Paper Presentation WORKING DRAFT

Malkiel Choseed, Ph.D. paper presentation WORKING DRAFT

MLA 2009 Philadelphia abstract submission for Panel 2 "WPA Work in Community College Contexts"

Title: “(Re)Creating a Writing Program: instituting and negotiating change using the WPA Outcomes Statement”

Abstract: Upon assuming the position of WPA at a rapidly expanding community college, I was faced with the task of unifying an academically diverse and somewhat antiquated staff of full and part time faculty primarily teaching composition. As in most of the academy, the majority of faculty in our program do not have a specific background in composition. Therefore, our students encounter an extreme diversity and inconsistency in pedagogy and outcomes, creating confusion and mixed expectations as to what college level writing is and can be. My goal was to create an actual writing program where faculty have the freedom to innovate within an agreed upon set of goals and standards. My strategy was to use the revised WPA Outcomes Statement as the catalyst for this change. In my presentation, I will document the successes and failures of this approach and explore the theoretical and practical implications of each.

In this presentation, I will talk with you about some of the challenges and opportunities of being a WPA in a rapidly expanding, two year college and how we attempted to use the Council of Writing Program Administrators “WPA Outcomes

Statement for First Year Composition” as a program building tool. I argue that the WPA

Outcomes statement, adapted to reflect the local context, can act as a unifying force, laying the foundation for a WPA’s attempts at building a cohesive writing program.

What is a WPA?

At my college, like many others, we had (and still have) a common course outline which articulates some learning goals and practices (number of papers, minimum number of words, types of assignments, etc.), but not much else. The approach, practices, and

1 actual student outcomes in a given classroom, however, seemed to me to be highly divergent. As I saw it, we had a Writing Program Administrator (the position was created in 2003), but no Writing Program to speak of. Instead, we had a collection of writing courses taught by our full and part time faculty which nominally shared certain nomenclature and practices. What was missing was an articulation of a shared outlook, philosophy, or even a set of composition and pedagogical theories. This resulted in very different pedagogies, approaches, texts, learning activities, ideas, and, for all practical purposes, actual student learning outcomes (as opposed to the stated learning outcomes).

All of this combined to create students who leave these courses with, what appeared from my view, as very different expectations for, and ideas about, what college level writing is and can be.

A WPA can take many different forms and titles, but, generally speaking, what they all have in common is that there is one person who is responsible for overseeing the continuity and unity of the program. According to the “Portland Resolution: Guidelines for Writing Program Administrator Positions,” WPA work may include Scholarship of administration, faculty development and other teaching, writing program development such as designing curricula or developing resources, administering writing program assessment, registration and scheduling, office management, advising and counseling, such as acting as an intermediary for grade disputes, and taking on the responsibility for the articulation between programs and schools, and other tasks.

At my college, the Writing Program Coordinator is responsible for running our writing center, coordinating programmatic assessment, and leading curricular reform (in addition to various and other sundry tasks, like investigating WAC). As I see it, the job

2 of a WPA, whether a faculty member, a part of the administration, or something in between, is to build and maintain programmatic unity and coherence through curricular innovation and the ongoing professional development of the faculty teaching within the program. At its worst, the WPA can seem like a cop, enforcing and prescribing, but, at its best, the WPA is a facilitator and a colleague among like minded colleagues. One imagines that all people teaching writing, whatever their status or position, have as utmost in their mind the goal of better serving students, of better preparing them for that next step (whatever that might be) and better helping the student to help him or herself succeed. The WPA can be the person who explicitly takes on the responsibility for facilitating these goals.

Problems facing a WPA

Drawing from a variety of sources, including my own experience, and the CWPA website, I would like to briefly list some of the biggest difficulties that a beginning WPA might face.

1. The WPA is responsible for identifying changes and reforms, but does not have

the authority to implement them.

2. Different faculty members value much different things. This is compounded by

the fact we either don’t speak the same language or use the same words to mean

different things. For example, how many competing and even antithetical

definitions of “revision” do you have floating around in your departments?

3 3. Literally getting everyone in the same room at the same time. This is especially

difficult at community colleges where teaching schedules are full and faculty are

generally over extended to begin with.

4. Related to the previous point, the growing dependence on an adjunct population

means more rapid turnover, which makes adjunct orientation that much more

difficult to coordinate.

5. Because of all of the above, our curricula are growing outdated. They need to be

revised to reflect the changing landscape of composition as it intersects with

technology. For example, our curricula should recognize that most students will

be composing in electronic formats.

In the March 2008 issue of Teaching English in the Two Year College, Jeffery Klausman published “Mapping the Terrain: The Two Year College Writing Program

Administrator.” Klausman does an excellent job of articulating many of the issues facing a new WPA in a community college context. The last three points in this section come from his article.

6. “Service vs. disciplinary integrity.” By this, Klausman means that composition’s

goals of increasing facility with written communication, critical thinking,

appreciation of diversity, etc. can conflict with the institution’s need for us to

produce writers who are reasonably error free for a nursing program, engineering

certificate, law enforcement program, etc.

7. “Curriculum integration.” By this, Klausman means that a big part of the WPA’s

job is to think about, compare, and, to some extent, ask faculty members to

change what they are doing in their classrooms. Some faculty see this as a threat

4 to their autonomy in the classroom. (I would like to make a distinction between

autonomy and academic freedom. The two things are not equivalent.)

8. The final issue is that of “Faculty preparedness.” It is worth quoting Klausman at length here. He writes:

“The backgrounds of faculty at my college could hardly be more diverse. We

have or have had faculty with a Master in Fine Arts, a Master of Arts in

Imaginative Literature, a Master of Arts in English, a Master of Education, a

doctorate in literature, several ABDs, and some former high school teacher. We

have very few people who specialize in composition/rhetoric but even fewer who

have no graduate-level training in teaching composition. […] We have faculty

with newly minted Master of Arts degrees and we have ABDs from twenty years

ago. We have a few who keep up with the field [of composition …], and one who

is a leader in the writing center community, but many whose interests lie

elsewhere […] Clearly, we cannot adopt what Lester Faigley and Susan Romano

call the “convenient fiction” of a “common curriculum” when such diverse

backgrounds must surely impact in a dramatic way how curriculum guidelines are

interpreted, implemented, or ignored.” (243)

One assumes Klausman is talking about both full time and adjunct faculty in this passage. The faculty at my college is very similar, as I am sure they are at many of your colleges, and even in the academic preparation and interest of faculty in this room.

At many four year universities, composition is a necessary service course foisted on the backs of graduate students and adjuncts that pays for the real work of a department

– its literature, film, creative writing, etc. curricula, as well as the research of professors.

5 Often, and I have seen this first hand, no one cares what ‘those’ folks in the writing classes do. But in a two year college, almost everyone teaches composition or primarily composition, everyone potentially has a stake in the program, regardless of what their interest or background might be. People claim expertise as a function of their experience.

I have taught FYC for x number of years, hence I am an expert. This makes for a complex set of conversations whenever we need to discus curriculum or approach.

Council of WPA Outcomes

[Hand out statement – Appendix A]

Shortly after assuming the position, I had the opportunity to attend the 2008

Council of Writing Program Administrators Summer Workshop. It was there I was introduced to the WPA Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition. In its clarity and brevity, the statement seemed like it might provide a suitable way into this role as

WPA. We had been talking about updating our departmental syllabus and outcomes which have been the same for the last decade plus. It made sense to start at the beginning, to create some sort of foundational document.

The WPA statement could be adapted into a goals and mission statement that might serve the purpose of providing a unifying element to the department. It could be modified to fit our local context. We needed to start at the bottom and construct a shared set of common goals and language. A small committee of volunteers, mostly full time faculty with some adjunct faculty dipping in and out, took a semester to adapt the outcomes to our college, making sure to schedule meetings at various times to try to accommodate all schedules (day, evening, every day of the week, etc.).

6 OCC version

[Hand out statement – Appendix B]

If the Council of Writing Program Administrators had done this work already, we wanted to benefit from it. Of course, we had to make changes to the document to fit our particular context. For example, we made a conscious effort to include writing about literature in our Outcomes. This is, for good reasons, I think, not present in the original statement. At our college, however, the second course of our two course sequence is devoted to students reading and writing about literature. In addition to it being a writing course, it also serves as an introduction to literature, stressing an understanding of literary terminology.

Faculty in our program do not often get to teach traditional, literature centered courses. For many years, this course seemed to function as the Intro to Lit course (with some writing) that many faculty members craved. My reviews of the research literature and discussions with colleagues at other institutions from across the country have me thinking that this model may in fact be counter productive. If we want a lit course, we should have a lit course. If we want a writing course, we should have a writing course. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, however, to change this now. Many of the faculty would see this as an attack on literature and themselves. I wanted as many people as possible, though, to be on board with this new document, so I thought it imperative to make a formal mention of literature, in part to justify and legitimate what was already happening. Additionally, the college uses this course to satisfy the SUNY Gen Ed

7 requirement in the Humanities. Any substantial change in the curriculum of this course would require us to substitute another course in order to satisfy this requirement.

I bring this up merely as an example of how we adopted the statement to reflect a local context and a local reality. I would like to share, however, an incident that is illustrative of the process and perhaps the special concerns that effect WPA’s in a two year college. Under the section labeled “Knowledge of Conventions” on the WPA

Outcomes statement, the fourth bullet point down reads “Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.” This to me was the least controversial feature of the Council’s Outcomes statement. Surely, I thought, everyone can agree on this and the prominent placement of it would assure the grammarians among us that their viewpoint was being represented.

Unforeseen by me, though, was how some faculty would see this as problematic.

“Surface features,” someone said, implied that these things were not important. For some faculty members, the teaching of writing is the teaching of surface feature correctness.

Eventually we arrived at the language you see on our version. This is, however, indicative of the kind of split that we often see in our department. The term “surface” has a history in the study of composition and composition pedagogy. It implies a distinction between “deep” issues, like the absence or presence of a thesis statement, the extent to which this thesis provides for an analysis of the subject, substantial development of ideas, appropriate tone and vocabulary given the audience, etc. As the dissenting professor at our meeting perhaps rightly surmised, this way of talking about and discussing student writing and the writing process does put syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling into another category, a category of writing concerns which can and should be addressed later

8 in the process. Important, yes, but not the most important. We can see a division between those who see writing as starting on the sentence level, moving to the paragraph level and then moving to the essay level with those who see writing beginning at the holistic essay level and working its way down to the paragraph and sentence.

This is not a generational divide. Rather, the generational differences highlight the differences in academic background and training. The community college environment, where the emphasis is on practice and not on research allows for a faculty of generalists that could not exist in a place with a “publish or perish” tenure system or a system that required specialized disciplinary knowledge, since most classes are on the introductory level..

Here we see a split between those who define the writing process as focused on editing and those who see it as focused on revision. No one would argue that grammar, punctuation, etc. are unimportant, or that the final product in writing, whatever that may be, is unimportant. In fact, we would probably all acknowledge that a student, a job applicant, etc. is judged on his or her ability to produce polished texts, but the last thirty years of composition research and study has revealed that students don’t learn how to produce clear, correct, polished sentences by focusing the class on grammar rules, punctuation rules, lessons on run-ons, etc. The field has moved on, the terms of the debate have changed, but as a WPA in a two year college, you have to engage with everyone, including those whose pedagogy or ideas haven’t changed in twenty years.

Conclusions

9 A WPA in a two year environment is faced with many challenges. Because I cannot force change (and probably would not want to, even if I could), I tried to build consensus. Adapting the WPA Outcomes statement is a good way to do it. Change comes slowly to big institutions, but we have a starting point now. In the past, it seems our attempts at changes have been rather hit or miss, with a very stop and go quality to them. We would start taking a look at our developmental class, make some progress, and then move away from it when the semester ended. It would take months for us to get our momentum back once the new semester started. It was as if we were trying to write a paper without a thesis. At the very least, we now have a thesis. On paper at least, we have been able to articulate goals, a mission statement, and learning outcomes. This should give us a basis on which to build. As we move forward to try to tackle more specific curricular changes and assessment, we should all be able to agree that students should be able to do X, Y, and Z. Now we just have to agree on what methods and in what time frame.

In reality, all program building, like ours, is a work in progress, an ongoing project and set of negotiations, but we are making progress. I hope that this presentation has been useful to you. Thank you for your attention.

10 Appendix A

WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition

Adopted by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), April 2000

For further information about the development of the Outcomes Statement, please see http://comppile.tamucc.edu/WPAoutcomes/continue.html

For further information about the Council of Writing Program Administrators, please see http://www.wpacouncil.org

A version of this statement was published in WPA: Writing Program Administration 23.1/2 (fall/winter 1999): 59-66

Introduction

This statement describes the common knowledge, skills, and attitudes sought by first-year composition programs in American postsecondary education. To some extent, we seek to regularize what can be expected to be taught in first-year composition; to this end the document is not merely a compilation or summary of what currently takes place. Rather, the following statement articulates what composition teachers nationwide have learned from practice, research, and theory. This document intentionally defines only "outcomes," or types of results, and not "standards," or precise levels of achievement. The setting of standards should be left to specific institutions or specific groups of institutions.

Learning to write is a complex process, both individual and social, that takes place over time with continued practice and informed guidance. Therefore, it is important that teachers, administrators, and a concerned public do not imagine that these outcomes can be taught in reduced or simple ways. Helping students demonstrate these outcomes requires expert understanding of how students actually learn to write. For this reason we expect the primary audience for this document to be well-prepared college writing teachers and college writing program administrators. In some places, we have chosen to write in their professional language. Among such readers, terms such as "rhetorical" and "genre" convey a rich meaning that is not easily simplified. While we have also aimed at writing a document that the general public can understand, in limited cases we have

11 aimed first at communicating effectively with expert writing teachers and writing program administrators.

These statements describe only what we expect to find at the end of first-year composition, at most schools a required general education course or sequence of courses. As writers move beyond first-year composition, their writing abilities do not merely improve. Rather, students' abilities not only diversify along disciplinary and professional lines but also move into whole new levels where expected outcomes expand, multiply, and diverge. For this reason, each statement of outcomes for first-year composition is followed by suggestions for further work that builds on these outcomes.

Rhetorical Knowledge

By the end of first year composition, students should

 Focus on a purpose  Respond to the needs of different audiences  Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations  Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation  Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality  Understand how genres shape reading and writing  Write in several genres

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

 The main features of writing in their fields  The main uses of writing in their fields  The expectations of readers in their fields

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

 Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating  Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources  Integrate their own ideas with those of others  Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power

 The uses of writing as a critical thinking method  The interactions among critical thinking, critical reading, and writing

12  The relationships among language, knowledge, and power in their fields

Processes

 Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text  Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading  Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work  Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes  Learn to critique their own and others' works  Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part  Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

 To build final results in stages  To review work-in-progress in collaborative peer groups for purposes other than editing  To save extensive editing for later parts of the writing process  To apply the technologies commonly used to research and communicate within their fields

Knowledge of Conventions

 Learn common formats for different kinds of texts  Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics  Practice appropriate means of documenting their work  Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

 The conventions of usage, specialized vocabulary, format, and documentation in their fields  Strategies through which better control of conventions can be achieved

Composing in Electronic Environments

13 As has become clear over the last twenty years, writing in the 21st-century involves the use of digital technologies for several purposes, from drafting to peer reviewing to editing. Therefore, although the kinds of composing processes and texts expected from students vary across programs and institutions, there are nonetheless common expectations.

By the end of first-year composition, students should:

 Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts  Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources  Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts

 How to engage in the electronic research and composing processes common in their fields  How to disseminate texts in both print and electronic forms in their fields

14 Appendix B Onondaga Community College Writing Program

Mission Statement and Outcomes

Outcomes based on and adapted from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), 2007 and consistent with the principles put forth in Writing in the 21 st Century: A report from the National Council of Teachers of English, 2009.

Mission Statement

The mission of Onondaga Community College’s Writing Program is to expose students to the principles and practices of the writing process, thereby enabling them to lay a strong foundation for success in a liberal arts education and in their professional lives.

Introduction to Outcomes

The act of writing is an extremely complex one that includes and depends on a variety of different, interlocking, simultaneous, multi-layered skills and principles. When faced with a writing task, we often just write. We do not necessarily reflect on the act of writing itself as we do it. This tendency is as true for seasoned professionals as it is for first year students. If we can develop a vocabulary for understanding writing and the ability to see it as a process, we can discuss it, make changes to it, and intervene when necessary in that process to change the outcome.

It stands to reason that the teaching of writing is equally complex and multi-layered. As such, we have broken the Writing Program outcomes into five major components:

 Rhetorical Knowledge  Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing  Processes  Knowledge of Conventions  Composing in Electronic Environments

Different instructors may use different strategies to help students progress in achieving these goals, but the Writing Program faculty agree these goals will inform our courses. As teachers of writing, our primary goal is to have students working toward a form of praxis, developing a theory of writing that they can then put into practice.

Rhetorical Knowledge

15 By the end of the composition sequence, students should be able to:

 Focus on a purpose  Show an awareness of and respond to the needs of different audiences  Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations  Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation  Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality  Demonstrate an understanding of the different genres of academic writing

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

By the end of the composition sequence, students should be able to:

 Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating  Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources  Integrate their own ideas with those of others  Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power  Explore how literature reveals and deepens our understanding of the human experience

Processes

 Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text  Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading  Understand writing as a recursive process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work  Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes  Learn to critique their own and others' works

Knowledge of Conventions

 Use appropriate academic conventions regarding essay structure, paragraphing, and mechanics  Use appropriate means of documenting work

16  Recognize conventions in syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling and correct violations (or errors) in those conventions  Demonstrate knowledge of literary conventions, terminology, and genres

Composing in Electronic Environments

As has become clear over the last twenty years, writing in the 21st-century involves the use of digital technologies for several purposes, from drafting to peer reviewing to editing. Although the kinds of composing processes and texts expected from students vary across programs and institutions, common expectations, nonetheless, exist.

 Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts  Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources  Understand the differences in the rhetorical strategies appropriate for both print and electronic composing processes and texts

Detailed explanation, examples, and assignment suggestions forthcoming for all components.

Spring 2009

17 Works Cited Klausman, Jeffery. “Mapping the Terrain: The Two Year College Writing Program Administrator.” Teaching English in the Two Year College March 2008.

Council of Writing Program Administrators. “WPA Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition.” 2007.

Onondaga Community College Writing Program. “Mission Statement and Goals.” 2009.