A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators (2nd Edition) presents the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration. The collection provides aspiring, new, and seasoned WPAs with the theoretical lenses, terminologies, historical contexts, and research they need to understand the nature, history, and complexities of their intellectual and administrative work.

Influenced by Erika Lindemann’s A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators delineates the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration and provides readers new to that field with theoretical lenses through which to view those issues and questions. In brief and direct though not oversimplified chapters, A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators explains the historical and theoretical background of such concepts as “academic freedom,” “first-year composition,” “basic writing,” “writing across the curriculum,” “placement,” “ESL,” “general education,” and “transfer. ” Its thirty-nine contributors are seasoned writing program and center administrators who, in a range of voices, map the discipline of writing program administration and guide readers toward finding their own answers to solving problems at their own institutions.

This reference guide provides a comprehensive review of the literature on all the issues, responsibilities, and opportunities that writing program administrators need to understand, manage, and enact, including budgets, personnel, curriculum, assessment, teacher training and supervision, and more. Writing Program Administration also provides the first comprehensive history of writing program administration in U.S. higher education. Writing Program Administration includes a helpful glossary of terms and an annotated bibliography for further reading.

This handbook offers wisdom and guidance from experienced college writing program administrators. It is intended for WPAs at all levels of experience.

Writing Program Administration Series - Series Editors: Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven - A RHETORIC FOR WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATORS (2nd Edition) presents the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration. The collection provides aspiring, new, and seasoned WPAs with the theoretical lenses, terminologies, historical contexts, and research they need to understand the nature, history, and complexities of their intellectual and administrative work. Each of the thirty-six chapters asks a direct question about an issue WPAs will need or want to answer, including such concepts as institutional politics, retention, technology, WAC, placement, ESL, general education, transfer, and many more. Its forty-four contributors are experienced writing program and writing center administrators who, in a diverse range of voices, map the discipline and help readers find their own ways to identify and solve problems at home institutions. Now in its Second Edition, A RHETORIC FOR WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATORS includes new essays on technology, threshold concepts, retention, and independent writing programs. Many other essays have been updated to reflect emergent concerns in higher education and WPA work. - Edited by Rita Malenczyk, contributors include Linda Adler-Kassner, Paul V. Anderson, Chris M. Anson, Hannah Ashley, William P. Banks, Mary R. Boland, Christiane Donahue, Doug Downs, Heidi Estrem, Lauren Fitzgerald, Tom Fox, Chris W. Gallagher, Jeffrey M. Gerding, Roger Gilles, Gregory R. Glau, Eli Goldblatt, Robert M. Gonyea, Kristine Hansen, Susanmarie Harrington, Douglas Hesse, Melissa Ianetta, Joseph Janangelo, Richard Johnson-Sheehan, Seth Kahn, Neal Lerner, Barry Maid, Rita Malenczyk, Peggy O'Neill, Charles Paine, Pegeen Reichert Powell, Melody Pugh, E. Shelley Reid, Kelly Ritter, Shirley K Rose, Dan Royer, Carol Rutz, Eileen E. Schell, David E. Schwalm, Dawn Shepherd, Gail Shuck, Martha A. Townsend, Elizabeth Vander Lei, Elizabeth Wardle, Irwin Weiser, and Stephen Wilhoit. - RITA MALENCZYK is Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program and Writing Center at Eastern Connecticut State University, where she has directed the writing program since 1994 and the writing center since 2008. Her work on writing program and center administration has appeared in numerous journals and edited collections. She served as the President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators from 2013 until 2015.

Editors Staci M. Perryman-Clark and Collin Lamont Craig have made a space for WPAs of color to cultivate antiracist responses within an Afrocentric framework and to enact socially responsible approaches to program building. This collection centers writing program administration (WPA) discourse as intersectional race work. In this historical moment in public discourse when race and racist logics are no longer sanitized in coded language or veiled political rhetoric, contributors provide examples of how WPA scholars can push back against the ways in which larger, cultural rhetorical projects inform our institutional practices, are coded into administrative agendas, and are reflected in programmatic objectives and interpersonal relations. Editors Staci M. Perryman-Clark and Collin Lamont Craig have made a space for WPAs of color to cultivate antiracist responses within an Afrocentric framework and to enact socially responsible approaches to program building. This framework also positions WPAs of color to build relationships with allies and create contexts for students and faculty to imagine rhetorics that speak truth to oppressive and divisive ideologies within and beyond the academy, but especially within writing programs. Contributors share not just experiences of racist microaggressions, but also the successes of black WPAs and WPAs whose work represents a strong commitment to students of color. Together they work to foster stronger alliance building among white allies in the discipline, and, most importantly, to develop concrete, specific models for taking action to confront and resist racist microaggressions. As a whole, this collection works to shift the focus from race more broadly toward perspectives on blackness in writing program administration.

Reconnecting Reading and Writing explores the ways in which reading can and should have a strong role in the teaching of writing in college. Reconnecting Reading and Writing draws on broad perspectives from history and international work to show how and why reading should be reunited with writing in college and high school classrooms. It presents an overview of relevant research on reading and how it can best be used to support and enhance writing instruction.

Explores the wide range of scholarship on revision while bringing new light to bear on enduring questions in composition and rhetoric.

Emotional labor is not adequately talked about or addressed by writing program administrators. The Things We Carry makes this often-invisible labor visible, demonstrates a variety of practical strategies to navigate it reflectively, and opens a path for further research. Particularly timely, this collection considers how writing program administrators work when their schools or regions experience crisis situations. The book is broken into three sections: one emphasizing the WPA’s own work identity, one on fostering community in writing programs, and one on balancing the professional and personal. Chapters written by a diverse range of authors in different institutional and WPA contexts examine the roles of WPAs in traumatic events, such as mass shootings and natural disasters, as well as the emotional labor WPAs perform on a daily basis, such as working with students who have been sexually assaulted or endured racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise disenfranchising interactions on campus. The central thread in this collection focuses on “preserving” by acknowledging that emotions are neither good nor bad and that they must be continually reflected upon as WPAs consider what to do with emotional labor and how to respond. Ultimately, this book argues for more visibility of the emotional labor WPAs perform and for WPAs to care for themselves even as they care for others. The Things We Carry extends conversations about WPA emotional labor and offers concrete and useful strategies for administrators working in both a large range of traumatic events as well as daily situations that require tactical work to preserve their sense of self and balance. It will be invaluable to writing program administrators specifically and of interest to other types of administrators as well as scholars in rhetoric and composition who are interested in emotion more broadly.

In Ghost Letters, one emigrates to America again, and again, and again, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one grows up in America, and attends university in America, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one wrestles with one’s American blackness in ways not possible in Senegal, though one never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; and one sees more deeply into Americanness than any native-born American could. Ghost Letters is a 21st century Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, though it is a notebook of arrival and being in America. It is a major achievement. —Shane McCrae