Untenured Faculty As Writing Program Administrators

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.

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 resource examines the politics of junior faculty appointments to positions as writing program administrators from historical, contextual, and personal perspectives. A central aim of this provocative book is to accept and reconcile the tension between the Council of Writing Program Administrators position statement and current institutional practices.

Labored: The State(ment) and Future of Work in Composition, edited by Randall McClure, Dayna V. Goldstein, and Michael Pemberton, offers both a retrospective and a prospective look at the 1989 Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing and its relation to the changing nature of work in composition. Stemming from an investigative project to strengthen the Statement with data culled from national reports on labor conditions, this collection draws on the expertise of scholars whose research agendas and lived experiences afford fresh insights and critical analyses on labor issues in composition and writing program administration.

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.

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.

Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace is the first volume to take up the issue of bullying in writing programs. Contributors to this collection share their personal stories and analyze varieties of collegial malevolence they have experienced as WPAs with consequences in emotional, mental, and physical health and in personal and institutional economies. Contributors of varying status in different types of programs across many kinds of institutions describe various forms of bullying, including microaggressions, incivility, mobbing, and emotional abuse. They define bullying as institutional racism, “academic systemic incivility,” a crisis of insularity, and faculty fundamentalism. They locate bullying in institutional contexts, including research institutions, small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and writing programs and writing centers. These locations are used as points of departure to further theorize bullying and to provide clear advice about agentive responses. A culture of silence discourages discussions of this behavior, making it difficult to address abuse. This silence also normalizes patterns and cultivates the perception that bullying arises naturally. Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace helps the field to name these patterns of behaviors as bullying and resist ideologies of normalcy, encouraging and empowering readers to take an active role in defining, locating, and addressing bullying in their own workplaces. Contributors: Sarah Allen, Andrea Dardello, Harry Denny, Dawn Fels, Bre Garrett, W. Gary Griswold, Amy C. Heckathorn, Aurora Matzke, Staci Perryman-Clark, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Erec Smith

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.