This volume deals with a number of related issues that are becoming increasingly crucial for English studies during this time when most faculty in the field are assistant professors approaching tenure review or associate professors seeking promotion. These critical issues focus on: * The diversity of research and scholarly publication in composition studies; * The fact that composition studies faculty are often evaluated by personnel committee members, department chairs, and deans unfamiliar with the nature and demands of the field; * The way that American higher education is rethinking "scholarship" and the role it plays in the work and evaluation of faculty members; and * The role composition studies faculty can play in this review of scholarship and professional advancement. This book seeks to address the entire spectrum of "composition studies" -- expository and argumentative writing, personal essay, literary nonfiction, technical and business writing, historical rhetoric, empirical research, and more -- by understanding the nature of and evaluating the work of faculty members in this broad field. Scholarship and advancement issues are discussed in a variety of situations including basic and regular first-year composition classes at four-year and two-year institutions or writing centers, advanced writing courses, ESL and skills-development programs, and writing classes and programs for teachers, administrators, and researchers. The chapters focus on a variety of subjects, including the importance of mentoring and faculty development in all departments and institutions; and how young scholar-teachers and assistant professors can prepare for a successful personnel or tenure review.

WRITING PROGRAMS WORLDWIDE offers an important global perspective to the growing research literature in the shaping of writing programs. The authors of its program profiles show how innovators at a diverse range of universities on six continents have dealt creatively over many years with day-to-day and long-range issues affecting how students across disciplines and languages grow as communicators and learners.

Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei Matsuda have created an essential introduction to the field of composition studies for graduate students and instructors new to the study of writing. The book offers a careful exploration of this diverse field, focusing specifically on scholarship of writing and composing. Within this territory, the authors draw the boundaries broadly, to include allied sites of research such as professional and technical writing, writing across the curriculum programs, writing centers, and writing program administration. Importantly, they represent composition as a dynamic, eclectic field, influenced by factors both within the academy and without. The editors and their sixteen seasoned contributors have created a comprehensive and thoughtful exploration of composition studies as it stands in the early twenty-first century. Given the rapid growth of this field and the evolution of it research and pedagogical agendas over even the last ten years, this multi-vocal introduction is long overdue.

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.

Contributors examine the politics of untenured writing program administrator appointments given the demands of writing program administration, and reconciles the tension between WPA position statements and current institutional practice.

This volume showcases some of the latest research on academic writing by leading and up-and-coming corpus linguists. The studies included in the volume are based on a wide range of corpora spanning first and second language academic writing at different levels of writing expertise, containing texts from a variety of academic disciplines (and sub-disciplines) and of different academic registers. Particularly novel aspects of the collection are the inclusion of research that combines rhetorical moves with multi-dimensional analysis, studies that cover both fixed and variable phraseological items (lexical bundles, phrase-frames, constructions), and work that is based on corpora of English as an academic lingua franca. Going beyond merely summarizing their findings, the authors also discuss what their research means for academic writing practice and pedagogical settings. The volume will be of interest to researchers, students, and teachers who would like to expand their knowledge of how academic writing functions and what it looks like in a variety of contexts.

In Talking Back, a veritable Who’s Who of writing studies scholars deliberate on intellectual traditions, current practices, and important directions for the future. In response, junior and mid-career scholars reflect on each chapter with thoughtful and measured moves forward into the contemporary environment of research, teaching, and service. Each of the prestigious chapter authors in the volume has three common traits: a sense of responsibility for advancing the profession, a passion for programs of research dedicated to advancing opportunities for others, and a reflective sense of their work accompanied by humility for their contributions. As a documentary, Talking Back is the first history of writing studies in autobiography. Contributors: Jo Allen, Ann N. Amicucci, Akua Duku Anokye, Paige Davis Arrington, Doug Baldwin, John C. Brereton, Judy Buchanan, Hugh Burns, Leasa Burton, Ellen C. Carillo, William Condon, Dylan B. Dryer, Michelle F. Eble, Jennifer Enoch, Joan Feinberg, Patricia Friedrich, Cinthia Gannett, Eli Goldblatt, Shenika Hankerson, Janis Haswell, Richard Haswell, Eric Heltzel, Douglas Hesse, Bruce Horner, Alice S. Horning, Asao B. Inoue, Ruth Ray Karpen, Suzanne Lane, Min-Zhan Lu, Donald McQuade, Elisabeth L. Miller, Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk, Sean Molloy, Les Perelman, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Stacey Pigg, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Jessica Restaino, J. Michael Rifenburg, Eliana Schonberg, Geneva Smitherman, Richard Sterling, Katherine E. Tirabassi, Devon Tomasulo, Martha A. Townsend, Mike Truong, Victor Villanueva, Edward M. White, Anne Elrod Whitney, Kathleen Blake Yancey

For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence. This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writing; students’ concepts of voice and style; students’ understanding of multimodal and digital writing; high school’s influence on college writers; and writing development after college. The digital edition offers samples of student writing, electronic portfolios produced by student writers, transcripts of interviews with students, and explanations of some of the analysis conducted by the contributors. This is an important book for researchers and graduate students in multiple fields. Those in writing studies get an overview of other longitudinal studies as well as key questions currently circulating. For linguists, it demonstrates how corpus linguistics can inform writing studies. Scholars in higher education will gain a new perspective on college student development. The book also adds to current understandings of sociocultural theories of literacy and offers prospective teachers insights into how students learn to write. Finally, for high school teachers, this volume will answer questions about college writing. Companion Website Click here to access the Developing Writers project and its findings at the interactive companion website. Project Data Access the data from the project through this tutorial.

Combining formal quantitative research with narrative-based scholarship, THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION represents multiple voices from faculty balancing between the demands of teaching, writing, and administering writing programs in professional, ethical ways-often under circumstances that can be defined, at best, as difficult. In these pages, junior faculty tell their stories of triumph and trauma, while more firmly established composition scholars reflect upon the changing and challenging profession we all share.

Describes mentoring of teachers and scholars in the field of composition and rhetoric.