Category: Uncategorized

Nomination Deadline: October 15

Purpose: The CCCC Committee on Technical Communication presents the Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication annually during the Awards Session at the CCCC Convention.

Eligibility: Dissertations eligible for the 2025 Dissertation Award in Technical Communication must have been completed in 2023 or 2024. A dissertation may be nominated only once during its two-year period of eligibility.

Award Criteria: Dissertations are evaluated according to the following five criteria: originality of research, contribution the research makes to the field, methodological soundness of the approach used, awareness of the existing research in the area studied, and overall quality of the writing.

Award Specifics: Applicants must submit the following materials: (1) letter of nomination from a dissertation committee member, preferably the chair, emphasizing the significance of the research for technical communication studies; (2) an extended abstract (approximately 250 words); and (3) a copy of the dissertation. Send materials by October 15, 2024, to the CCCC Liaison, cccc@ncte.org.

E-mail questions

Outstanding Dissertation in Technical Communication Award Winners

2024

Morgan Banville, “Am I Who I Say I Am? The Illusion of Choice: Biometric Identification in Healthcare”

2023
Wilfredo Flores, “Toward a Virulent Community Literacy: Constellating the Science, Technology, and Medicine of Queer Sexual Health”

2023 Honorable Mentions
Veronica Joyner, “Black at the OB-GYN: Rhetorics of Race in Women’s Health Care”
Jessica McCaughey, “Dynamic Workplace Writing Transfer: Writing Across Career Change”

2022
Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo, “Spatial Technologies, (Geo)Epistemology, & the Global South: Addressing the Discursive Materiality of GhanaPostGPS through Technical Communication” 

2022 Honorable Mention
Yeqing Kong,“‘Water Is a Human Right’: Exploring Environmental and Public Health Risk Communication in the Flint Water Crisis” 

2021
Cecilia D. Shelton, “On Edge: A Techné of Marginality”

2021 Honorable Mentions

Sweta Baniya, “Comparative Study of Networked Communities, Crisis Communication, and Technology: Rhetoric of Disaster in the Nepal Earthquake and Hurricane Maria”
Wil LaVeist, “Adding Soul to the Message: Applying African American Jeremiad Rhetoric as Culturally Competent Health Communication Online”

2020
Temptaous Mckoy, “Y’all Call it Technical and Professional Communication, We Call it #ForTheCulture: The Use of Amplification Rhetorics in Black Communities and Their Implications for Technical and Professional Communication Studies”

2019
Julie Collins Bates, “Toward an Interventionary Rhetoric for Technical Communication Studies”

2018
Kathryn Swacha, “‘I Could Probably Live to Be 100’: A Rhetorical Analysis of Aging, Agency, and Public Health”

2018 Honorable Mentions
Joy McMurrin, “Negotiating the Supermarket: A Critical Approach to Nutrition Literacy among Low-Income Consumers”
Beau Pihlaja, “New Black Boxes: Technologically Mediated Intercultural Rhetorical Encounters on the US–Mexico Border”

2017
Ella R. Browning, “Rupturing the World of Elite Athletics: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suspension of the 2011 IAAF Regulations on Hyperandrogenism”

2017 Honorable Mentions
Laura Gonzales, “Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach us about Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology”
Emily J. Petersen, “‘Reasonably Bright Girls’: Theorizing Women’s Agency in Technological Systems of Power”

2016
Erin Trauth, “A ‘Natural’ Miscommunication: An Examination of Front-of-Package Label Claims and User-Centered Food Labeling Practices”

2015
Erin A. Frost, “Theorizing an Apparent Feminism in Technical Communication”
Ashley Rose Kelly, “Hacking  Science:  Emerging  Parascientific  Genres  and  Public  Participation in  Scientific  Research”

2014
Natasha N. Jones, “Mediation, Motives, and Goals: Identifying the Networked Nature of Contemporary Activism”

2013
Ehren Pflugfelder, “In Measure of the World: Advancing a Kinesthetic Rhetoric”

2012
Joy Santee, “Inter-institutional Collaboration and the Composition of Cartographic Texts: Mapping the Underground Railroad Bicycle Route”

2011
Colleen Derkatch, “Rhetorical Boundaries in the ‘New Science’ of Alternative Medicine”

2010
Rebekka Andersen, “The Diffusion of Content Management Technologies in Technical Communication Work Groups: A Qualitative Study on the Activity of Technology Transfer”

2010 Honorable Mention
Sarah Hallenbeck, “Writing the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in Late Nineteenth-Century America”

2009
Jonathan Buehl, “Instrument to Evidence to Argument: Visual Mediation of Invisible Phenomena in Scientific Discourse”

2008
Lara Varpio, “Mapping the Genres of Healthcare Information Work: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Interactions Between Oral, Paper, and Electronic Forms of Communication”

2008 Honorable Mention
Huiling Ding, “Rhetoric of a global epidemic: Intercultural and intracultural professional communication about SARS”

2007
Natasha Artemeva, “Becoming an engineering communicator: A study of novices’ trajectories in learning genres of their profession”

2006
Neil Lindemann, “Blurred Boundaries of Science and Advocacy: The Discourse of Scientists at a Conservation Organization”

2005
Huatong Sun, “Expanding the Scope of Localization: A Cultural Usability Perspective on Mobile Text Messaging Use in American and Chinese Contexts”

2004
Donna Kain, “Negotiated Spaces: Constructing Genre and Social Practice in a Cross-Community Writing Project”

2003
Brent Henze, “Scientific Rhetorics in the Emergence of British Ethnology, 1808-1848: Discourses, Disciplines, and Institutions.”

2003 Honorable Mention
Sandra Sterling Reynolds, “Collaboration or Subordination: The Role of Rhetoric in the Conception of Primary Healthcare Giver.”

2002
David Dayton, “Electronic Editing in Technical Communication:  Practices, Attitudes, Impacts.”

2002 Honorable Mention
Dave Clark, “A Rhetoric of Boundaries:  Living and Working Along a Technical/Non-Technical Split.”

2001
Kenneth Baake, “Metaphor and Knowledge: The Rhetorical Challenges at a Post- Modern Science Think Tank.”

2000
Clay I. Spinuzzi, “Designing for Life Worlds: Genre and Activity in Information Systems’ Design and Evaluation.”

1999
Katherine Durack, “Documentation and Domestic Technology: Household Sewing Technologies and Feminine Authority.”

1999 Honorable Mention
Brenda Camp Orbell, “Discourse, Power, and Social Ruptures:  An Analysis of Tailhook 91.”

1999 Honorable Mention
Graham Smart, “An Ethnographic Study of Knowledge-Making in a Central Bank:  The Interplay between Writing and Economic Modeling.”

Jared Johns: Case #1

Characterization of Institution

Research I

Characterization of Department

Ph.D. granted in English
Ph.D. granted in Composition/Rhetoric
M.A. granted in English
M.A.  granted in Composition/Rhetoric
B.A. granted in English

How would Jared Johns’ case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

Probably very much like it did here—the Promotion and Tenure committee would be very concerned about John’s low number of refereed publications and would want the chair to send him a strong message about the need to focus his efforts on such publications. If he were to come up for promotion and tenure with this profile, he’d likely not receive it at the college or university level.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Johns?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The chair’s obligations to Johns include making the criteria for promotion and tenure clear to him and to be sure he understands, early in his career, which of his work will be helpful and which will not. His conference with Johns in his first year was a step in the right direction, since he offered him specific advice about his research and teaching, but it appears that there was not as much follow-up as there could be. It also appears that Johns was given quite a bit of very time-consuming service work, and that might not have have been fair to him, despite the released time he received for it.

What are the Personnel  Committee’s responsibilities toward Johns?  Which did they fulfill?  Fail?

It appears that the Personnel Committee at this institution does not do annual reviews of untenured faculty. If that’s the case, then perhaps the committee did what it was required to do. However, I think it’s critical for untenured faculty to be reviewed much more frequently by those who will vote on their promotion and tenure. By the fourth year, there’s little that can be done to turn around a situation like Johns’. In this case, the thorough review Johns received came two years too late to help him. It also seems to me that the committee may have placed too much emphasis on traditional teaching and not enough on Johns’ work with students, both formally on graduate students’ committees and informally in the computer facility.

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Sorry, I don’t see any references to the Dean in this scenario. And I don’t think that during the probationary period, Deans typically have much involvement with untenured faculty. That’s mostly a departmental responsibility.

What are Johns’ responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Johns’ responsibilities include understanding the criteria on which he will be evaluated for promotion and tenure and focusing his work so that it dovetailed with those criteria. He probably should have understood that he needed to publish his work in the kinds of forums that are accepted and recognized at his institution, since it’s very difficult to be a “break-through” case. He also had the responsibility to work hard to improve his teaching, since it was made clear to him that there were concerns about its quality. Johns did seem to fulfill his responsibilities in terms of administering the computer facility and working with graduate students. He certainly seemed to be a good colleague—one who shared his expertise willingly with his peers and students. He was clearly establishing a national reputation among people in his area of expertise. 

What went wrong?  What went right?

Two things went wrong. First, the department did not seem to give Johns the kind of detailed “warning” about his status until too late. Second, Johns, like a number of new faculty I’ve seen, didn’t seem to understand that ultimately his service contributions and his non-tradtional publications would not help him earn tenure and promotion. He seemed not to understand how conservative most universities are—looking for traditional peer-reviewed publications and teaching evaluations that are at least average for the institution and the courses. Though Johns’ chair did seem to talk to him about these issues early in his career, there did not appear to be enough regular subsequent evaluation and/or mentoring.

Nomination Deadline: November 1

Purpose: The CCCC Executive Committee presents, as occasion demands, the CCCC Exemplar Award to a person whose years of service as an exemplar for our organization represents the highest ideals of scholarship, teaching, and service to the entire profession.

Eligibility: The Exemplar Award seeks to recognize individuals whose record is national and international in scope, or whose record is local and regional with national implications, and who set the best examples for the CCCC membership.

Award Specifics: Nominations should include a letter of nomination; four letters of support; and a full curriculum vita. The nominating material should be send to the CCCC Exemplar Award Committee at cccc@ncte.org. Nominations must be received by November 1, 2024.

E-mail questions

Congratulations to the 2024 CCCC Exemplar!

Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University, Fort Collins

Exemplar Award Winners

2024

Mike Palmquist

2023

Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes

2022
Louise Wetherbee Phelps

2021
Beverly J. Moss

2020
Charles Bazerman

2019
Cheryl Glenn

2018
Kathleen Blake Yancey
(watch Kathleen Blake Yancey’s acceptance speech during the 2018 CCCC Annual Convention Opening Session)

2017
Deborah Brandt
(watch Deborah Brandt’s acceptance speech during the 2017 CCCC Annual Convention Opening Session)

2016
Sondra Perl

2015
Sharon Crowley

2014
Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe

2013
Keith Gilyard

2012
Mike Rose

2011
Edward M. White

2010
W. Ross Winterowd

2009
Victor Villanueva

2008
Patricia Bizzell

2007
Peter Elbow

2006
David Bartholomae

2005
Erika Lindemann

2004
Jacqueline Jones Royster

2003
Winifred Bryan Horner

2002
Art Young

2001
Lynn Quitman Troyka

2000
Muriel Harris

1999
Geneva Smitherman

1998
Janice Lauer

1997
Ann E. Berthoff

1996
Edward P.J. Corbett

1995
James L. Kinneavy

1994
Andrea Lunsford

1993
Richard Ohmann

1992
Janet Emig

1991
Richard Lloyd-Jones

Contact the Editor

EMAIL: Bump Halbritter, Editor, CCC Online, ccconlineeditor@gmail.com

MAIL: Bump Halbritter, Editor, CCC Online,

Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures,

298 Ernst Bessey Hall, Michigan State University,

East Lansing, MI 48824-1033

 

CCC Online Submission Guidelines

The editorial staff of College Composition and Communication Online (CCC Online) invites the submission of stand-alone webtexts comprised of digitally-mediated research and scholarship in composition studies that supports college teachers in reflecting on and improving their practices in teaching writing. The field of composition studies draws on research and theories from a broad range of humanistic disciplines— English studies, linguistics, literacy studies, rhetoric, cultural studies, gay studies, gender studies, critical theory, education, technology studies, race studies, communication, philosophy of language, anthropology, sociology, and others—and within composition studies, a number of subfields have also developed, such as technical communication, computers and composition, writing across the curriculum, research practices, history of composition, assessment, and writing center work.

Webtexts for CCC Online may come out of the discussions within and among any of these fields, as long as the argument presented is clearly relevant to the work of college writing teachers and responsive to recent scholarship in composition studies. The usefulness of articles to writing teachers should be apparent in the discussion, but webtexts need not contain explicit sections detailing applications to teaching practices.

In writing for CCC Online, you should consider a diverse readership for your article, a readership that includes at least all teachers of college-level writing at diverse institutions and literacy centers, and may include administrators, undergraduate and graduate students, legislators, corporate employers, parents, and alumni. To address such an audience, you need not avoid difficult theories or complex discussions of research and issues or detailed discussions of pedagogy; rather you should consider the interests and perspectives of the variety of readers who are affected by your theories, pedagogies, and policies.

Genre, Format, Length, Documentation. You are encouraged to submit finished, stand-alone webtexts in whatever genre and format best fits your purposes, and to use alternate genres and formats if they best express your meanings; similarly, the use of endnotes and subheadings should align with your purposes and meanings. CCC Online’s audio-visual webtexts do not have typical word counts or page lengths. Your webtexts should be guided by your purposes; however, we recommend that you aim for the depth and rigor of CCC articles (generally around 7,000 words). All webtexts should be documented according to the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (2nd ed.). NCTE’s Guidelines for Gender-Fair Use of Language can be found here. Finally, please allow padding of no fewer than 25 pixels at the top of each page of your webtext to accommodate the CCC Online watermark that will be used to link your text to the issue in which it will appear. 

Copyright and Fair Use. Our ability to publish your webtexts in a timely manner will be determined, in part, by the speed with which we can make fair use determinations and/or obtain copyright clearances for the various media assets in your work.  Please consult the U.S. Copyright Office’s site on Fair Use and/or the site for Copyright and Fair Use available from Stanford University Libraries to make fair use determinations for your work prior to submitting it to CCC Online. Please, do not rely on fair use as a rule for your work.  We highly recommend that your seek and obtain express permission to use all media assets that appear in your webtext prior to submitting your work to CCC Online.  

Research Practices and Citing Unpublished Work. If your webtext reports the results of empirical or observational research, you need to be attentive to the ethics as well as the validity of your research methods. In any webtext, if you quote or otherwise reproduce unpublished writing by students or teachers or others, you need to get permission from the writers to do so, even if you use their writing anonymously. Permission forms for citing unpublished work are available from the CCC Online editor.

Submission and Review of Webtexts. Please contact the editor to set up a dropbox for submitting your complete webtext and all associated files. We understand that many audio-visual texts have assets that identify the author, the author’s institution, the author’s collaborators, and/or the subjects of the author’s study.  Webtexts will not be read blind by outside reviewers.  However, when possible, please make every effort to not identify yourself, your institution, or your collaborators in the text or in the list of works cited. Please include your address, phone number, and email address with all submissions.

CCC. Articles that are composed in a format that could be mediated on paper should be submitted for publication in CCC. Please contact the CCC editor for submission requirements.

About half of the submissions to CCC Online are sent to outside readers after the first stage of review by the editorial staff. You should receive prompt acknowledgment of receipt of your piece by either postcard or email, followed by a report on its status from the editor within 16 weeks. The time between acceptance and publication is usually less than a year. Please feel free to write or call the editor if you have any questions about submitting work to CCC.

CCC Online Home

Return to Table of Contents

Jared Johns: Case #1

Characterization of Institution

Research II, State University

Characterization of Department

Ph.D. granted in English Studies
M.A. granted in English
M.A. granted in Writing
B.A. granted in English

How would Jared Johns’ case turn out in your department?  At your university/college?

It would be a very close decision, but I think Johns would not be tenured in my department.  If the department did recommend tenure, I’m fairly certain that the college committee would deny tenure and the provost would support that committee.

What are the Department Chair’s responsibilities toward Johns?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The chair’s main responsibilities are to provide a very clear sense of standards for tenure, promotion, and merit evaluation and to give Johns input on how well he was proceeding.  The chair also has responsibilities for the overall quality of the department’s programs, making sure that courses are being taught and faculty are performing professionally in accordance with the department’s mission and curriculum, policies, and procedures.

The chair seemed appropriately to intervene with the earlier warning signs about undergraduate teaching, though he could have set up a more formal mentorship during the second or third year; it’s unclear if the department has a WPA, but that would be an obvious colleague to serve as mentor.

The chair did not seem to give very clear guidance regarding Johns’s publishing record.  The end of four years is too late to be telling someone they’re publishing in the wrong places.  If Johns even reported annually where he was sending things for consideration, the chair could provide some guidance.

The chair and DGS appropriately conveyed to Johns that he was doing too much thesis and dissertation work.  Given this amount of teaching (and such work is a form of teaching) and given the pressing demands of the department computer facility, the chair might have explored a further reduction of course load.  This would be further warranted if Johns is spending a great deal of time consulting with his colleagues.  Coordinating 30 volunteers in the computer facility with what appears to be a very limited budget is a demanding position.  The chair has responsibilities to pursue additional funding for that facility.

Finally, and minorly, the chair handled the parent complain to the President inappropriately, I believe.  The chair should have written to the president to explain pedagogies in the course, and he should have invited Johns to write as well.  The president could choose or not choose to share that correspondence with the parent.  I note that—since Johns’ teaching has been described as outside the local conventions for the course (even if the course does not include “teaching grammar”)—he is in a weaker position than he might be.

One other responsibility of the chair.  Upon hiring or during the first year, the chair should determine whether the nature of Johns’ duties qualify him for the same criteria as other faculty members or whether the MLA Guidelines in “Making Faculty Work Visible” or the WPA guidelines on “The Intellectual Work of Writing Administration” ought to be invoked to modify the general guidelines.

What are the Personnel  Committee’s responsibilities toward Johns?  Which did they fulfill?  Fail?

The PC’s responsibilities are much the same as the chair’s, though the chair has more agency to act.  The committee did not seem especially qualified to judge Johns’ work, though I would tend to agree with their assessment.  To their credit, they got outside reviewers.  Their advice to Johns’ seemed appropriate even if arrived at sort of bumblingly.

As with the chair, I’d say that the end of four years is fairly late in the game for this kind of feedback.  Three years would be better.

Given the questions about teaching, the PC might recommend a teaching portfolio so that Johns’ can make the best possible case for his teaching and the committee can make a more informed judgment. From the sketchy things provided, I think the committee is right to be concerned about teaching.

What are the responsibilities of the Dean?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

The Dean is not very obvious in this scenario nor necessarily does she need to be.  She ought to help departments and faculty acquire the resources needed for their work (and the computer facility seems to be lacking), and she ought to make certain that department and university guidelines for P and T are being followed.  She ought, finally, to advise the chair whether any special profiles for a tenure and promotion case are available for someone like Johns.

What are Johns’ responsibilities?  Which did she/he fulfill?  Fail?

Johns needs to understand the department’s mission and curriculum and its policies and procedures for tenure and promotion.  He needs to be able to represent his work in teaching, research, and service to his colleagues in ways that they can understand and value.  He also has responsibilities to his own students and to the profession at large.

Clearly Johns has worked hard and in ways that suggest someone vitally involved with the profession and committed to advancing technology and writing issues.  He has not always been astute in how he deploys his time, and he needs to listen to those who advise him to back away from certain projects at least until he has built the kind of scholarly profile that stands him in good stead.

What went wrong?  What went right?

There have been review processes that provided Johns feedback on his performance, and these have come before the tenure decision.  Good.  Perhaps they could have come even earlier.

Also, the chair needs carefully to analyze Johns’ service load; if circumstances just do not allow additional modifications of load or evaluative criteria, the chair needs to convey forcefully the consequences, for example, of “I just can’t say no to graduate students” for Johns’ future.

Each issue of CCC (February 2010 through December 2014) included a “Poster Page” intended for our various publics–students, colleagues, administrators, and the public at large–explaining a particular concept from rhetoric and composition. The page is suitable for posting and for duplication, and we offer it in hopes that it will faciliatate your discussions with students and others.

Please use the Comments section below to let us know how you use the Poster Pages and what you think of them.

CCC Poster Page 1: Rhetorical Situation

CCC Poster Page 2: Rhetoric

CCC Poster Page 3: Composition

CCC Poster Page 4: Literacy/Literacies

CCC Poster Page 5: Genre 

CCC Poster Page 6: Audience

CCC Poster Page 7: Language

CCC Poster Page 8: Vocabulary

CCC Poster Page 9: Writing Assessment

CCC Poster Page 10: Invention

CCC Poster Page 11: Discourse Community

CCC Poster Page 12: Error

CCC Poster Page 13: Writing across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines

CCC Poster Page 14: Digital Rhetoric

CCC Poster Page 15: Revision

CCC Poster Page 16: Research

CCC Poster Page 17: Multimodality

CCC Poster Page 18: Process

CCC Poster Page 19: Voice

CCC Poster Page 20: Writing Studies

Editor

Malea Powell
Michigan State University

Editorial Assistant

Jill McKay Chrobak
Michigan State University

Production Editor

Tom Tiller
NCTE

Copy Editor

Lisa McCoy

Director of Publications

Colin Murcray
NCTE

Editorial Board

Tamika Carey, University of Virginia
Ellen Carillo, University of Connecticut
Matt Cox, East Carolina University
Collin Craig, Hunter College CUNY
Cristyn Elder, University of New Mexico
Nicole Hancock, Southwestern Illinois College
Jo Hsu, University of Texas at Austin
Lisa King, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dundee Lackey, Texas Woman’s University
Michelle LaFrance, George Mason University
Travis Margoni, Yakima Valley College
GPat Patterson, Kent State University–Tuscarawas
Andrea Riley-Mukavetz, Community Engagement Manager for the City of Grand Rapids
Michelle Bachelor Robinson, Spelman College

A conversation with Hannah J. Rule, author of “Writing’s Rooms” (17:21).

Hannah J. Rule is an assistant professor of English in rhetoric and composition at the University of South Carolina. Her research and teaching focus on writing pedagogies, writing process theories and history, and embodiment. Her scholarship, focused on pedagogical questions related to freewriting, multimodality, voice, writing environments, and rhetorical grammar, also appears in venues including Composition Forum, CEA Critic, and Composition Studies.

 

 

 

 

A conversation with Jim Webber, author of “Toward an Artful Critique of Reform: Responding to Standards, Assessment, and Machine Scoring” (12:34).

Jim Webber is assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches academic, professional, and public writing. He is the author of An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public (forthcoming from Utah State UP).