AGENDA R&W FACULTY/GRADUATE STUDENT FORUM
Rhetoric & Writing Faculty/Graduate Student Forum
Wednesday, April 11, 2011
4:00-5:30 p.m.
SUB Mirage Thunderbird
Presentations: 4:00-4:45 (5 minutes/each)
Opening Remarks/Ground Rules
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Michelle Hall Kells, Chair,
Special Assistant to Dean on Core Writing
A call from grad students for the meeting
Bubbling conversations nationally R&W
7 new faculty in one year
amazing people
gifts and ideas and vision
benefit grad students and colleagues
How to invite our new R&W grad students into our program in a productive way
A year of amazing transition
R&W Faculty/Graduate Student Forum
Working Documents/Minutes
Genevieve Garcia de Mueller
Secretary, R&W Forum
R&W New Hires & Course Rotations
Chuck Paine
 WPA summer conference in ABQ – submit a proposal will be paid for Deadline is
tomorrow wpa2012.unm.edu
 Five new tenure track
 Spousal hire – Andy Burrell
 More lecturers
 Course rotations, structure, and grad program—coming into town May 17th and 18th
o Coming in as a team
o We have to figure out how to include them into this program we cannot delegate
o It takes time to figure out course rotations
o New hires for the Fall 2012 (2:1 load)
o Everyone is teaching a core course
o Grad level courses/400 level courses
 All of the faculty will teach full spectrum from ENG 101-640
 Core writing is a place of strength
R&W Administrative Structure & Grad Program Chuck Paine
 Chuck will be Associate Chair of Core Writing
 All five are interested in program building
 All will be involved in program building, mentoring, course work
o Brian: What is the face of core writing fellowships for grad students?
Traditionally two positions for assistant directors? Will it change?
o Chuck: Keeping things the same but reducing the number of mentorships. Hard
to martial people into meaningful work. Assistant Director of Core Writing will
be the same. Weekly mentor meetings. Less mentors.
o Melissa: Prep someone to be the Core Writing WPA?
o Chuck: Someone will be prepped. But when that happens the person has to be
tenured. The self study is time consuming but the WPA self learning.
o Michelle: WPA job description. Future WPAs. What does a WAC director do
nationally? Working documents of what the WPAs and WAC directors look like.
What needs do we have? Chrystn and Bethany look to be in a WPA core writing
area. Natasha and WPA, Todd and Bee – WAC.
o Chuck: What will new faculty say? They are all team players. They want to do
this work.
R&W Graduate Admission Fall 2012
Michelle Kells
ESL Joint Hire (LLSS & RW)
Michelle Kells
 Bee accepted the job. Joint hire in LLSS/R&W
 Jill—transfer writer
o HS to college
o GED to college
o Two year
 Bee
o ESL 101/102
o Designing courses in World Englishes
o Writing center pedagogy for ESL students
o Non-native speaker of English
 Authority as a non-native
 Negotiate the two worlds between college of ed and English
o Designated ESL ENG 101/102?
 Lindsey: there are a lot of machinations that need to
o Chuck: The dean expect and want major changes in writing and speaking core.
Including a more prominent and better ESL sections. Curriculum may change
o Lindsey: Cross cultural English of 102 focusing on Language Issues
o Michelle: College of Ed want to participate in the W-courses. Diverse students.
o Dan: Administrative problems.
o Michelle: Have an idea and carry that idea and people involved. Team of folks
recruited, all of them had proven records of being initiators and creators of ideas
into policy. There is no clear path to success for the w-courses. Coalitions of
support.
ENGL 102 W Course Pilot Project
Dan Cryer
 Something we have been working on for awhile. Haf a dozen stand alone writing
intensive courses helped along by graduate students of English. Morphed in to something
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else. Held onto FLCs instead of starting from scratch. Rather then having stand alones
we have paired courses.
o Sociologu
o Economics
o Sustainability
o College of Ed
Two writing intensive courses paired together
Writing fellows working with courses
Faculty in other discisplines who are committed to teaching lower/upper writing intensive
courses. WACish trail. More reality then it was. But future work. Outcomes for writing
intensive courses. Faculty who are buying in are excited about it.
Michelle: Title V Stem Project—interested into how to connect this
o The problem isn’t a lack of interest
o We don’t have the infrastructure to sustain this
o Phase I, II, III
 Justify the hires
o Danial Sanford
 CAPS and peer mentoring may help us to train WAC fellows across the
disciplines
 Working and training grad students across the disciplines to be writing
fellows
Buy-in is there but not enough to guarantee the future
Networking faculty into this
Lindsey: New faculty and the projects. The need for more information from people in the
disciplines and what they expect from writing. 219 W course.
Michelle: Advisory entity: what is a W-Course? What qualifies? Incentive: WAC fellow
to work with professors. Other incentives: tenure review was enhanced by teaching a WCourse. New faculty, early adopters. Visibility across the university and tenure case.
Advisory Council. Marty Townsend did her dissertation on starting a WAC program here
at UNM. Ford Foundation grant to start a WAC program. The kiss of death was that it
was soft money. Ford Foundation/ post mortem on WAC at UNM in 1999. What went
wrong? Relying on grant funding to sustain a WAC program not at a grass roots level.
Prominent WAC leader. Some level of prestige an recognition.
Brian: Goldblatt and Townsend for the Writing the World Symposium next year
Dan: Can the W-Course count for core curriculum?
Chuck: The curriculum has to go through the state. No one works for this. HED is
broken. Joel Nosoff did a great job for the FLC. Nobody knows what will happen with
the FLCs when he retires. Some things we can do that don’t cost as much.
Michelle: Kate Krouse sees other options. Fall and Spring FLCs. In conversation with the
W-Course. 6 faculty for Spring 2013 for W-Courses.
Professional Writing & Online Courses
Steve Benz & Valerie Thomas
 Transitioning from WEBct to Blackboard Learn
 Blackboard Learn by the spring..some will offer blackboard in the fall as a pilot
 Valerie and Steve are learning things now about the system
o Committee called the Super Bug who will be taking on the courses in the fall
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Online courses
o Valerie has been doing the mentoring and guidance for TAs teaching online
o Valerie is leaving to Santa Cruz to be an only online teacher
o Onsite on campus Steven will be handling her responsibilities
 Send Steve and email about Blackboard Learn
 We need people to teach online courses in the fall 101/102/219/220
 Blackboard Vista is similar to WEBct Vista but Blackboard Learn is a but
better…intuitive
 Content that exists should be transferred over
 Onlining learning adds to CV
Professional Writing Program Learning Outcomes
& Internship Assessment
Jim Burbank
 State Legislature, outcomes for UNM
o Funding formula for higher education
 Increase graduation
 Move students into STEM
 Tuition tax credit goes away
o Potential negative impact in the classroom
 The pressure to pass social promotion
 Classroom quality is reduced and lowered
 Pressure to pass students is increased from admin
 The pressure not to drop students
 Students protest drops and that requires a lot of admin work
 Increasing problem
 More grade inflation
 Problems we need to face in the department
 Understand
 Respond
o Professional
 25-30% of our undergrads
 English 290: intro to prof writing
 Internship program
 Brings former grads
o Discuss and talk to the class about internships
o Internship mentors
o Participants in the ENG 499 internship seminar
 Undergrads understand course offerings
o Visual rhetoric
o Grant writing
o Editing
 This may change with the new professors
 Professional writing needs grad students to understand how
professional writing is included in the Eng dept.
 How will this be affected by new prof? New funding formulas?
 Steve:
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All of the courses also have 400/500 numbers
Much more desirable to have a strictly 500 level classes
What are people interested in?
Let prof writing know which courses we want as just grad courses
Michelle: more numbers come from other institutions
o PW is the strength of RW
o Retirements the PW get a bit loss
o Institutional foot print
o Professional expertise
o Reimagining how PW courses could add to grad students
RW versus PW
Brian: different kind of courses
o Rhet
o PW
o What is a clear trajectory of scholarship to choose the
classes?
o What certain trajectories look like depending on what
courses we take?
o Pedagogy class as an Intro to Creative Writing
o Our own Rhet and Comp intro class
Writing Across Communities (WAC) Alliance
Brian Hendrickson
WAC Newsletter & Spring 2012 Plans
 WAC
o Up to the new leaders
o Outgoing remarks
o We have a few things that we are doing that are good at and few things
that we need to look over
o CSW going and getting it more focused in terms of what it is trying to do
 The CSW really become more of an integral part of the sequences
in the courses
 Less ambiguous of what we are celebrating
 A real embodiment of WAC principles
 Honoring students home discoure communities
 Valuable tools that have served them well
 Use them as they transition into the new communities
 Students coming together from different backgrounds,
different values different skills
 Each validate each other where have they been? Where are
they going? Linguistic diversity/socioeconomic diversity
o We haven’t decided about CSW yet
 Mandatory?
 More concrete of what we are doing and why
 CNM and Branch Campuses
 Sam in the MFA program
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Needs continued support of Core Writing and become a core
writing thing
o Big events--- keep it small
o Assist in building projects the move on ABQCWC
 ABQCWC more fluid
 Continue the conversation in August
Michelle
o No new PhDs
o Accepted ten new MAs (6-10 new MAs)
o 7 new RW faculty
o new volunteers
o managers of their new projects
UNM Writing the World Symposium Spring 2012 Deb Paczynski
Key Note Speakers & Schedule of Events
 Schedules to the symposium
R&W Work In Progress Colloquia Series**
(See Schedule Below)**
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Work in progress from our grad students
Q&A/Open Discussion
(30-45 Minutes)
Closing Remarks
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Genevieve Garcia de Mueller
Michelle Kells
April 26 Thursday from 2-4
On outcomes
Invitation for R&W “Meet & Greet” Potluck
SAVE THE DATE: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 R&W “Meet & Greet” Potluck
NOTE: January-March 2012 Meetings of R&W Faculty/Graduate Student Forum were
suspended to accommodate campus visits for the R&W New Assistant and ESL Joint Hires.
**R&W Work In Progress Colloquia Series (New Assistant Professors)
Featured Presenters: (Dates and Location TBA)
September:
Jill Jefferey
October:
Pisarn “Bee” Chamcharastri
November:
Todd Ruecker
January:
Natasha Jones
February:
Tiffany Bourelle
March:
Bethany Davila
April:
Cristyn Elder