Committee on Diversity (March 2015)

Committee Charge

This CCCC Committee on Diversity is charged to promote and support ongoing dialogues about diversity and difference in all aspects of teaching, graduate study, professional hiring and development, and research on rhetoric, writing, and literacy. This committee has a particular but not exclusive charge to address the concerns and problems of racial diversity in the rhetoric and composition community, given the underrepresentation of people of color in our organization and on college faculties nationwide.

To carry out this general charge this committee is particularly charged

1. To gather data about people of color and other minorities who are members of our professional organization – this includes information such as the degree of diversity of students enrolled in graduate programs, faculty rank and institutional type, representation of diverse scholars & scholarship at our national convention and in NCTE/CCCC publication venues.
2. To poll the membership regarding the effectiveness of CCCC in meeting the needs of our many different constituents, as defined by diverse identity categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, sexual orientation, etc.
3. To document and synthesize any data collected from the above efforts, along with scholarship and practical experiences from our members, in order to identify the needs of our membership, and of our discipline, that might appropriately be supported by the CCCC organization or attended to by the CCCC Executive Council.
4. To develop resources that will support our members in engaging in scholarship that directly address diversity issues and/or concerns.
5. To develop resources that will support our members in teaching for diverse student populations, or in teaching diversity-centered curricula to homogenous student populations.
6. To promote the hiring and retention of faculty of color into all departments in which our members are employed.
7. To promote the recruiting and retention of graduate students of color into rhetoric & writing graduate programs and to advocate for diversity-rich graduate curricula.
8. To propose position statements on diversity in the discipline for consideration by the Executive Committee.
9. To combine efforts with other NCTE/CCCC committees where possible to improve efficiency, including the Committee on Disability Issues, the Committee on LGBT/Q Issues, the Committee on Language Policy, as well as with CCCC EC governance groups and Task Forces as is appropriate.

Spring 2014 Update

This CCCC Committee on Diversity is charged to promote and support ongoing dialogues about diversity and difference in all aspects of teaching, graduate study, professional hiring and development, and research on rhetoric, writing, and literacy. This committee has a particular but not exclusive charge to address the concerns and problems of racial diversity in the rhetoric and composition community, given the underrepresentation of people of color in our organization and on college faculties nationwide.

This committee has been working to identify the areas of tension within the organization, and will be moving forward in the next year to craft position statements to submit to the EC. The CCCC Committee on Diversity will also be working with other committees to collaborate on our efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in our organization.