Making Administrative Work Visible

Making Administrative Work Visible brings together voices from graduate students, associated faculty, administrative staff, and tenured and tenure-track faculty at community colleges, regional state universities, liberal arts colleges, private colleges, and research-intensive institutions across the country to speak to the challenges, both named and unnamed, faced by those who do writing program administration work. These authors call explicit attention to this work and examine WPAs’ lived labor experiences and research methodologies to truly understand the scope of lived WPA labor. The collection has three parts, each of which focuses on the most confounding challenges facing WPAs as well as the most compelling sites of their contributions to administration, labor in higher education, and the discipline’s collective obligation to forwarding the goals of social justice and advocacy: Advocating through Representations of WPA Labor, Advocating by Accounting for Time and Labor, and Advocating in and through Complex Institutional Contexts. The chapters use data to share and track the work functions, job titles, grand narratives, program assessments, tenure and promotion, email practices, and more undertaken by WPAs in their administrative capacities. Chapters also surface narratives for future data and studies to be done by other scholars. By taking up and answering questions about the range of WPA work—and the invisibility of much of that work—Making Administrative Work Visible creates avenues toward accounting for and acknowledging the complex activity systems in which WPAs lead the work of the university and advocate for data-driven strategies needed to sustain this foundational area of higher education. Contributors: Kamila Albert, Brooke Anderson, Sheila Carter-Tod, Amy Cicchino, Ana Cortés Lagos, Kristi Murray Costello, Jennifer Cunningham, Ryan Dippre, Kimberly Emmons, Genevieve García de Müeller, Jill Gladstein, Caleb González, Michael Healy, Lyra Hilliard, Kristine Johnson, Seth Kahn, Rita Malenczyk, Troy Mikanovich, Lilian Mina, Angela Mitchell, Greer Murphy, Kate Navickas, Michael Neal, Patti Poblete, Jan Rieman, Heather Robinson, Katelyn Stark, Mary Stewart, Natalie Stillman-Webb, Lizbett Tinoco, Lisa Tremain, Martha Wilson Schaffer

Rooted in contemporary understandings of social action, informed by up-to-date research on writing program administration, and attentive to the needs of value-driven decision-making, Burnin’ Daylight enables writing program administrators (WPAs) to shape writing programs that help people create the lives they envision. This book guides WPAs through the rough terrain of running a writing program during a period of sustained social and economic upheaval—and through the process of making their programs more principle-driven and sustainable along the way. WPAs face a range of challenges on a regular basis: organizing class schedules, leading professional learning events, conducting program assessments, responding to student needs, meeting with deans and provosts, and more. Additionally, WPAs need to learn about and direct their programs strategically when considering the kind of program they currently have, the sort of program they envision, and how they can transition from one to another. Burnin’ Daylight acts as a roadmap for IRB-approved research and provides WPAs—specifically, new and returning WPAs—with a detailed yet flexible plan for understanding the inner workings of a writing program and how to develop a future trajectory for it. Burnin’ Daylight is for writing program administrators of all experience levels and other administrators interested in taking a “principled practices” approach to their work.

This volume explores how women in the fields of rhetoric and composition have succeeded, despite the challenges inherent in the circumstances of their work. Focusing on those women generally viewed as "successful" in rhetoric and composition, this volume relates their stories of successes (and failures) to serve as models for other women in the profession who aspire to "make it," too: to succeed as women academics in a sea of gender and disciplinary bias and to have a life, as well. Building on the gains made by several generations of rhetoric and composition scholars, this volume provides strategies for a newer generation of scholars entering the field and, in so doing, broadens the support base for women in the field by connecting them with a greater web of women in the profession. Offering frank discussion of professional and personal struggles as well as providing reference materials addressing these concerns, solid career advice, and inspirational narratives told by women who have "made it" in the field of rhetoric and composition, this work highlights such common concerns as: dealing with sexism in the tenure and promotion process, maintaining a balance between career and family, struggling for scholarly and/or administrative respect, mentoring junior women, finding one’s voice in scholarship, and struggling to say "no" to unrewarded service work The profiles of individual successful women describe each woman’s methods for success, examine the price each has paid for that success, and pass along the advice each has to offer other women who are beginning a career in the field or attempting to jumpstart an existing career. With resources and general advice for women in the field of rhetoric and composition to guide them through their careers—as they become, survive, and thrive as professionals in the discipline – this book is must-have reading for every woman making her career in the rhetoric and composition fields.

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.

The First British Crime Survey: An Ethnography of Criminology within Government explores the early history of the British Crime Survey and how government officials, academics, and criminologists address the challenges brought by large-scale data projects.

"Using innovative digital humanities research yoked to a specially-built database of sources, Making a Living, Making a Difference revises many received opinions about the history of gender and work in Europe through analysis of the micro-patterns of early modern life."--Back cover.

Public administration education programs prepare students in the provision of important public and nonprofit services, so it is essential that such programs help prepare administrators to advance social equity, one of the pillars of the discipline. This exciting new book from social equity authorities Sean McCandless and Susan T. Gooden demonstrates how public administration faculty can teach social equity across the curriculum, in practical terms. This edited collection features chapters from authors experienced in both public administration and in teaching social equity. Each chapter discusses teaching social equity in a particular class (Introduction to Public Administration, Organizational Dynamics and Theory, Human Resources, Policy Process, Research Methods, Capstones, and more) through distinct pedagogical practices that advance student learning (including case studies, community engagement projects, and simulations). The text captures an array of instructional approaches to social equity within public affairs education, particularly at the graduate level. It includes approaches from both established and newer instructors, across a diversity of universities. The book serves as an important resource to faculty who teach these courses, as well as the students who take them. Most importantly, it is a resource to academics and practitioners alike who share a commitment to fairness in the implementation of public services.

This accessible book gives academics, graduate students, and researchers a comprehensive survey of the vast, varied, and often confusing landscape of interpretive policy analysis. The book is both theoretically informed and clear and jargon-free in its wide-ranging coverage of the different interpretive approaches in policy analysis. For each approach, the author provides a strong practical example from the policy literature. He distinguishes between three distinct types of meaning--hermeneutic, discursive, and dialogical--each of which is rooted in different philosophical assumptions, underlies different approaches to interpretive analysis, and focuses on different topics in public policy. The book dispassionately discusses the specific strengths and limitations of different interpretive approaches, and combines thorough theoretical discussions with a practical orientation towards doing policy analysis. It includes an extremely comprehensive bibliography.