External Program Review
English Department, Central Washington University
Reviewer:
William Condon
Washington State University
Campus Visit: March 10-11, 2005
Report filed: June 13, 2005
Executive Summary
The English Department at Central Washington University is strong and healthy.
Collegial and collaborative relationships allow the department to identify and solve its
problems from within, and the department’s seniority makes it an important factor in
campus-wide service commitments. The recommendations below and in the full report
should allow the department and the university to address the few problems exhibited in
the department’s self-study and in the onsite visit.
Recommendations:
University-Wide Issues
 Completely reform the treatment of adjuncts, not only in the department, but in
the college and the university. (p.5)
 Put teachers’ and students’ needs first in room scheduling. (p.8)
 Develop adequate office space and staff for the department and its programs. (p.9)
 Revise policies and procedures supporting faculty development, research, and
professional travel so that they are more transparent and the resources are easier
to identify and access. (p.10)
Departmental Issues
 Develop long-term hiring strategies to address problems that might occur when
the department’s very senior faculty begins to retire. (p.11)
 Build “big picture” issues into the advising routine. (p.11)
 Schedule classes with an eye toward maximizing students’ options and
accommodating faculty research agendas. (p.12)
 Take advantage of de facto learning communities among majors. (p.13)
 Develop means of exploiting the major portfolios as an assessment tool for
improving faculty practice, undergraduate curriculum, and departmental planning.
(p.13)
 Develop the composition program so that it is sustainable and so that it presents a
reasonable workload for its director. (p.15)
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Introduction
On March 10 and 11, 2005, I visited the campus of Central Washington
University to conduct a program-level evaluation of the English Department.
This fact-finding visit was extremely helpful, due especially to the efforts of
Department Chair Patsy Callaghan, who provided extensive and important
contextual material before my arrival and arranged for extended conversations
with key administrators and faculty members as well. I want to thank Professor
Callaghan for helping make my visit exceptionally useful for my evaluation. I
also want to thank Provost David Soltz and Dean Liahna Armstrong, along with
the English Department’s faculty and staff, all of whom gave generously of their
time and knowledge. The information all these people provided not only forms
the backbone of this report, but also undergirds the credibility of the conclusions
I have drawn and of the recommendations I make below.
Context
Overall, Central’s English Department is clearly very strong—a conclusion
supported by practically everyone with whom I spoke, from undergraduate students to the
Provost. Perhaps the most prominent of this broad set of strengths is the easily recognized
sense of collegiality in the department. Every department has its problems to solve, but
every conversation I had indicated that this department solves its problems
collaboratively and congenially. Outgoing Chair Patsy Callaghan’s leadership has
fostered this sense of community and engagement, and the faculty look forward to more
of the same from incoming Chair Toni Kuljak.
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Another strength is the centrality of teaching, not only to the mission of the
department, but also in the attitudes of the faculty. Tenure-line faculty teach
approximately one-third of their loads in General Education, for example, and I did not
get the impression that they regarded such assignments as burdensome or unpleasant.
Department faculty see their General Education courses as part of their central
responsibilities to the university, rather than as a separate service obligation. That
acceptance is as refreshing as it is unusual. The English Department, taken as a whole—
that is, tenure-track faculty, adjuncts, and graduate students together—carries a full
twenty per cent of the FTE in the College of Arts and Humanities. Nevertheless, the
faculty also pursue a broad range of professional development opportunities, remaining
active in research and publication as well as in departmental and university service—and
since this department is unusually senior (only two of its tenure-line faculty remain
untenured—service is another of its strengths. In sum, the faculty, to an admirable extent,
take a wholistic approach to their jobs. Instead of being individuals filling separate roles,
they collaborate to fulfill the department’s mission and to help the department improve
on its already fine record.
One important result of these strengths is that students report feeling cared for,
well treated, and welcome in the department. Undergraduates and graduate students alike
spoke often about the attention they get from their teachers, both in class and out of class.
Their teachers clearly know them well, mentor them carefully, and maintain cordial
relations with them. In addition, students respect the expertise of their teachers, especially
since they recognize repeated instances when faculty bring students into ongoing research
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projects and take time to go the extra mile when students need assistance with their
studies.
Faculty, too, on the whole, feel well treated. I heard consensus that expectations
of faculty are clear and consistent, that the department atmosphere is supportive. While
there are some minor issues to address (see below), morale among the tenure-line faculty
is understandably high.
All these positive features have allowed the department to engage in proactive
planning processes. I found several instances in which the department showed an unusual
ability to address and solve problems that on many campuses cause longstanding
disagreements and resentment. For example, the department has revised its major away
from a coverage model and more toward an outcomes-based or competency model,
culminating in a major portfolio. The design moved the major from, say, the mid-1970’s
into the present, yet this rapid transition was accomplished so cooperatively that I heard
no leftover frictions. Nor did I hear any frustrations over the fact that, having
accomplished that revision, the department is thinking of further change, toward a “ways
of reading” curriculum that promises to be quite innovative. Another example is in the
way faculty observed that MA students were reaching a kind of bottleneck in getting
through their exams and finishing their degrees. Faculty recognized that this kind of
largely bureaucratic delay could hurt the program, so they acted quickly to change
procedures so that students can finish in a timely manner. Similarly, in designing the new
TESOL program, faculty balanced a need for high standards with a sense of the market
for an MA in TESOL that could be completed in fifteen months—in other words, on a
sabbatical or a year’s leave of absence. Again, the design process seems to have been
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smooth and collegial, and I predict that the program will be widely attractive, both for its
quality and its ability to accommodate the needs of students enrolling in it. Clearly, too, if
the fifteen-month time frame proves unworkable, this faculty is perfectly capable of
making any needed adjustments.
Finally, the department’s seniority has led to a strong record in university-wide
service, as well as an ability to collaborate with other departments and programs. A
senior department can also be—as this one is—a department that doesn’t feel the need to
play turf games, a department secure enough in itself to cooperate with others in pursuing
broader initiatives that work for the common good. English faculty were in the forefront
of the union movement, for example, and they have acted as good partners in supporting
efforts such as the Writing Center (which reports to Linda Beath) and Teacher Education
(indeed, Teacher Education, under the leadership of Terry Martin and Bobby Cummings,
is a pronounced strength).
Issues and Concerns to Address
Within this context, there are some problems to address and some opportunities
the department can take greater advantage of. Some of these needs stem from Collegeand University-wide policy decisions, so that the department will need cooperation from
the Dean and/or the Provost to solve them. Others are easily addressed within the
department itself.
College- and University-wide Issues and Concerns
The only truly distressing issue I discovered in this review has to do with the
treatment of adjuncts in the department—a situation that I found endemic in the way the
university regards adjuncts. Put plainly, the adjunct situation is a disgrace. Adjuncts are
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routinely exploited in some of the worst ways I have seen in more than thirty years in this
profession. They are overworked. By university policy, their pay is kept below that of the
lowest paid Assistant Professors (in fact, teaching full time—that is, three courses per
quarter—an adjunct earns less than $22,000 per year according to the funding formula for
these positions). They are housed at least three to a standard-sized office. They cannot—
at least in the College of Arts and Humanities—get a yearly contract, despite the fact that
the FTE they provide stem from a constant need for the writing courses they typically
teach. In order to make a decent living, they must regularly teach more than a full-time
load and rely on heavy summer teaching loads; therefore, while their need to do research
and publish, and to travel to and present at conferences, is arguably greater than that of
the tenure-line faculty, adjuncts have less time and ability to pursue the kinds of research
that might buy them a ticket to a tenure-track position, at Central or somewhere else. In
other words, if Central had designed the adjunct position in order to exploit these people
as ruthlessly as possible, the university could hardly have done more than it is currently
doing. When I questioned the fact that no mention was made of adjuncts in the
department’s self-study, I discovered that university policy focused program review on
activities of tenure-line faculty only—a measure that, whether intended to do so or not,
results in sweeping the adjunct mess under the rug.
These people deserve better, They provide fully one quarter of the department’s
FTE, and every indication is that they do excellent work. Students can’t really tell the
difference between tenure-line and adjunct faculty in the classroom, for example, and
many adjuncts take a serious interest in departmental affairs, despite the fact that their
terms of employment do not include service. And given the demographics of the state
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population, the university’s need for adjuncts will only grow over the next two decades.
This situation is an embarrassment to Central as a whole, and the time to solve it is now.
Three immediate measures would help:
1. Support the English Department in conforming to the Modern Language
Association’s recently issued standards for employing adjuncts. The MLA’s standards
are available at
http://www.mla.org/resources/documents/rep_policy/mla_recommendation_course.
These standards will do away with some of the most egregious features of the current
situation: unconscionably low pay, the inability to get a yearly contract, the lack of
benefits, etc.
2. Develop a plan for converting FTEs that are consistently offered by adjuncts to fulltime, continuing instructorships or to tenure-line appointments. At some universities,
if a department has offered courses amounting to one FTE for a four-year period, that
FTE is converted to a tenure-line position. If the central administration will not create
such a policy, I think it would be in the interests of the new faculty union to do so.
Perhaps a new tenure-line category in the nature of WSU’s Clinical Professor track
might also be workable.
3. Be sure that, as the faculty union comes into being, adjuncts have a strong voice
there. Adjuncts are part of the university’s expert labor force, as are tenure-line
faculty. If the interests of both these constituencies are to be addressed successfully,
then they have to work together to address them.
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Over the long term, perhaps a task force consisting of chairs, deans, and representatives
from the Provost can devise a more complete and systematic plan for treating these
teachers well.
Fortunately, not all the problems I encountered are as serious as the adjunct
situation. Two others, however, require attention and support from outside the English
department.
The first of these is room scheduling, Recently, Central adopted PeopleSoft as the
means for matching classes to rooms. Currently, the software matches class size to room
size, but it does not take into consideration the pedagogy being employed in the room, the
subject being taught there, or the home department of the faculty member teaching the
class. As a result, faculty using a student-centered pedagogy to teach writing are
frequently assigned to classrooms in which students must sit in immovable rows of long
tables—effectively undermining anything but a lecture-based pedagogy. Faculty who
teach with technology find themselves assigned to classrooms that are not equipped for
their needs, while faculty who make no use of new technologies in their teaching find
themselves in “smart” classrooms, where the technology remains idle. Finally, faculty
whose offices are in one building find themselves in relatively far-away classrooms,
when similar classrooms are available in their own or in neighboring buildings.
Software must not be allowed to put the needs of teachers and the interests of
students last. Whoever is in charge of room scheduling needs the resources to reprogram
PeopleSoft so that educational concerns trump mere logistics. The solution here is simple,
frankly, since computers will do what they are programmed to do and since, at many
institutions, PeopleSoft has been used in ways that accommodate the needs Central’s
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faculty and students have for classrooms that support—or at least don’t prohibit—the
kinds of learning going on in a given class.
The second need is for space and administrative support. This department is
bursting at its seams, and the building in which it is housed is widely considered
inhospitable. Offices are small and too often have to be shared. Common spaces are small
and not easy to use. The dark and narrow stairways and the small and slow elevator
service make getting around in the building extremely difficult. While faculty often
complain about space that is in most ways not so bad, in this case, I was immediately
struck at the poor quality of the physical environment for this department. Even the
extension of network services beyond “the Ganges,” as the creek is sometimes called, has
lagged behind the rest of the campus. The only way to address this situation is through
the university’s planning process for its physical plant. In the short term, perhaps a
department or program on one floor could be relocated elsewhere and that space
reallocated to the remaining departments and programs in the building. That might at
least solve the problems of overcrowding. The building’s other design problems will be
more difficult and may require more drastic measures. For instance, given the inadequacy
of stairs and elevators, this building should not house high-traffic functions—that means
devoting it to something other than classroom use and faculty offices. That, in turn,
means new construction to house the instructional programs that currently occupy the
space.
Along with needs for space comes a need for more administrative support within
the department. Currently, English has only one full-time Secretary Lead and one Office
Assistant II, positions which it supplements with part-time student help. Staffing on this
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model can support the Chair and vital departmental functions, but it cannot supply the
kind of support this department’s undergraduate and graduate programs need in order to
provide excellent service. A department of this size and with this department’s programs
should have separate staff support for the undergraduate programs and for the graduate
programs, including for the composition program.
Third, policies and procedures surrounding professional travel and research
support needs to be more transparent, and funding needs to be easier to access. Overall,
faculty were please with the level of support they receive (though we all know support
could be better, especially in a time of shrinking budgets). However, many faculty
reported that they had to apply to several different offices for funding, that
reimbursements often took far too long, and that the process was more complicated and
more time-consuming than it needed to be. Some faculty indicated that the process of
applying for some kinds of research support (summer support or reassigned time, for
example) was so cumbersome that it actually detracted from the ability to carry out the
supported research. While my time on campus was insufficient to explore this topic fully,
I can say that in two group conversations with English faculty, this topic recurred, and
agreement with these observations was unanimous. Therefore, I feel comfortable in
recommending that administrators at the chair, dean, and provost level study this problem
with an eye toward making the support of professional development more substantial and
more transparent. As the administration moves to raise the research profile of CMU
faculty, it can look to English as a department that has led the way. The administration
should therefore look to English for advice on how to make the processes and procedures
work better for faculty.
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Department-level issues and concerns
Several issues addressable within the department arose from conversations with faculty,
staff, and students during my stay, as well as from the self-study.
The first of these issues is perhaps the one most easy to overlook—unless from
the standpoint of an outsider. This department is quite senior. Only two tenure-line
faculty are untenured at this point, and both are excellent recent hires. I count twelve
Professors, three Associate Professors, and four Assistant Professors (two of whom
occupy non-tenurable lines). At some point in the not too distant future, this department
will experience a wave of retirements that could easily leave it an almost entirely junior
department. As these retirements approach, the leadership needs to work with the Dean
and Provost to spread out the hires as much as possible and to arrange to make some of
those hires at the Associate and Full Professor ranks. Junior faculty need senior faculty to
mentor them, and the department needs the experience of senior faculty to provide the
kind of leadership and service that this department’s faculty are in fact providing. While
this compression in rank does not present an immediate problem, it does constitute a
problem that needs to be addressed over time, so that the department can continue to be
as effective as it is today.
Second, scheduling and advising problems are creating some difficulties for
students. As I pointed out above, undergraduate and graduate students are very happy
with their treatment in this department. Nevertheless, when asked what they’d change,
the focus fell principally on these issues.
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Advising needs to cover more than which courses a student may need to take in a
given semester. Undergraduates and graduate students alike felt that “big picture” issues
were not being covered in advising. In part, the reason may stem from the recent changes
in both the major and the graduate program. In part, it surely stems from the desire to
help students with their immediate needs. Whatever the reason, students need to know
not just what to do but why. So advisors need to help students see the connections
between this semester’s course load and the outcomes for the major, between what they
need to do next term and their own long-term career plans. Faculty already do quite a bit
of this informally, outside the advising context. It just needs to be on the agenda for
advising meetings. This kind of counseling needs to come from faculty on a routine basis,
rather than being something students may or may not seek out from their favorite
professors.
A third and related issue has to do with scheduling. Again, my visit does not
provide the depth of information to recommend a given solution, but students also agreed
that required courses frequently seemed to be scheduled opposite desirable electives or
alternatives. Students clearly have good experiences in English courses, and in making
this observation, they are only asking that the department not limit students’ options
unnecessarily. This request was reinforced by some ideas from faculty about how to
coordinate undergraduate offerings with graduate offerings so that course loads reinforce
research agendas and so that faculty can reduce the number of preparations where
possible. So if a faculty member is teaching an undergraduate course in Romanticism, for
example, she might also be scheduled to teach a graduate course or a special topic on
some subset of that course. This tactic engages students in courses where faculty
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members can make direct use of their research interests, it reduces the time needed to
prepare for three different courses, and it supports the faculty member’s focus on a
research question within the scope of his teaching load. In a “ways of reading”
curriculum, this approach would also expand the options available for both faculty and
students.
Fourth, and again related to the department’s curriculum, is the fact that the
department’s majors know each other well. They are often enrolled in at least two classes
in common with other majors. As I talked with several of them, I realized that the
department has established de facto learning communities. If there is a way to take
advantage of this feature of Central’s context, the department should do so. Perhaps there
is some space in the building where students might be encouraged to gather and to
discuss their common interests. Perhaps the teachers in courses with significant common
enrollment might plan some activities or assignments together. I’d recommend gathering
a focus group of majors and putting the question to them to find out what measures would
be most effective in promoting these learning communities.
Fifth, and the final recommendation affecting curriculum, the portfolio could
provide more information and more opportunities for faculty and curriculum
development than it does. The major portfolio is one of the strongest features of the
redesigned major, and I offer these observations to help the department take better
advantage of a strength. Majors put together a portfolio and complete an end-of-program
survey. The portfolio establishes that the students have addressed the objectives for the
major; it reveals the outcomes in the student’s own work products. The teacher of the
senior colloquium makes the final judgment. I read a healthy selection of these portfolios,
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and I was impressed with the results. Clearly, students preparing to graduate are
exhibiting the outcomes the department has designed into the major. However, faculty do
not routinely review the portfolios, unless they are teaching the colloquium. The
colloquium process works well for the department and for the students; I do not
recommend changing it. However, I do recommend that a larger group of faculty (ideally,
the whole faculty) sit down on at least an annual basis to read through and discuss a
sampling of these major portfolios. Faculty need to see for themselves what their majors
are capable of doing as they leave the program. Faculty need to determine the set of
strengths and needs the majors exhibit and to decide whether graduating students do
actually meet the expectations of the faculty in general. These deliberations will act as
powerful faculty development opportunities: colleagues will sit together, read their
student’s work, and discuss aspects of that work and of their own standards and
expectations. Faculty will see the variety of assignments and performances and be able to
adjust their own practices in ways that seem profitable for their students. And faculty will
be able to see which outcomes need strengthening in the curriculum. I could foresee an
annual day-long departmental workshop of this kind, planned collaboratively by faculty.
Were I a Dean, I’d be only too happy to provide stipends and food money—in return for
a brief report on the proceedings—for this kind of workshop, the results of which would
bolster the university’s accreditation process.
Concurrently with assembling the portfolio, majors also complete an end-ofprogram survey, the results of which are compiled and made available to the Chair. These
results need to be disseminated far more widely, so that faculty can take advantage of
students’ feedback. Within some limits, the best advice we can get about the efficacy of
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our programs comes from students who have just completed them. The survey results
would enhance the workshop described above, or they might make a good focus for a
regular department meeting. However the department decides to disseminate the material,
the main goal is to get it into the hands of as many faculty as possible. The data do
comparatively little good given their current very limited circulation.
Sixth, and finally, I offer some observations about the composition program, ably
directed by Loretta Gray. When I asked the graduate students what aspect of their
program the department should definitely keep, they were unanimous: “Keep Dr. Gray.”
I’m going to agree with their assessment, but add the proviso, “Support her as she
prepares a program for her successor.” I came to CWU expecting to find tough problems
in the composition program. The self-study revealed that first-term MA students were
teaching English 101 and that the bulk of English 102 sections were taught by adjuncts. I
could see no visible means of ensuring that all the teachers were properly prepared or that
sections attended to consistent outcomes. Instead, I found Dr. Gray, whose extraordinary
energies have brought order to what by all rights ought to be pure chaos. She trains and
fiercely mentors the graduate students, providing theory, models for practice, and
constant advice and collaborative problem solving. Single-handedly, she not only
prevents English 101 from collapse, she works with the MA students to ensure that it
actually succeeds.
The bad news is that under her current load, Dr. Gray is certain to burn out or to
simply grow tired of the grind. Even if she were to sustain her efforts for the rest of her
career, in the end she will retire and the department will have no recourse but to try
replacing her—with someone whose expertise and energy will not match hers. Wisdom
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demands preparing for such a day by working to put a sustainable program into place.
Some steps are obvious:

Establish a system that allows first-quarter MA students not to teach; instead, they
should enroll in the seminar on composition theory and practice, observe
experienced teachers, assist in the Writing Center, and perhaps assist in tutoring
students in composition. If they were excused from teaching during their first
term and then taught an extra section in the fall of their second year, the funding
for this change would be limited to a one-time expenditure.

Provide more reassigned time for Dr. Gray, so that she can focus on more than
preparing inexperienced teachers for the 101 classroom. A program demands
explicit outcomes and a means for ensuring that those outcomes are being
produced. Some sort of portfolio exit assessment is called for, but the time to
plan, implement, or maintain such a system is not in place.

Spread the mentoring of graduate student teachers more broadly among
department faculty. Most faculty, if not all, teach 102; take advantage of their
presence to support new and continuing graduate students in their classrooms.

Extend the composition director’s oversight to adjuncts and faculty who teach
English 102. Again, that course—defying what an outsider would (and did)
expect—seems to provide solid and consistent results for students, even without
the kind of oversight such a course normally receives. Credit the composition
committee, a set of devoted adjuncts, and, again, Dr. Gray. But find the resources,
human and financial, to sustain this record and to help the courses change and
grow over time, as they will certainly need to do.
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In general, the goal here would be to transform Dr. Gray’s job into one that would not
overwhelm her replacement. In the process, the second goal is to make the composition
program more coherent, more transparent, and more sharable among existing faculty. The
graduate students’ endorsement of Dr. Gray is good news for the department in the short
term; if the good news is to continue beyond her directorship, the department and the
college have work to do. It has enjoyed the luxury of depending on one person’s energy
and good will, rather than on a workable—and working—system.
Conclusion
As I noted in beginning this report, the English Department is remarkably strong and
collegial. The recommendations laid out above should build on those strengths. The fact
that the department has proven its ability to generate and accommodate change leads me
to conclude that even the most difficult of these recommendations will receive serious
attention. I urge the Dean and the central administration to support these initiatives and to
provide resources and assistance in the set of recommendations that extend beyond the
department’s ability to address its own problems.
Respectfully submitted,
William Condon, Director
Washington State University Writing Programs
Professor of English
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