from Ukraine. We also stand in solidarity with students and scholars in and from places affected by war and violence, including Ethiopia, Myanmar, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, Cameroon, and Yemen.

We stand in solidarity with our colleagues and students who oppose the war crimes inflicted on citizens, immigrants, and visitors.

As a community of educators and scholars, we will work to open our scholarly resources to fellow scholars and students in generous collaboration. We will work to open our classrooms, writing centers, and professional resources for access to you and your students. And we will work to make the conditions under which literacy learning is happening in the face of war crimes visible in our understanding of teaching writing.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

2021 State of the Art of Online Writing Instruction

In 2011, the former CCCC Online Writing Instruction Committee surveyed the field as part of its charge to identify and examine best practices in online writing instruction. Based on the findings from the survey, the committee wrote an Initial Report of the Committee for Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction (OWI): The State of the Art of OWI 2011. In 2021, a decade later, the current CCCC Online Writing Instruction Standing Group sought to update the report by replicating the survey, documenting successes and challenges, and identifying areas where more research is needed. This updated report aims to complement and extend the original findings, serving as a 10-year snapshot of online teaching and learning for the Writing Studies field.

CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program

2022-23 Call for Applications

Are you interested in digital activism, knowledge equity, and public rhetorics? Make a real difference in public access to knowledge and explore your own research interests through the CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program.

Applications due: Monday, May 30, 2022

Fellowship period: July 2022–June 2023

Time commitment: 10 hours/week July–Aug; 5 hours/week Sept–June

Award: $1,500 USD

The Conference on College Composition and Communication Wikipedia Initiative (CCCCWI) is accepting applications for the 2022-23 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellowship Program. Graduate students in writing studies and closely related fields are invited to apply. The fellowship is aimed at emerging scholars who are 1) invested in digital activism and knowledge equity, and 2) interested in hands-on experience with Wikipedia, Wikidata, and the digital public humanities.

Established in 2019, the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative proceeds from the conviction that public scholarship and knowledge equity on Wikipedia serve as fundamental groundwork for social justice. We are developing skills, cultivating inclusive community, and building structures of support and recognition for scholars of writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies who want to engage with Wikipedia as a form of global public scholarship.

2022-23 CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows will each receive a $1,500 award in recognition of their one-year appointment to advance and expand the work of the CCCCWI. Applications are due Monday, May 30, 2022. (See the application overview below for details.)

What do CCCC Wikipedia Grad Fellows do?

CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellows participate in Wikipedia and Wikidata training activities, collaborate on group projects, and lead individual projects that extend the work of the CCCCWI.

The 2022-23 cohort of fellows will work with CCCCWI leadership on shared projects aimed at highlighting writing studies related content gaps across different language Wikipedias and engaging editors with the support and resources they need to address knowledge inequities. Tasks include:

  • Improving the categorization of Wikipedia articles related to writing studies scholars and topics
  • Expanding bibliographies and resource lists to support citation equity
  • Developing Wikidata queries that showcase content gaps across language Wikipedias
  • Creating article worklists based on these queries to establish goals for WikiProject Writing
  • Revising and expanding help documentation and curriculum

Individual fellows will also take the lead in developing and executing a project aligned with the CCCCWI’s goal of engaging scholars in writing studies to edit Wikipedia within their field(s) of expertise. Project ideas will be refined in conversation with Dr. Melanie Kill (CCCCWI Chair), Savannah Cragin (CCCC Wikipedian-in-Residence), and the project mentor identified by the fellow. (See the project types overview below for details.)

Who should apply?

We welcome graduate students interested in digital activism, knowledge equity, and public rhetorics. If you meet the following criteria, we look forward to reading your application:

  • Currently enrolled in a graduate program in writing, rhetoric, composition, literacy, and/or language studies or a closely related field
  • Experience and investment in work supporting diversity and equity
  • Strong research, writing, and communication skills

All experience levels with Wikipedia or Wikidata are encouraged to apply. (See gaining experience on Wikipedia and Wikidata below if you’re interested in getting oriented with the Wikimedia movement.)

We are particularly interested in applicants who have one or more of the following:

  • Experience working in a community organizing, non-profit, or social justice role
  • Spoken and/or written language skills in a language other than English
  • Experience with Wikidata or data science (i.e., SPARQL)
  • Experience contributing to Wikipedia
  • Familiarity with the open knowledge movement
  • Experience with outreach via social media and graphic design communication skills

This is by no means a comprehensive list. If there is another skill set or experience not mentioned here that you believe would further the goals of the initiative, we highly recommend submitting an application that describes your project ideas and how you see yourself contributing.

What happens when?
  • May 30, 2022 – Deadline for application submission. This includes your cover letter, CV, and project ideas overview. Your project mentor’s letter of support should be received by Savannah Cragin (CCCC Wikipedian-in-Residence) at savannahcragin@berkeley.edu by this date.
  • June 6-12, 2022 – Selection committee will meet with finalists for brief, informal online interviews.
  • June 13-19, 2022 – Applicants will be notified.

If you have any questions or concerns about the application process, please email Savannah Cragin (CCCC Wikipedian-in-Residence) at savannahcragin@berkeley.edu.

Appendix 1: Project Types Overview

These fellow-led projects will draw on each fellow’s particular skill sets, community investments, and academic interests to support knowledge equity and public scholarship on Wikipedia. Applicants must identify a project mentor to help support their project goals throughout the fellowship. The mentor may be a faculty advisor, a faculty member at another institution, and/or a Wikipedian or Wikidatan community member doing knowledge equity work. (If the project mentor is a faculty member, it is not necessary for them to have prior experience with Wikipedia or Wikidata). Potential projects could include:

  • Writing studies community engagement projects involving members of a defined academic community as co-creators, for example through Wikipedia article assessment and worklist curation. Deep relationships within and commitment from the community are important. (For example, you might collaborate with a CCCC SIG or standing group or an organization like DBLAC or Anti-Ableist Composition.)
  • Wikipedian community engagement projects, including organizing meetups, workshops, edit-a-thons, contests, or resources supporting public engagement with writing studies research and knowledge. The ability to translate expertise into a relevant format in a way that will genuinely engage the intended public is crucial, as are skills and connections that will bring the public to the programs. (For example, you might collaborate with WikiProject Women in Red or AfroCROWD.)
  • Creative outreach and audiovisual projects pertaining to writing studies and Wikipedia and/or Wikidata, including podcasts, social media campaigns, short films, or graphic design. The ability to frame a narrative and articulate complex ideas in a compelling way is crucial, as is expertise in the relevant design technology and in distribution. (For example, you might create work we can showcase on the CCCCWI website and/or the WikiProject Writing Twitter account).
  • Public or classroom curriculum projects that develop adaptable training resources, activities, and participatory projects for a specific audience. These projects take up the work of teacher training and create instructional materials that support writing teachers (at any level and in any context) to teach Wikipedia editing in ways informed by writing studies pedagogy. (For example, you might work on developing a unit or focus for an FYC course that encourages instructors to edit alongside their students or develop a continuing education course on writing for Wikipedia).
  • We welcome other innovative projects that create engaging pathways for writing studies scholars to contribute to Wikipedia. This can relate to any aspect of the initiative’s goals, including but not limited to unique collaborations, diversifying our outreach practices, and developing compelling storytelling and branding that aid in the goal of establishing a culture of writing studies scholars editing Wikipedia as a form of public scholarship.
Appendix 2: Application Overview

This appendix provides an overview of the application process. There are four documents to submit. The applicant will upload items 1-3 when they complete the online application. The applicant’s mentor will submit item 4 (the letter of support) via email.

  1. Cover letter: Include a cover letter introducing yourself and highlighting academic and non-academic skills and experiences that make you an ideal CCCC Wikipedia Graduate Fellow. We’d love to know how your project ideas and this fellowship fit into your current work and future goals. Tell us about your diversity and equity work. Describe your language skills. Describe your experience with Wikipedia and/or Wikidata and include your username (even if you are just getting started).
  2. Résumé/CV: Include a résumé/CV highlighting the work most relevant to your project ideas, as well as any previous public-engagement experience, if applicable.
  3. Project ideas overview (1,000 words total / 2 project ideas): Include an overview describing two (2) project ideas you could develop and implement during the fellowship period. Once the fellowship period begins, these project ideas will be discussed and one of them developed and completed in collaboration with CCCCWI key stakeholders. When articulating your project ideas, keep in mind the complexities of the communities or landscapes you are engaging with. Clear and concise descriptions of project activities, outcomes, and plans to address anticipated challenges will give reviewers greater confidence. For each project idea, please complete steps (a-d) in fewer than 500 words:
    1. Project title: Provide a descriptive title for your project idea
    2. Project summary: Provide a compelling overview of a project you would like to complete as an organizer extending and expanding the work of the CCCCWI. Briefly summarize the project goals, including at least one key output (e.g., an activity or product). Projects that involve individual contributions to Wikipedia or Wikidata should do so with the aim of understanding a process or problem and developing the infrastructure for writing scholars to engage in similar work. Think of yourself as part of the organizing team for the CCCCWI rather than a participant.
    3. Project alignment: Describe how each project idea aligns with the CCCCWI’s goals of engaging scholarly editors within writing studies fields to contribute to Wikipedia. Specifically, elaborate on how you will engage CCCCWI participants and/or specific scholarly communities. Additionally, describe how the project helps combat knowledge inequities within writing studies-related content on Wikipedia.
    4. Project investment: Describe why you are the right person to lead this project. Please discuss your relationship to the communities you plan to collaborate with.
  4. Project mentor letter of support: Ask your project mentor to email a brief letter of support to Savannah Cragin (CCCC Wikipedian-in-Residence) at savannahcragin@berkeley.edu. The letter should:
    1. Briefly evaluate the value and significance of the applicant’s project ideas
    2. Assess the applicant’s relevant skills and ability to carry out proposed project ideas
    3. Indicate a commitment to support the fellow and their proposed project ideas
Appendix 3 – Gaining Experience on Wikipedia and Wikidata

We welcome applicants who are committed to learning how to edit or looking to expand their knowledge of Wikipedia and Wikidata’s editing culture. Below are some resources, initiatives, and events that we hope will pique your interest, get you started editing, and deepen your experience with Wikipedia.

Initiatives, projects, and organizations of interest
Recent Scholarship on Wikipedia
Getting started with Wikipedia
Getting started with Wikidata

CCCC 2023: Statement from Program Chair Frankie Condon

April 13, 2022

Dear Friends,

I write with a heart full of gratitude to members of the CCCC trans community and allies who reached out about the 2023 CFP and Adrienne Rich’s endorsement and amplification of transphobia. I should have known her history and the truth is that I could have known without laying on you the added emotional labor of instructing me. I recognize my culpability and rededicate myself to educating myself and holding myself accountable so you don’t have to. I have now removed the reference from the CFP.

You deserve a field and a CCCC organization unfettered from transphobia and that, as Latinx trans writer and performance artist Heath V. Salazar urges, neither forgets nor denies but rather contends with its past in service of creating and sustaining a more equitable, more just, more fulsome future. And you deserve a conference like that as well. I commit to you that I will do everything I can to make that conference a reality.

With Love,
Frankie

P.S. You can read about Heath V. Salazar here:
https://www.alunatheatre.ca/be-a-part-of-it/residencies/heath-salazar/

You can see an interview/performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvdE9W0E8ms

And another performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey7uZpQMNPM

2023 Call for Proposals

Submit a Proposal

Submit a Proposal

Proposal deadline for the 2023 CCCC Annual Convention is 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 7, 2022.

Full Call for Proposals

Criteria and Guidelines

General Information

Program Format

Area Clusters

Information Required to Submit

Volunteer to Review Proposals

Grants and Travel Awards

Statement from Program Chair Frankie Condon
April 13, 2022

Doing Hope in Desperate Times

Dear Colleagues,

Dearly Beloved,

Dear Friends,

I’ve learned a lot during the pandemic. One thing I now know for sure is that however much I love my solitude, I need all of you. I miss the energy, the vibe, the hustle, and the hum of CCCC. I miss the learning—the deep, lovely, hard, sometimes bitter, always energizing learning that, face with face, one with one, all with all, togetherness makes possible. During the years since last we met in person, like many of you, I have also wrestled with despair. I have always known, but not felt so deeply until now, the truth that we live in a broken world. The crushing tides of climate change and its resulting ecological disasters; the spread of COVID across the globe; endless war, poverty, famine, and the mass migration of peoples that coincide with a rising tide of authoritarianism, nationalism, extrajudicial violence, white supremacy, ethnocentrism, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny—come near to breaking me. I have wondered whether deep affiliative relations beyond my homeplaces are even possible. Honestly, if the pandemic and all the other terrors to which we have been exposed have brought out the best in us (at least, that’s what cable news says), they’ve also unleashed our inner jerks; loosed ignorance so profound as to numb our capacity to even look at one another let alone speak with one another; launched political opportunism and manipulation so deadly that democracy looks to be in its death throes—and, as it dies, looks to be taking with it our capacity to imagine and reach for the kindness, compassion, and empathy that must be the foundation of social, economic, and political justice struggles.

But, in my lowest moments, I remember what Dr. Cornel West teaches: hope is action. Hope “enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles” against the evidence of our brokenness. Here’s a hard truth: the catastrophes we face are humanmade, in particular by the exercise of power of a few over and against the many—against the earth, itself, and all the teeming life that call this planet home. Here’s another hard truth: a lot of the many have gone along to get along and packaged our acquiescence in the frippery of moral rectitude. And here’s one more hard truth: doing hope is much harder than wringing hands or assigning blame. Many of us are outraged, enraged, all the rage. Indeed, to riff on Derrida, the evidence seems incontrovertible that the future—if there can be any future for us—is bleak. Cornel West, however, does not eschew rage. Nor does he capitulate to despair. Neither should we. As Dr. Cornel says, “Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane—and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word” (2005).

I invite you to a 2023 CCCC Annual Conference dedicated to doing hope. Together, let’s evaluate anew the relationship of our field’s prevailing theories and practices to the perpetuation of systems, structures, institutional policies, procedures, and practices that—by design—oppress, exclude, exploit. Together, let’s see if we can both imagine and make manifest, as trans writer and performance artist Heath Salazar might say, a CCCCs organization “where people do right by one another . . . a [field] which has no chance of faltering because it will refuse to forget its past” (2018). Let’s admit that the tyranny of western argument over our field and the attachment of “personal,” like an epithet-filled ball and chain, to narrative are not serving well our students, ourselves, or the public and political discourses our teaching helps to shape.  Let’s bust some binaries . . . between self and other and us and them on one hand and between genre and method and argument and narrative on the other. The known has failed us. So, I am inviting you to do hope at the outside edges of our knowns. To follow Fanon in re-membering “that the real leap consists in introducing invention into existence. For the world through which [we] travel, [we are] endlessly creating [ourselves]” (1967).

To experiment, to try, to essay into learningful unlearning, into uncertainty attended by curiosity and wonderment, I’m asserting that we should admit our failures, address the evidence that—in our communities as across the world, in our institutions, our classrooms, our writing, speaking, teaching, and learning centres—things are not looking good. And if they do look good to you, chances are there are folks whose lives and lived experiences you’ns ain’t lookin’ at. So, let’s ask crazy hard questions and see if we can talk about them without certainty but with a real commitment to being together in the talking.

Let’s go to the places and ways our lives as teachers, scholars, writers, rhetors, performers, learners, and just-plain-folks intersect and let’s see if we can imagine an ethical relation undergirded by a shared commitment to doing hope. And if the old ways—our known ways of doing teaching, research, writing, talking, performing, and learning—have failed us, let’s experiment; let’s mesh methods, methodology, genres, languages, discourses, codes. Let’s embrace ALL the trans: transnational, translingual, transmemoration, multiracial, multi-ethnic—and transgender, transexual, transforming. Let’s be “the baddest bitch in the room, until we go to the next room” (The Vixen).

Here are some questions meant as provocations, not be-all-end-alls:

  • What can we learn together when we seek out possibilities for deep relationship with collaborators, fellow troublemakers—for doers of hope across
    • identities and identifications
    • national borders
    • global, regional, and local histories of struggle
    • institutional spaces or pedagogical fields: the writing centre, the writing program, the writing classroom, for example?
    • disciplines (bring a mathematician to CCCC or sumthin!)?
  • As scholars, teachers, rhetors, what might we learn or unlearn, what erased knowledges might we recover or reclaim; what new knowledge might we produce; how might we teach differently as transnational allies, accomplices, co-researchers, and co-writers?
  • What might we do together as intersectional accomplices in the production of new knowledge—where we understand intersectionality as an “analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power” that makes visible the “many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them” (Crenshaw)?

Dr. Aja Martinez told us that “narrative has always been theoretical” and “counterstory as methodology is the verb, the process, the critical race theory-informed justification for the work whereas counterstory as method is the noun, the genre, the research tool.” And Lee Maracle told us that “creative non-fiction is bound by the original foundations handed to us by ancestors, ceremony, laws, and our relationship to creation. We place our obligations before us when we re-member . . . We need to draw upon the tangled web of colonial being, thread by thread—watch as each thread unfurls, untangles, shows its soft underbelly, its vulnerability, its strength, its resilience, its defiance, its imposition, its stubbornness.”

  • So, when we act on these understandings of methodology, method, and genre, what possibilities or knowledge-making open when we braid creative nonfiction, counterstory, narrative with critical rhetoric, narrative inquiry, and critical discourse analysis?
  • Can we lay aside our compulsion to commemorate that which we believe we know as teachers, scholars, writers, and colleagues and instead embrace what Kyo Maclear calls “transmemoration”: the practice of narrating one’s life or history without denying or suppressing the truth of other lives, other narratives—“coming to terms (to language) with the ways in which our identities and understandings are unevenly implicated in wider social and symbolic formations structured on power and inequality” (as cited in Condon, 2012: Maclear, 1998, p. 155)?
  • How can we use our talk, our teaching, our writing (our citing, baby!) to amplify, to lift up, to elevate those whose voices in our field have too long been ignored? Think graduate students, adjunct, parafaculty, and staff whose labour is exploited. Think emerging scholars—particularly those coming from historically marginalized and oppressed, equity-deserving communities: Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Colour, Peoples with disabilities, neurodivergent Folks, 2SLGBTQIA+ Folks?
  • How can we encourage, create, and draw on laughter in service of survivance to thrive, to learn, and to turn our minds, spirits, and our energy toward creating worlds where the idea of a future is imaginable?

This is my love letter—to the folks in the discipline, some of them now passed on, who raised and nurtured me, challenged and troubled my knowns, believed in me, or wondered aloud with me what the hell I was doing and saying and why. To the emerging scholars, the young folks in the field who are smart as hell, who speak up and out, who are courageous and determined—and inspiring! To my contemporaries, my friends, my colleagues whether I’ve met you or not, who, with love and rage put the field on blast.

Keep yourselves safe, get vaccinated, get boosters, stay home, charge into 2022 CCCC Annual Convention online with delight. And let’s make Chicago 2023 a thang.

All My Love—Truly,

Frankie

Frankie Condon
2023 Program Chair

Important Dates

Email CCCCevents@ncte.org with questions.

Volunteer to Review Proposals

Would you want to serve as a reviewer for the 2023 CCCC Annual Convention proposals? Please complete this short survey by 9:00 a.m. ET, Friday, April, 22, 2023.

CCCC Statement on Teaching and Learning about Race, Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Social Justice in the College Curriculum

Conference on College Composition and Communication
March 2022

The National Council of Teachers of English (the umbrella organization of the Conference on College Composition and Communication) previously cosigned the AAUP “Joint Statement on Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism” in June 2021, affirming that teachers and students “deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today.”

Since the affirmation of that statement, however, legislative efforts throughout multiple states in the US have sought to undermine students’ educations about racial history and racism under the umbrella of objections to critical race theory (see, for example, the 2021 article “Legislating against Critical Race Theory, with Curricular Implications in Some States” and PEN America’s “In Higher Education, New Educational Gag Orders Would Exert Unprecedented Control Over College Teaching” by Young and Friedman).

As the CCCC Executive Committee, we support both academic freedom and academic responsibility. The professional roles of educators—as those trained in a range of content and instructional methods—are unacceptably undermined by this legislative overreach. We affirm the importance of using all the theoretical and scholarly tools available to support student learning, including scholarship of critical race theory, disability studies, and feminist and gender justice, among others.

Faculty in writing studies should have agency in designing educational experiences that are historically accurate and that attend to practices of rhetorical ethics and equitable literacy education more generally. There is no question that the disciplinary studies of language, composition, and rhetoric take place within larger power systems (e.g., colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other structurally asymmetrical power relations that shape our world). Writing teachers need to support students in recognizing the full range of linguistic and rhetorical tools that can be used to reproduce and reinforce such power systems. Writing teachers need to support students in learning to speak and write in service of exposing and dismantling injustices produced by those systems. This work can only be accomplished through historically accurate, honest, well-informed course readings, writing assignments, and classroom conversations.

As an organization and a field of practice, we are committed to resisting attacks on curricula and pedagogies that make visible legacies of racial oppression. Likewise, we are committed to supporting curricula and pedagogies that work toward equity and social justice. Our organization’s mission is as follows:

CCCC advocates for broad and evolving definitions of literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing (including multimodal discourse, digital communication, and diverse language practices) that emphasize the value of these activities to empower individuals and communities.

In the interests of empowerment, we object to mischaracterizations and erasures of injustices as well as denial of persistent inequities.

We call upon other institutional entities within higher education (for example, administrators and offices) to join us in our resistance to legislative bodies and actions that seek to undermine our responsibilities as educators.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

CCCC Governance Restructuring Proposal: Overview from the CCCC EC Structures and Processes Working Group

CCCC Governance Restructuring Proposal: Overview from the CCCC EC Structures and Processes Working Group (co-chairs, Holly Hassel and David Green)[1]

Background and Process

In November 2020, the CCCC Executive Committee held its annual retreat where working group subcommittees of the Executive Committee (EC) were established by CCCC Chair Julie Lindquist. The CCCC EC Structures and Processes Working Group subcommittee (SPWG), co-chaired by David Green and Holly Hassel, set about the task of developing a restructuring proposal that would make substantive changes to the governance of the organization, drawing from significant prior data collection, reports, and feedback from members and member groups in the last five years (see the supporting documents links on the proposal website). The revised governance structure reimagines the composition of the EC (including how nominations, elections, and representation happen), creates new structures for organizing the governance labor of the organization, and builds in greater levels of transparency in decision making at the elected governance levels of CCCC.

Over the course of 2021, SPWG met regularly with the Committee for Change leadership (a group established in the spring of 2019), held listening sessions and individual meetings with various constituent groups, gathered feedback from member groups including Standing Groups and Caucuses, and presented its governance restructuring proposal to the Executive Committee in April, September, and November, with unanimous endorsement from the EC at its November meeting (see the 2021–2022 feedback timeline available on the website). As the elected body charged with the stewardship of the organization and its well-being, the EC has worked throughout these multiple deliberations to reflect as many perspectives and concerns as possible and has invited the feedback of many constituent groups to inform their decision making and final approval of the changes.

Our proposed changes to the Constitution must now be approved through a simple majority vote of our membership. This document provides an overview of the following:

  • Principles and Values
  • Overview of Changes
  • Next Steps
  • Where to Read More

Principles and Values

The organization’s governance structure has remained largely the same throughout the history of CCCC. The proposed restructuring aims to update and move the organization’s work forward by creating new, permanent structures dedicated to equity and access; by codifying the work of continuing committees with annual responsibilities; and by building stronger relationships between member groups and the decision-making levels of the organization. In this section, we explain the relationship between the principles and values that have underpinned the restructuring proposal and how they are translated into specific structural changes.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and access: CCCC has a long, stated commitment to DEI and accessibility. In the proposed structural changes, we have sought to codify an organizational commitment to these values. Every recommended change seeks to support these values, including a revised structure of the EC; more visible and expansive nomination processes for open seats; ex officio representation that creates greater accountability and tighter relationships between the decision-making bodies and member groups; formal references to electronic participation in meetings; and formalizing the work of the Committee on Disability Issues in College Composition within the organizational structure. Further, the governance restructuring creates a new administrative structure that is parallel with that of the Executive Committee and the CDICC, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee; this is a permanent structure, unlike previous groups that have been special committees or task forces, each of which has a finite period of constitution before being dissolved or expiring.

Transparency: The processes of decision making in the structures of the organization are disconnected from the member groups (see organizational chart). There are also narrow and undefined channels of communication between leaders and membership; many decisions are made by a single person (the chair). Whenever possible, we have brought more alignment between the member groups, the stated values of the organization, and the levers of decision making governing the organization; we believe the changes proposed here make more visible the available leadership and governance seats and how those seats get filled. They also aim to make visible how nomination slates are created and how members can be involved in and have influence within the organization.

Accountability: There has been a long history of concern about the relationship between the Executive Committee’s decision making and the organization’s member groups. In the proposed restructuring, we have sought to build stronger relationships between member groups and the organization’s elected leadership; we have centered DEI and access by creating new administrative structures dedicated to those values, and we have integrated specific duties and responsibilities that will benchmark the work of groups who have expertise and leadership on this topic. We have sought as well to incorporate, for example, meaningful reporting and recommendation-making from groups with responsibilities in these and other areas. We have simultaneously suggested changes that will increase the communication to groups from the elected leadership.

Scaffolded leadership development: There is a large and often difficult gap between the national-level leadership roles of the Executive Committee and the Standing Group activities that many CCCC members participate in. The visual depiction of the current and proposed restructuring illustrates this gap. The new restructure creates a pool of nominees to the EC that is put forward by Caucuses, Standing Groups, and TYCA (while “at-large” seats—or those nominations submitted by individual members—are also retained). The restructuring proposal is intended to create more alignment between the kinds of activities and conversations that take place within elected governance leadership groups and the work that takes place in Standing Groups, Special and Standing Committees, and Special Interest Groups, ideally building a stronger pipeline between (and scaffolded experience of, from the perspective of members) the organization’s increasing levels of responsibility and authority.

Aligning practice with policy: In the current structure, the organization’s work at the administrative level has been done through three Standing (or administrative—meaning, they are enshrined in the constitution) Committees, while “Special Committees”—those with three-year terms—have been regularly created and dissolved (or extended in perpetuity), typically by the Officers Committee, though sometimes by the chair or the EC as a whole. There is no category of governance within the organization that is named “Standing Committee” in the current structure (even though we have groups that act in this way), an issue we address in the restructured proposal. The new category appears in the constitution, while the specific groups that are acting in these ways are listed in the Bylaws. This will allow for more agility in making changes to the groups that are characterized as Standing Committees (because bylaws changes require a vote of the EC only) while retaining the “compositional” definitions within the constitution.

Overview of Change

Change 1: Constitutional Language Establishing CCCC Values: Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

The addition of a new article, drafted by the Committee for Change, that embeds the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Constitution. We propose an amendment of Article I, Section 2 that adds the word equitable to the organization’s objective. We propose an amendment of Article I of the Constitution that adds all new language to address the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We propose an amendment of Article IV, Section 1b that adds the word identities to detail how diversity is represented within the EC.

Change 2: Composition of Executive Committee and Additional Committees and Categories

A restructuring of the Executive Committee membership that draws from multiple pools, including a reduction of at-large seats and an increase in ex-officio and member group nominated pools. We propose a restructuring of the Executive Committee composition that includes a great number of voting “ex officio” seats, which are themselves determined through nominations, elections, or established governance processes used by member groups.

Reorganizing the levels of committee structures to include two new administrative committees: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Committee on Disability Issues in College Composition (CDICC). A DEI committee does not currently exist. The CDICC has been functioning as a Standing Committee though its origins are as a Special Committee. This elevates these two areas of the organization’s work as parallel to the Executive Committee, Nominating Committee, and Officers Committee.

Creating a Standing Committee category structure: The only committees operating in perpetuity without ongoing renewal and recharging are the Executive, Nominating, and Officers Committees. Special Committees have been formed and recharged from a single time period (three years) to multiple decades, depending on the EC composition and will at the time. The Standing Committee category will codify the work of groups that are already engaging in ongoing annual labor or that have traditionally been perpetually reconstituted. These will be spelled out in the bylaws, which are a separate document that outlines the operations of the organization and its groups but that follows a different approval process and timeline.

Standing Committees will include entities such as the Newcomers Committee, the Research Committee, and the Social Justice and Activism at the Convention Committee, among others whose responsibilities will be named in the revision of the CCCC Bylaws (and in collaboration and conversation with affected groups) should the governance restructuring proposal be approved by membership. The CCCC Executive Committee bylaws will also explicitly describe a process for changing the status of a Special Committee to a Standing Committee.

Change 3: Changes to Nominations Processes and Responsibilities of Nominating Committee

More detailed expectations for the Nominations Committee are provided in the Constitution (and subsequently in the EC bylaws), and ex officio representative seats are reserved for member groups. These changes propose that the EC reduce the number of elected at-large positions from 20 to 12 to ensure designated seats for the Cultural Identity Caucuses and the CDICC, DEI, and graduate student positions on the EC and that substantive written guidelines be provided for the Nominating Committee. Two of the at-large seats are reserved for members who work in contingent faculty positions.

Change 4: Revisions to Election Processes and Ballot Construction

Changes in EC composition will warrant changes to the nomination, ballot construction, and election processes. At-large elections and nominations will continue as they have in the past. Ex officio seats of Cultural Identity Caucuses will be put forward by the Caucuses themselves, as is the case with the two seats from the Standing Group for Graduate Students. These proposed changes to the election process and ballot construction are designed to address concerns raised about how ballots are put together and voted on.

Visual Depiction
Current Structure
Proposed Structure

Next Steps

The CCCC EC bylaws are a kind of “procedure” or operating manual for the structures spelled out in the Constitution. Their revision process (spelled out in the Bylaws themselves) is that changes are approved by the CCCC EC itself. Should the constitutional changes be approved by a vote of the membership (as spelled out in the Constitution), then the SPWG will continue working to revise the bylaws for an approval vote in late spring 2022 by the EC.

Members of the 2021 CCCC Executive Committee Structures and Processes Working Group:

David Green (co-chair)
Holly Hassel (co-chair)
Steven Alvarez
Cheryl Hogue Smith
Janelle Jennings-Alexander (consulting member, chair of Committee for Change)
Timothy Oleksiak
Malea Powell
Jen Wingard

Members of the 2022 CCCC Executive Committee Structures and Processes Working Group:

Holly Hassel (co-chair)
David Green (co-chair)
Steven Alvarez
Tracey Daniels-Lerberg
Kendra Mitchell
Becky Mitchell Shelton
Timothy Oleksiak
Malea Powell
Jennifer Wingard

Where to Read More

Glossary:

  • Administrative Committees: Currently, these refer to three groups that are permanent to the structure of the organization:
    • Executive Committee: the governing body of the organization, made up of several ex officio members and a majority of elected members
    • Nominating Committee: a separately elected committee that includes two past chairs of the organization who prepare the slate of nominations for election vacancies from nomination
    • Officers Committee: the four chairs in the rotation (assistant chair, associate chair, chair, and immediate past chair), plus the elected secretary of the organization
  • Member Groups:
    • Special Interest Groups: These are groups that meet annually around a topic of shared interest at the Convention; they do not have formal reporting responsibility to the organization.
    • Standing Groups: These are groups with greater longevity who hold a business meeting and have formal reporting responsibilities; there is a process for creating them. SIGs can become Standing Groups after they have been active for five years by submitting an application for a change in status. Standing Groups have their own bylaws and operating processes and can determine their own responsibilities (bottom up).
  • Other Types of Groups:
    • Special Committees: These are three-year committees tasked and populated by the Executive Committee (sometimes only the officers) around a specific issue; they are given charges, determined by the officers or chair (top-down).
    • Task Forces: These are groups assembled by the chair, officers, or Executive Committee, with a one-year constitution and a focused charge given by the organization’s elected leadership.

[1] Please see the end of the document for a brief glossary of organization-specific terminology.

2022 CCCC Governance Restructuring Proposal

CCCC Governance Restructuring Proposal: Overview from the CCCC EC Structures and Processes Working Group (co-chairs, Holly Hassel and David Green)

Restructuring Proposal Documentation
Supporting Documents Consulted

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