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In this conversation with Brett Keegan, Yancey and McElroy talk about the genesis of their edited collection Assembling Composition and the growing interest in scholarship on assemblage theory. (32:01)

 

 

Kathleen Blake Yancey is Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University. She has served in several elected leadership positions: as president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE); chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC); president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA); and president of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). Immediate past editor of College Composition and Communication, she co-founded the journal Assessing Writing and coedited it for seven years: she also co-founded and co-directs the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research; and she is the lead investigator for the Transfer of Transfer Project, a cross-institutional research study of the efficacy of the Teaching for Transfer (TFT) writing curriculum.

Stephen J. McElroy is director of the Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio at Florida State University. He has pursued his broad interest in visual rhetoric, multimodal design, and digital composing—in terms of both theory and practice as well as both past and present—recently in the Computers and Composition article “Assemblage by Design: The Postcards of Curt Teich & Company,” which examines the design and production of picture postcards in the early twentieth century, focusing specifically on cards produced by Teich & Company and depicting scenes of Key West, Florida. Examining microhistories of design and production through the lens of assemblage, he argues, helps us better attend to and better theorize our current composing practices.

Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) series. 157 pp. 2010. College. NCTE/CCCC and Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2956-4.

Listen to the Podcast Interview with authors Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau and interviewer Brandon Alva:

Book Description

The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations is an informative study on the challenges, expectations and adjustments facing first semester, two-year college students…more (PDF)

Author Information

Howard Tinberg, a professor of English at Bristol Community College, Massachusetts, is the author of Border Talk: Writing and Knowing in the Two-Year College and Writing with Consequence: What Writing Does in the Disciplines and is a coeditor of What Is “College-Level” Wriitng?; What Is “College-Level” Writing? Volume 2: Assignments, Readings, and Student Writing Samples; and Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom.

Jean-Paul Nadeau, a coauthor of Foundations for Learning, is an assistant professor of English at Bristol Community College.

Review

http://crw.sagepub.com/content/39/2/201.full.pdf+html

Purchase The Community College Writer from Southern Illinois University Press.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
April 2016

Executive Summary

As the non-tenure-track (NTT) cohort of writing faculty grows, departments and programs need to provide equitable working conditions for all faculty, including reasonable workloads and protections against unnecessary changes; access to shared governance and curricular decisions; transparent and fair hiring, evaluation, and renewal processes; access to technology and other resources necessary for job performance; access to professional development and scholarly resources; and fair compensation. To provide such conditions, departments need consistent and transparent policies developed as much as possible in collaboration with NTT faculty.

Introduction

The term non-tenure-­track (NTT) refers to all faculty who are not protected by tenure. Faculty off the tenure track face conditions that tenure-­track and tenured (TT/T) faculty do not—even NTT faculty in the most secure positions.

From 2005 to 2012, the number of contingent faculty members increased from 48.2 percent to 52.9 percent at doctoral-granting universities, held steady at about 61 percent at masters-granting universities, grew from 55 to 57 percent at baccalaureate colleges, and stayed constant at almost 80 percent in two-year colleges.¹ One 2010 study, for example, found that roughly 75 percent of faculty were working off the tenure track, most part-time.² While data vary based on differing reporting mechanisms, contingent faculty employment clearly continues to rise in US colleges and universities. Additionally, it is challenging to obtain comprehensive and accurate information about contingent faculty demographics and working conditions following the discontinuation of the National Postsecondary Faculty Survey, an instrument that attempted to gather this information.

These figures are especially significant for faculty teaching college writing courses. These courses include those labeled “basic” or “remedial” writing and general education courses such as first-year writing. The Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW), which brings together faculty and disciplinary associations around issues related to academic labor practices, found in a 2012 survey of contingent teachers that 16.4 percent of all contingent faculty in the United States were from English language and literature departments; most of these faculty were teaching writing courses. A 2007 Association of Departments of English of the MLA study also found that almost 70 percent of composition courses housed within English departments are taught by contingent faculty.

As institutions encounter tightening budgets, calls for flexibility, and greater demand for instructional activities supporting students, many are relying on NTT faculty, especially in writing courses. With increasing pressure from state legislatures and campus or system governing bodies to maximize “efficiency” through such measures as increasing class sizes and demanding higher teaching loads, such situations are becoming more common and the need for specific disciplinary recommendations more urgent.

Summary of Recommendations

Given increasing institutional reliance on NTT faculty in writing courses and departments, recommendations here emerge from two core principles:

(1) Departments, programs, and faculty must work to ensure equity³ for NTT writing faculty by attending to issues associated with employment: compensation; job security; benefits; access to resources; access to shared governance; and opportunities for professional advancement⁴; and

(2) Decisions about hiring, workload, and working conditions should be made based on policies applied consistently to all faculty and take into consideration parameters of existing agreements, such as union contracts. Where no parameters currently exist, departments should develop and apply consistent and transparent standards based on factors such as seniority and quality of performance. NTT faculty should have as much input into those standards as possible.  

These principles can be applied to a number of practices and situations affecting NTT faculty and their efforts: workload; hiring; evaluation and renewal; basic workplace resources; support for professional development and scholarly activity; and compensation. Each of the following sections outlines specifics related to these principles and their application.

Workload: Teaching and Service

• NTT faculty workloads should be limited to a maximum twenty students per section of first-year and/or advanced composition courses and a maximum fifteen students per section of basic (or “remedial”) writing courses. Generally, NTT faculty should not teach more than three sections of such courses per term⁵. If TT/T faculty teaching loads exceed three sections of first-year, advanced, or basic writing courses per term or exceed the class size recommendations, NTT faculty teaching loads should be consistent with those of TT/T faculty. NTT faculty should not teach larger sections of the same course as TT/T faculty.
• Departments should not use recommendations regarding numbers of students or sections to prevent the creation of full-time NTT positions, nor to deny health care benefits to NTT faculty.
• NTT faculty should have access to teaching assignments in their areas of expertise and at various levels of the curriculum. NTT faculty should not be assigned exclusively to courses enrolled by students at any one level.⁶
• NTT faculty should be protected against last-minute schedule changes/reductions.⁷ When such changes are absolutely necessary, departments should follow clear and transparent policies for determining how those changes or reductions are made.
• Departments should provide full-time schedules for NTT faculty who want them before offering overloads to TT/T faculty.
• NTT faculty should be included in and receive credit for department/program/campus governance. Such participation should be compensated.⁸ When NTT faculty are included in service, they should have voting rights on matters connected to that work.
• NTT faculty should be included in curriculum decisions for courses that affect their teaching and receive credit for their involvement.
• NTT faculty should be able to vote on all policy matters unless specifically excluded by department code, faculty manual, or collective bargaining agreement.

Hiring, Evaluation, and Renewal Practices

• NTT faculty should be hired through formal, transparent, and systematic processes, e.g., submission of an application letter, CV, names of recommenders, and teaching materials followed by a formal interview process and reference check.⁹
• NTT faculty should undergo rigorous, systematic evaluations on par with evaluations of TT/T faculty in terms of frequency and rigor. Most frequently, these include: teaching observations; student evaluations; teaching portfolio; and evaluations of scholarship and service where appropriate.¹⁰
• If NTT faculty are involved in evaluations of superiors, they should receive appropriate provisions/protections.
• NTT faculty should be hired into long-term (multiyear) lines, including the creation of “teaching specialist” lines¹¹ (or their equivalent), as often as possible.      
• Institutions should develop pathways to tenure-track or other secure positions for NTT faculty whose quality performance has kept them continually renewed.¹²
• Departments should provide timely notification of renewals and non-renewals so that NTT faculty have enough time and notice to find other work and/or apply for unemployment insurance and other forms of assistance.
• NTT faculty should be granted due process rights, including written rationales for renewal and non-renewal decisions, and opportunities to respond to evaluations and non-renewal decisions.

Basic Workplace Resources

• NTT faculty require office space that allows them to comply with FERPA and Title IX regulations. They also should have access to a desk and locked storage space; building and workspace access on weekends and nights, including building/office keys or electronic passkeys; access to faculty lounges and dining halls; mailboxes in the main department office; and adequate faculty parking.
• NTT faculty need access to technology required for teaching including but not limited to: campus email address and phone service; course management software; photocopy machines and codes; and representation on mailing lists, listservs, and rosters for departmental and university opportunities.
• NTT faculty should receive written notice of policies that differ for TT/T and NTT faculty. Such policies should not discriminate arbitrarily based on status.

Support for Professional Development and Scholarly Activity

• NTT faculty should receive funding for travel and professional opportunities. This support should be proportional to NTT faculty workload.¹³
• NTT faculty should be eligible for no- or low-cost access to graduate courses at institutions with graduate programs, or for subsidized graduate credits if their institutions do not have graduate programs, where such credits enhance professional development or lead toward improved credentials for the teaching of writing.
• NTT faculty should be eligible for institutional grant funding without requiring TT/T sponsors. Where such eligibility violates policies, departments should offer opportunities to NTT faculty, including collaborations on projects, in order to help NTT faculty become eligible for such resources.

Compensation and Benefits¹⁴

• Consistent with MLA’s current recommendation, NTT faculty should be paid a minimum (as of 2016) of $7,350 for a standard 3-credit-hour semester course or $4,900 for a standard 3-credit-hour quarter or trimester course.¹⁵
• NTT faculty should be eligible for health insurance.
• NTT faculty should be offered retirement benefits.
• NTT faculty should be offered support for filing unemployment claims, and other non-salary benefits.
• NTT faculty should be eligible for additional benefits available to TT/T faculty, including sabbatical leave, family/maternity leave, and sick leave.

Endnotes

1. Reported by Steven Shulman, Chair of the Research Committee for the AAUP and co-director of the Center for the Study of Academic Labor (CSAL).
2. As reported by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW).
3. The term equity is used deliberately. The term is distinct from but in service to equality. While equal compensation and institutional support for equal responsibilities is important, achieving equality will also involve adopting restorative policies (e.g., low-/no-cost access to PhD programs; retirement buyouts for longtime NTT faculty; etc.) that help to redress injustices that have been endemic to the contingent system.
4. Adapted from the New Faculty Majority’s “Seven Goals.”
5. These recommendations are consistent with both ADE recommendations and the CCCC Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing.
6. Following the recommendation that no faculty teach more than three writing courses per semester or more than sixty students, NTT writing faculty whose contracts mandate four sections per semester will need assignments beyond introductory courses to fill their workloads. Furthermore, teaching across a curriculum improves teaching at each level of it. Finally, access to different courses/areas enhances NTT faculty inclusion in departments, especially as they are more involved in developing and assessing courses.
7. The NFM/CFHE “Who Is Professor Staff?” report highlights harms to students and faculty from just-in-time hiring. Also harmful for faculty and students are sudden changes/reductions in schedules enabled by NTT faculty’s contingent status. Departments should not allow TT/T faculty to force NTT faculty schedule changes unless the change is required by policy.
8. NTT faculty should have governance responsibilities as part of their base workload calculation. An array of models exists for crediting committee work, including several that constitute 10 to 20% of an NTT’s base workload. Alternately, NTT faculty’s shared governance responsibilities can be compensated via reassigned time or overload pay.
9. The Delphi Project and others advocate aligning NTT with TT/T hiring practices as closely as possible. Hiring NTT faculty under dubious conditions enables systemic, untenable bias and disrespect. Formal processes provide institutions the benefit of the full range of an NTT faculty member’s qualifications. Poor hiring practices also hurt students and expose the institution to legal risk.
10.  Rigorous evaluations are essential faculty development tools. They also buffer against arbitrary and capricious non-renewals. Evaluation processes should reflect the actual work of NTT faculty, providing faculty opportunities to document teaching excellence and improvements, and be rewarded. Such processes should be connected to career ladders and potential rank and salary advancement.
11.  Long-term contracts offer some job security. We endorse them as improvements over casual and temporary employment, but we advocate for the codification of formalized long-term protected employment, or instructor tenure.
12.  Those pathways should not deny NTT faculty access to continued part-time work if they want it. Pathways should also exist for faculty who have been in part-time positions. One model for NTT-to-TT conversion process is in the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty (APSCUF) Collective Bargaining Agreement (see Article 11.G).
13.  Such that a full-time NTT faculty member receives the same travel funding as TT/T faculty; a 50% NTT faculty receives half as much; etc.
14.  SEIU’s aspirational call for a combined salary/benefits package of $15,000/section in 2015 offers a strong reminder that per-section salary is not the only relevant figure. Models for benefited positions include Colorado State University, where a 50% appointment qualifies the employee for full benefits participation, including retirement and health, maternity leave, family leave, and sick leave, employee study privileges, tuition scholarships for family members, etc. See http://www.hrs.colostate.edu/benefits/.
15.  See “MLA Recommendation on Minimum Per-Course Compensation for Part-Time Faculty Members” for an explanation of how they arrived at this figure.

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

Leigh Ann Jones is an assistant professor of English at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she teaches rhetorical criticism and history, composition, and pedagogy in the undergraduate and graduate programs. She also codirects Hunter’s first-year writing course. In addition to her work on rhetorics of national masculinity, Jones has published on performative epistemology, a multimodal approach to composition pedagogy. She is the author of the SWR book From Boys to Men: Rhetorics of Emergent American Masculinity.

In this conversation with Vincent Portillo, Jones talks about the book’s focus on national organizations for boys and young men, including the Boy Scouts of America, the Sigma Chi college fraternity, and the US Army; the interdisciplinary nature of her book (it draws from history, political science, and rhetoric); the work of transforming a dissertation into a book; and some possibilities for political intervention in the rhet/comp classroom. (22:14)

Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee on Computers and Composition,  November 1998, Revised November 2015

Digital media and work with technology has become a critical, integral part of teaching, scholarship, and service in the academy, transforming the ways faculty engage with students, conduct research, and serve their campus, local, and national communities. These guidelines—originally written in 1998 and updated in 2015—are designed to advise departments in evaluating work with digital media and technology for which there is not a convenient print analog [see also the 2012 MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media and the American Association of History and Computing Tenure Guidelines]. Thus, we offer general principles for evaluating such work, bearing in mind that the rapid pace of technological change means that each case will need to be decided on its own merits.

Digital media and work with technology are defined in this document as any work of teaching, scholarship, or service that is developed and distributed on computers. While innovations like additive manufacturing, enhanced fabrication, and other studies in materiality defy our screen-based expectations, generally digital media and work with technology is also consumed and archived on computers. Digital media work may be communicated through number of mediums, including alphabetic text, images, sounds, video, audio, graphics, and animation. Its distribution may be achieved through a variety of methods, including content management systems, personal or professional websites, blogs, social networks, digital archives, and online peer-reviewed publications.

These guidelines are intended for use by promotion and tenure committees, candidates for promotion and tenure, job and fellowship candidates, departmental hiring committees, and others assessing or evaluating digitally mediated works. The purpose of this document is to ensure that prospective hires are informed about whether and how work with technology and digital media will be considered in the tenure and promotion process, provide some general principles to promotion and tenure committees, and safeguard that candidates’ work with technology is explained accurately and evaluated fairly.

This document consists of three parts: general statements about digital media technology and its potential impact on review processes, guidelines for review committees, and guidelines for candidates for hiring, reappointment, promotion, and tenure.

In preparing these guidelines, we have tried to address the fact that work with digital media has reconfigured instruction, research, and professional service in the academy. Changes in technology require that faculty be familiar with online course management systems, open-source instructional materials, and ever-evolving digital technologies. New forms of scholarship continue to emerge in electronic environments, and while some digital media scholarship may mimic print scholarship, it also differs from print scholarship in important ways. Finally, service loads for faculty who work with technology may include managing department and organizational websites, as well as developing and maintaining listservs, databases, surveys, and online forums.

General Statements

Digital media affords new venues for learning about candidates’ work and assessing the candidate’s role within the profession.
For example, a person’s web page may offer outside reviewers a wider lens through which to view a candidate’s teaching, research, and service. While new software tools allow better ways to find citations of publications to demonstrate the impact of a candidate’s work, citation practices and other evidence of a candidate’s reach to audiences are themselves changing. For example, a candidate’s sustained and careful participation in social media venues and other collaborative academic forums like discussion lists related to their areas of pedagogical or scholarly expertise can have an impact on the profession, but that impact may be measured only by number of visitors, shares, or crosslinks.

Work with technology is often collaborative.
Those who work with digital media often work closely with other departments and campus personnel, such as computing support and librarians. In addition, teachers who work on different campuses may link their courses for collaborative research and composition between colleagues, peers, or students in several class sections. Collaborative scholarship is also common with digital media publications that require equal amounts of research, writing, and digital media design.

Work with digital media is time-consuming.
Scholars who work with digital media in the classroom must spend a portion of their time learning, enhancing, and teaching new software skills to students and even colleagues. They may find themselves providing technical support to students and colleagues outside of class and office hours, sometimes taking on responsibilities that would not reasonably be expected to fall under their purview, and that cannot be easily documented in the ways other teaching and service obligations may be.

Additionally, such scholars may find themselves taking on a disproportionate number of committee assignments as expertise with technology is increasingly in demand as classroom-, department-, and campus-level resources and functions are digitalized. Finally, faculty who work with technology in their research must keep abreast of best practices and trends in a rapidly accelerating and expanding field.

Digital media often creates access for diverse audiences, and in some cases, may provide more inclusive access for teachers and researchers.
Scholar-teachers are increasingly focused on using digital media to widen access, particularly for those with disabilities. For example, scholars may create a companion website for a conference where papers can be posted in advance for those who cannot attend and/or for participants who benefit from reading scripts (including Deaf audiences, audiences with traumatic brain injuries, etc.). They may provide rich visual description or speak-aloud functions in online media for those who cannot see or easily process text (including those with visual impairments and some learning disabilities). Teachers working in face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes may employ digital media in their instruction to improve learning for all students, but especially for students with disabilities or learning differences. While all such approaches cannot be listed here, this use of digital media seeks to fully include and empower all scholars, teachers, and students.

Guidelines for Review Committees

It is important that tenure and promotion committees work with departmental hiring committees to ensure that expectations for work with digital media and online teaching, scholarship, and service be communicated to prospective new hires. Further, prospective hires should be informed about whether and how work with digital media and online teaching, research, and service will be considered in the tenure and promotion process.

Hiring, reappointment, tenure, and promotion committees must work flexibly to find ways to acknowledge digital media work done by candidates, because the pace and scope of technological change make it difficult for any set of guidelines to account completely for the ways the technology (and thus the work done with it) is redefining our profession.

The following general guidelines are designed to aid committees in assessing work with digital media. In such assessments and evaluations, we find it important that:

• the candidate’s work be evaluated in the medium and native environment in which it was intended to be viewed. Printing off web pages, for example, is a poor substitute for evaluating those pages online.
• the candidate’s work be evaluated with respect to local conditions on campus. For example, early adopters of a particular technology on a campus generally face more obstacles than those who come later. Similarly, on campuses where support for technology is limited, individuals who work with digital media may gain experience through challenges with implementation and troubleshooting that benefit colleagues later.
• members of review committees educate themselves about the candidate’s work, and embrace the opportunity to understand new work in digital media, the candidate’s specific uses of it, and the significance of such work.

The following guidelines provide additional recommendations for assessing digital media in teaching, research, and service.

Teaching
Online and hybrid courses require significant preparation of digital materials, as well as intensive work on best practices for offering and evaluating online student work. This work can provide key innovations in teaching and student learning, and the additional pedagogical investment and time devoted to preparing these materials should be accounted for in reappointment, tenure, and promotion reviews. If qualified reviewers are not available on the candidate’s home campus, outside reviewers should be asked to provide observations and evaluations of the candidate’s online teaching, e.g., online course management, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), course websites, discussion boards, or blogs.

Courses offered in the classroom often have substantial and significant online components, such as course websites, electronic portfolios, and blogs, which extend student learning. Candidates who teach in traditional classroom settings, but who employ digital media technologies as a part of their course instruction, should receive assessments of their pedagogical use of digital media as a part of the review of their teaching.

Research
Intellectual work with digital media should demonstrate similar academic standards as other scholarly endeavors: it should be innovative (offering new research, insights, processes, or discoveries; or providing potentially productive syntheses of existing research), subject to scholarly peer review, and distributed in appropriate venues.

Intellectual work with digital media should be evaluated by experts who are knowledgeable about the use of that technology. If qualified reviewers are not available on the candidate’s home campus, outside reviewers should be asked to provide evaluations of the candidate’s digital media work, e.g., instructional software, video productions, tool innovations, or digital scholarship.

Service
Department administrators should ensure that the full scope of service performed by candidates who specialize in work with technology and digital media is apparent to the institution’s review committees. While digital media scholarship may be highly visible, digital media service may be less visible to department colleagues as it typically involves solitary work managing department and organizational websites, as well as developing and maintaining listservs, databases, archives, surveys, and online forums.

For more information, see the “Tenure and Promotion Cases for Composition Faculty Who Work with Technology” website at /cccc/committees/7cs/tenurepromotioncases.

Guidelines for the Candidate

It is crucial for candidates whose teaching, research, or service relies on or incorporates technology to clearly articulate the nature and value of their work, and not to assume a review audience that is already familiar with certain technologies. Such guidance begins during the hiring process and continues through the review process for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.

During the hiring process, when candidates first negotiate for new academic positions, they should ask about whether and how credit for use of technology in teaching, service, and digital media scholarship is awarded in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. They should also inquire about resources and support for work with technology, meeting with technology support services, if necessary, during the campus visit, and negotiating hardware and software packages as a part of the job offer.

Candidates should be prepared to explain and advocate for the value and complexity of their work with digital media, rather than offer only the final “product” (such as a website, social media platform, interactive research article, etc.) for review.

It is important that candidates find ways to situate their work in terms of the traditional areas of teaching, research, and service, and also to explain the ways in which their work overlaps with or redefines those categories. The burden of understanding work with digital media, the candidate’s specific uses of it, and the importance of such work is the responsibility of the committee, but the candidate is uniquely positioned to argue for the merit and innovation of an approach.

It is important for candidates to find others on campus who also work with technology, and to network with those colleagues. Faculty outside of the candidate’s own department can help to contextualize digital media work in terms that are important to the institution as a whole and can attest to the value of the work done by the candidate.

Finally, candidates for new academic positions, reappointment, tenure, and promotion should also familiarize themselves with professional statements, like this one, about the increasing importance of digital media work within the field of composition. Professional statements like those below can help candidates for new positions, reappointment, tenure, and promotion better articulate the value of their work, locate that work within current conversations within the field, and provide review committees with guidelines for evaluating their work with technology. Links to some of those statements are included below.

Conference on College Composition and Communication

• Beginning Composition and Rhetoric Faculty Guidelines
• Scholarship in Composition: Guidelines for Faculty, Deans, and Department Chairs
• Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction
• Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments

Two-Year College English Association

• Research and Scholarship in the Two-Year College

National Council of Teachers of English

• Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies
• Policy Research Brief on 21st-Century Literacies
• Conference on English Education Beliefs about Technology and the Preparation of English Teachers

Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project

• Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

Modern Language Association

• Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media

American Association of History and Computing

• Tenure Guidelines

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

Conference on College Composition and Communication
November 2015 (replaces the 1982 CCCC “Position Statement on the Preparation and Professional Development of Teachers of Writing”)

Introduction

To serve as socially conscious citizens and productive professionals, college students need to cultivate and refine advanced literacy practices, rhetorical flexibility, and habits of mind that will prepare them to address and influence a variety of complex professional, civic, and social situations. Students who possess a sophisticated rhetorical awareness, an extensive knowledge of genre conventions, and a complement of effective writing, critical thinking, and reading proficiencies are advantageously positioned to succeed in academic, public, and professional settings. Because of their high-impact, student-centered, and literacy-focused curricula, assignments, and activities, first-year writing and other writing-intensive courses help students develop these essential areas of knowledge and literacy practices. Effective writing instruction, then, plays a crucial role not only in students’ successful academic performance but also in their performance in professional and public settings.

An investment in the training and professional development of writing instructors is an investment in student learning and success. Moreover, because writing-intensive courses and instruction privilege high-impact practices, periodic feedback and revision, and frequent contact with first-year and advanced students, the professional preparation of writing faculty may also positively affect other concerns of postsecondary institutions, including student retention, persistence, and degree completion. Exemplary writing instructors are highly competent, reflective practitioners who prioritize students’ learning needs and experiences, integrate contemporary composition theory and research into their teaching practices, and contribute their disciplinary expertise to improve their departments and institutions.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) presents this position statement to provide guidelines for how best to prepare and support postsecondary instructors of writing throughout their careers. In producing this statement, CCCC envisions many audiences that may possess disparate interests, including undergraduate and graduate students; parents or guardians; high school instructors who facilitate Dual Credit and Concurrent Enrollment (DC/CE) courses; prospective and current postsecondary instructors of writing; writing program administrators; department chairs; college and university administrators; and municipal, state, and national legislators. With so many interested groups involved in or concerned about the preparation of those who teach postsecondary writing, there is a need for direction and clarity regarding what principles should inform the preparation and continued professional development of postsecondary writing instructors.

The study of writing is multidisciplinary, building on the work of rhetoricians, compositionists, cognitive psychologists, linguists, librarians, educators, and anthropologists. Effective college teachers of writing require a broad base of theoretical knowledge, including:

• rhetorical knowledge: an understanding of how audience, purpose, and context shape writing
• linguistic knowledge: an understanding of professional genres and conventions for writing
• instructional knowledge: an understanding of a broad base of practical, pedagogical knowledge and experience, and an ability to apply research and best practices in the field of rhetoric and composition, including using effective strategies for designing writing curricula, courses, and assignments; providing constructive feedback on students’ drafts; assessing students’ writing formatively and summatively; and working with diverse learners
• ethical and effective research methods: an understanding of both secondary and primary research methods, as well as a knowledge of plagiarism, copyright law, and human subjects protection
• technical knowledge: an understanding of how to prepare students to address the evolving nature of persuasion and written communication in the 21st century

These theoretical and practical areas are consistent with the CCCC’s “Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing” (/cccc/resources/positions/postsecondarywriting), and proficiency in these theoretical and practical areas is best achieved through ongoing formative assessment that incorporates opportunities for professional development and improvement, formal mentoring by more experienced or expert colleagues, and participation in curriculum development and assessment. The principles, requirements, and recommendations below are consistent with and help cultivate the characteristics outlined in NCTE’s “Principles of Professional Development” (http://legacy.ncte.org/positions/statements/profdevelopment) and TYCA’s “Characteristics of the Highly Effective Two-Year College Instructor in English” (https://prod-ncte-cdn.azureedge.net/nctefiles/groups/tyca/characteristics_statement.pdf). Because quality writing instruction is essential for helping students develop advanced literacy practices, CCCC offers the following principles, requirements, and recommendations that should inform the preparation and ongoing professional development of instructors in Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment programs, graduate teaching assistants, and new and continuing faculty.

 

Instructors in Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment (DC/CE) Programs

Recently, given wide concerns regarding student preparedness for college and their possible careers, Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment (DC/CE) programs have become an increasingly popular option for bridging between secondary and postsecondary educational experiences in writing. The myriad financial challenges experienced by students and their families and the escalating costs of tuition have also enhanced the appeal of DC/CE programs, as high school students attempt to earn college credit at a reduced price. In accommodating this need, many high school instructors are now teaching college-level writing, and the institutions that sponsor DC/CE programs have had to manage myriad foreseen and unforeseen pedagogical, logistical, and economic implications resulting from the proliferation of DC/CE programs. The CCCC’s Statement on Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment Composition: Policy and Best Practices (/cccc/resources/positions/dualcredit) articulates guidelines for developing and assessing DC/CE programs, for admitting students, and for hiring and training high school teachers to facilitate DC/CE courses. The principles, requirements, and recommendations below are consistent with that statement, as well as with the “TYCA Executive Committee Statement on Concurrent Enrollment” (http://legacy.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/TYCA/Concurrent_Enrollment.pdf).

Principle: Secondary instructors assigned to facilitate college-level writing instruction should hold qualifications and have access to professional development experiences equivalent to those of instructors hired and assigned to teach writing courses at the sponsoring institution, including:

I. Required:

• At least a master’s degree in Composition/Rhetoric, English, English Education, Linguistics, or a closely-related field
• Graduate coursework in composition theory, research, and pedagogy; and in rhetorical theory and research
• Meet and/or exceed the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnership (NACEP) Standards for faculty who teach in DC/CE programs
• Mentoring partnerships with experienced teachers of college writing, which should include regular formative assessments of teaching (classroom observations, course evaluation reviews, syllabi and assignment reviews) by the DC/CE program director or faculty liaison from the sponsoring institution

II. Recommended:

• Graduate coursework in and experience with writing assessment, both formative and summative, and working with diverse populations, such as non-native speakers of English, students with special learning needs, and at-risk student populations
• Experience with both formative and summative writing assessment
• Experience with curriculum development

III. Additional Responsibilities of the Sponsoring Institution: As both the NACEP standards document and CCCC’s Statement on Dual Credit/Concurrent Enrollment Composition: Policy and Best Practices aver, a postsecondary institution sponsoring a DC/CE program bears the responsibility of initial training and ongoing professional development of instructors who are hired to teach college writing instruction to secondary students. That responsibility includes:

• An intensive initial training workshop or seminar that familiarizes qualified secondary instructor(s) with the sponsoring institution’s composition curriculum. This training should introduce participants to the programmatic outcomes for first-year writing, as well as assignments, readings, and assessment criteria and practices, and should provide qualified secondary instructor(s) with a comprehensive discussion of contemporary composition theory and pedagogy. The initial training seminars should be at least equivalent to on-campus instructor preparation.
• Ongoing professional development seminars or workshops that review the sponsoring institution’s composition curriculum; outline shifts in disciplinary scholarship related to composition theory and pedagogy; and allow qualified secondary instructor(s) opportunities to reflect on their pedagogy and how it is aligned with the sponsoring institution’s composition curriculum and with contemporary research in the field of rhetoric and composition
• Monetary compensation for participation in all initial and ongoing professional development opportunities
• Pedagogical materials, such as copies of sample syllabi, writing assignments, and lesson plans; textbooks; and other course materials
• Support mechanisms, such as class observations, site visits, and reviews of pedagogical materials to ensure quality instruction and alignment with the sponsoring institution’s composition curriculum
• Regular assessment of artifacts produced by secondary students completing a DC/CE course and consistent evaluation of the DC/CE program

Secondary and postsecondary administrators, writing program administrators, legislators, and instructors who are interested in advocating for and collaborating to design DC/CE programs, assess established programs, hire and train instructors, and provide ongoing professional development for instructors are strongly encouraged to consult existing guidelines published by other professional organizations, including:

• Standards from the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (http://nacep.org/docs/standards/NACEP-Standards-2011.pdf)
• “Position Statement on Pre-College Credit for Writing” from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (http://wpacouncil.org/files/cwpa-statement-pre-college-credit.pdf)
• “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement” from CCCC (/cccc/resources/positions/writingassessment)
• “Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition” from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (http://wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html)
• Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Writing Project, and the National Council of Teachers of English (http://www.wpacouncil.org/framework)

 

Graduate Teaching Assistants

Graduate programs from across the disciplines provide opportunities for graduate students to serve as teaching assistants. In English Studies, a teaching assistantship often means serving as the instructor of record for first-year writing courses with the possibility of teaching advanced writing courses as a student gains experience and completes degree requirements. First-year writing courses and other postsecondary writing-intensive courses are not only taught by graduate students in rhetoric and composition, but also by graduate students studying other subfields of English Studies, including linguistics, secondary education, literature, and creative writing. Teaching assistantships provide a critical opportunity for graduate students to gain needed experience in the classroom, particularly in the application of practices and content covered in composition and rhetorical pedagogy and theory courses. Such experiences may include developing course curricula, assignments, and lesson plans and cultivating a pedagogical persona.

The authentic classroom experiences that teaching assistantships provide are crucial to the development of effective post-secondary writing instructors. However, assistantships may be misused as a significantly cheaper method for institutions, departments, and/or writing programs to ensure course coverage without the significant investments in salary and benefits for full-time, tenure and non-tenure track faculty. Graduate student teachers inhabit an acutely vulnerable space because they are simultaneously students and employees of a postsecondary institution: their status as both learners and as emerging practitioners in the classrooms must be protected. This is especially true when institutions face difficult fiscal challenges, and graduate teaching assistantships may become exploitative. Graduate programs and the postsecondary institutions in which they are located, then, must treat graduate teaching assistants ethically and responsibly, recognizing that their primary role at the university is as a student and apprentice teacher.

Principle: In preparing graduate teaching assistants to teach writing, graduate programs should provide students with varied opportunities to cultivate and apply a theoretically informed writing pedagogy by participating in and completing:

I. Required:

• Coursework in composition theory, research, and pedagogy; in rhetorical theory and research; in writing assessment, both formative and summative; and in working with diverse populations such as non-native speakers of English, students with special learning needs, non-traditional students, and at-risk student populations
• Graduate coursework in teaching with technology, including learning management systems, and experience with facilitating writing courses where students practice multimodal genres of textual production and refine their digital literacies
• Intensive and comprehensive TA training that could include pre-semester training for an extended duration (1–3 weeks), a one- or two-semester-long graduate composition theory course, and frequent workshops discussing aspects of composition pedagogy
• Mentoring partnerships with experienced teachers of college writing, which should include regular formative assessments of teaching (classroom observations, course evaluation reviews, syllabi and assignment reviews)

II. Recommended:

• Participation in programmatic assessment, such as dynamic criteria mapping and portfolio assessment
• Opportunities to train and work in writing centers
• Experience with curriculum development

III. Additional Responsibilities of the Institution and Graduate Program: In treating graduate student instructors ethically and responsibly, institutions and graduate programs should provide the following:

• A monetary stipend that sufficiently defrays cost-of-living expenses for the cities in which the institutions are located
• Monetary compensation for participation in pre-semester comprehensive training seminars or workshops
• Full tuition remission, health and dental benefits, and financial support for travel to academic conferences and other professional development opportunities
• Office space; pedagogical materials, such as copies, gradebooks, textbooks for courses; and other forms of office support

New and Continuing Faculty

Recently hired instructors experience challenges with assimilating to the social dynamics of a particular institution, department, and/or program. They invest significant emotional, psychological, and physical energy in completing institutional onboarding procedures. Such procedures include completing paperwork related to human resources, learning the curriculum and understanding the privileged outcomes and objectives of the programs in which they teach, and modifying their pedagogy to reflect that curriculum and meet the various learning needs of students within a new institutional context. A hiring institution, department, and/or writing program should make every effort to facilitate an easy transition for recently hired instructors.

What is more, CCCC conceptualizes preparation and professional development as an intensive and reflective practice that continues throughout and enriches an instructor’s entire career. Effective instructors of postsecondary writing labor diligently to stay informed of disciplinary scholarship, to modify their pedagogical practices to mirror shifts in disciplinary scholarship and accommodate student learning needs, and to foster an ethic of professional development that conceptualizes teaching as a life-long process of intellectual, professional, and personal growth. An institution, department, and/or program must provide ample opportunities for instructors to learn about and apply shifts in disciplinary scholarship, develop theoretically informed pedagogical practices that accommodate the learning needs of an ever-changing student body, and find intellectual and personal satisfaction in the process of continually enhancing their expertise and refining their craft.

Principle: Institutions must hire highly qualified writing faculty who hold at least a master’s degree in Composition/Rhetoric, English, English Education, Linguistics, or a closely-related field.

I. Required:

• Graduate coursework must have included composition theory, research, and pedagogy; and rhetorical theory and research.

II. Recommended:

• Graduate coursework in and experience facilitating writing assessment, both formative and summative
• Graduate coursework in and experience working with diverse populations, such as non-native speakers of English, students with special learning needs, non-traditional students, and at-risk student populations
• Graduate coursework in teaching with technology, including learning management systems, and experience with facilitating writing courses where students practice multimodal genres of textual production and refine their digital literacies
• Graduate coursework addressing, and experience working in, writing and/or learning centers

Principle: Hiring institutions should provide all new faculty with institutional orientation, pedagogical training, and support, including:

I. Required:

• Clear onboarding procedures which introduce all new faculty to the curriculum, student population demographics, institutional/departmental structure, technology requirements, and assessment expectations of the hiring institution and the department
• Monetary compensation for all required orientation and training activities
• Monetary, logistical, and office support for developing course materials
• Information and support for preparing materials for contract renewal or promotion
• Professional development training related to significant safety risks that endanger instructors and their students. Such training must include active shooter training, suicide prevention training, and training in administering first-aid.

II. Recommended:

• Formal mentoring programs where new faculty meet regularly during their first semester(s) with experienced colleagues, and which include opportunities both to observe experienced teachers in the classroom and to have their teaching observed by their mentors
• Ongoing formative and summative assessment of teaching by a supervisor
• Professional development training for working with non-native speakers of English, students with special learning needs, non-traditional students, and at-risk student populations

Principle: Institutions should provide experienced faculty with opportunities and support for continued professional development, including:

I. Required:

• Tuition remission for enrollment in graduate-level courses (pedagogy, assessment, ESL, tutoring, digital media)
• Financial support to participate in pedagogy workshops (local and national) to further develop skills
• Financial support to attend or present at national conferences
• Specialized training for working with non-native speakers of English, students with special learning needs, non-traditional students, and at-risk student populations
• Ongoing fair, transparent, and non-threatening formative and summative assessment of teaching by a qualified supervisor and/or peer. Any process of formative and summative assessment of teaching performance must prioritize professional growth, involve a wide-range of evidence, and align with clearly articulated institutional standards of effective teacher performance. See NCTE’s “Position Statement of Teacher Evaluation” (http://legacy.ncte.org/positions/statements/teacherevaluation).
• Clear guidance on preparing materials for contract renewal or promotion

II. Recommended:

• Opportunities to engage in mentoring
• Opportunities to participate in research, assessment, or curriculum development work within the department
• Ongoing formative and summative self-assessment of teaching

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

Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2010). Learning on demand online education in the United States, 2009. Babson Survey Research Group.

Burgstahler, S., & Cory, R. Eds. (2008). Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Press.

CCCC Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. (2009). Annotated bibliography. Retrieved from https://prod-ncte-cdn.azureedge.net/nctefiles/groups/cccc/committees/owiannotatedbib.pdf

CCCC Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. (2011). Initial report of the CCCC Committee for Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction: Report on the state-of-the-art of OWI. Retrieved from https://prod-ncte-cdn.azureedge.net/nctefiles/groups/cccc/committees/owi_state-of-art_report_april_2011.pdf

CCCC Committee on Disability Issues in College Composition (original in 2006, reaffirmed in 2011). A policy on disability in CCCC. Position statement. Retrieved from /cccc/resources/positions/disabilitypolicy

CCCC Committee for Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing. (1989) Statement of principles and standards for the postsecondary teaching of writing. Retrieved from /cccc/resources/positions/postsecondarywriting

CCCC Committee for Second Language Writing and Writers (original in 2001, revised in 2009). Position statement. CCCC statement for second language writing and writers. Retrieved from /cccc/resources/positions/secondlangwriting

Federal plain language guidelines. (2011). PlainLanguage.gov. Retrieved from http://www.plainlanguage.gov/

Griffin, J., & Minter, D. (March 2012). Expert views from student voices regarding fully online and hybrid OWI. A presentation from the 2012 Conference on College Composition and Communication. St. Louis, MO.

Guide to Disability Rights Laws. (2012). American Disabilities Act. Retrieved from: http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm#anchor65610

Hewett, B. (2010). The online writing conference: A guide for teachers and tutors. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Moore, J. C. [The Sloan Consortium]. (2011). A synthesis of Sloan-C effective practices. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 16(1): 91-115.

Office for Civil Rights. (June, 2010). Joint “Dear colleague” letter: Electronic book readers. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.html

Online learning: How effective is the virtual classroom? (2011). The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.texterity.com/onlinelearning/20111111b/?sub_id=B2HNSHyoS0Yxv#pg1

Seaman, J. (2009). Online learning as a strategic asset, Volume 2: The paradox of faculty voices: Views and experiences with online learning. Washington, DC: Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and Sloan National Commission on Online Learning.

Warnock, S. (2009). Teaching writing online: How and why. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Worley, W. L., & Tesdell, L. S. (2009). Instructor time and effort in online and face-to-face teaching: Lessons learned. IEEE PCS, 52(2), 138-151.

Back to Main Page: A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)

Conference on College Composition and Communication
(1987, Revised November 2015, Revised November 2022)

Introduction

The purpose of this statement is to help you as a faculty member—adjunct, contingent, contracted, tenure-track—who are new to an institution be successful in a new position. It seeks to provide guidance in navigating your new institution’s policies and practices so that you and your colleagues and administrators may create the “reasonable and equitable working conditions” that the CCCC’s Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (2015) states are necessary for “sound writing instruction.” This statement offers insights into the kinds of questions you may wish to ask, covering areas such as the basic conditions of your employment; expectations and opportunities for administrative work; and conditions for promotion, reappointment, and/or rehiring. Depending on institutional context, you may ask these questions to individuals such as program director, department chair, dean, mentors, seasoned colleagues, etc.

This document works in conjunction with two other CCCC position statements: the Statement of Best Practices in Faculty Hiring in Rhetoric and Composition Studies (2016) as well as the Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (2015), especially the information in principle number eleven, “Sound writing instruction is provided by instructors with reasonable and equitable working conditions.”

1. Conditions of Employment

A. Employment Contracts (TT, NTT, Leaves, Consulting, Length, etc.)

An employment contract is a nonbinding document that outlines terms of employment for part- and full-time faculty. Human resources offices often provide employment contracts to part- and full-time employees in order to convey expectations to employees and state compensation for services rendered. Many faculty members receive a copy of a contract in writing upon obtaining a position and can request a copy of the contract at any time from a human resources representative.

Here are questions to ask about your employment contract:

• How is my employment contract used to evaluate my performance at work?
• How often will I receive a new contract?
• When should I expect to receive my contract?
• What happens if I don’t receive it on time?
• Under what circumstances has the employer historically changed the terms of contracts or terminated contracts?
• What is my employment status between contracts?
• Do I have a reasonable expectation of continued employment for the following semester or year?

B. Union and Union Contracts

A union is a group of workers who come together to build power in the workplace and a union contract is a negotiated and binding document that obligates the institution for which unionized employees work to establish standards for compensation and working conditions, as well as processes for evaluation, discipline, and reappointment. If you are part of a unionized group of part-time faculty, full-time faculty, or some combination, you have a union contract or you have a bargaining committee that is bargaining for a contract. You can typically view your union contract on your union’s website. If it isn’t on your union’s website, you can ask your union steward or your union president for a copy of your union contract.

Different aspects of your employment are subject to negotiation in a union contract, so you should read your union contract and get involved with your union. You have a say about what contract items a bargaining committee might negotiate for or renegotiate. You could also serve as a member of your union’s bargaining committee or support the bargaining committee in other ways. Union contracts may last for one or more years. When a union contract expires, a union (i.e., the faculty members who comprise the union) renegotiates the contract. Here are questions to ask the faculty leaders of your union about your union contract:

• Where can I find my union contract?
• What issues does my union contract address?
• What kinds of salary increases will I have as a result of the most recently negotiated contract?
• Does my union contract provide me with grievance rights and academic freedom protection?
• When does my union contract expire?
• What issues will we bargain for as a union in our next union contract?
• What can I do to strengthen our bargaining position?

C. Evaluation, Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion

Institutions often require or ask contingent and/or tenure-line faculty to engage in evaluation, reappointment, tenure, and/or promotion processes. It is essential for faculty to understand the stakes and nuances of these processes. Here are questions that new faculty might ask:

• How do I access policies about evaluation, tenure, and promotion?
• What processes are used for evaluation, reappointment, tenure, and promotion?
• Is there a single process or separate processes for annual evaluation and tenure?
• How am I evaluated?
• Are any aspects of my performance not evaluated or counted?
• When am I evaluated?
• Who evaluates my work?
• What aspects of my work are evaluated?
• How does teaching count in my progress toward tenure, promotion, and/or reappointment? What are the requirements for documenting my teaching as part of the tenure process?
• What processes will be used to evaluate my teaching? Where can I find guidelines or policies about those processes?
• What assessment activities for teaching (if any) will I be required to participate in?
• How does research count in my progress toward tenure, promotion, and/or reappointment?
• How does service count in my progress toward tenure, promotion, and/or reappointment?
• To whom can I turn for help with any materials required for evaluation, reappointment, tenure, and/or promotion?
• How are the different aspects of my performance weighed for reappointment, tenure, and promotion?
• How and when do I receive the results of my evaluation?
• How am I expected to respond to the results of my evaluation?
• How does my evaluation relate to reappointment, tenure, pay increases, and/or promotion?

2. Professional Responsibilities

A. Teaching

Faculty who are new to an institution need to be prepared to adapt their teaching strategies to institutional requirements and material realities, the goals of a writing or literacy program, the curriculum, and the needs of the students who enroll in the program. The following questions can help faculty navigate teaching in a new context.

Questions About Teaching at the Institution

• What is the mission of the institution and its relationship to the community (or communities) in which it is located? How do the mission and local community shape curriculum and instruction at the institution?
• Where can I access institutional policies about teaching?
• When will I have a definite list of my course assignments? When is the latest date when my course assignments might change? What factors determine whether teaching assignments change?
• What learning management system (LMS) is used for course websites at the institution? When and how will I have access to my course sites?
• What training is available for learning how to use the LMS and other technology tools for teaching?
• What kinds of early alert reporting (if any) is required for monitoring the success of students in my courses?
• When are grades due? Are midterm grades required? How do I submit grades?
• What technologies are available in my classrooms? How do I access information that will help me learn how to use those technologies?
• What technology tools do students have access to? Where can I find information about those technology resources?
• What learning support resources are available on the campus? What do I need to do to help students access them?
• When and how will I receive information about accommodation plans for students with disabilities?
• Is there a teaching and learning center? What resources and training are available through the center?
• What library resources are available for my students? Where can I find information about library resources that students will need for my courses?
• What teaching materials (if any) am I required to submit to the institution to document my teaching? How do I submit them?
• Will I have my own office? If not, where can I meet with students?
• When will I receive my course assignments for the next semester or term?
• How are course assignments made for continuing instructors? What is the process for making course and scheduling requests?
• Can I propose new courses? If so, what’s the process of new course approvals?

Questions About Teaching in a Writing or Literacy Program

• Who is my direct supervisor for teaching?
• Where can I access program policies and guidelines?
• What student communities does the program serve? How do those student communities shape teaching and learning in the program?
• How are students placed into writing or other literacy courses? How does placement influence curriculum and instruction within the program?
• What courses are offered in the writing or literacy program? What is the relationship between each course? What pathway(s) do students take through the program as they work toward receiving a college degree?
• What types of resources and mentoring for teaching are available to new instructors? How do I access those resources?
• How much choice do individual instructors have over textbook selection and use of open educational resource (OER) texts? What is the process for receiving copies of any required textbooks?
• What teaching modalities are available in the program (for example, face-to-face, hybrid, asynchronous online, synchronous online with scheduled meetings, high flex)? What training (if any) is available and/or required for teaching in each modality?
• Will my courses enroll dual credit high school students? If so, what do I need to know about teaching dual credit students? Do I need a background check in order to teach high school students?
• What was I approved (or credentialed) to teach when I was hired? What is the process for becoming approved to teach other courses or in other program areas?
• What shared governance processes are used for determining guidelines for teaching in the program? How might I participate in those processes?

Questions About Individual Courses

• How much autonomy will I have in making my own choices about readings, assignments, and course activities? If I have limited autonomy in my first semester, when (if ever) will I be able to have more autonomy in how I design my course?
• Where can I access learning outcomes, curriculum guides, sample syllabi, model assignments, and other teaching resources?
• Does the program use a common syllabus?
• Does the program provide a model course (predesigned course, template, or development shells)? If so, how can I access it? How much freedom will I have to adapt and change a model course?
• Who can I contact to learn about how to teach the course and how to support the students that the course serves?

B. Service

Service refers to all duties and responsibilities to the institution and students of the college that are not directly related to teaching, professional development, or research. Some colleges recognize service to professional organizations and similar activities as well. Service is most commonly associated with committee work, mentoring, and administration of departments or programs. Service responsibilities are generally described in contracts or faculty handbooks, including how service is weighed in performance evaluations.

Questions to ask about service include the following:

• What types of service are required for faculty at different levels of employment?
• Where are service requirements articulated?
• How much is service weighed in performance reviews, for rehiring, and promotions?
• Is service to professional organizations recognized as part of workload?
• How should I document my service work?
• What types of service work are most valued by the institution and department?
• How are service opportunities and expectations distributed?
• How are different faculty affected by service expectations, e.g., are BIPOC faculty inordinately affected?
• If service work is compensated, e.g., reassignment for WPA work, is other service work required to meet workload expectations?
• Do administrative assignments count as service?

C. Professional Development

Professional development refers to the activities faculty engage in to improve as teachers, researchers, mentors, and administrators. Professional development is usually required as a part of workload and is fulfilled through workshops, courses, and training either through the college or through professional organizations; however, colleges have different requirements for types of professional development required, expected, and/or valued.

Questions to ask about professional development include the following:

• Are specific types of professional development required for faculty at different levels or points of employment?
• Where are professional development requirements articulated?
• How much is professional development weighed in performance reviews, for rehiring, and promotions?
• Is professional development conducted through professional organizations recognized?
• How is professional development work documented?
• What types of professional development work are most valued by the institution and department?

D. Program Administration (see Appendix)

3. Navigating Campus Culture

A. Finding Mentorship/Support and Building Support Network

Mentorship is important for new faculty members to thrive in a new institution, especially when systemic structures might make it difficult for faculty to carry out their work in balanced ways, particularly for multiply-marginalized faculty members. Effective mentors should not only support the new faculty’s professional development but also advocate for them in department, college, or other institutional contexts.

Some schools have formal systems of assigning mentors to new faculty members. If not assigned, new faculty may inquire of their department chair about any formal mentoring mechanisms on campus. A mentor may be assigned within a department and cross-department/college mentors may be assigned as well. The new faculty member might consider in which context they would like to have a mentor for their different needs, given different power dynamics and institutional policies and procedures on performance reviews such as contract renewals or tenure and promotion review processes. However, mentorship from outside your workplace can also be very important, especially as you start a new job and need time to build relationships in the institution or when you experience challenges at the job caused by institutional structures difficult to change.

Some questions to consider when finding mentors/mentorship:

• What do I need to thrive in this role?
• What challenges do I envision or have I already experienced when starting the new job?
• What do I expect my mentor to do for me?
• How would I like to interact with my mentor and how often should we interact?
• What can I do if I am unhappy with my formal mentoring assignment?

Depending on the faculty member’s different needs, mentorship can be found in different places and for different needs. The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity offers a mentor map that allows you “to map your current mentoring network, identify your unmet needs, and plan how to expand your existing network to meet your current needs.” Adapted from this map, the following questions can help a faculty member in building a support network:

• Where can I seek substantive feedback on my scholarly or teaching activities? Who can provide feedback on my writing/research or observe my teaching to give suggestions for improvement?
• Who can I contact for guidance on interpreting institutional policies regarding expectations for research, teaching, or service?
• Who can provide emotional support for me as I transition into a new role, new institution, and/or new geographical location?
• Who do I go to for insider knowledge of the way the institution works?
• Who can be my role model in not only thriving professionally but also personally?
• Who can help provide accountability in my work and help me develop and manage boundaries?
• Where can I find a space to recover and recharge?
• Who can be my “sponsor” or advocate at my workplace?

Institutional mentorship and support may be offered in informal ways. A new faculty member can seek out informal mentors if no formal structure is offered. Tapping into extra institutional support can help the faculty member identify places where they may be able to seek out mentors on campus.

B. Addressing Challenging Workplace Situations

Faculty should become aware of the formal and informal institutional systems of support for responding to challenging workplace situations such as bias, stereotyping, and abusive power dynamics.

Questions for consideration are as follows:

• How are issues of bias addressed at the institution? What is the process for my concerns to be formally addressed?
• If I am a contingent or part-time faculty member, how can I address my concerns about my position or working environment?
• What specific changes to my faculty position do I have autonomy over? If changes were requested, how would those changes be addressed?
• If I am a contingent or part-time faculty member, do I have a right to attend faculty meetings? Are there specific faculty meetings for part-time and contingent faculty available and/or held regularly?
• How does my department handle student-faculty concerns? Where do I go to address those concerns?
• How does my department handle faculty-staff concerns? Where do I go to address those concerns?
• As a faculty member, what part of my responsibilities will I be handling solely because of my race, gender, age, or other aspects of my social and cultural identity?
• Where may I report my concerns about another faculty member? May I report my concerns confidentially?

C. Accessing Resources (Grievances and Appeals, Ombuds, Accessibility, Accommodations)

New faculty members, regardless of their employment status, should be aware of who has the power to advocate on their behalf. In difficult or even hostile working environments, faculty members should know where to turn for support, including how to file complaints and have them heard.

Questions for consideration are as follows:

• What ombuds services are available to me if I have concerns that I would like to address regarding my faculty position? How can an ombudsperson assist me in addressing those concerns?
• To whom do I address my concerns about accommodations for time off for religious observances that lie outside of the stipulations of my contract?
• To whom do I address my concerns regarding faculty disability accommodations? What is the process for these faculty accommodations to be received and approved?
• What are the requirements of filing a complaint against a supervisor or faculty member?
• How do I file a grievance against a supervisor or faculty member? What is the process for filing a grievance and obtaining a resolution?
• How can I appeal a decision that has been made about a grievance that I have made? What is the appeals process for faculty members?
• How do grievances and appeals affect the renewal of my contract as a permanent or contingent faculty member?
• How are students’ grievances against faculty members handled by my institution or department?
• Do I have a right to record meetings with staff or faculty members for documentation purposes?
• How will my involvement in another faculty member’s grievance affect my standing and position at my institution? How could grievances possibly affect my obtaining tenure?

Appendix:
Professional Guidance for Literacy Program Coordinators

Members of CCCC and NCTE serve in a variety of different literacy program administration roles. Higher education literacy programs coordinated by members include (but aren’t limited to) writing, developmental education, reading, integrated reading and writing, adult basic education, corequisite support, ESL, and online literacy education. English studies experts can also serve in other administrative positions that draw from their disciplinary expertise, such as directing writing and learning centers or coordinating placement, assessment, or first-year experience programs. The purpose of the following information is to help literacy program coordinators understand their terms of employment and working conditions as they transition to new administrative responsibilities. It provides questions that new program coordinators can ask or reflect on as they learn about their new positions. Programs and institutions can also use these questions to assess whether they are providing literacy program coordinators with equitable working conditions, access to resources, and effective information about their responsibilities. Institutions should also follow the recommendations in two helpful statements from the Council of Writing Program Administrators: “‘The Portland Resolution:’ Guidelines for Writing Program Administrator Positions” (Hult et al., 1992) and Evaluating the Intellectual Work of Writing Program Administration (2019).

Conditions of Employment

• What are the responsibilities of the position? Where can I find those responsibilities in writing? If they aren’t already available in writing, will the institution create a written position description so that I have a clear understanding of my administrative responsibilities?
• What percentage of my workload will be devoted to administrative responsibilities? What additional responsibilities will I have for teaching, service, and professional development?
• What is the expected length of appointment for my position?
• What types of compensation will I receive for my administrative work throughout the year (for example, reassigned time/course releases, academic year stipend, summer stipend, overload pay, etc.)?
• Does the position have summer responsibilities? If so, are the workload, employment percentage, and responsibilities different during the summer compared to the academic year? How will I be compensated for summer work?

Conditions of Employment for Non-Tenure-Track Administrative Positions

• What type of contract will I have for the administrative part of my position (for example, permanent contract, renewable contract, limited appointment, etc.)?
• What factors contribute to whether I will have an expectation of employment beyond the current academic year?
• If teaching is included with the administrative position, will I have guaranteed course assignments? Or is teaching offered as an adjunct position with the potential to have variable levels of employment based on funding and enrollment?
• Is my pay the same for administrative work and teaching? Or does the pay vary for different parts of my employment?

Conditions of Employment for Tenure-Line Faculty in Administrative Positions

• Is the administrative job classified as a tenure-line position for faculty? Or is the position funded and structured outside of a tenure line?
• If the administrative position isn’t classified as a faculty position, what steps do I need to take to ensure that I will be able to return to a faculty position after the administrative appointment ends?
• If I don’t have tenure, will I be able to make progress toward tenure while in the position? How will my administrative responsibilities count toward tenure? Are there written policies or guidelines to outline the relationship between administrative responsibilities and progress toward tenure?
• If I already have tenure, will I be classified as a tenured faculty member during my time in the position? Will I retain the responsibilities and rights of a tenured faculty member? Or will my employment classification as an administrator change the terms of my faculty status within the institution? What actions do I need to take to ensure that I will retain my tenure status while serving as an administrator?
• How will administrative work count toward promotion to full professor?
• Will I be able to participate in shared governance processes for faculty while serving in the position?

Institutional Context

• Where can I find written policies and guidelines that are relevant for my position? Are the institution’s policies for the administrative position different from the policies for faculty?
• Where is the program housed within the institution?
• Who is my direct supervisor? Is the administrative supervisor different from my direct supervisor for teaching or other employment responsibilities?
• What other literacy programs are available on the campus? What is the role of each program within the institution? What is the relationship between those programs? How do program coordinators work together to create effective literacy support for students?

Evaluation

• What are the institutional expectations for how I should document my administrative responsibilities for the purpose of evaluation and (if available) promotion?
• What is the process for evaluating my administrative work?
• Is the evaluation process part of the evaluation process for teaching? If so, how will my administrative work count toward my evaluation?
• If there is a separate process for evaluating administrative work, what are the differences between the administrative evaluation and the evaluation of my teaching?
• What policies or practices are in place to ensure that assessment of the program itself is separate from an evaluation of my administrative work?

Funding

• How is the administrative part of my position funded? Is the funding stream a stable part of the base budget? Or does it depend on enrollment, tuition revenue, or other variable factors that influence institutional budgets?
• How might funding affect the stability of my position and the resources available for coordinating an effective program?
• What are the revenue streams that support the resources available to the program? Who is responsible for managing the program budget?

What responsibilities (if any) will I have for seeking funding for the program through annual budget requests, grants, or other processes? Which institutional offices can help me learn about how to complete parts of the position related to obtaining or renewing funding? What are the timelines for those processes?

References

Conference on College Composition and Communication. (2016, April). CCCC Statement of best practices in faculty hiring for tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions in rhetoric and composition/writing studies. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/faculty-hiring

Conference on College Composition and Communication. (2015, March). Principles for the postsecondary teaching of writing. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/postsecondarywriting

Council of Writing Program Administrators. (2019, July 17). Evaluating the intellectual work of writing administration. https://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/pt/sd/news_article/242849/_PARENT/layout_details/false

Hult, C., Joliffe, D., Kelly, K., Mead, D., & Schuster, C. (1992). “The Portland resolution”: Guidelines for writing program administrator positions. WPA: Writing Program Administration, 16(1–2), 88–94.

Acknowledgments

This statement was generously revised by the Task Force to Revise the CCCC Statement of Professional Guidance for New Faculty Members. The members of this task force included:

Kimberly Bain
Chen Chen
Joanne Baird Giordano
Jeffrey Klausman
Liliana Naydan

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

The purpose of this statement is to help you as a faculty member—adjunct, contingent, contracted, tenure-track—who are new to an institution be successful in a new position. It seeks to provide guidance in navigating your new institution’s policies and practices so that you and your colleagues and administrators may create the “reasonable and equitable working conditions” that the CCCC’s Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (2015) states are necessary for “sound writing instruction.” This statement offers insights into the kinds of questions you may wish to ask, covering areas such as the basic conditions of your employment; expectations and opportunities for administrative work; and conditions for promotion, reappointment, and/or rehiring. Depending on institutional context, you may ask these questions to individuals such as program director, department chair, dean, mentors, seasoned colleagues, etc.

This document works in conjunction with two other CCCC position statements: the Statement of Best Practices in Faculty Hiring in Rhetoric and Composition Studies (2016) as well as the Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing (2015), especially the information in principle number eleven, “Sound writing instruction is provided by instructors with reasonable and equitable working conditions.”

Read the full statement, Statement of Professional Guidance for New Faculty Members (1987, Revised November 2015, Revised November 2022)

In July 2011, a 24-year old online activist was arrested in Boston on a number of charges, including computer hacking and wire fraud, which stemmed from his downloading articles which, under normal circumstances, he would have been entitled to get for free. It isn’t a crime to download entire articles from JSTOR; in fact, many of us have done so in the course of our work as teachers and scholars. Most college/university libraries pay for access to JSTOR so that their users (like teachers and students) are allowed to access the articles for free. But downloading 4.8 million JSTOR articles (and crashing some of its servers in the process) is another story. Or is it?

Who is Aaron Swartz?
Labeled as an “Internet Folk hero” and “hacktivist,” Aaron Swartz is not new to the “internet elite.”¹  As a teenager, he helped to create RSS, “a bit of computer code that allows people to receive automatic feeds of online notices and news.”²  He also founded Demand Progress and helped to launch Creative Commons.

In 2008, he wrote and released a “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto” which “called for activists to ‘fight back’ against the sequestering of scholarly papers and information behind pay walls.”³  And his penchant for massive downloads (and for inspiring federal investigations) is not new either: in 2009, he downloaded close to 20 million pages of court documents for a project that made them free and available online.

At the time of his arrest, Swartz was a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

What’s at Stake?
The US Attorney’s office (via the US District Court of Massachusetts) has charged Aaron Swartz with “wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer”⁴  charges that carry heavy penalties: up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Swartz pleaded “not guilty” to all counts and was released on $100,000 bail. According to the indictment, Swartz broke into a computer wiring closet at MIT and set up a laptop using the name “Gary Host” (which, when shortened for the email address, becomes “ghost”). He then used this fake MIT address to gain free JSTOR access through the school’s network. He would periodically retrieve the laptop, ostensibly to offload the contents, and then replace it in the wiring closet, hiding his face behind a bicycle helmet to conceal his identity.

David Segal, the executive director of ‘Demand Progress’ likens the indictment to “trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”⁵  Demand Progress set up a petition in support of Swartz (a petition that gained 15,000 signatures in the first few hours) that reinforced Segal’s sentiments: “As best we can tell,” the site reads, “he is being charged with allegedly downloading too many journal articles from the web.”⁶

Lawrence Lessig, a champion in the open access/fair use/commons arena and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, spoke to the motive of the alleged “crime,” stating that “Aaron has never done anything in this context for personal gain – this isn’t a hacking case, in the sense of someone trying to steal credit cards…That’s something JSTOR saw, and the government obviously didn’t.”⁷  But US attorney Carmen Ortiz offered a much more stark assessment of Swartz’s acts: “Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data, or dollars.  It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen, or give it away.”⁸

In a statement released by JSTOR , they noted that they are “fully cooperating” with the US Attorney’s Office, but they have “no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter.” After securing the content that was taken and receiving confirmation [from Swartz] that “the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed,”  JSTOR  then seems to distance themselves from the criminal investigation, noting that “it was the government’s decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s.” Heidi McGregor, vice president of marketing and communications at JSTOR, emphasized the fact that JSTOR’s main concern was that the information taken “was secure and wasn’t disseminated” and confirmed that none of the downloaded content included any information about particular database users.⁹

Implications for the Open Access Movement
As Aaron Swartz wrote in his manifesto: “It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture…we need to download scientific journals and upload them to file-sharing networks.”¹⁰

But even his friends seem a bit divided on the JSTOR incident. Carl Malamud, “an online activist who worked with Swartz on the court document project,” noted that “the JSTOR incident is very disturbing.”¹¹  Malamud continues: “My style, when I see a gate barring entry and that gate is sanctioned by the law, is to go up to that gate and pound on it hard and force them to open up. Others sometimes look for a back door. I’m not convinced that style is always effective, and it is certainly often dangerous.”¹²

Only days after Swartz’s indictment, however, another programmer posted JSTOR’s archive of historic science journals online via BitTorrent on the Pirate Bay website.¹³  Gregory Maxwell shared over 18,000 papers from The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a journal that has been around since 1665 (and, as such, is out of copyright and in the public domain) but its contents are still “locked up” by the academic publishing system, in particular JSTOR’s subscription-only database.  In a note posted on the Pirate Bay website, Maxwell explains:

These documents are part of the shared heritage of all mankind and are rightfully in the public domain, but they are not available freely.  Instead the articles are available at $19 each – for one month’s viewing, by one person, on one computer.  It’s a steal.  From you.¹⁴

In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Maxwell acknowledged that he was inspired to post the Royal Society files because of the Swartz case:

I’ve had these files for a long time, but I’ve been afraid that if I published them, I would be subject to unjust legal harassment by those who profit from controlling access to these works. I now feel that I’ve been making the wrong decision.¹⁵

The case against Swartz also prompted Maxwell to release the documents “under his real name” so that people would not immediately suspect Swartz as the culprit.¹⁶

JSTOR confirmed that the Royal Society files that Maxwell uploaded were indeed copies of material that JSTOR had digitized.¹⁷  In response to Maxwell’s comments about the price of accessing these materials, JSTOR noted that it is equally important to understand “that there are costs associated with digitizing, preserving, and providing access to content.”¹⁸  The fact that there are costs associated with distribution is one accepted by Maxwell; what he cannot accept “is the position that making a century-old document available costs nearly $20 every single time it is accessed.”¹⁹

In his written statement on the Pirate Bay website, Maxwell deftly identifies what he sees as the root of the access problem:

Academic publishing is an odd system – the authors are not paid for their writing, nor are the peer reviewers (they’re just more unpaid academics), and in some fields even the journal editors are unpaid. Sometimes the authors must even pay the publishers. And yet scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access fees supported the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals, but online distribution has mostly made this function obsolete. As far as I can tell, the money paid for access today serves little significant purpose except to perpetuate dead business models. The “publish or perish” pressure in academia gives authors an impossibly weak negotiating position, and the existing system has enormous inertia.²⁰

JSTOR, then, is just a symptom (and a remnant) from what has become a chronic disease: the seeming inability of old business models to adapt to new technology. Indeed, this is at the root of the problem in all areas of the content industry – whether journals or jpegs, medicine or mp3s, books or BitTorrents, the question of access is still being answered by the old models of distribution.

There have been rumors of a settlement in the Swartz case. Many at MIT questioned why the feds were involved in the first place. Christopher Capozzola, associate professor of history and interim dean of the school of humanities, arts, and social sciences at MIT, acknowledged that Swartz’s acts were “clear violations of the rules and protocols of the library and the [MIT] community,” but that the “penalties in this case, and the sources of those penalties are really remarkable…they [the penalties] really go against MIT’s culture of breaking down barriers.”²¹  Richard Stallman – a computer programmer, “free culture” advocate and MIT alum – stated the case even more bluntly, saying that he was “mystified” by the fact that Secret Service agents were brought in when Swartz’s laptop was discovered in the wiring closet: “At best – if they didn’t know what the laptop was doing – it was an overreaction….Surely MIT people can examine a laptop without police help.”²²

But the Swartz case catalyzes the debate about academic publishing, paywalls, and the public domain. As John H. Summers, historian and editor of a journal devoted to cultural criticism, wrote, “What Aaron’s case begs us to remember is that universities are supposed to be public, not-for-profit institutions…they owe a standing moral debt to the public.”²³

The interesting post-script to this story?
Two months after Swartz was indicted, JSTOR announced that users anywhere in the world would now have free access to JSTOR’s Early Journal Content – scholarly articles published prior to 1923 in the US and prior to 1870 elsewhere. In the announcement, Laura Brown, JSTOR’s managing director, “said the move was not prompted by a much-publicized incident this year involving Aaron Swartz, a hacktivist charged with violations related to making unauthorized downloads of millions of JSTOR files.”²⁴

¹  John Schwartz. “Open Access Advocate is Arrested for Huge Download.” New York Times online.  July 19, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20compute.html
²  Qtd in Schwartz.
³  Ibid.
⁴  Jie Jenny Zou.  “Programmer is Charged with Hacking into Journal Database.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  July 19, 2011.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/programmer-is-charged-with-hacking-into-journal-database/32316
⁵  Qtd in Schwartz.
⁶  Qtd. In Zou.
⁷  Qtd. In Schwartz.
⁸  Qtd. In Schwartz.
⁹  Qtd. In Zou.
¹⁰ Qtd. In Schwartz.
¹¹ Qtd. In Schwartz.
¹² Qtd. In Schwartz.
¹³ Jennifer Howard.  “User Posts Thousands of JSTOR Files Online.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  July 21, 2011.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/user-posts-thousands-of-jstor-files-online/32378
¹⁴  Qtd. In Howard.
¹⁵ Qtd. In Howard.
¹⁶ Janko Roettgers.  “Thousands of Scientific Papers Uploaded to the Pirate Bay.”  Gigaom.  July 21, 2011.  http://gigaom.com/2011/07/21/pirate-bay-jstor/
¹⁷ See Howard.
¹⁸ Qtd. In Howard.
¹⁹ Qtd. In Howard.
²⁰ Qtd. In Roettgers.
²¹ David Glenn.  “Rogue Downloader’s Arrest Could Mark Crossroads for Open-Access Movement.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  July 31, 2011.  http://chronicle.com/article/Rogue-Downloaders-Arrest/128439/
²² Qtd. In Glenn.
²³ Qtd. In Glenn.
²⁴ Jennifer Howard.  “JSTOR Opens Up US Journal Content From Before 1923.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education.  September 7, 2011.  http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/jstor-opens-up-u-s-journal-content-from-before-1923/33057

Submitted by
Traci Zimmerman
Associate Professor
School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication
James Madison University

 

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