Liminal Practice in a Maturing Writing Department

Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons English Faculty Publications English 2011 Liminal Practice in a Maturing Writing Department Louise Wetherbee Phelps Old Dominion University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs Part of the Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Original Publication Citation Phelps, L. W. (2011). Liminal Practice in a Maturing Writing Department. Fulbright Project Report, Aug. This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the English at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Liminal Practice in a Maturing Writing Department A Fulbright Project Report prepared for The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications the University of Winnipeg                   by         Louise  Wetherbee  Phelps     Emeritus  Professor  of  Writing  and  Rhetoric,  Syracuse  University   Adjunct  Professor  of  Rhetoric  and  Writing,  Old  Dominion  University           August,  2011   Introduction     In  Spring  2011  I  was  awarded  a  Fulbright  Specialist  Grant  to  “consult,  collaborate,  and   inform”  on  the  future  of  the  Department  of  Rhetoric,  Writing,  and  Communications  at  the   University  of  Winnipeg,  located  in  the  city  of  Winnipeg  in  Manitoba,  Canada.  The   Department  of  Rhetoric,  Writing,  and  Communications  department  (hereafter,  RWC)  was  a   pioneer  in  writing  instruction  in  Canada,  where  it  became  the  first  unit  to  establish  itself   independently  as  a  department  with  a  full-­‐time  faculty  committed  to  both  teaching  and   scholarship  in  writing  and  rhetoric.  It  remains  a  rare  phenomenon  on  the  Canadian  higher   education  scene,  where  studies  and  programs  in  rhetoric  and  writing  have  developed  late   and  along  a  different  trajectory  from  the  discipline  in  the  United  States.  Because  of  its   unique  history,  the  faculty  is  positioned  to  make  significant  contributions  to  the  further   development  of  writing  instruction  and  scholarship  in  rhetoric  and  writing  in  Canada  and   beyond.  At  the  same  time,  the  close  fit  between  the  department’s  character  and  the  mission   of  the  institution  makes  it  a  strategic  asset  to  the  university.  This  report  presents  my   findings,  analyses,  and  recommendations  to  the  Department  and  the  Fulbright  Specialist   Program,  based  on  six  weeks  of  inquiry  and  conversations.       I  visited  the  University  of  Winnipeg  from  April  24  to  June  4,  2011.  From  undergraduate   students  to  central  administrators,  my  hosts  were  extremely  gracious  and  generous  with   their  time.  I  conducted  interviews  with  faculty  members  and  administrators  and  met  with   faculty  and  student  groups  for  a  total  of  over  70  hours.  I  collected  and  read  a  large  body  of   historical  and  current  materials  from  the  department  and  university  (curricular  materials,   syllabi,  faculty  publications,  university  reports  and  reviews,  policy  papers,  and  more).   Before  and  during  my  visit,  I  read  a  body  of  publications  and  reports  about  the  history  and   current  state  of  writing  instruction  in  Canada  as  well  as  examples  of  Canadian  scholarship   in  rhetoric  and  writing.  I  also  conducted  3  phone  interviews  with  Canadian  scholars  at   other  institutions,  as  well  as  talking  with  others  at  two  conferences  in  the  U.S.  prior  to  my   visit.  On  May  27,  2011  I  delivered  an  invited  lecture  in  the  university’s  Distinguished   Scholar  Lecture  Series.  Copies  of  this  speech,  which  was  videotaped,  will  be  made  available   to  the  department.     During  my  visit,  I  worked  closely  with  a  Steering  Committee,  which  included  Judith  Kearns,   department  chair,  and  faculty  members  Jennifer  Clary-­‐Lemon,  Wade  Nelson,  Barry  Nolan,   Jaqueline  McLeod  Rogers,  and  Tracy  Whalen.    At  my  request,  this  group  met  weekly  to   engage  in  conversations  focused  on  the  writings  and  curricular  contributions  of  its   members.  Members  presented  a  sample  of  their  work  and  explained  how  it  represented   their  intellectual  interests  or  disciplinary  affiliations,  and  how  these  translated  into  the   curriculum.  I  also  asked  them  to  discuss  how  each  benefited  from  being  in  a  department   with  this  particular  focus  and  configuration,  as  signified  by  the  terms  “rhetoric,”  “writing,”   and  “communications.”  I  am  indebted  to  these  colleagues  for  the  insights  developed  in   these  conversations,  as  well  as  in  wide-­‐ranging  interviews  with  them  and  other  faculty.       Judith  Kearns  was  an  invaluable  source  of  information,  materials,  and  wisdom  about   departmental  history,  structures,  and  processes.  Jennifer  Clary-­‐Lemon,  who  developed  the     2   project  proposal,  was  the  primary  “go-­‐to”  person  for  the  project,  both  intellectually  and   logistically.  Staff  members  Cathleen  Hjalmarson  and  Kevin  Doyle  were  unfailingly   courteous  and  helpful  in  making  it  easy  for  me  to  function  in  an  unfamiliar  environment  .   Finally,  Allison  Ferry,  undergraduate  major,  showed  impressive  initiative  in  developing  and   administering  a  quick  survey  of  majors  and  alumni  and  organizing  a  meeting  where  I  was   able  to  hear  from  a  remarkable  group  of  bright,  enthusiastic  young  Canadians.  All  made  this   project  truly  a  collaborative  effort.       The  theme  I  will  be  exploring  throughout  this  report  is  best  captured  by  Tracy  Whalen’s   term  “liminal  practice”—fittingly,  a  notion  she  applies  to  rhetoric.  In  her  terms,  the   department  is  at  a  liminal  moment—between  its  history  and  its  future;  and  much  of  its   research  and  teaching  involves  traversing  the  liminal  spaces  defined  by  the  relations  of   conceptual  pairs.     EXIGENCE  FOR  THE  FULBRIGHT  PROJECT:  RENEWAL,  TRANSITIONS,  AND  OPPORTUNITIES     A  number  of  considerations  make  this  a  propitious  time  for  assessing  current  programs   and  planning  future  directions  in  the  Department  of  Rhetoric,  Writing,  and   Communications.  The  project  comes  at  a  critical  moment  of  transition  for  the  department   and  university,  coinciding  with  the  emergence  of  new  formations  for  studying  and  teaching   writing,  rhetoric,  and  cognate  disciplines  in  Canada  and  internationally.     Program  renewal.  The  steering  committee,  in  setting  priorities  for  my  consultancy,   described  a  primary  goal  of  the  project  as  “program  architecture  renewal.”  Programs  need   regular  assessment  and  reinvention  in  order  to  keep  them  lively  and  responsive  to  changes   in  their  environment.  In  this  department,  the  first-­‐year  program,  Academic  Writing,  is  now   16  years  old  and  overdue  for  such  review  and  an  investment  of  new  energy  and  ideas.  The   Tutorial  Centre  in  its  current  form  was  established  at  the  same  time  and  needs  to  be   examined  not  only  as  an  adjunct  for  Academic  Writing,  but  as  an  underdeveloped  asset  for   other  programs,  both  in  and  outside  the  department.  The  undergraduate  major  (and  the   associated  Joint  Communications  degree),  while  still  vigorous,  is  now  8  years  old  and  needs   critical  attention  to  ensure  its  continued  growth  and  success.     At  the  same  time,  the  department  is  developing  a  proposed  M.A  in  Rhetoric,  Writing  and   Public  Life.  If  approved,  this  degree  will  open  new  paths  for  the  department  but  implies   many  adjustments.  I  once  heard  a  musician  explain  how  replacing  a  member  of  a  quartet   transformed  all  the  roles  and  relationships  in  the  group,  which  had  to  discover  through   trial  and  error  how  to  rebalance  and  reharmonize  their  sound.  Adding  graduate  studies  is   not  just  an  addition  to  the  department;  it  is  transformative  in  the  same  sense.  A  new   student  constituency  adds  its  voice  and  its  needs,  and  enters  into  relationships  with  faculty   and  with  current  students  in  the  curriculum  and  Tutorial  Centre.  New  faculty  roles  emerge,   with  new  responsibilities  and  expectations  from  the  administration  and  university  faculty.   Teaching  in  the  program  will  add  components  of  thesis  and  practicum  supervision  to   course  load.  Graduate  studies  also  require  a  strong  faculty  investment  in  relevant   scholarship  (research  and  publication,  applied  scholarship)  to  provide  an  intellectual  base     3   and  some  funding  for  the  program.  All  this  requires  rebalancing  resources  and  priorities,   while  potentially  enriching  existing  programs  by  integrating  three  levels  of  curriculum.     Transition  at  the  University.  While  the  University  is  not  changing  course  from  the  direction   set  by  President  Lloyd  Axworthy,  it  is  going  through  some  subtle  transitions  in   consolidating  and  implementing  these  policies,  which  are  directly  relevant  to  change  in  the   RWC  dept.  Several  key  administrators  are  relatively  new  and  putting  their  own  stamp  on   evolving  developments.  In  2009  President  Axworthy  published  a  policy  paper  articulating   an  “evolving  mission”  of  “community  learning”:  the  “active  integration  of  the  university  into   the  social,  cultural  and  educational  life  of  the  community.”1    His  vision  “demands  an  effort   to  explore  how  people,  especially  children,  learn,  and  how  new  practices  can  be  shared   with  the  community  to  improve  access  and  to  respond  to  a  range  of  cultural,  social  and   economic  diversities.”  He  specifies  community  learning  in  this  sense  in  four  dimensions,   which  involve  providing  learning  opportunities  for  underrepresented  populations,   committing  the  university  to  address  public  issues  in  partnership  with  community  groups,   using  university  resources  to  facilitate  sustainable  development  on  campus  and  in  the   community,  and  placing  these  initiatives  in  both  local  and  global  contexts.  His  paper     followed  closely  on  a  2009  update  of  the  Winnipeg  Academic  Plan,  which  emphasized  many   of  the  same  themes,  including  as  well  a  strong  commitment  to  “original  research  and   creative  activity  and  enhanced  research  capacity,  along  with  expanded  graduate  studies.”   In  May  2011  the  University  of  Winnipeg’s  Board  of  Regents  formally  approved  the   community  learning  policy.     These  documents  are  a  rich  lode  of  themes  that  help  give  the  university  its  character.   As  suggested  in  my  lecture,  the  university  explores  and  draws  energy  from  the  dynamic   tensions  inherent  in  this  vision:  between  access  and  excellence,  academy  and  community   (or  city),  local  and  global,  university  and  college,  research  and  teaching,  learning  in  and  out   of  the  classroom.  These  are  reinterpreted  in  various  ways  to  make  them  productive  (for   example,  as  crossing  borders  or  as  interdependent  and  reciprocal  influences).  These   themes  and  the  challenges  the  university  faces  offer  some  lenses  through  which  to   interpret  the  work  of  the  department  and  to  decide  which  directions  are  strategic   opportunities,  given  university  priorities  and  opportunities  for  partnerships  in  developing   initiatives.       Generational  change.  In  the  next  5-­‐10  year  period  the  department  can  expect  to  deal  with  a   wave  of  retirements  among  the  founding  generation  of  the  department.  In  addition,  the   current  long-­‐time  chair  will  complete  her  final  term  in  two  years.  The  department  must   therefore  plan  for  new  faculty  and  for  concurrent  leadership  changes.                                                                                                                     1  “The  University  and  Community  Learning:  An  Evolving  Mission.”  Available  on  President  Axworthy’s   website,  http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/admin-­‐president.       4   Disciplinary/interdisciplinary  developments.  Studies  and  teaching  of  writing,  rhetoric,     discourse,  and  communication  in  Canada  are  emerging  in  new  configurations  on  campuses   and  experimenting  with  new  definitions  as  an  interdisciplinary  field  networked  with   international  writing  studies  and  global  rhetorics.  As  the  RWC  faculty  and  its  programs   undergo  growth  and  renewal,  the  department  is  positioned  to  contribute  significantly  to   these  national  and  international  developments.         PRIORITIES  FOR  THE  FULBRIGHT  PROJECT     In  view  of  these  motives  and  conditions,  the  Steering  Committee  outlined  priorities  for  my   visit.  I  have  reorganized  and  interpreted  them  here  as  follows:     Context  and  history.  Characterize  the  identity  of  the  department  in  the  context  of  its  local   university/city  setting  and  its  distinctiveness  on  the  Canadian  scene,  by  examining  the   history  of  the  department  and  its  relationship  to  the  Canadian  instruction  and  scholarship   in  rhetoric,  writing,  and  communications,  past  and  present.  This  includes  consideration  of   the  faculty  research  strengths  and  the  department’s  current  and  potential  visibility  among   peers.       Curriculum.  (1)  Examine  the  curricular  design  and  implementation  of  each  of  the  RWC   programs,  both  current  and  proposed,  to  inform  future  curricular  decisions.  (This  includes   the  first-­‐year  program  “Academic  Writing”;  the  undergraduate  major  in  Rhetoric  and   Communications;  the  Joint  B.A.  Program  in  Communications  with  Red  River  College,   building  on  its  degree  in  Creative  Communications;  the  Tutorial  Centre;  the  proposed  M.A   in  Rhetoric,  Writing  and  Public  Life  and  the  possibility  of  situating  it  as  a  stream  within  an   M.A  in  Cultural  Studies;  and  participation  by  department  members  in  special  instructional   programs,  partnerships,  and  learning  initiatives.)  Where  relevant,  make  comparisons  with   U.S.  programs.       (2)  Consider  how  the  department  can  articulate  levels  of  the  curriculum  and  explore   relationships  among  the  intellectual  traditions  represented  by  the  three  terms  of  the   department’s  curricula,  rhetoric,  writing,  and  communications.       Process  and  collegiality.  Suggest  a  process  by  which  the  department  can  work  collegially   and  efficiently  on  program  renewal  and  curriculum  development.       CARRYING  OUT  THE  PROJECT     Although  six  weeks  seemed  like  a  long  time  before  I  came,  it  was  quickly  evident  that  the   original  proposal  and  agenda  covered  much  more  than  I  could  complete  in  that  time  frame.   Instead,  I  have  viewed  myself  as  laying  the  groundwork  that  would  enable  the  faculty  to   accomplish  its  priorities  by  continuing  the  processes  of  inquiry  and  conversation  that  I   began  with  them.       In  reporting  progress  toward  each  of  these  goals,  I  will  primarily  discuss  here  questions  of   curriculum  and  process.  I  decided  not  to  construct  a  formal  history  of  the  department,  since     5   its  history  is  well-­‐documented  by  publications  and  internal  reports,  and  to  go  any  further   would  require  a  full  archival  research  project.  But  my  investigation  of  that  history  as   experienced  by  members  of  the  department  and  narrated  in  these  materials  deeply  informs   my  recommendations.  The  goal  of  contextualizing  the  department  and  its  work  in  a  variety   of  ways  is  addressed  but  not  exhausted  in  my  lecture  “Writing  Studies  at  the  University  of   Winnipeg:  A  Strategic  Opportunity  “  (Appendix  1).  Understanding  how  the  department  fits   into  the  institution  and  into  Canadian,  U.S.,  and  international  instruction  and  scholarship  in   written  communication  is  fundamental  to  decision-­‐making  about  its  future,  and  the  work  I   did  on  these  questions  is  the  point  of  departure  for  the  analyses  and  recommendations   below,  as  well  as  for  collaborative  research  planned  with  Jennifer  Clary-­‐Lemon.       6        Curricular  Articulation  and  Integration     In  approaching  the  curricular  tasks  of  this  project,  I  asked  myself  a  cluster  of  guiding   questions,  including  these  about  value:     What  is  the  value  of  each  level  and  component  of  the  curriculum  to  the  department’s   faculty  and  students?  to  other  Winnipeg  faculties,  students,  and  programs?  to  the   institution  at  large?  to  the  external  communities  it  serves?  What  of  value  has  been  lost  and   gained  in  the  evolution  of  the  department  from  its  pioneering  days  as  a  writing  program?   What  value  might  the  current  and  proposed  curricular  programs,  and  by  extension  the   intellectual  or  disciplinary  organization  of  the  department,  have  to  peers  in  Canada  or   elsewhere?  How  can  these  values  be  highlighted?  strengthened  through  hiring,  funding,   partnerships,  increased  visibility?  What  is  the  potential  to  capitalize  on  these  values  to   pursue  new  directions  strategically?     Another  sense  of  “value”  is  the  values  the  department  holds  dear  and  promotes  through  its   programs.  The  department  began  as  a  teaching  program  that  emphasized  a  social  mission   identified  with  broader  access  to  the  academy.  Subsequently,  it  developed  an   undergraduate  major  that  teaches  theory,  criticism,  history,  and  research  methods  as  well   as  writing  practices,  while  it  developed  its  scholarly  capacity  in  research  and  publication.       How  has  this  original  commitment  both  endured  and  evolved  with  the  addition  of  degree   programs  and  greater  opportunities  and  expectations  for  scholarship?  What  challenges   have  arisen  in  balancing  “access”  and  “excellence,”  and  how  are  these  values  associated   with  different  elements  in  the  curriculum?       The  department  was  constituted  by  virtue  of  a  common  teaching  enterprise,  enacted   through  conversations,  experimentation,  and  faculty  learning,  that  was  at  the  heart  of  the   department.  So  I  asked  these  questions:     To  what  degree  does  (or  should)  the  faculty  still  function  as  a  teaching  community,  though   with  the  teaching  enterprise  now  redefined?  To  what  extent  is  the  intellectual  work  of  the   faculty  (expressed  as  theory,  criticism,  reflective  thinking,  applied  scholarship,  and  formal   research,  embodied  in  scholarly  publication,  presentations,  teaching  genres,  or  public   writings)  informing  and  enriching  the  entire  curriculum?  How  might  the  department  take   greater  advantage  of  its  intellectual  resources  to  articulate  and  integrate  the  curricula?     I’m  going  to  begin  with  this  last  question,  targeting  the  goals  of  integration  and  articulation.   It’s  not  the  obvious  place  to  start:  it  seems  more  logical  to  start  with  the  parts  and  then  look   for  connections.  But  that  reproduces  the  way  the  levels  and  functions  of  the  curriculum   have  come  into  being;  they  were  not  designed  all  at  once  as  interconnected,  but  arose  at   different  times  in  response  to  rather  different  needs,  desires,  conditions,  and  opportunities.   As  a  result,  they  are  in  practice  relatively  discrete  and  disconnected,  and  it  is  hard  to   articulate  them  after  the  fact.  I’d  like  to  begin  with  the  assumption  that,  by  virtue  of  being     7   taught  by  a  single  faculty  to  overlapping  groups  of  students,  they  comprise  a  holistic   curriculum,  differentiated  by  levels  and  purposes.  Then  specific  analyses  and  proposals  for   each  part  of  the  curriculum  can  reflect  the  perception  of  cross-­‐cutting  themes,  reciprocal   influence,  and  synergies  among  them.       “WRITING,”  “RHETORIC,”  AND  “COMMUNICATIONS”     The  disjunctures  and  disconnects  within  the  curriculum  have  shown  up  most  vividly  in  the   major,  where  the  Curriculum  Committee  has  been  trying  for  two  years  to  group  courses  in   order  to  structure  requirements.  The  obvious  choices  are  the  “naming”  terms  of  the   programs,  courses,  and  department—“rhetoric,”  “writing,”  and  “communications.”  Naming   is  a  way  of  staking  out  intellectual  and  curricular  territory.  Students  expect  these  terms  to   help  them  make  sense  of  the  intellectual  configuration  of  the  department,  and  to  match  up   to  faculty  identities,  disciplines,  graduate  programs,  and  career  paths.  But  both  students   and  faculty  have  struggled  with  the  recalcitrance  of  these  terms  when  applied  to  these   purposes.  In  order  to  get  past  this  impasse,  it’s  necessary  to  analyze  these  terms  to  see   why,  as  currently  (mis)understood,  they  do  not  work  well  for  structuring  curriculum  or   organizing  the  work  of  the  department,  but  remain  important  signifiers  for  its  activities.       Curricular  space,  as  designated  by  departmental  or  program  names,  is  implicitly  a  claim  to   disciplinary  status  as  a  faculty  by  virtue  of  belonging  and  contributing  to  a  scholarly   community  whose  “studies  of”  the  topic  ground  the  curriculum.  It’s  not  surprising,   therefore,  that  faculty  and  students  alike  (including  myself,  at  first  look)  have  identified   these  terms  with  disciplines,  and  seen  the  faculty  in  turn  as  representatives  of  those   disciplines.  Under  that  assumption,  the  department  title  seems  to  imply  a  tri-­‐partite   disciplinary  structure  for  classifying  courses  and  faculty.  This  in  turn  raises  the  question  of   whether  each  has  equal  claims  to  curricular  space,  program  development,  and  faculty   resources  in  future  planning,  for  example  as  “streams”  in  the  undergraduate  major.           However,  the  reality  is  that  intellectual  space  is  not  carved  up  so  neatly  by  the  academy,   and  terms  like  these  are  context-­‐variable  (in  part,  by  national  culture)  and  operate   rhetorically  rather  than  taxonomically.  (Modernism  persists  in  our  thinking,  despite  post-­‐ modernism!)  To  be  useful,  naming  terms  depend  on  strategic  ambiguity,  but  they  are   therefore  vulnerable  to  reinterpretation  and  misunderstanding.     Even  if  we  could  align  these  terms  with  disciplines,  and  specify  them  for  Canada,  the   histories  and  scholarly  interests  of  the  RWC  faculty  would  make  their  work  quite  difficult   to  place  in  disciplinary  terms.  Most  are  quite  eclectic  in  the  intellectual  traditions,  sources,   and  methods  they  draw  on  in  publications  and  teaching.  As  Judith  Kearns  and  Brian  Turner   have  pointed  out  in  a  forthcoming  profile  of  the  department,  most  of  the  PhDs  in  the   department  “were  trained  in  text  analysis  of  some  kind  and  learned  to  teach  writing  largely   ‘on  the  job.’”2  Half  the  eight  PhD  degrees  have  some  focus  on  “rhetoric,”  but  what  that                                                                                                                   2  Judith  Kearns  and  Brian  Turner,  “Department  of  Rhetoric,  Writing,  and  Communications:  University  of   Winnipeg.  In  Writing  Programs  Worldwide:  Profiles  of  Academic  Writing  in  Many  Places,  Chris  Thaiss,  et  al.,   eds.,  forthcoming.       8   means  can  be  significantly  different,  depending  on  the  doctoral  program  and  whether  it  is   Canadian  or  American.  More  recently  minted  scholars  may  have  a  more  sharply  honed   sense  of  disciplinarity,  but  it  can’t  be  contained  or  explained  simply  by  referring  to  one  of   these  terms.  Typically,  faculty  in  fields  focused  on  writing  and  rhetoric  are  dynamically   interdisciplinary,  learning  new  methods  or  turning  to  sources  in  unfamiliar  fields  at  need,   to  work  with  new  partners,  pursue  particular  research  questions,  or  inform  teaching   projects.     If  that  is  the  case,  it’s  important  to  discover  how  these  terms  actually  function  in  the   discourse  of  the  department  (connotation  as  well  as  denotation)  and  how  these  meanings   correspond  to  uses  in  external  contexts,  both  academic  and  professional.  This  clarification   will  allow  RWC  to  use  these  terms  more  strategically  for  the  various  purposes  they  can   serve  by  their  useful  polysemy,  while  reducing  confusion  or  oversimplification.  In  addition,   it  will  provide  a  basis  for  answering  questions  that  were  raised  during  my  visit  about  the   future  role  of  “communications”  and  “communications  studies”  in  the  department.     Without  the  opportunity  to  do  a  full-­‐scale  discourse  analysis,  I  nevertheless  formed  some   impression  of  the  way  these  terms  function  in  course  titles,  descriptions,  syllabi,   requirements  for  the  major,  and  even  the  language  of  students.  Setting  aside  my  original   observation  that  they  are  misperceived  as  labels  for  disciplines  and  faculty,  I’ll  focus  first   on  the  way  “rhetoric”  and  “writing”  enter  into  a  dichotomy  between  theory  and  practice.  It   appears  that  “writing”  is  over-­‐identified  with  the  “practical,”  while  “rhetoric”  is  assigned   the  primary  role  of  providing  the  theories  and  critical  methods  for  producing  and   interpreting  practices.  Even  though  the  practical  is  valued  in  the  curriculum,  this  pairing   comes  at  the  cost  of  ignoring  the  vast  development  of  contemporary  studies  in  writing  that   reflect  intellectual  traditions  other  than  rhetoric.  At  the  same  time,  it  obscures  the  fact  that   rhetoric  itself,  in  the  classical  tradition,  was  a  practical  art.       This  dichotomy  of  practice  and  theory  is  mapped  onto  the  first-­‐year  curriculum  (“writing”)   and  certain  “practical”  courses  (e.g.,  “Professional  Editing  and  Style”))  while  “rhetoric”  is   associated  with  academic  study  in  the  major.  Rhetoric  stands  in  for  a  claim  that  the   practices  taught  in  the  department  merit  serious  scholarship.  But  in  curricular  practice,  it  is   actually  a  handy  umbrella  term  for  teaching  the  arts  of  language  use,  providing   communicators  with  principles  of  production  and  a  critical  method  for  analyzing  situations,   texts,  images,  and  events.3  The  major  program  reflects  a  shared  vocabulary  of  concepts  and   values  rooted  in  classical  and  20th  century  rhetoric,  which  actually  informs  the  whole   curriculum:  explicitly  in  the  M.A    proposal  and  more  tacitly  as  a  basis  for  teaching  Academic   Writing.  Thus  Turner  and  Kearns  claim  in  their  profile  that  the  first-­‐year  courses  have  the   broad  goal  of  “increasing  our  students’  rhetorical  awareness  of  academic  and/or   disciplinary  styles,  genres,  and  epistemic  criteria.”  More  generally,  they  say,  the  curriculum   aims  “to  develop  what  Quintilian  called  facilitas—the  ability  to  assess  any  rhetorical   situation  and  respond  appropriately.”    But,  even  in  the  major,  “rhetoric”  does  not  appear  to   be  highly  historicized  or  referenced  to  its  contemporary  development  by  scholarly   communities.                                                                                                                     3  See,  for  example,  Objectives  and  Outcomes  for  the  Major,  available  on  the  RWC  website.     9      “Communications”  is  perhaps  the  most  confusing  term,  partly  because  of  the  apparent   disjuncture  between  the  broad  way  it  is  most  frequently  used  within  the  curriculum  and   the  external  uses  that  are  relevant  to  the  curriculum  (professional  careers  in  creative   communications,  for  some  students,  research  and  graduate  studies  for  others).  In  the  case   of  “communications,”  the  dichotomy  between  the  “academic”  and  the  “practical”  hides   within  the  term  itself,  which  has  three—arguably  four—uses  in  the  department.  The  first,   most  characteristic  of  the  department,  is  a  broad  reference  to  practices  of  communication:   oral,  written,  digital,  multimedia,  professional,  or  creative  communication(s).  These  are   differentiated  both  by  mode  or  medium  and  by  specialization.  Since  rhetoric  is  also  often   defined  as  “the  effective  practice  of  communication,”  there  is  large  overlap  in  what  the  two   terms  point  to;  the  differences  lie  in  the  way  they  have  developed  as  studies  and,  in  the  case   of  communications,  as  professions.  The  second  RWC  use,  then,  of  the  term   “communications”  is  to  name  professional  careers  in  the  media  industry—public  relations,   advertising,  journalism,  and  so  on.  The  corresponding  academic  study  of  that  industry  is   the  third  use  (referenced  particularly  to  the  distinctively  Canadian  development  of  that   discipline).  Finally,  although  this  is  not  well-­‐articulated  in  the  department,  there  are   graduate  studies  that  represent  disciplinary  studies  of  other  specialized  forms  of   communication,  in  particular  professional  and/or  technical  communication,  which  is  a   rising  field  in  Canada  and  well-­‐developed  in  the  U.S.     I  won’t  try  to  explain  here  the  complexity  of  how  these  terms  are  translated  into   programmatic  names  for  disciplinary  and  interdisciplinary  studies,  except  for  a  few  brief   remarks.  Programs  exist  in  both  Canada  and  the  U.S.  (though  in  very  different  forms  and   proportions)  that  represent  disciplinary  or  multidisciplinary  studies  of  any  and  all  of  the   practices,  professions,  and  specializations  mentioned  above.  But  programs  are   unpredictable  and  inconsistent  in  how  they  define  and  name  those  studies.  To  give  one   example,  in  the  U.S.,  in  just  one  state  several  programs  embody  three  entirely  different   understandings  of  “communication”:       •  an  undergraduate  concentration  in  “strategic  communication,”  described  as  a   “convergence  of  advertising,  public  relations  and  marketing  concepts”  using  an   “integrated  marketing  communication  process”  (U.  of  New  Mexico)   •  a  Ph.D  in  “rhetoric  and  professional  communication,”  combining  rhetoric,  composition,   professional  [i.e.,  workplace]  communication,  and  critical/cultural  studies  (New  Mexico   State)     •  a  B.S.  in  “technical  communication,”  which  “teaches  students  to  apply  principles  of   communication  and  problem  solving  in  order  to  transfer  information  effectively   between  scientists,  engineers,  managers,  technicians,  and  the  general  public”  (New   Mexico  Tech).     Not  surprisingly,  each  of  these  programs  is  located  in  a  differently  named  institutional   home,  housing  different  disciplines  or  interdisciplinary  mixes.     Contrary  to  my  first  impression,  there  is  similar  variation  in  Canadian  programs  even   though  the  dominant  model  is  to  study  the  communications  industry  academically  while     10   preparing  students  for  careers  in  it.  There  is  new  interest  in  professional  communication   degrees,  for  example,  while  in  some  cases  “communication(s)”  seems  to  be  a  term  of   convenience  for  eclectic  groupings  of  faculty.    Broadly,  Canadian  “writing  studies”  (more   often  represented  by  individual  scholars  than  programs)  can  mean  something  like  U.S.   rhetoric  and  composition  in  one  place,  genre  studies  of  workplace  communication  in   another,  and  linguistic  or  cognitive  studies  in  another.  These  are  all  being  influenced  by  U.S.   rhetoric  and  composition  on  the  one  hand  and  the  recent  development  of  international   writing  studies  (as  an  interdiscipline)  on  another.  Rhetoric  is  almost  impossible  to  stabilize   as  a  programmatic  or  disciplinary  term  because,  first,  it  is  effectively  an  interdiscipline  that   crosses  many  fields  and  appears  in  any  institutional  sites,  and,  second,  it  is  typically  found   in  integrated  studies  (rhetoric  and  composition,  rhetoric  and  professional  communication,   rhetorical  genre  studies,  and  so  on).         Given  this  chaos  of  terminology,  I  propose  that  the  RWC  treat  these  terms,  in  their  primary   local  sense,  as  designating  symbolic  practices—writing  practices,  rhetorical  practices,  and   communication  practices—that  have  a  large  overlap  in  their  reference  or  denotation,  but   represent  different  constructions  of  these  practices  as  objects  of  scholarship.  The  reality  is   that  faculty  in  the  department  bring  to  these  practices  not  a  single  “discipline”  each,  but  a   wide  range  of  intellectual  resources  and  traditions  for  construing  and  analyzing  them.   Historically,  the  faculty  and  its  programs  have  integrated  approaches,  primarily  from   rhetoric  and  writing  disciplinary  sources,  in  the  study  and  teaching  of  a  wide  range  of   practices,  including  the  professional  practices  of  communication(s).  Canadian  disciplinary   studies  of  the  communications  industry  play  a  role  in  the  major,  but  not  significantly  in   other  levels  of  the  curriculum.       If  this  is  established  as  the  dominant  understanding  of  these  three  terms  in  the  curriculum,   the  faculty  can  clarify  for  students  the  other  meanings  they  have  in  specific  courses,  in   scholarship,  in  graduate  programs  at  other  universities,  including  Canadian/U.S   differences,  while  explaining  the  uniqueness  and  value  of  the  department’s  own  integrative   approach.  It  is  this  relationship  between  the  generic  arts  and  the  specialized  studies  and   professions  that  gives  the  curricular  programs  their  value  and  the  department  its   distinctive  character.  The  department  offers  integrative  generalist  studies  in  writing  and   rhetoric  and  makes  these  relevant  to  careers  in  communications  industries  as  well  as   various  possible  paths  into  graduate  studies  and  academic  careers.  The  broad  preparation   it  offers  in  effective  communication  (oral,  written,  visual,  digital,  multimedia)  can  also  be   put  to  use  in  other  professions,  like  law  or  government.       What  are  the  implications  of  this  analysis  for  the  future  role  of  “communications”  in  the   department?  On  one  level  this  is  a  question  of  language.  The  use  of  the  terms  “writing,”   “rhetoric,”  and  “communications”  in  naming  (courses,  programs,  the  department)  should   be  based  on  understanding  the  variety  of  meanings  and  uses  they  have.  That  means  that  all   three  terms  should  be  retained,  though  not  necessarily  exactly  as  presently  deployed,   because  each  has  important  functions  in  the  curriculum  and  scholarship  of  the  department.   It  also  means  that  all  three  terms—not  just  “communications”—need  more  critical   examination  and  clarification,  as  I’ll  discuss  further  below.         11   The  more  substantive  question  is  how  curricular  resources  (and,  by  extension,  faculty   resources)  should  be  apportioned  in  the  department  in  some  kind  of  relationship  to  its   primary  naming  terms,  now  it  is  realized  that  these  terms  don’t  correspond  precisely  either   to  courses  or  to  faculty  identities  and  disciplines.       If  it  is  impossible  (as  the  Curriculum  Committee  found)  to  classify  courses  in  the  major   unambiguously  into  categories  of  “writing,”  “rhetoric,”  or  “communications,”  then  perhaps   that  is  not  the  best  way  to  go  about  organizing  and  prioritizing  the  curriculum.  A  more   useful  principle  might  be  a  distinction  that  crosses  these  categories,  for  instance  between     “practical  arts”  and  “academic  studies”  courses,  both  of  them  important  to  each  of  the   department’s  curricula.  “Practical  arts”  might  designate  courses  that  intend  to  teach   students  to  produce  and  perform  symbolic  practices—writing,  speech,  visual  rhetoric,  or   multimedia  communication,  including  specialized  genre  courses  (e.g.,  in  organizational   communication,  science  journalism,  or  advertising)  as  well  as  advanced  courses  focused  on   techniques  and  strategies.  Academic  courses  would  be  primarily  designed  as  “studies”:  of   history,  research  traditions,  theories,  rhetorics,  media,  sites  or  communities  of  practices,   and  special  topics  or  figures.  In  the  latter  courses,  student  practices  (of  writing,  research,  or   criticism)  serve  as  instruments  for  learning  about  these  subjects.  Experiential  learning   courses  (tutoring,  research  projects,  community  action  projects,  internships)  might  be  a   third  group,  or  could  be  construed  as  “practical.”  In  either  case,  if  concepts  of  “practical   arts,”  “academic  studies,”  or  “experiential  learning”  are  understood  as  emphases  rather   than  rigid  categories,  it  is  possible  to  imagine  courses  that  mix  them  in  different  ratios.  This   academic/practical  distinction  offers  one  of  many  possible  ways  to  “map”  curriculum  so   that  decisions  can  take  into  account  multiple  perspectives.     Just  as  individual  courses  don’t  necessarily  fit  neatly  into  categories  of  “writing,”  “rhetoric,”   and  “communications,”  there  is  no  identifiable  stream  of  courses  in  “rhetorical  studies”  or   “writing  studies”  that  could  be  identified  with  a  particular  discipline.  Rather,  the  curriculum   offers  courses  that  expose  students  to  broad  understandings  and  specific  topics  related  to,   and  often  blending,  rhetorical  perspectives  and  concepts,  writing  theories  and  practices,   communication  histories  and  theory,  and  various  interdisciplinary  theories  and  research   approaches  (for  example,  cultural  studies,  critical  discourse  analysis,  and  ethnography).   The  major  is  not  designed  to  study  disciplines  per  se  or  to  correlate  student  programs   directly  with  future  graduate  study.  Instead,  it  gives  them  a  background  that  is  appropriate   for  a  variety  of  academic  and  professional  paths.  (What  the  department  needs  to  do  is   explain  the  value  of  this  approach  better  to  students.)     This  niche  suits  a  department  of  small  size  and  high  diversity  of  scholarly  training  and   interests,  which  has  neither  the  reason  or  the  resources  to  build  streams  around  its  naming   terms.  In  this  model,  the  curriculum  shouldn’t  be  thought  as  requiring  equal  development   of  each  component,  since  they  play  different  roles  at  each  level.  So  an  introductory  course   in  communication  studies  as  a  field  is  warranted,  or  courses  that  contribute  broadly  to   studying  media,  for  example,  but  not  an  attempt  to  build  a  stream  or  program  along   disciplinary  lines.  If  anything,  there  should  be  a  more  careful  effort  to  make  sure  that   studies  in  writing  and  studies  in  rhetoric  are  amply  represented  and  well-­‐balanced  in  the   curriculum’s  academic  courses,  not  in  a  discrete  “stream”  but  through  sufficient  exposure     12   to  courses  that  demonstrate  how  symbolic  practices  (including  speech  and  image)  are   studied  through  different  paradigms  of  research,  theory,  and  criticism.  This  goal  doesn’t   require  sorting  courses  into  three  categories;  instead,  one  can  map  courses  against  the   desired  learning  experiences,  recognizing  that  each  may  have  several  functions  or  meet   multiple  goals.     One  implication  of  an  integrative  model  is  that  particular  topics  and  concepts  don’t  belong   exclusively  to  a  discipline  or  school  of  thought  and  should,  where  possible,  be  taught  from  a   multidisciplinary,  contrastive  perspective.  In  this  way  the  department  and  students  can   take  advantage  of  the  diversity  and  eclecticism  of  its  faculty.  For  example,  the  concept  of   “mediation”  is  not  limited  to  Canadian  communications  studies  (the  Toronto  School),   where  it  is  traced  to  Marshall  McLuhan;  “mediation”  is  a  central  idea  in  activity  theory   (originating  with  Russian  psychologists  Vygotsky  and  Leontiev),  developed  and  applied   widely  by  international  scholars  in  interdisciplinary  research  areas  ranging  from   interaction  design  to  genre  studies.4       These  comments  on  the  curriculum  are  separate  from  the  question  of  how  disciplinary  or   interdisciplinary  background  should  enter  into  decisions  about  future  faculty  hiring.  I  will   return  to  this  question  in  considering  hiring  for  the  future,  below.       TAPPING  THE  DEPARTMENT’S  INTELLECTUAL  RESOURCES  TO  INNOVATE  AND  INTEGRATE     In  the  recent  history  of  the  department,  despite  important  accomplishments  like  designing   the  M.A  proposal,  too  much  of  the  available  energy  for  curricular  work  has  focused  on  the   three  terms  analyzed  in  the  previous  section,  filtering  all  problems  and  disagreements   through  this  lens.  During  my  visit,  the  most  overt  debate  over  these  terms  emerged  in  the   context  of  curricular  mapping  in  the  major,  but  they  also  tended  to  structure  differences   and  concerns  that  were  not  so  publicly  voiced.  In  my  view  this  focus  has  eroded  faculty   collegiality  by  over-­‐identifying  faculty  scholarship  (and  its  disciplinary  sources)  with  the   supposed  recognition  of,  representation  of,  and  respect  for  these  identities  and  fields  in  the   courses,  groupings,  and  levels  of  the  curriculum.  The  confusion  around  these  terms  and   their  perception  as  competitive  priorities  have  blocked  the  path  to  fresh  curricular   thinking.  With  clarification  of  these  terms  and  a  better  understanding  of  how  they  can   function  more  productively  in  the  department’s  discourse,  it  becomes  possible  to  take   advantage  of  the  intellectual  resources  that  are  available  in  the  department  to  address  its   priorities  for  articulating  levels  of  the  curriculum  and  building  collegiality.  In  this  section  I   want  to  introduce  a  number  of  strategies  for  undertaking  fresh  thinking  about  curriculum:   the  first  set  working  with  significant  terms,  concepts,  and  themes;  the  second  set  working   with  exemplars  or  models.  Specifically,  I  advocate  critically  examining  terms  and   terminological  pairs  of  several  types;  identifying  from  local  sources  (institution  and   faculty)  generative  concepts  as  themes  that  can  cross  and  connect  different  levels  of                                                                                                                   4  See,  for  example,  Victor  Kaptelinin  and  Bonnie  A.  Nardi,  Acting  with  Technology:  Activity  Theory  and   Interaction  Design  (Cambridge:  MIT  P,  2006);  and  David  Russell,  “Rethinking  Genre  in  School  and  Society:  An   Activity  Theory  Analysis,”  Written  Communication  14.4  (1997):  504-­‐54.     13   curriculum  or  types  of  courses;  and  identifying  exemplars  or  models  in  courses  whose   ideas  or  approaches  are  portable  or  more  broadly  applicable.  In  identifying  examples  that   implement  these  strategies,  I  will  try  to  suggest  how  these  can  become  practical,  concrete   tools  for  accomplishing  curricular  thinking,  design,  and  change.         Concepts,  Terms,  and  Themes     1.  Institutional  themes     As  I  pointed  out  in  my  lecture,  there  are  clear  institutional  themes  that  manifest  themselves   in  the  courses,  curriculum,  and  overall  ethos  of  the  RWC  department.  It  is  useful  to  make   these  themes  the  object  of  critical  consciousness,  because  they  are  both  productive  and   also  subject  to  certain  dangers.  The  institutional  tension  between  access  and  excellence,  for   example,  is  susceptible  in  RWC  to  being  articulated  as  a  contrast  between  curricula  (first-­‐ year  vs.  major  or  graduate  studies)  or  between  different  student  groups  and  educational   goals  within  each  of  the  programs.  Thus  “access”  may  be  interpreted  as  a  “service”  mission   in  the  Tutorial  Centre  or  certain  sections  and  functions  of  Academic  Writing,  while   “excellence”  is  attributed  to  the  ideals  for  scholarship  and  knowledge-­‐making  embodied  in   the  major,  graduate  studies,  and  faculty  publication.  Or,  again,  this  tension  could  be  aligned   with  different  student  groups  within  Academic  Writing,  or  with  the  differences  between   students  preparing  for  careers  in  Creative  Communications  in  the  joint  major  and  those   preparing  for  graduate  school.  As  the  university  increases  attention  to  research,  the  same   pairing  could  be  simplistically  equated  with  teaching  and  research  as  competing  values.       The  antidote  to  these  kinds  of  reductions  and  equations  is  to  understand  that  any   particular  responsibility  taken  on  by  faculty,  and  any  instructional  site  in  the  department   can  embody  commitments  to  access  and  also  strive  for  excellence  in  teaching  and  student   learning.  Tutoring,  for  example,  and  other  writing  centre  functions  are  not  only  for   underprepared  students.  Further,  students  with  great  potential,  motive,  and  determination   appear  in  every  demographic  group,  and  high  faculty  expectations  can  nurture  them.   However,  it  is  important  to  acknowledge  honestly  that  sometimes  these  commitments  can   compete  with  one  another  and  greatly  complicate  particular  tasks  and  situations,  as,  for   example,  when  a  course  or  program  enrolls  students  who  differ  dramatically  in  their   preparation,  expectations,  and  divergent  goals.  The  department  needs  to  confront  directly   the  reality  that  these  different  responsibilities  can  compete  for  faculty  time  and  energy  in   particular  instances,  and  devise  ways  to  meet  the  challenges  presented  by  student   heterogeneity  at  each  of  its  program  levels.       Other  important  institutional  pairs  manifest  in  the  department’s  work  include  oppositions   and  relations  between  academy/institution  and  city  (or  communities)  and  local  and  global   contexts.  Each  of  these  is  highly  relevant  to  the  department’s  work  in  both  teaching  and   scholarship.  The  ways  that  these  pairs  engage  relationships  of  difference,  contrast,   alienation,  cooperation,  separation,  linkage,  complementarity,  synergy,  and  so  on  have  very   concrete  expressions  in  situations  like  these,  for  example:         •  A  teacher  offers  a  version  of  Academic  Writing  on-­‐site  at  Urban  Circle  in  the  North  End     14   •  Students  undertake  an  assignment  to  “compose  our  Winnipeg”   •  Tutors  or  teachers  work  with  “new  Canadians”  or  aboriginal  students  who  have  never   used  a  computer  before,  alongside  international  students  or  immigrants  who  define   “post-­‐national”  identities  through  digital,  cross-­‐cultural  communication.5       There  are  other,  less  remarked  institutional  themes  whose  possibilities  and  connections  to   the  curriculum  might  be  explored  in  future  planning  by  the  department.  Among  those  I   noticed  in  the  Strategic  Plan  Update  are  an  ideal  of  sustainability  as  “the  paradigm  that   connects  learning  with  access,  economic  viability,  community  interaction,  and  social   commitment”  (echoed  thematically  in  U.S.  composition  studies)  and  the  related  concept  of   “a  traditional  way  of  going  forward”  as  a  strategy  for  responding  to  change.  Another  is  the   ancient  “tension  between  University  and  College”  (think  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge).   Winnipeg’s  evolving  approach  reminds  me  of  the  New  American  College/University   movement  in  the  U.S.,  which  attempts  to  combine  the  scope  and  variety  of  a  university   education  (offering  research  opportunities  and  career  preparation)  with  the  intimate   atmosphere  and  student  engagement  of  a  liberal  arts  college.6               In  reflecting  on  particular  curricular  choices  and  issues,  faculty  should  realize  that  these   are  embodying  in  concrete  terms  both  the  potential  and  the  tensions  created  by  these   commitments.         2.  “Foundational  terms  and  concepts”  in  the  RWC  curriculum     In  catalog  copy  about  the  Rhetoric  and  Communications  major,  I  encountered  the  claim   that  Academic  Writing  offers  students  the  “foundational  terms  and  concepts”  needed  for   upper  level  courses.  I  have  been  wondering  ever  since  to  what  degree  the  department   faculty  is  consciously  aware  of  having  a  common  vocabulary  of  “foundational  concepts,”   which  implies  a  sense  that  the  curriculum  is  held  together  in  part  by  such  concepts  and   envisions  some  kind  of  development  in  their  use  over  subsequent  levels.  I  think  this  would   be  a  provocative  and  useful    topic  for  inquiry,  both  to  discover  what  terms  appear  to  be   “foundational”  across  curricula  (for  example,  “audience”),  and  also  to  explore  their   meanings,  contexts  of  application,  variations,  sources,  and  histories  of  usage  in  the   program.  For  example,  how  widely  shared  are  particular  terms?  Which  are  more  rare  or   recently  introduced?  When  a  teacher  introduces  a  term  (e.g.,  Bakhinian’s  “chronotope”)  or   updates  a  canon  (e.g.,  memory  as  “public  memory”),  does  it  spread  to  other  courses?  How?   Can  this  work  backwards,  with  terms  introduced  in  advanced  courses  migrating  back  to   first-­‐year  writing?  Do  terms  become  more  complex,  historicized,  or  theorized  in  later   courses?  Do  students  who  encounter  foundational  terms  in  earlier  courses  actually  retain                                                                                                                   5  See  Iswari  Pandey,  “Researching  (with)  the  Postnational  ‘Other’:  Ethics,  Methodologies,  and  Qualitative   Studies  of  Digital  Literacy.”  In  Digital  Writing  Research:  Technologies,  Methodologies,  and  Ethical  Issues,”  Heidi   McKee  and  Danielle  DeVoss.  eds.  (Cresskill,  NJ:  Hampton  P,  2007)  107-­‐25.   6  See  the  New  American  Colleges  &  Universities  website,  http://www.anac.org/,  with  the  motto  “Integrating   Liberal  Arts,  Professional  Studies,  and  Civic  Responsibility.”     15   knowledge  and  use  of  these  concepts  or  strategies  in  subsequent  courses—in  RWC?  In   courses  in  other  disciplines?         Some  primary  source  materials  I  looked  at  with  this  question  in  mind  include  program   descriptions  and  materials  on  the  web  and  in  the  catalog,  especially  learning  objectives  and   outcomes;  teachers’  individual  course  descriptions;  and  syllabi  and  assignments.    These   provide  strong  evidence  for  what  I  have  said  about  the  dominant  role  of  rhetorical   perspectives  in  teaching  various  symbolic  practices,  centered  on  written  language  but   inclusive  also  of  speech  and  images  (especially  as  objects  of  critical  analysis)  and  conscious   of  the  role  of  technologies  in  mediating  communication.       It  would  be  an  interesting  experiment  to  solicit  from  students  in  their  3rd  or  4th  year  of  the   major  all  the  rhetorical  concepts  or  terms  that  they  can  think  of,  and  then  compare  lists  for   overlapping  (i.e.,  most  commonly  named)  terms.  I  have  tried  this  experiment  with  teachers   in  a  program,  starting  with  individual  lists;  moving  into  small  groups  to  determine  common   terms  and  outliers;  then  comparing  results  between  groups.  (I  didn’t  worry  about  whether   or  not  the  terms  were  really  “rhetorical”—it  was  sufficient  that  they  thought  so.)  My  point   was  to  demonstrate  that  teachers  had  acquired,  and  taught  largely  unconsciously,  a  broad   shared  “programmatic”  vocabulary  of  rhetorical  concepts  and  terms.  This  experiment   won’t  get  at  concepts  that  students  or  teachers  don’t  recognize  as  rhetorical,  but  such  a  list   would  provide  an  important  window  onto  actual  usage  and  learning  as  compared  to  the   aspirational  language  of  formal  curriculum  documents.       Many  deeply  foundational  terms  for  each  program  or  level  of  curriculum  are  used   uncritically  by  the  faculty  and,  therefore,  by  students,  precisely  because  they  are  so   indispensable  that  they  have  become  naturalized  as  “givens”  that  need  not  be  defined  or   defended.  Curricular  reviews  of  Academic  Writing  and  the  Rhetoric  and  Communications   major  present  an  opportunity  to  look  at  such  terms  with  the  assumption  that  their   meanings  are  actually  multiple,  ambiguous,  and  subject  to  disciplinary  and  public   controversy.  I  will  have  more  to  say  about  these  in  later  sections;  suffice  it  to  say  here  that   all  three  naming  terms  in  the  curriculum  merit  such  scrutiny,  in  such  contexts  as  “academic   writing,”  plural  “rhetorics,”  and  “creative  communications,”  as  does  the  concept  of  genre   deployed  in  Academic  Writing.       3.  Organizing  terms  in  RWC  programs     Here  I  want  to  emphasize  not  so  much  the  need  to  examine  these  individual  terms  critically   (although  that  is  necessary)  as  to  point  out  that  certain  concepts  are  constitutive  of  the   very  structure  of  these  programs.  They  therefore  offer  a  starting  point  for  analyzing   particular  problems  and  issues  as  practical  consequences  of  these  structures.     The  current  Academic  Writing  curriculum  (and,  by  extension,  the  Tutorial  Centre)   embodies  an  unacknowledged  and  underexplored  conflict  between  a  concept  of  “academic   writing”  as  a  teachable  body  of  general  knowledge  and  the  idea  that  writing  is  genre-­‐ specific  and  best  learned  in  context.  The  undergraduate  major  in  Rhetoric  and   Communications  (including  students  pursuing  the  Joint  Communication  degree)  is  more     16   explicitly  structured  by  the  co-­‐existence  and  tensions  between  the  academic  or  liberal  arts   orientation  of  the  primary  degree  and  the  practical  emphasis  and  career  goals  of  the   Creative  Communications  program  that  is  linked  to  the  RC  curriculum.  In  the  case  of  the   major,  these  tensions  are  played  out  on  the  bodies  of  students  enrolled  in  the  different   programs.  Both  oppositions  are  built  into  the  very  design  of  the  programs  and  won’t  go   away  absent  a  complete  redesign  or  abandonment  of  fundamental  premises.  While  the  M.A   degree  is  still  in  the  proposal  stage,  it  may  also  turn  out  to  be  structured  partly  by  versions   of  the  academy/community  or  academic/practical  binaries,  as  expressed  in  the  alternative   career  paths  it  will  accommodate.       4.  Generative  themes  in  faculty  work     Faculty  scholarship  and  curricular  materials  are  an  undervalued  source  of  ideas  for   energizing  and  integrating  the  curriculum  through  multiple  threads  (rather  than  forcing  a   single  vision  on  the  whole).  In  this  section  they  were  my  source  for  what  I’m  calling   “generative  themes.”  I  found  examples  through  my  readings  of  these  materials,  discussed   with  faculty  in  the  reading  group,  interviews,  and  other  meetings.  What  makes  them   potentially  “generative”  themes?  First,  though  these  concepts  may  derive  from  or  invite   application  to  one  curricular  level,  they  seem  generalizable  or  transportable  to  other  levels.   Sometimes  they  suggest  concrete  pedagogical  designs  or  experiments;  other  times  they   offer  topics,  problems,  questions,  or  perspectives  to  explore  in  various  settings.  Second,   they  enable  faculty  and  students  to  connect  their  work  with  disciplinary  scholarship  and   instruction  in  other  settings.     •  “Canadianizing”:    I  came  across  this  idea  (new  to  me)  in  the  context  of  a  textbook,  Across   the  Disciplines:  Academic  Writing  and  Reading,  written  by  Jaqueline  McLeod  Rogers  and   Catherine  Taylor,  which  substituted  Canadian  for  U.S.  authors  in  many  of  the  anthologized   articles.7  This  text  is  appropriate  for  a  first-­‐year  class  like  Academic  Writing.  At  the  same   time,  I  noticed  that  most  students  in  my  meeting  with  majors  seemed  unaware  even  of  the   existence  of  Canadian  scholars  and  international  bodies  of  scholarship  in  writing  studies,   composition,  and  rhetoric.  My  suggestion  is  that  faculty  should  Canadianize  their  selections   of  readings  at  various  levels  of  curriculum,  but  especially  in  the  major,  with  the  specific   intention  of  acquainting  students  with  the  fact  that  writing  studies,  composition,   professional  communication,  genre  studies,  and  rhetoric,  as  well  as  media  studies  and   cultural  studies,  have  representation  in  Canadian  scholarship  and  graduate  programs.       •  “liminal  spaces”:  This  concept  was  suggested  by  Tracy  Whalen’s  article  “Rhetoric  as   Liminal  Practice,”  which  begins  with  this  statement:  “In  liminal  spaces  we  find  ourselves  on   a  threshold  (or  limen),  caught  between  practices,  cultures,  frames  for  knowing  the  world,   and  modes  of  communication—between,  for  instance,  the  divine  and  secular,  university   and  workplace,  private  and  public,  linguistic  and  non-­‐linguistic.”8  Liminal  space/time                                                                                                                   7  Jaqueline  McLeod  Rogers  and  Catherine  G.  Taylor,  Across  the  Disciplines:  Academic  Writing  and  Reading   (Toronto:  Pearson  Canada,  2011).   8  Rhetor  1  (2004)  <cssr-­‐scer.ca/rhetor>     17   (especially  as  a  specifically  rhetorical  concept)  offers  one  interesting  interpretation  and   way  of  exploring  the  many  thematic  pairs  that  characterize  the  university,  the  department,   student  experience,  the  city,  perhaps  even  Canadian  character.  Living  in  and  near   numerous  new  buildings  on  the  edge  of  the  campus,  I  was  particularly  struck  by  the   physical  expression  of  liminal  spaces  between  university  and  city  that  have  been  so   transformed  by  recent  building  and  the  various  programs  through  which  the  city  and   university  interpenetrate  each  other  in  buildings  and  centres  where  different  cultures   meet.  Liminality  is  also  an  apt  description  of  a  moment  when  the  department  is  on  the   threshold  of  change  and  new  opportunities,  between  history  and  future.  It  suggests  to  me   the  importance  of  valorizing  innovation,  risk,  and  invention,  but  also  respecting  and   preserving  the  department’s  traditions  and  unique  history.       •  “critical”:  Across  the  Disciplines  begins  with  a  refreshing  attempt  to  define  “critical   thinking,”  the  buzz  word  of  so  many  curricula,  as  not  negative  thinking,  but  “reasoning  as   opposed  to  guessing  or  just  believing  what  you  are  told”(1-­‐2).  It  goes  on  to  specify  critical   thinking  as  particular  disciplinary  ways  of  thinking  or  reasoning  well,  manifested  in  key   concepts,  questions,  and  methods.  I  was  reminded  of  James  Crosswhite’s  concept  of   “written  reasoning,”  in  his  brilliant  and  underappreciated  book  The  Rhetoric  of  Reason:   Writing  and  the  Attractions  of  Argument,  which  “reconstructs”  argumentation  in  analyses  of   claiming,  questioning,  and  conflict  (among  other  things).9  As  a  faculty  reading,  this  would   suggest  how  that  concept  could  be  elaborated  pedagogically  (beyond  first-­‐year  writing).   Later,  the  textbook  introduces  a  contrasting  conception  of  “critical”  in  a  later  chapter  as  a   “parallel  method  of  critical  thinking”:  “This  method  is  ‘critical’  in  the  sense  of  ‘critical  social   theory’:  its  focus  is  primarily  on  power  rather  than  on  ‘truth’.  .  .  .  Critical  literacy  involves   becoming  aware  of  the  ‘box’  constructed  by  the  text  itself  (sometimes  called  ‘reading   against  the  grain’  of  a  text)  by  exposing  the  text’s  politics  and  drawing  attention  to  its   oppressive  effects”  (104).  I  later  saw  this  second  concept  of  “critical”  articulated   pedagogically  in  Catherine  Taylor’s  course  “Critical  Studies  of  Discourse.”       The  notion  of  being  “critical”  is  crucial  to  many  contemporary  theories,  pedagogies,  and   research  methods,  as  illustrated  in  terms  and  concepts  like  critical  thinking,  critical   research,  critical  discourse  analysis,  critical  consciousness,  sometimes  aligned  with  and   sometimes  opposed  to  “rhetorical”  thinking,  research,  analysis,  consciousness.  It  also   enters  into  the  curriculum  in  another  pairing  that  deserves  thoughtful  attention—of     “critical”  versus  “productive”  orientations.  How  does  the  faculty  make  choices  in  balancing   between  teaching  writing,  rhetoric,  and  communications  as  critical  activities  and  analyses   (reading)  and  as  productive  activities  (writing,  creating  multimedia  products),  educating   students  to  be  both  “critics”  and  “crafters”  of  language  (and  image)?  For  example,  what  is   conveyed  by  introducing  rhetoric  to  majors  first  through  a  course  labeled  “rhetorical   criticism,”  given  that  rhetoric  developed  first  as  a  productive  art?  Does  the  curriculum   adequately  address  multimedia  production?                                                                                                                       9  James  Crosswhite,  The  Rhetoric  of  Reason:  Writing  and  the  Attractions  of  Argument  (Madison,  WI:  U  of     Wisconsin  P,  1996).       18   •  “facilitas”:  This  classical  term  has  been  identified  in  curricular  materials  and  articles  by   Brian  Turner  and  Judith  Kearns  as  a  core  rhetorical  concept  in  the  curriculum.  It  is  an   interesting  choice  that  connects  into  a  broad  body  of  contemporary  work  that  deals  with   the  question  of  what  it  means  to  be  able  or  skilled  as  a  form  of  knowledge,  and  how  such   abilities  are  learned  so  that  they  can  be  applied  in  novel  situations.  This  work  is  found  in   studies  of  reflective  practice;10  adaptability,  flexibility,  and  judgment  as  “dispositions”;11   and  transfer.12    These  discussions  are  pertinent  to  the  question  of  whether  and  how   “academic  writing”  can  be  taught  in  a  general  manner  that  students  can  translate  into   writing  in  disciplinary  classes.       •  “place”  and  “identity”:  These  concepts  are  obviously  thematic  in  the  department’s   curricular  materials,  both  independently  and,  frequently,  together,  especially  in  reference   to  Canadian  identity.  The  faculty  can  usefully  situate  this  work  in  the  scholarly  literature   and  pedagogy  of  rhetoric,  composition,  writing  studies,  literacy,  and  so  on,  which  share   these  preoccupations.  Place  (and  space)  are  explored  in  areas  like  eco-­‐composition,  global   and  international  vs.  local  perspectives,  and  environmental  writing.13  The  formation  of   identity  in  academic  writing  and  learning  is  widely  discussed  in  international  writing   studies  as  well  as  in  U.S.  composition  studies.14       •  “performance,”  “delivery”:  These  topics,  addressed  in  courses  and  publications  by  Tracy   Whalen,  attracted  my  attention  partly  because  they  relate  to  speech,  and  this  department  is   distinctive  among  writing  departments  in  its  attention  to  speech  and  orality.  These  themes,   like  place  and  identity,  are  significant  topics  in  contemporary  scholarship;  for  example,  on   the  intersection  of  rhetoric  and  performance15  and  on  recuperating  the  canon  of  delivery.16     Exemplars                                                                                                                     10  Donald  A.  Schon,  Educating  the  Reflective  Practitioner  (San  Francisco:  Jossey-­‐Boss,  1987).   11  David  Perkins,  Eileen  Jay,  and  Shari  Tishman,  “Beyond  Abilities:  A  Dispositional  Theory  of  Thinking,”   Merrill-­‐Palmer  Quarterly  39  (1993):  1-­‐21.   12  Doug  Brent,  “Transfer,  Transformation,  and  Rhetorical  Knowledge:  Insights  from  Transfer  Theory,”   forthcoming  in  the  Journal  of  Business  and  Technical  Writing,  Fall,  2011.  Available  on  the  web.   13  See  Peter  Simonson’s  recent  keynote  address  to  the  Rhetoric  Society  of  America’s  Summer  Conference,   “Our  Places  in  a  Rhetorical  Century,”  available  at  the  RSA  Blogora,  http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/.     14  Recent  contributions  on  the  topic  include  Stanton  Wortham,  Learning  Identity:  The  Joint  Emergence  of   Social  Identification  and  Academic  Learning  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  UP,  2006);  and  Roz  Ivanic,  Writing  and   Identity:  The  Discoursal  Construction  of  Identity  in  Academic  Writing  (Amsterdam:  John  Benjamins,  1998).   15  For  example,  Stephen  Olbrys  Gencarella  and  Phaedra  C.  Pezzullo,  Readings  on  Rhetoric  and  Performance   (State  College,  PA:  Strata,  2010).   16  For  example,  Lindal  Buchanan,  Regendering  Delivery:  The  Fifth  Canon  and  Antebellum  Women  Rhetors.   Carbondale:  Southern  Illinois  P,  2005.     19   Here  the  strategy  is  to  look  at  courses  or  sections  that  introduce  key  concepts  or  practices   that  have  the  potential  to  spread  through  the  curriculum.  Often  they  will  be  foregrounded   only  for  a  period  of  time,  so  that  others  can  borrow,  test,  and  optionally  incorporate  good   ideas  into  their  own  teaching,  and  then  the  teaching  community  will  move  on  to  new  ones.   But  sometimes  they  can  merit  consideration  as  permanent,  signature  features  of  the   program.  Here  are  several  examples  I  noted.     Research  methods.  The  key  concept  of  inquiry,  if  it  goes  beyond  the  “research  paper,”  tends   to  be  specified  in  rhetoric  and  writing  curricula  today  as  “critical  thinking”  or  rhetorical   analysis  in  the  context  of  reading.  But  the  department’s  offerings  of  courses  that   incorporate  more  varied  research  methods,  like  ethnography,  oral  history,  discourse   analysis,  or  arts-­‐based  methods,  along  with  the  new  research  methods  course  in  the  major   curriculum,  suggest  the  potential  for  original  undergraduate  research  to  become  a   signature  feature  of  the  curriculum  (including  first-­‐year  writing).  There  are  conferences,   books,  and  local  and  national  journals  devoted  to  a  pedagogy  centered  on  undergraduate   research.17  Besides  courses,  faculty  might  consider  involving  interested  undergraduates  in   their  own  scholarly  research  or  offering  them  opportunities  to  pursue  such  research   independently.  An  emphasis  on  undergraduate  research  as  an  activity  fits  into  experiential   learning  approaches  as  well  as  the  university’s  enhanced  attention  to  research.       Experiential  learning.  The  Writing  Partnerships  Practicum  designed  by  Jennifer  Clary-­‐ Lemon  could  be  a  model  or  inspiration  for  developing  a  significant  strand  of  experiential   learning  at  different  levels  of  intensity  within  the  entire  curriculum.  This    could  be   integrated  with  a  focus  on  undergraduate  research  in  diverse  ways,  since  the  practicum   calls  for  “writing  and  research  expertise.”  In  participating  in  the  university’s  emphasis  on   experiential  learning,  it’s  important  to  give  these  experiences  the  distinctive  stamp  of  this   department  through  inclusion  of  critical  readings  and  reflections  combined  with  practical   skills,  production,  and  action.  This  theme  articulates  all  levels  of  the  curriculum,  including   the  proposed  M.A.     Translating  academic  knowledge  or  expertise  for  various  publics.  Barry  Nolan  presented  to   the  reading  group  and  discussed  with  me  an  approach  to  teaching  linked  science  classes   that  has  broad  interest  and  application.18  He  asked  students  to  compare  articles  by   scientists  with  popular  articles  by  nonscientists  written  for  the  lay  public.  Some  of  the   issues  this  activity  raises  are  discussed  in  scholarly  terms  (with  respect  to  science)  by   Jeanne  Fahnestock,  as  a  question  about  the  “rhetorical  life  of  scientific  facts.”19  Her  article   addresses  in  part  the  question  of  “the  impact  of  science  reporting  on  public  deliberation.”                                                                                                                   17    See,  for  example,  “Valuing  and  Supporting  Undergraduate  Research,”  a  special  issue  of  New  Directions  for   Teaching  and  Learning  93  (Spring,  2003);  and  Laurie  Grobman  and  Joyce  Kinkead,  Undergraduate  Research  in   English  Studies,  (Urbana:  NCTE,  2010),  in  which  Jaqueline  McLeod  Rogers  published  an  article.   18  Barry  Nolan,  Report  on  the  Academic  Writing  Link  with  Kinesiology.  University  of  Winnipeg,  May,  2011.   19  “Accommodating  Science:  The  Rhetorical  Life  of  Scientific  Facts.”  Written  Communication  15  (1998):  275-­‐ 96.  Other  scholars  might  call  this  practice  “re-­‐mediation.”       20   This  pedagogical  strategy,  originating  in  Academic  Writing,  opens  up  up  a  set  of  significant   questions  for  the  whole  curriculum,  about  how  academic  knowledge  and  expertise  is   communicated  to  various  publics  more  or  less  successfully,  sometimes  by  experts   themselves  and  sometimes  by  translators.  Graduates  in  ordinary  life  and  as  citizens  have  to   know  how  to  interpret  and  evaluate  expert  knowledge  in  order  to  put  it  to  use  (for   example,  as  medical  patients)  or  to  make  choices  about  it  as  voters  or  decision  makers.  As   professionals  they  will  almost  certainly  have  to  communicate  expert  knowledge  to  others   who  are  not  experts  in  their  own  particular  area.  As  “creative  communicators”  some  may   specialize  in  translating  legal,  bureaucratic,  scientific,  medical,  and  other  knowledge  for   popular  reading  and  use.  These  tasks  present  important  compositional,  rhetorical,  and   ethical  issues  that  could  energize  particular  courses  and  become  topics  of  conversation   with  faculty  in  other  disciplines.       Losses  and  Gaps     At  any  point  in  a  department’s  life  there  are  losses  and  gaps:  losses  of  important  ideas  and   earlier  practices  that  have  been  forgotten  or  faded  away,  but  could  be  recuperated;  and   gaps,  where  current  topics  and  approaches,  while  sporadically  present,  are  not  being   robustly  pursued  and  supported  throughout  the  curriculum.  A  department  can  always  find   fresh  ideas  by  revisiting  its  curriculum  through  this  analytic  lens,  and  gaps,  in  particular,   may  also  suggest  possible  directions  for  future  hiring.  Here  are  a  few  that  I  noticed:     Losses.  1)  writing  across  the  curriculum/writing  in  the  disciplines—greatly   underdeveloped  compared  to  original  conceptions     2)  an  expansive  concept  of  the  Tutorial  Centre,  including  the  very  successful   apprenticeship  model  that  was  used  in  the  original  centre,  with  undergraduates  acting  as   teachers  of  tutors  in  the  context  of  community  learning     Gaps.  1)  histories  and  historical  perspective   2)  digital  writing,  new  media,  multimedia,  especially  courses  in  production   3)  collaborative  writing   4)  creative  nonfiction  and  its  relation  to  academic  writing   5)  professional  and  technical  communication.       One  message  of  this  section  on  themes  and  terms  is  that  the  RWC  faculty,  operating  as  a   teaching  community  and  a  kind  of  think  tank,  have  only  to  look  around  them  at  their  own   institution  and  their  own  scholarship  and  teaching  materials  to  discover  myriad  ideas  and   concepts  to  explore.  These  provide  ample,  rich  intellectual  resources  for  developing  the   constructively  critical  perspective  and  the  integrative  connections  they  are  seeking.  At  the   same  time,  they  will  learn  more  about  how  the  department’s  own  teaching  and  research  fits   into  broader  Canadian  and  international  trends,  movements,  scholarly  communities,  and   bodies  of  work.  By  making  these  external  connections,  faculty  can  draw  on  this  work  more   explicitly  and  comprehensively  and  make  their  own  contributions  more  visible.       21              Levels  of  the  Curriculum:  The  Major,  the  First-­‐Year  Program,  and  the  M.A  Proposal     In  moving  to  practical  advice,  I’ll  begin  by  offering  some  general  principles  that  need  to  be   adapted  to  the  very  different  situations  and  “liminal  moments”  of  the  three  levels  of  the   curriculum.  These  differences  mean,  as  I’ll  suggest  in  discussing  processes  of   implementation,  that  each  level  requires  a  different  time  frame  for  assessing  and   undertaking  potential  revisions  in  its  curricular  design  and  implementation.  At  the  same   time,  this  work  offers  the  opportunity  to  strengthen  the  horizontal  (thematic)  and  vertical   (developmental)  articulations  of  the  whole  curriculum.       Here  are  some  principles  that  emerged  in  the  course  of  this  study:       1.  Take  a  bottom-­‐up  approach.  Before  making  decisions,  conduct  research  to  find  out  what   is  going  on  in  the  curriculum  as  it  is  actually  practiced:  how  variable  its  content  and   pedagogical  strategies  are,  how  it  is  experienced  and  valued  by  students,  how  well  it   responds  to  needs  articulated  by  various  stakeholders,  how  it  compares  to  what  is   represented  in  syllabi  and  curriculum  descriptions,  how  well  placement  is  working,  etc.20   Develop  ways  to  gather  basic  data  that  is  not  easily  available  now  (e.g.,  how  many  students   take  Academic  Writing  later  than  required,  how  many  majors  there  are,  how  often  courses   are  offered,  alumni  placements,  etc.).  Document  the  extracurriculum—mentoring  and   advising,  tutoring,  internships,  student  organizations  related  to  the  curriculum,  etc.  Talk  to   students,  teachers,  and  a  broader  range  of  stakeholders  inside  and  outside  the  institution.   Investigate  thoroughly,  as  well,  institutional  facts  and  contextual  information  (e.g.,  about   funding,  administrative  priorities,  faculty  hiring  opportunities,  potential  partnerships)  that   are  relevant  to  your  decisions.       This  primary,  local  research  is  crucial,  but  for  some  parts  of  the  curriculum  faculty  will  also   beneft  from  comparative  research  and  readings  to  situate  its  own  programs  in  relation  to   other  programs  in  Canada  or  the  U.S.       Common  research  methods  include  surveys,  interviews,  focus  groups,  document  collection   and  analysis,  institutional  research,  conversations  with  various  stakeholders  and  among   teachers,  website  research,  and  faculty  discussion  groups  on  relevant  scholarship.       A  corollary  to  this  principle  is                                                                                                                       20  I  am  thinking  here  of  the  concept  of  curriculum  developed  in  Research  as  a  Basis  for  Teaching:  Readings   from  the  Work  of  Lawrence  Stenhouse,  Jean  Ruddick  and  David  Hopkins  ,  eds.  (London:  Heinemann,  1985):   “Curricula  are  hypothetical  procedures  testable  only  in  classrooms”  (68).  “The  curriculum  problem.  .  .  is  that   of  relating  ideas  to  realities,  the  curriculum  in  the  mind  or  on  paper  to  the  curriculum  in  the  classroom”  (62).       22   2.  Employ  “backwards  design.”  Develop  goals  based  on  this  research  and  work  backwards  to   design  or  redesign  courses,  curricula,  and  learning  environments  to  meet  them.  Learning   goals  for  students  are  primary,  but  they  are  not  the  only  ones;  and  curriculum  design  must   also  take  into  account  various  constraints.  Considerations  might  include,  for  example,   accommodating  faculty  interests  and  availability  for  teaching,  responding  to  funding  or   research  opportunities,  attracting  a  different  group  of  students  (e.g.,  dual  majors),  or   making  the  department  visible  on  the  Canadian  or  international  scene.  Be  prepared  to   modify  both  goals  and  curriculum  dynamically  as  the  programs  evolve  and  circumstances   change.     3.  Address  the  heterogeneity  of  student  populations.  This  involves  dual  goals:  to  meet  the   needs  of  students  with  varying  backgrounds  or  experience  and  to  help  teachers  deal  with   the  challenges  this  diversity  poses.  Doing  so  may  involve  various  strategies  from  placement   to  course  design  to  faculty  development  programs.     4.  Develop  and  highlight  signature  features  of  programs  and  of  the  curriculum  as  a  whole.       5.  Clarify  and  make  visible  the  terms,  concepts,  and  tensions  among  perspectives  that   structure  the  programs,  and  work  to  make  them  productive.  One  strategy  is  to  make  such   problems  into  a  topic  of  inquiry  for  both  students  and  teachers,  both  as  subject  matter  in   the  curriculum  and  as  a  basis  for  making  curricular  and  course  design  decisions.         Below,  these  are  specified  and  adapted  for  each  level  of  the  curriculum.         THE  UNDERGRADUATE  MAJOR  IN  RHETORIC  AND  COMMUNICATIONS     I  begin  with  the  major  for  several  reasons.  Relative  to  first-­‐year  writing  and  to  an  M.A  that   is  still  in  the  proposal  stage,  it  is  both  young  and  thriving.  Because  of  the  department’s   emphasis  on  faculty  autonomy,  and  because  of  the  nature  of  a  major,  it  is  there  that  the   department’s  faculty  scholarship  and  teacher  inventiveness  are  most  fully  deployed,   visible,  and  diversified.  So  the  major  functions  as  the  laboratory  of  ideas  for  the  whole   curriculum.  Yet,  because  students  demand  that  a  major  “make  sense,”  the  faculty  must  give   it  coherence  in  the  way  they  describe  it,  map  it  with  requirements  or  sequences,  thematize   issues  and  problems,  and  implement  it  in  specific  courses.       Analysis     By  all  accounts  the  major  has  been  successful  and  popular.  Yet  both  teachers  and  students   voice  some  concerns  and,  more  important,  see  unexploited  possibilities  for  enrichment.     The  immediate  exigence  for  addressing  these  issues  during  my  visit  was  the  Curriculum   Committee’s  effort  to  determine  requirements  based  on  course  groupings,  which  bogged   down  in  the  terminological  confusions  of  rhetoric,  writing,  and  communications.  But  other   issues  and  needs,  as  well  as  exciting  possibilities,  emerged  in  my  meeting  with  majors.  That   is  also  where  it  became  clear  how  much  the  distinctive  integrative  design  of  the  program   needs  to  be  more  clearly  explained  and  consistently  implemented.  Finally,  it  was  evident     23   that  the  faculty  needs  to  think  more  explicitly  about  how  to  accommodate  and  deal  with  the   mixed  student  constituencies  created  by  the  Joint  degree  with  Creative  Communications.     In  addressing  all  of  these  matters,  I  suggest  that  the  faculty  adopt  (and  adapt  to  its  own   purposes)  the  concept  of  “backwards  design.”21  The  idea  is  to  work  backwards  from  the   goals  or  purposes  of  the  curriculum  to  the  means  for  learning,  whatever  they  might  be.   Instead  of  a  priori  categories,  decisions  about  requirements  and  courses  follow  from   decisions  about  goals.  Learning  goals  are  central,  but  they  are  not  necessarily  uniform  for   different  student  groups  in  the  program;  and  they  are  not  the  only  kind  of  goals  to  be  taken   into  account.  For  example,  the  faculty  should  be  asking  questions  like  this:  Do  we  want  to   expand  the  size  of  the  major?  This  might  imply  attracting  new  groups  of  students  and   responding  to  their  needs.  Are  we  interested  in  increasing  access  to  the  major  through   special  supports  for  particular  students?  Or  do  we  want  to  sustain  (or  even  cap)  the  major   at  a  certain  size  and  shift  the  balance  among  different  types  of  students?  What  balance   among  the  heterogeneous  groups  (academic,  Joint  Program,  and  others)  is  desirable?   Realistic?     The  department  does  have  a  set  of  learning  objectives  and  outcomes  posted  on  its  website.   However,  it  is  not  clear  what  role  they  have  played  in  the  ongoing  design  and  revision  of   the  major  curriculum,  or  whether  they  are  being  used  as  a  basis  for  measuring  its  success.   At  the  least,  they  didn’t  appear  to  be  part  of  the  conversation  that  was  guiding  decisions   about  regrouping  courses  for  requirement.  Nor  did  the  students  themselves  seem  to  use   these  as  reference  points  for  understanding  the  curriculum  and  evaluating  their   experiences.     Without  implying  any  negative  judgment  about  the  current  objectives  and  outcomes,  I   suggest  that  they  be  reviewed  for  possible  revision  and  additions  only  after  a  process  of   careful  research  to  find  out  more  about  the  needs  and  desires  of  students  and  graduates  of   the  major  themselves,  as  well  as  those  of  various  other  stakeholders;  their  perceptions  and   judgments  of  how  the  current  curriculum  and  pedagogical  approaches  meet  their  own   goals;  and  their  suggestions  for  improvement  or  change.  I  include  among  the  stakeholders   the  RWC  faculty  itself,  as  well  as  students  who  take  a  minor  or  certificate;  faculty  in  other   disciplines  who  might  take  an  interest  in  the  major  (see  below);  faculty  in  graduate   programs  that  alumni  have  attended  or  might  attend;  and  potential  employers.  In  addition,   research  should  include  comparisons  with  majors  elsewhere  and  investigation  of  trends  in   the  development  of  undergraduate  majors,  both  in  Canada  and  the  U.S.22                                                                                                                       21  Grant  Wiggins  and  Jay  McTighe.  Understanding  by  Design,  2nd  ed.  (Alexandria,  VA:  Association  for   Supervision  and  Curriculum  Development,  2005).   22  See  Greg  A.  Giberson  and  Thomas  A.  Moriarty,  What  We  Are  Becoming:  Developments  in  Undergraduate   Writing  Majors  (Logan:  Utah  State  UP,  2010);  and  The  Writing  Major,  ed.  Heidi  Estrem,  et  al.,  a  special  issue  of   Composition  Studies  35.1  (2007).    A  committee  of  the  Conference  on  College  Composition  and  Communication   has  posted  a  list  of  program  titles  and  requirements  for  such  majors  at   http://www.ncte.org/cccc/committees/majorrhetcomp.       24   Students  were  eager  to  collaborate  in  the  kind  of  programmatic  research  I  am   recommending,  as  evidenced  by  the  participation  of  many  majors  and  some  alumni  in  the   survey  and  meeting  with  majors  organized  by  Allison  Ferry.  Many  programs  solicit  advice   from  undergraduate  majors  on  an  advisory  board  and  include  them  in  curricular  planning.   These  students  were  interested  in  various  means  of  working  together  and  with  the   department  as  a  cohort,  offering  ideas  ranging  from  a  colloquium  to  writing  support   groups.  The  department  should  welcome  their  participation,  provide  them  a  place  to  hang   out  together,  and  develop  different  channels  for  their  input  as  well  as  encouraging  them  in   developing  an  identity  as  a  cohort.     I  urge  the  Curriculum  Committee,  to  the  degree  possible,  to  extend  its  conversations   beyond  students  to  the  other  stakeholders  listed  here,  to  get  a  broader  sense  of  the  role  the   major  and  its  graduates  play  or  can  play  in  the  university,  the  community,  and  across   Canada.  I  would  specifically  single  out  faculty  on  campus  who  might  interact  with  the  major   or  its  students:  for  example,  those  whose  students  do  or  might  benefit  from  a  dual  major,   minor,  or  certificate;  those  who  could  provide  research  or  professional  internships  for   majors;  and  those  who  might  participate  in  a  Writing  Fellows  program  (see  below).  Once   these  contacts  are  established,  the  department  should  consider  various  possibilities  for   ongoing  relationships,  collaborative  and  advisory.  Such  efforts  may  synergize  with  (as   suggested  below)  reviving  efforts  to  work  with  other  faculty  on  writing  in  the  disciplines.       In  developing  this  information,  the  faculty  will  discover  it  wants  data  that  is  not  available,   largely  because  there  is  no  process,  commitment,  or  even  institutional  mechanism  for   collecting  it.  For  example,  I  was  told  it  is  impossible  to  know  exactly  how  many  majors  the   department  has,  and  no  one  seemed  to  be  tracking  how  many  majors  are  duals  and,  among   these,  which  major  was  primary.  I  suggest  that  one  consequence  of  this  research  should  be   to  try  to  establish  stable  mechanisms  for  gathering  and  archiving  data  for  purposes  of   planning  and  assessing  the  program  over  time.       While  in  the  end  the  department  should  continue  to  pursue  its  own  distinctive  vision  of  the   major,  it  should  do  so  after  a  clear-­‐sighted  look  at  the  state  of  the  major,  as  illuminated  by   all  these  viewpoints  and  sources  of  information.  Most  of  this  information  was  not  available   when  the  major  was  first  designed  and  implemented,  and  the  faculty  has  new  members   unfamiliar  with  the  original  exigence  and  subsequent  evolution.     My  meeting,  along  with  the  survey  conducted  by  Allison  Ferry  (Appendix  2)  has  already   provided  some  remarkable  insights  into  the  major  from  the  perspective  of  students  and   graduates.  Among  the  most  obvious  is  a  strong  sense  that  the  major  as  experienced  is   structured  by  dramatic  differences  in  the  goals  of  its  constituents.  In  the  first  analysis,  this   structure  reflects  the  perceived  difference  in  learning  goals  and  career  paths  between   students  in  the  mainstream  major  versus  those  in  the  Joint  Communications  program.  At   the  moment,  this  difference  presents  itself  as  a  problem  of  incompatible  needs  and   conflicting  priorities,  but  it  need  not  be.  A  first  step  toward  making  it  productive  is  to   reinterpret  this  difference  as  neither  dichotomous  nor  inevitably  conflictual.         25   In  my  observations,  the  current  audience  for  this  major  is  more  subtly  differentiated  than  it   appears  to  be.  First,  these  two  groups  (single  degree  vs.  joint  degree)  are  not  so  sharply   distinguished  as  they  appear.  Some  students  seem  have  a  more  ambiguous  relationship  to   the  two  programs,  not  only  in  terms  of  whether  they  will  pursue  a  joint  degree,  but  also  in   the  career  paths  their  choices  imply.  Some  seem  to  want  flexibility  to  go  either  way  in  the   future.  Some  are  simply  unsure  what  they  want  to  do  or  be  and  are  exploring  the   possibilities.  One  implication  is  that  the  faculty  must  be  careful  not  to  assume  that  the   current  dual  structure  of  programs  (“practical”  vs.  “academic”)  translates  into  students  at   one  extreme  or  the  other.  Many  in  either  program  may  fall  in  the  middle,  or  want  to   combine  elements  of  each.  But  others  may  fit  neither  mold.       Second,  the  major  offers  the  option  of  a  3  or  4-­‐year  degree,  which  differentiates  the  student   population  along  another  dimension.  The  significant  difference  this  implies  in  goals  and  in   what  the  extra  year  enables  (including  the  possibilities  for  combining  majors)  needs  to  be   taken  into  consideration  in  thinking  about  how  to  address  a  heterogeneous  student   population  in  the  major.     Third,  I  noticed  that  an  unusually  large  number  of  students  claimed  dual  majors  or  mixed   programs  of  some  kind  (enabled  in  part  by  the  large  number  of  electives  in  requirements   for  the  major).  In  some  cases,  R&C  students  were  pursuing  a  second,  complementary   major;  in  other  cases,  students  in  another  discipline  were  taking  R&C  as  a  second  major   that  would  enhance  their  degree  and  job  prospects.  If  we  add  to  this  the  possibility  of  R&C   minors  and  certificates,  this  group  presents  opportunities  for  growth  in  the  major.  In  the   research  phase  of  this  project,  I  suggest  careful  investigation  of  which  other  majors  are   attracting  students  to  take  courses,  certificates,  minors,  or  dual  majors  in  R&C  as  well  as   which  are  attracting  R&C  students  as  supplements  to  their  program.  These  fields  are  prime   candidates  for  developing  course  links,  a  Writing  Fellows  program,  WAC/WID   relationships,  partnerships  for  internships  and  other  joint  ventures,  as  well  as  for   recruiting  students  to  the  major  program.     These  existing  variations  and  departures  from  the  simple  opposition  of  “academic”  and   “practical”  majors  suggest  a  more  radical  move  to  escape  the  dichotomy  by  helping   students  to  reimagine  an  integrative,  generalist  major  as  affording  multiple  paths  through   it  and  into  a  range  of  careers.  Even  the  most  salient  alternatives  right  now—academic   careers  in  rhetoric,  writing,  and/or  communications  or  careers  as  communication   specialists  in  industry—are  much  more  diverse  than  students  realize.  But  besides  these   options,  the  major  already  has  (dual  major  or  minor)  students  from  other  fields  like  science   or  business  heading  toward  either  academic  or  professional  careers,  with  R&C  as  a  strong   complement  or  supplement  to  their  degrees.  Finally,  there  are  plenty  of  other  careers  for   which  a  degree  like  the  R&C  major  is  particularly  appropriate  undergraduate  preparation,   including  advocacy  roles  (a  good  fit  with  the  proposed  M.A  degree),  law,  government,  and   politics.       In  other  words,  the  major  is  already  heterogeneous  in  its  student  populations  and  paths  to   future  careers,  in  ways  the  faculty  could  both  elucidate  and  cater  to  by  targeting  different   features  and  options  to  the  curriculum  for  particular  student  goals  and  needs.  To  the     26   degree  that  research  demonstrates  genuinely  different  needs  among  groups,  which  may   not  be  met  by    current  curricular  structures,  I  recommend  that  the  faculty  address  these   needs  by  expanding  options  and  implementing  them  in  flexible  ways,  rather  than  setting  up   a  set  of  mini-­‐curricula  that  separate  students  along  particular  lines  of  difference  and  then   lock  them  into  these  choices,  once  made.     Such  moves  (as  suggested  below)  would  strengthen  its  curriculum,  especially  alongside   efforts  to  both  clarify  and  analyze  its  terms  and  question  the  oppositions  they  enter  into,   starting  with  local  meanings.  For  example,  I  was  struck  by  the  fact  that  in  Communications   at  Red  River  College,  “practical”  is  actually  equated  with  “creative”  communication  in  mass   media  professions,  not  (for  example)  with  the  more  common  sense  of  transactional   discourse  like  business  communication.  I  wonder  if  common  ground  could  be  developed   through  such  means  as  adding  or  highlighting  coursework  or  topics  in  creative  nonfiction,   the  role  of  narrative  in  inquiry,  and  the  esthetic  as  a  component  of  many  rhetorics,  both   classical  and  postmodern.  On  the  academic  side  there  is  no  single  discipline  or  graduate   study  into  which  students  are  being  socialized,  so  that  mentorship  and  course  selections   for  this  group  must  accommodate  diverse  interests  and  possibilities.     Faculty  also  need  to  be  discussing  with  themselves  and  with  students,  in  different  forums   (not  only  courses),  the  central  terms  of  the  curriculum.  Besides  “practical”  and  “academic,”   and  the  issues  raised  earlier  about  the  department  terms  in  relationship  to  disciplines,  I   wonder  that  “rhetoric”  has  not  received  more  critical  examination  as  the  central  term  of  the   curriculum.  For  example,  are  students  systematically  learning  about  the  multiplicity  of   rhetorics?  Given  a  classical  framework,  is  the  core  rhetoric  Aristotelian,  Platonic,  Sophistic,   or  based  on  Cicero  and  Quintilian?  How  do  these  challenge  one  another,  especially  in  their   contemporary  expressions?  What  about  the  current  expansion  of  rhetorical  studies  to   international  or  global  or  intercultural  rhetorics?  What  does  it  mean  to  speak  of  “rhetorics   of”  identity,  disability,  social  movements,  and  so  on,  or  rhetorics  with  a  modifier  (feminist,   cultural,  networked.  .  .)?  These  questions  suggest  ways  to  connect  rhetoric  to  other  themes   and  priorities,  like  access  or  advocacy  for  social  justice:  for  example,  studying  aboriginal   cultural  rhetorics;  examining  how  identity  issues  intersect  with  academic  learning  for   particular  ethnic  and  social  groups;  studying  the  rhetoric  of  social  movements  in  relation  to   aboriginal,  urban,  immigrant,  and  other  social  groups  in  Canada.       A  Menu  of  Options     I’ll  end  this  section  with  some  specific  suggestions  and  recommendations  reflecting  the   general  strategies  suggested  above.  They  comprise  a  menu  of  options,  not  exhaustive,  some   of  them  drawn  from  proposals  made  by  students  and  faculty  in  meetings  during  my  visit.       1.  Incorporate  into  courses,  curricular  descriptions,  and  program  events  (conferences,   symposia,  speakers,  etc.)  discussions  of  the  integrative  nature  of  the  curriculum,  the   multiple  meanings  and  relationships  of  terms,  distinctive  features  of  the  curriculum  in   comparison  to  other  types  of  programs,  and  explanations  of  how  it  will  prepare  students   for  various  careers.  Design  courses  and  extracurricular  experiences  that  enable  the   department  and  students  to  explore  both  the  differences  and  potential  connections     27   between  “academic”  and  “practical”  or  “creative”  (communications)  perspectives  and   futures,  to  expand  conceptions  of  each,  and  to  point  to  the  role  of  rhetoric,  writing,  and   communication  practices  in  other  careers  like  law,  government,  business,  or  technology.         2.  In  place  of  defined  “streams,”  lay  out  and  make  available  on  the  web  a  number  of   exemplary  student  programs  that  demonstrate  different  “paths”  related  to  different   interests  and  goals.  Students  need  some  guidance,  not  dependent  on  occasional   conversations  with  advisors,  as  to  how  to  put  together  coherent  selections  and  routes   through  the  program.       3.  Develop  undergraduate  research  as,  potentially,  a  signature  feature  of  the  mainstream   program.  It  could  perhaps  begin  through  a  series  of  pilots  and  experiments,  and  then   spread  to  become  an  explicit  element  of  many  courses.  It  could  also  be  attached  to  specific   programmatic  options  like  a  4-­‐year  program  or  a  possible  Honours  stream.  In  addition,  the   department  should  systematically  develop  the  potential  for  independent  research  projects   or  participation  in  faculty  projects.  Other  ways  to  develop  this  as  part  of  the  program   signature  are  to  catalog  research  methods  used  by  the  faculty  and  make  that  information   known  to  students,  perhaps  with  invitations  to  consider  collaborative  projects;  offer  a   research  methods  course  frequently;  and  bring  speakers  to  talk  about  research.       4.  Develop  a  robust  set  of  options  in  experiential  learning,  both  in  courses  and  in   internships  (favored  widely  by  students).  This  will  involve  the  department  in  working  with   partners  both  in  and  outside  the  academy,  and  could  lead  to  developing  an  external  board   for  the  whole  curriculum.  The  many  advantages  of  such  a  board  including  gaining  insight   into  the  current  thinking  of  employers  and  other  stakeholders,  providing  funding   opportunities,  gaining  boosters,  and  offering  internship  placements.         5.  Develop  multiple  opportunities  for  extracurricular  participation  of  the  undergraduate   major  cohort  in  activities  with  academic,  professional,  and  community-­‐building  features.   Among  these,  a  number  can  tie  together  different  levels  of  the  curriculum  or  connect  with   other  parts  of  the  university  and  nonacademic  community:  for  example,  linking  students  in   the  undergraduate  major  with  the  M.A  program  and  the  first-­‐year  program  through  joint   participation  in  the  Tutorial  Centre;  or  recruiting  R&C  majors  along  with  students  in  other   disciplines  together  into  a  Writing  Fellows  program  (see  discussion  below,  in  context  of  the   Tutorial  Centre).         6.  Consider  an  optional  ,  team-­‐taught  capstone  seminar,  which  might  include  “correlation   and  review”  conducted  largely  by  the  students  themselves,  with  faculty  facilitators,  and/or   a  capstone  portfolio  or  extended  writing  experience.  This  could  be  designed  specifically  for   4  year  BAs,  students  planning  an  academic  career,  and  perhaps  students  in  an  Honours   stream  (see  next  item),  but  with  the  idea  it  might  be  open  to  others  if  there  is  demand  for  it.       7.  Cautiously  consider  an  Honours  stream  (or,  depending  on  institutional  requirements,  a   more  informal  alternative,  perhaps  for  the  4-­‐year  degree),  built  around  the  capstone   seminar  and  perhaps  an  identified  series  of  recommended  course  choices  plus  options  for   extracurricular  experiences,  like  undergraduate  research,  internships,  or  experiential     28   learning  projects.  Students  requested  an  Honours  section  of  Academic  Writing;  this  might   be  considered,  but  most  wouldn’t  know  they  wanted  it  until  too  late.  The  department  could   simply  identify  certain  Academic  Writing  sections  as  more  challenging  (e.g.,  a  more   elaborate  and  demanding  link,  a  service  learning  section,  a  student  research-­‐oriented   section,  or  a  specific  set  of  readings  or  topics)  and  let  students  choose  from  them.   Flexibility  here  is  desirable,  but  may  depend  on  university  rules  about  what  “counts”  as   Honours.     29          THE  FIRST-­‐YEAR  PROGRAM:  ACADEMIC  WRITING  AND  THE  TUTORIAL  CENTRE23     The  first-­‐year  writing  program—“Academic  Writing”—needs  a  thorough  and   comprehensive  assessment,  as  anticipated  by  the  department’s  establishment  of  a  First-­‐ Year  Committee  with  the  charge  to  examine  it  in  any  and  all  aspects  without   preconceptions.  It  is  a  kairotic  moment  for  revitalizing  a  program  that  has  been  running  on   auto-­‐pilot  for  awhile.  The  program  is  more  than  due  for  a  fresh  look,  given  its  age—sixteen   years  since  its  inception—and  its  importance  in  the  first-­‐year  experience  that  is  the  focus   of  university  concern  in  a  recent  task  group  report.24  In  addition  to  its  role  in  fulfilling  the   task  group’s  recommendation  for  the  first-­‐year  curriculum  to  “be  a  strong  foundation  for   later  study,”  the  first-­‐year  program  also  contributes,  through  the  Tutorial  Centre  and  some   of  its  specialized  sections,  to  ensuring  that  the  curriculum  “be  accompanied  by  readily   available  but  sustainable  supports  for  students  who  need  them.”  These  two   recommendations  are  a  reminder  of  the  potential  for  both  excellence  and  access  that  is   built  into  this  department’s  first-­‐year  program  (unique  in  Canada),  which  received  so  much   public  attention  and  accolades  in  its  early  years.  The  faculty  needs  to  recapture  the  vitality   and  renew  the  legacy  of  these  beginnings.  It  is  tempting  to  see  the  major  and  proposed   master’s  program  as  somehow  more  intellectually  exciting  and  advanced.  But  the  first-­‐year   program  is  the  core  of  the  department’s  scholarly  and  ethical  mission  and  is  not  merely   practical  nor  unconnected  to  its  theoretical  and  critical  work.  It  is  time  to  reinvest   intellectually  in  this  program,  in  the  access  mission  it  represents  as  well  as  the  capability  to   prepare  students  for  writing  development  in  college  and  beyond.       I  need  to  warn  at  the  outset  that  updating  this  program  will  take  a  lot  of  work.  But  if,  as   implied  by  the  Fulbright  project,  the  RWC  department  wants  to  reestablish  the  status  of  its   first-­‐year  course  and  Tutorial  Centre  as  a  national  model  of  innovative  design,  it  must   tackle  two  tasks  as  prerequisites:  studying  the  course  as  currently  implemented,  as  a   response  to  the  distinctive  realities  and  writing  environments  of  the  University  of   Winnipeg;  and  reconnecting  the  program  to  current  scholarship  on  writing  instruction.  The   first-­‐year  committee  needs  to  formulate  an  agenda  and  schedule  for  this  work  that  will   allow  the  department  to  make  and  implement  decisions  about  the  future  directions  of  this   course.  This  is  what  I  will  try  to  help  with.  I  will  share  some  general  observations  and  link   them  to  the  kinds  of  research,  discussions,  readings,  and  experiments  that  I  think  would  be   productive  for  the  first-­‐year  committee  to  sponsor  and  undertake.  The  committee’s  plan   should  distribute  this  work  over  a  multi-­‐year  time  frame  so  that  it  does  not  displace  other   priorities  of  the  department.                                                                                                                           23  I  am  including  the  Tutorial  Centre  in  this  section  because  of  its  origin  and  most  common  use  at  present,   but,  as  I  will  discuss,  it  is  not  and  should  not  be  limited  to  support  of  Academic  Writing.     24  Final  Report  of  President’s  Task  Group  on  First-­‐Year  Curriculum,  University  of  Winnipeg,  Feb.  2011.       30   As  a  program  ages  and  begins  to  take  for  granted  rather  than  to  argue  and  debate  its  major   premises,  it  becomes  increasingly  difficult  to  understand  how  these  are  operationalized  in   practice.  This  is  even  more  the  case  in  a  multi-­‐section  program  taught  by  everyone  in  the   department.  Even  in  writing  programs  with  a  designated  administrator,  it  is  an  ongoing   challenge  to  document  the  variability  of  the  curriculum  in  practice  and  to  temper  it  (in  the   interests  of  consistency  and  coherence)  with  such  measures  as  class  observations,  syllabi   checks,  readings  of  student  work,  faculty  development  programs,  outcomes  measures,  and   so  on.  Without  such  oversight,  and  without  the  dialogue  and  collaborations  of  a  teaching   community,  there  is  nothing  working  either  to  sustain  a  particular  model  of  instruction  or   to  provide  for  its  criticism  and  evolution.  In  the  case  of  Academic  Writing,  there  was  no  way   for  me  to  discern  (and  I’m  not  sure  anyone  knows)  the  relationship  between  the   curriculum  on  paper  (which  is  rather  minimally  described  in  syllabi  and  other  places)  and   the  curriculum  in  practice.  Besides  the  natural  variations  in  philosophy  and  style  from   teacher  to  teacher,  it  is  hard  to  know  what  the  commonalities  and  principled  differences   are  among  the  design  variants  of  the  program:  by  major  fields  of  study  (humanities,  social   sciences,  business  and  administration)  or  multidisciplinary  sections;  linkages  to  other   disciplines;  online  delivery;  and  extended  versions  for  several  audiences.  So  the  first  order   of  business  for  the  First-­‐Year  Committee  is  to  examine  each  of  these  curricula—the   curriculum  on  paper  and  the  curriculum  in  practice—both  separately  and  in  comparison.         Researching  the  Curriculum  on  Paper  and  the  Curriculum  in  Practice     The  curriculum  on  paper—you  might  say  the  curriculum  as  conceived  and  intended—is     more  easily  observed  than  the  curriculum  as  it  is  actually  practiced  across  multiple   classrooms  in  several  variants  by  many  instructors.  It  can  be  studied  through  curricular   materials—syllabi,  assignments,  departmental  descriptions  of  requirements,  and  so  on,   amplified  by  teachers’  own  explanations  of  these,  preferably  in  dialogue  with  one  another.   The  committee  needs  to  pay  special  attention  to  the  differences  these  materials  and   teachers  articulate  about  the  structural  variations  around  which  the  curriculum  is   organized.       My  own  look  at  the  curriculum  on  paper  was  necessarily  limited,  although  greatly  aided  by   conversations  with  instructors.  But  that  was  enough  to  see  that  the  structure  of  the     curriculum  conceals  an  unexamined  opposition  between  two  premises  about  writing  and   how  it  is  learned:  the  first,  a  generalist  notion  of  “academic  writing”  that  underlies  the   whole  course,  most  obviously  its  multidisciplinary  sections;  the  other,  a  genre-­‐based   concept  suggested  by  the  primary  organization  of  the  course  around  major  fields  and  the   design  of  some  sections  as  “links”  to  particular  disciplines.  In  fact,  the  options  available  in   the  course  correspond  to  one  of  the  great  divisions  and  ongoing  controversies  in  writing   pedagogy:  the  idea  of  writing  as  a  broad  capability  that  can  be  taught  in  a  generic  writing   class  as  a  “foundation”  for  later  writing  and  learning  versus  the  concept  of  writing  as   deeply  embedded  in  social  life,  taking  the  form  of  specific  genres  that  can  only  be  learned   through  immersion  and  practice  in  the  situations  and  contexts  where  they  are  tied  to   activities,  social  roles,  knowledge  content,  technologies,  and  so  on.  The  concept  of   “academic  writing”  is  a  variant  of  the  first  position  that  assumes  there  is  a  generic   discourse—ways  of  thinking  and  writing—common  to  academic  disciplines,  which  can  be     31   learned  in  a  composition  course  and  will  then  “transfer”  to  the  writing  that  students  must   learn  and  produce  in  disciplinary  courses  throughout  college.       The  multidisciplinary  sections  of  Academic  Writing  represent  the  typical  environment  for   teaching  writing  as  a  “global  or  universal  ability,”  in  the  words  of  David  Smit  (a  strong  critic   of  this  position),25  while  the  linked  courses  (nominally,  at  least)  push  the  curriculum  in  the   opposite  direction  toward  genre-­‐specific  learning.  The  organization  of  the  first-­‐year   curriculum  primarily  around  broad  super-­‐genres  (the  humanities,  business,  the  sciences,   the  social  sciences)  seems  to  mediate  these  two  apparently  incompatible  positions,  but   whether  it  does  so  in  practice  depends  on  what  actually  goes  on  in  these  sections,   including,  for  example,  whether  the  three  options  (multidisciplinary,  linked,  and  major-­‐ field)  are  distinctly  different  in  the  curriculum  as  practiced  and—especially—whether  such   a  mediating  stance  is  deliberate  and  explicitly  taught.     In  practice,  I  didn’t  see  much  evidence  that  a  rich  genre  model  is  taught  either  conceptually   or  practically,  even  in  the  link  courses.  My  suspicion  is  that,  as  suggested  by  the  rhetoric  of   descriptive  materials,  most  sections  in  all  three  models  of  “Academic  Writing”  are  teaching   versions  of  the  same  generalist,  foundationalist  position,  with  the  major-­‐field  and  even   linked  courses  using  disciplines  primarily  as  the  source  of  topics  rather  than  teaching  the   concept  or  practice  of  field-­‐specific  genres.  The  only  example  I  was  able  to  examine  up   close  was  Barry  Nolan’s  kinesiology  link,  which,  while  it  is  organized  topically,  also     highlights  comparisons  between  expert  disciplinary  discourse  and  popularizations  (singled   out  earlier  as  a  promising  theme  for  the  whole  curriculum).  Conversely,  though,  it  is  hard  to   see  exactly  what  principles  of  writing,  rhetoric,  or  communication  animate  a  generalist   approach  and  provide  common  ground  across  sections.  One  candidate  might  be  the  notion   that  academic  writing  is  “critical”  (see  earlier  discussion).  Another  might  be  the  concept  of   “facilitas,”  and,  more  generally,  the  notion  of  rhetoric  as  an  art  adaptable  to  any  context.  A   generalist  notion  of  first-­‐year  writing  meshes  well  with  the  undergraduate  major,  which   emphasizes  the  portability  of  rhetorical  strategies  that  can  be  applied  and  revised  for   different  purposes,  audiences,  and  settings.  In  fact,  the  major  holds  promise  of  providing   defensible  principles  for  this  position  and  even  articulating  and  reconciling  it  with  a  genre   approach.  But  it  is  unclear  how  widely  “rhetorical  consciousness”  is  cultivated  in  Academic   Writing,  or  how  comprehensively  a  pedagogical  rhetoric  is  implemented  in  the  curriculum-­‐ in-­‐practice.           Many  of  the  assumptions  underlying  the  foundationalist  model  of  first-­‐year  writing  have   come  strongly  into  question,  in  scholarship  on  “transfer”  as  well  as  in  genre  studies   According  to  Canadian  scholar  Doug  Brent,  cited  earlier,  “We  now  generally  accept  that   there  is  no  universal  educated  discourse  that  students  can  learn  in  a  writing  course  and   easily  apply  to  courses  in  history  or  astronomy.”  Nonetheless,  the  notion  persists  amongst   teachers  of  the  course  and  stakeholders  in  the  first-­‐year  requirement  alike  that  it  can   provide  foundations,  not  simply  for  college  writing  in  various  disciplines,  but  for  an                                                                                                                   25  David  Smit,  The  End  of  Composition  Studies  (Carbondale:  Southern  Illinois  UP,  2004)  10.  For  a  critical   review  of  his  extreme  position,  see  Louise  Wetherbee  Phelps,  Rhetoric  Review  25.2  (2006):  211-­‐33.       32   indefinite  future  of  writing  tasks,  functions,  and  contexts,  ranging  from  courses  in  a   student’s  major  to  writing  in  the  professions  or  for  civic  advocacy.  Any  particular  writing   curriculum  emphasizes  one  or  more  of  these  future  contexts  over  others,  but  in  all  cases   they  imply  a  responsibility  that  extends  far  beyond  the  learning  goals  internal  to  the  course   and  its  semester  time  frame.       These  expectations  constitute  a  uniquely  heavy  burden  for  first-­‐year  writing  curriculum   planners.  Practically  speaking,  it  means  that  backwards  design  is  extremely  difficult,   because  the  end  point  is  so  unclear,  subject  to  the  pressures  of  multiple  constituencies,  and,   often,  remote  in  time.  As  a  result,  the  course  tends  to  run  on  a  tacit  assumption  that   whatever  is  being  taught—the  “outcomes”  to  be  reached  at  the  end  of  the  course—will   magically  serve  as  a  foundation  for  any  and  all  of  these  future  writing  contexts,  without   knowing  very  much  about  what  they  will  be,  how  they  differ,  and  by  what  means  these   foundational  skills  will  carry  forward  from  one  to  the  next.  (It  doesn’t  help,  of  course,  that   some  students  may  not  actually  take  the  course  before  completing  42  credit  hours,  as   assumed  in  its  foundational  mandate.)     One  conclusion  that  follows  from  this  analysis  is  that,  while  research  on  the  curriculum  on   paper  and  in  practice  needs  to  begin  with  an  internal  examination  of  the  course,  that  is   insufficient  either  to  understand  it  or  to  gauge  its  effectiveness.  The  natural  starting  point   for  the  First-­‐Year  Committee’s  work  is  to  study  the  content,  pedagogical  strategies,  and   perceived  effectiveness  of  the  course  as  it  is  designed  and  experienced  by  the  faculty  who   teach  it  and  as  it  is  experienced  and  assessed  by  students  during  and  immediately  after  the   course.  Methods  like  surveys,  focus  groups,  interviews,  and  faculty  conversations  will   provide  insight  into  the  relationships  between  the  curriculum  in  practice  and  the   curriculum  on  paper.  Both  students  and  teachers  will  be  able  to  express  satisfactions,   dissatisfactions,  and  suggestions  for  change.  In  addition,  institutional  research  can  provide   basic  data  about  issues  like  placement  and  timing  of  student  enrollment  in  the  course.  But   the  foundationalist  claims  and  expectations  of  the  course  mean  that  it  is  necessary  to  go   beyond  internal  discussions  and  assumptions  based  on  conventional  wisdom  about   university  writing  (about  the  research  paper,  for  example).  The  committee  needs  to   develop  empirical,  local  knowledge  about  what  the  course  is  actually  preparing  students   for  and,  from  the  perspective  of  both  advanced  students  and  faculty  in  the  disciplines,  how   effective  it  is.  Research  of  this  type  encompasses  such  questions  as  the  range  of  writing   tasks  and  genres  students  encounter  in  their  courses;  faculty  attitudes,  concepts  of  writing,   and  pedagogical  practices  like  assignments  and  responses  to  student  writing;  and  advanced   students’  experiences  and  reflections  as  writers  and  learners  in  these  contexts,  including   their  assessment  of  how  first-­‐year  writing  did  or  didn’t  prepare  them  for  these   challenges.26  Despite  the  focus  on  academic  writing,  faculty  must  also  consider  the  role  of   nonacademic  writing,  since  it  is  practiced  by  university  students  for  internships,   community  projects,  contexts  of  experiential  learning,  or  professional  courses  like   business,  even  sometimes  in  first-­‐year  writing  assignments.  Since  ultimately,  both  students                                                                                                                   26  For  a  start  on  this  kind  of  research,  see  the  brief  survey  of  faculty  in  the  disciplines,  conducted  by  Judith   Kearns  and  Brian  Turner  in  Fall,  2009.     33   and  publics  expect  that  college  writing  instruction  will  produce  graduates  who  can  write   for  nonacademic  contexts,  ideally  planners  would  gather  information  about  the  views  of   alumni  and  employers  (some  of  it  available  from  outside  sources).       This  is  the  kind  of  information  base  necessary  for  backwards  design  of  Academic  Writing.   But  it  is  only  the  first  step  in  a  complex  process  of  deciding  not  only  what  relationship  the   first-­‐year  course  has  now  to  students’  learning  and  writing  in  contexts  beyond  the  course,   but  what  relationship  it  can  possibly  have,  based  on  an  informed  understanding  of  scholarly   discoveries  and  debates  about  writing  in  the  disciplines,  genres,  transfer,  and  related   matters—issues  and  questions  raised  by  the  organization  of  the  course.     These  observations  suggest  that  the  First-­‐Year  Committee  pursue  its  inquiry  on  dual  tracks.   One  would  focus  on  local  research  into  the  curriculum  as  it  is  actually  practiced,   experienced  by  students,  and  viewed  by  a  widening  circle  of  stakeholders  (academic  and   nonacademic),  beginning  with  an  internal  inquiry  and  moving  out  into  the  university  to   gather  information  and  conduct  conversations  with  teachers  and  students  about  concepts,   practices,  and  attitudes  toward  writing  in  the  disciplines  in  relation  to  the  role  of  first-­‐year   writing.  The  second  would  analyze  critically  the  intellectual  premises,  contradictions,  and   potential  of  the  curriculum,  drawing  on  scholarly  perspectives  as  well  as  conversations   with  faculty  in  other  fields.  These  would  begin  as  separate  projects,  in  different  time  frames   and  at  different  paces,  but  would  converge  and  inform  each  other  as  the  committee  brings   together  the  critical  perspectives,  insights,  and  alternatives  from  its  readings  and   conversations  with  the  process  and  findings  of  its  research.       Some  suggestions  for  reading  may  clarify  how  this  convergence  might  happen.  I   recommend  two  books  that  explore  the  issues  I  have  identified  here  in  a  practical  way,  by   engaging  in  conversations  with  faculty  in  the  disciplines.  Because  one,  Engaged  Writers  and   Dynamic  Disciplines,  locates  itself  in  writing  studies  and  the  other,  In  Search  of  Eloquence,  in   rhetoric,  they  provide  two  intellectual  perspectives  on  these  topics  (for  example,  whether   there  is  any  common  concept  of  academic  writing  among  disciplinary  faculty,  how  a   general  art  of  rhetoric  can  inform  understanding  of  writing  in  the  disciplines)  and  two   models  for  investigating  them  through  faculty  discussions.27  Doug  Brent’s  article,   previously  cited,  offers  a  thorough  and  balanced  introduction  to  the  literature  on  transfer   (accessible  enough  to  share  and  discuss  with  faculty  in  other  fields).  For  the  First-­‐Year   Committee  or  a  reading  group  set  up  for  the  purpose,  these  readings  might  be  coupled  with   discussions  of  two  statements  on  appropriate  outcomes  for  writing  instruction:  the  WPA   Outcomes  Statement  for  First-­‐Year  Composition  and  the  NCTE  Framework  for  Success  in   Postsecondary  Writing,  both  of  which  adopt  a  generalist  position.28    For  the  other  side  of                                                                                                                   27  Chris  Thaiss  and  Terry  Myers  Zawacki,  Engaged  Writers  and  Dynamic  Disciplines:  Research  on  the  Academic   Writing  Life  (Portsmouth:  Boynton/Cook  Heinemann,  2006);  Cornelius  Cosgrove  and  Nancy  Barta-­‐Smith,  In   Search  of  Eloquence:  Cross-­‐Disciplinary  Conversations  on  the  Role  of  Writing  in  Undergraduate  Education   (Cresskill,  NJ:  Hampton  P,  2004).   28  The  two  statements  are  available  on  the  web  at  the  WPA  and  NCTE  websites,  respectively.       34   the  picture,  Bawarshi  and  Reiff  offer  a  comprehensive  guide  to  a  large  and  complex   literature  on  genre,  including  a  good  deal  of  Canadian  scholarship.29     One  problem  that  will  emerge  in  studying  the  curriculum  in  practice,  but  needs  separate   attention,  is  heterogeneity  in  the  student  populations  taught  in  Academic  Writing,  which   manifests  itself  both  in  special  sections  (various  versions  of  an  extended  option,  as  well  as   an  online  version)  and  within  sections  across  the  different  options.  Placement  is  by  student   choice,  for  the  most  part.  The  university’s  access  policy  coupled  with  a  universal   requirement  means  that,  with  self-­‐placement,  the  range  of  student  preparation,  knowledge,   and  interest  in  writing  might  be  extreme  in  a  given  class.  There  may  also  be  a  significant   difference  between  students  taking  the  course  in  their  first  year  and  students  who  delay  it   until  late  in  their  programs.       All  these  issues  around  the  diversity  of  students  in  a  universal  course  were  well-­‐recognized   in  the  early  years  of  the  program,  and  the  present  structures  of  special  sections,   placements,  and  tutorial  support  were  designed  in  response.  I  suspect  this  problem  has   faded  into  the  background  over  the  years,  and  the  department  assumes  it  is  handled  by   placement  and  through  the  Tutorial  Centre.  But  it  can’t  take  that  for  granted.  The  faculty   needs  to  assess  how  these  arrangements  are  working  now  in  practice  and  how  they  might   be  enriched,  improved,  or  modified.  What  are  the  consequences,  good  and  bad,  of  self-­‐ placement?  What  is  the  range  of  differences  among  students  in  regular  sections  of  the   course,  and  what  kinds  of  challenges  do  these  present  to  teachers  and  students?  I  heard   comments  from  majors  who  wanted  a  more  rigorous  first-­‐year  writing  experience  and   from  teachers  who  had  some  classes  with  a  range  of  diversity  that  was  pedagogically   difficult  to  manage.  What  role  is  the  Tutorial  Centre  playing  in  supporting  this  range  of   students?  How  effective  is  the  extended  version  of  the  course,  and  are  the  right  students   taking  it?  What  reasons  do  students  have  for  choosing  a  major  field,  link,  or   multidisciplinary  section,  and  do  these  reasons  and  placements  have  any  pedagogical   consequence?       Beyond  First-­‐Year  Writing:  Expanding  the  Tutorial  Centre  and  Connecting  to  Disciplines     Focusing  on  the  problem  of  heterogeneity  and,  especially,  its  relationship  to  access  and  to   the  work  of  the  Tutorial  Centre  raises  in  a  different  context  the  question  of  limitations  to  a   first-­‐year  foundational  course.  When  students  are  admitted  through  the  access  policy,  their   needs  for  special  support  as  writers  and  learners  extend  far  beyond  what  even  an  extended   course  can  do.  What  responsibilities  does  the  RWC  department  have  for  these  needs,   through  what  means?  Specifically,  what  role  should  the  Tutorial  Centre  have  in  supporting   these  students  as  they  move  into  writing  in  academic  courses,  over  the  college  years?  What   communication  or  cooperation  with  faculty  in  other  disciplines  would  that  entail?  How   would  such  an  expansion  of  tutorial  functions  be  funded,  organized,  administered?                                                                                                                     29  Anis  S.  Bawarshi  and  Mary  Jo  Reiff,  Genre:  An  Introduction  to  History,  Theory,  Research,  and  Pedagogy,  West   Lafayette:  Parlor  Press/WAC  Clearinghouse,  2010.     35   This  question,  as  it  applies  to  access,  is  just  a  specialized  version  of  the  general  problem   that  a  foundational  course  can  only  be  effective  if  it  is  taught  as  one  element  in  a  much   longer  sequence  of  writing  development.  With  this  issue,  as  with  the  other  lines  of  research   I  have  suggested,  every  effort  to  study  the  first-­‐year  course  is  likely  to  lead  back  into  the   writing  environments  that  surround  and  follow  it.       The  fact  is,  first-­‐year  writing  is  not  simply  part  of  the  whole  RWC  curriculum;  it  is  the  first   level  in  the  writing  curriculum  of  the  university,  which  is  distributed  among  the  disciplines   (including  RWC  classes),  activities,  and  settings  where  students  write  and  learn.  That   means  that  first-­‐year  writing  needs  to  be  articulated  with  writing  in  those  settings,  through   ongoing  interactions  with  faculty  and  students  and,  where  the  opportunity  arises,   partnerships  to  strengthen  the  extended  writing  curriculum.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  trying  to   re-­‐institute  a  formal  WAC/WID  program,  which  I  don’t  advocate,  but  of  finding  multiple   ways  to  keep  a  line  of  communication  open  with  faculty  in  the  disciplines  and  student   writers  as  they  move  through  the  university.  Although  an  earlier  WAC  initiative  lapsed,  the   spirit  still  lingers  as  a  legacy  among  many  faculty,  and  can  be  revived  by  various  modest   means,  as  the  opportunity  arises.  For  example,  one  of  the  simplest  ways  to  make  first-­‐year   writing  relevant  to  writing  in  the  university  (and  vice  versa)  is  to  invite  faculty  in  the   disciplines  into  first-­‐year  classrooms,  as  writers  talking  about  their  experiences  of  writing,   teachers  talking  about  their  assignments,  and  readers  explaining  how  to  interpret   materials  in  their  field  or  comparing  expert  with  popular  representations  of  knowledge.       I  would  suggest  that  the  department  cautiously  explore  selective  initiatives  to  extend  the   functions  of  first-­‐year  writing  instruction  and  the  Tutorial  Centre  to  other  levels,  weighing   their  costs  and  benefits:  for  example,  following  up  with  students  who  complete  extended   sections  to  offer  special  support  as  needed  in  disciplinary  courses;  developing  a  Writing   Fellows  program,  in  which  peer  writing  tutors  with  tutorial  training  and  experience  are   located  within  writing-­‐intensive  courses  in  the  disciplines;  or  experimenting  with   advanced  links  that  work  with  disciplinary  faculty  to  analyze  and  practice  genres  in   disciplinary  contexts.  All  of  these  possibilities  require  cooperation  and  involvement  from   faculty  in  other  units,  and  choices  among  them  should  reflect  departmental  priorities  and   take  advantage  of  synergies  among  different  parts  of  the  curriculum.  For  example,  a   Writing  Fellows  program  might  both  employ  majors  as  tutors  and  also  attract  new  double   majors  or  minors  from  recruited  tutors  who  had  performed  well  as  writers  and  learners  in   a  targeted  disciplinary  course.  Such  initiatives  would,  of  course,  require  funding,  either   through  reallocation  of  department  resources  or  through  university  or  external  sources.     Using  the  Current  Framework  as  a  Scaffold  for  Change     There  is  so  much  going  on  in  any  first-­‐year  writing  course,  and  so  many  demands  placed   upon  it,  that  it  is  important  to  build  a  very  strong  research  base  and  consensus  for   undertaking  any  major  changes.  I  urge  the  department  to  take  a  slow  evolutionary   approach  to  making  actual  changes  and  to  use  the  existing  structure  of  variations  and   options  as  a  viable  continuing  framework;  it  has  the  flexibility  to  allow  experimentation   and  the  potential  to  make  its  problem—an  apparent  philosophical  contradiction—into  an   opportunity.     36      The  structure  of  Academic  Writing,  as  now  organized,  has  two  potentially  viable  concepts   for  writing  instruction.  Both  have  deep  roots  in  the  history  of  the  department,  but  the   generalist  approach  is  stronger  because  it  has  developed  into,  and  reflects,  a  full-­‐scale   curriculum  in  the  major,  whereas  the  genre  approach  was  only  sketched  schematically  by   the  organization  of  sections  by  field.  It  was  never  developed  as  a  collective  departmental   project,  and,  with  the  fading  of  the  WAC  initiative,  lost  connection  with  the  disciplines.  I  see   no  need  to  choose  between  them,  however;  maturity  of  a  program,  like  that  of  an   individual,  means  being  comfortable  with  ambiguity,  complexity,  and  paradox.  Rather,  I   suggest  taking  both  more  seriously  and  developing  each  as  fully  as  possible  as  an   intellectual  position  and  pedagogical  model,  so  that  ultimately  they  will  enter  into  a   dialectical  relationship  that  reveals  the  complementary  virtues  and  limitations  of  each.       These  two  pedagogical  positions  do  not  equate,  as  one  might  too  quickly  assume,  with   rhetorical  studies  and  writing  studies  in  any  disciplinary  sense.  Each  of  them  is  compatible   with  a  range  of  theoretical  frameworks  from  different  disciplinary  perspectives.  In  this   department,  the  generalist  position  corresponds,  as  noted  earlier,  with  the  integrative,   interdisciplinary  ethos  of  the  department,  already  projected  into  the  major:  essentially,  a   notion  of  rhetoric  as  a  global  art  for  use  in  writing,  communication,  and  critical  practices.   That  idea  translates  naturally  into  a  first-­‐year  pedagogy  of  generic  principles,  to  be  applied   in  subsequent  rhetorical  situations  and  contexts  of  communication.  I  suggest  that  this   conception  of  writing  instruction  be  thought  of  as  what  Paul  Ricoeur  calls  a  “weighted   focus,”  or  productive  bias,  informing  the  whole  curriculum,  to  be  played  against  and   articulated  with  a  genre  perspective  on  how  advanced  writing  develops  in  terms  of   context-­‐based  practices.  By  posing  the  two  against  one  another  in  a  dialectic  method— reading  each  generously,  the  idea  is  to  allow  each  to  bring  out  both  the  virtues  and   limitations  of  the  other.30  To  carry  out  this  method,  though,  requires  making  the  faculty’s   understanding  of  its  preferred  pedagogy  more  explicit  and  critical,  while  using  its   discipline-­‐oriented  sections  for  actually  developing  and  instantiating  a  genre-­‐oriented   pedagogy.     While  the  department’s  generalist  pedagogy  has  practical  vitality,  it  needs  a  greater   intellectual  investment  to  explain  how  it  relates  Academic  Writing  to  the  rhetorical   curriculum  of  the  major.  This  work  is  not  independent  of  the  suggestions  made  in  earlier   sections  for  enriching  the  whole  curriculum  conceptually;  the  first-­‐year  initiative  can  draw   on  such  efforts  from  any  quarter  of  the  department  (individual  or  group),  or  initiate  its   own.  This  work  must  be  critical  as  well,  questioning  assumptions  about  what  is  being   learned  in  Academic  Writing  and  how  easily  it  will  transfer.  Genre  studies  offer  that   criticism,  along  with  research  and  theory  on  the  situations  and  demands  that  advanced   writers  face  in  the  disciplines  and  outside  the  academy.  But  to  play  its  part  in  this  dialectic,   genre  pedagogy  must  have  its  own  place  in  the  curriculum.  That  can  begin,  at  least,  by                                                                                                                   30  An  explanation  of  Ricoeur’s  dialectic  method  is  offered  in  Louise  Wetherbee  Phelps,  “The  Third  Way:  Paul   Ricoeur  and  the  Problem  of  Method,”  Ch.  8  in  Composition  as  a  Human  Science:  Contributions  to  the  Self-­‐ Understanding  of  a  Discipline  (New  York,  Oxford,  1988).       37   developing  genre  concepts  and  relationships  with  other  disciplines  in  the  discipline-­‐ oriented  sections  of  Academic  Writing  (major  fields  and  links),  drawing  particularly  on  the   strong  Canadian  scholarship  in  genre  studies,  which  is  rhetorically  based.           Ultimately,  truly  exploring  genres  in  the  disciplines  for  both  students  and  teachers  requires   going  beyond  first-­‐year  writing,  since  experience  with  context-­‐specific  genres  is  very   limited  in  most  first-­‐year  courses  in  the  disciplines.  The  real  promise  of  this  effort  would  be   to  begin  to  figure  out  what  kind  of  bridging  strategies  make  “transfer”  possible.  For   example,  Academic  Writing  could  develop  genre  itself  as  a  rhetorical  concept  to  prepare   the  way  for  understanding  its  role  in  advanced  applications  of  general  principles.  In  link   sections  teachers  could  work  with  disciplinary  partners  to  illustrate  how  specific  genres   exemplify  such  general  principles  while  also  clarifying  the  kinds  of  knowledge  that  can  only   be  acquired  in  practice  of  such  genres.         All  the  proposals  I’ve  made  for  assessing  and  transforming  Academic  Writing  assume   continuation  of  the  overall  framework  while  trying  to  develop  its  content  more   substantively  and  make  an  apparent  contradiction  into  a  productive  tension.  That  is  to  say,   my  proposals  are  conservative;  not  only  do  they  build  on  what’s  there,  but  they  can  be   paced  according  to  the  department’s  priorities  and  resources.  The  way  to  control  the  pace   is  to  set  long-­‐term  schedules  for  research,  reading,  analysis,  and  discussions,  while  inviting   faculty  to  conduct  practical  experiments  and  pilots  of  their  ideas  (which  can  then,  of  course,   be  folded  into  assessment).     Specifically,  I  think  multidisciplinary  sections  can  be  used  as  laboratories  to  push  the   boundaries,  trying  out  alternate  models  of  the  course  and  themes  and  ideas  from  various   sources,  including  other  parts  of  the  curriculum.  For  example,  one  could  have  sections   organized  by  experiential  learning  or  around  undergraduate  research,  or  (from  the  M.A   proposal)  by  a  focus  on  civic  writing  and  advocacy.  Some  sections  might  introduce  digital   and  multimedia  writing,  develop  a  local-­‐global  theme,  or  try  to  incorporate  genre  theory   into  the  dominant  rhetorical  approach.  Link  courses  are  inherently  experimental  in  the   connections  they  could  more  actively  explore  between  the  first-­‐year  curriculum  and  the   writing  and  reading  of  the  linked  discipline,  by  working  more  closely  with  disciplinary   faculty.  Any  useful  information  that  emerges  from  them  (for  example,  regarding  the   relations  between  expert  and  popular  writing  about  disciplinary  knowledge,  or  the  range  of   actual  assignments)  can  then  be  fed  back  into  the  major  fields  curriculum  to  inform   teachers  or  provide  optional  themes  and  assignments.  Experiments  outside  the  Academic   Writing  curriculum  per  se  could  affect  it  profoundly;  for  example,  if  the  department   develops  a  Writing  Fellows  initiative,  the  Fellows  could  become  a  rich  source  of  knowledge   for  first-­‐year  writing  teachers  and  students  about  the  genres  of  particular  fields,  the   applicability  of  general  principles,  the  problems  of  transfer,  and  so  on.     38   PROPOSAL  FOR  M.A  IN  RHETORIC,  WRITING  AND  PUBLIC  LIFE       In  Sept.  2009,  in  response  to  the  university’s  decision  to  expand  graduate  studies,  the   department  submitted  a  proposal  for  a  Master  of  Arts  in  Rhetoric,  Writing  and  Public  Life   along  with  a  Graduate  Certificate  in  Rhetoric  and  Public  Life.  When  I  arrived,  the  proposal   was  still  pending,  because  of  changes  in  the  climate  for  such  expansion,  and  the  department   was  reluctantly  preparing  to  try  an  alternate  route.  After  two  graduate  programs  were   approved  which  COPSE  was  unable  to  fund,  including  an  M.A  in  Cultural  Studies  from  the   English  Department,  the  university  had  put  a  hold  on  adding  independent  graduate   programs,  including  this  one  from  RWC.  Instead,  the  department  had  been  encouraged  to   consider  the  possibility  of  “nesting”  its  M.A  as  a  stream  within  the  M.A  in  Cultural  Studies.   The  M.A  Subcommittee  was  in  the  process  of  developing  a  revised  proposal  for  this   purpose.  I  was  asked  to  examine  and  evaluate  this  prospect.           Briefly,  the  proposal  as  originally  written  is  for  a  one-­‐year  master’s  degree  intended  to   educate  graduates  in  rhetorical  analysis,  design,  and  practical  production  of  writing,  with  a   strong  focus  on  using  this  knowledge  to  support  community-­‐based  efforts  for  social   change.  It  claims  that  “our  graduates  will  be  well  positioned  to  continue  to  work  for  social   justice  by  applying  their  expertise  in  their  careers  in  their  volunteer  work,  whether  their   work  contexts  are  activist  organizations  or  mainstream  employers  such  as  government   departments  or  corporations.”  The  centerpiece  of  the  proposed  program  is  its  preparation   of  students  for  real-­‐world  practice  of  rhetorical  and  research  skills  through  a  practical   internship,  with  a  companion  course  to  make  the  connections  between  theory  and  practice.   Students  are  also  required  to  learn  research  methods  and  study  relations  between  rhetoric   and  public  life.  The  program’s  theory-­‐practice  combination,  along  with  the  focus  on  civic   contributions  by  students  and  graduates,  is  the  most  distinctive  and  unique  feature  of  the   proposed  program.  However,  it  also  provides  a  second  option  for  courses  without  the   internship,  more  oriented  to  academic  study  and  future  doctoral  work.         In  my  initial  reading,  I  found  this  a  strong  proposal  that  built  on  strengths  in  the   department’s  faculty  and  undergraduate  curriculum.  But  members  of  the  M.A   Subcommittee  believed  that  placing  the  program  as  a  stream  within  the  Cultural  Studies   M.A  would  require  significant  revision,  including  stripping  out  its  signature  feature—the   internship  requirement.  Because  important  decisions  on  this  strategy  were  to  be  made   while  I  was  on  campus,  I  made  it  a  priority  for  investigation.  I  will  return  to  the  proposal   itself  after  reporting  that  investigation  and  its  consequences.       The  Streaming  Option     I  interviewed  Dr.  Kathryn  Ready,  the  first  Coordinator  of  the  Cultural  Studies  program,  and   Dr.  Serena  Kesavjee,  Coordinator  of  the  Curatorial  Practices  specialization,  which  had   already  been  implemented  as  a  stream  within  the  Cultural  Studies  MA.  I  also  interviewed   Dean  of  Graduate  Studies  Sandra  Kirby  twice,  the  second  time  in  the  company  of  Catherine   Taylor,  chair  of  the  M.A  Subcommittee.  All  were  candid  and  extremely  helpful  in  clarifying   the  situation.  I  also  touched  on  the  proposed  program  and  possible  streaming  arrangement     39   in  interviews  with  other  administrators,  among  them  Vice  President  (Academic)  John   Corlett  and  Dean  of  Arts  David  Fitzpatrick.     My  questions  focused,  first,  on  trying  to  understand  exactly  what  this  arrangement  would   mean—how  it  would  work—and  what  costs  and  benefits  it  would  have  to  each  program  as   well  as  to  the  university.  These  facts  were  essential  to  weighing  the  viability  of  such  an   arrangement  and  whether  it  was  worth  sacrificing  some  changes  in  order  to  get  the   program  in  place  rather  than  waiting  until  an  independent  program  proposal  would  be   welcomed.  I  was  particularly  concerned  about  the  degree  of  autonomy  for  the  streamed   program  (its  requirements,  curriculum,  administration)  and  the  specific  changes  that   would  be  needed  to  make  it  compatible  with  the  Cultural  Studies  degree  framework.  I  also   wanted  to  know  exactly  what  savings  or  efficiencies  in  use  of  resources,  as  well  as   intellectual  benefits,  would  be  generated  by  nesting  the  program,  and  whether  these  could   be  achieved  in  alternate  ways.  Finally,  I  wanted  to  find  out  directly  from  administrators   whether  there  was  any  chance  that  a  RWC  proposal  for  an  independent  program  could  still   succeed.       On  May  13  I  reported  my  findings  and  recommendations  to  the  M.A  Subcommittee.  First,   on  the  negative  side,  I  concluded  that  the  Cultural  Studies  M.A  was  not  a  viable  framework   for  streaming  the  Rhetoric,  Writing  and  Public  Life  degree.  It  made  sense  to  stream   Curatorial  Practices,  which  relies  on  cultural  studies  courses  to  supply  the  theoretical   component  of  its  program.  But  the  Rhetoric,  Writing  and  Public  Life  degree  has  its  own   theory,  represented  in  courses,  and,  in  order  to  gain  any  of  the  hoped-­‐for  efficiencies   through  sharing  courses  or  faculty,  would  have  to  give  up  an  essential  feature  that  defines   the  program—the  practicum.  The  specific  expectations  for  how  streaming  would  work  (for   example,  housing  students  from  all  three  programs  in  a  single  research  methods  course)   didn’t  seem  to  me  logistically  practical  or  intellectually  desirable.  The  Rhetoric,  Writing  and   Public  Life  degree  has  its  own  integrity  and  needs  both  curricular  and  administrative   autonomy.  Further,  I  couldn’t  really  identify  many,  if  any,  financial  advantages  to  the   university  or  the  programs  from  nesting  the  RWPL  program  in  the  Cultural  Studies  degree.     It  appeared  to  me  that  most  of  the  advantages  cited  for  streaming  could  be  achieved  by   cross-­‐listed  courses  or  allowing  some  courses  from  either  department  to  be  listed  in  the   other  program  as  a  possible  elective.         At  the  same  time,  my  conversations  with  administrators  were  unexpectedly  positive  about   the  renewed  possibility  for  pursuing  the  proposal  as  an  independent  program.  Vice   President  Corlett  and  Dean  Fitzpatrick  both  encouraged  the  department  to  put  forward,  in   a  new  submission,  a  proposal  for  its  ideal  M.A  program,  built  on  its  own  philosophy  and   strengths,  and  then  explore  ways  to  make  it  work,  comparing  different  models  of   partnership  with  other  academic  units  or  with  organizations  outside  the  institution.  Dean   of  Graduate  Studies  Sandra  Kirby,  in  a  brief  conversation,  expressed  interest  and  asked  me   to  come  back  for  a  second  discussion.       Based  on  these  conversations,  in  my  meeting  with  the  M.A  Subcommittee  I  recommended   that  the  department  suspend  efforts  to  revise  the  proposal  for  streaming  with  Cultural   Studies  and  talk  directly  with  administrators  to  explore  further  the  prospects  for  the     40   original  proposal,  with  whatever  modifications  might  be  desirable  to  strengthen  it.  The   department  should,  I  thought,  not  negotiate  away  or  compromise  what  it  wanted  to  do  in   the  program  ahead  of  time,  by  offering  a  reduced  version  of  its  proposal,  but  remain  open   to  various  possibilities  for  partnerships  with  other  units,  including  Cultural  Studies.  I   thought  it  important  to  show  flexibility,  but  to  set  conditions  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the   proposal.     (At  that  time  I  also  recommended  certain  changes  to  the  proposal  unconnected  to  the   streaming  option;  these  are  explained  and  amplified  below,  based  on  subsequent   discussions  and  reflection.)     The  next  step  was  for  me  and  Catherine  Taylor  to  meet  again  with  Dean  Kirby  so  that  she   could  understand  the  proposal  better  and  the  department  could  learn  more  about  the   process  for  submission  and  the  (new)  arrangements  for  funding.  Based  on  the  notes  both  of   us  took,  by  the  time  I  left  campus  shortly  after,  the  department  was  positioned  to  revise  the   proposal  and  research  further  possibilities  for  partnerships,  as  recommended  by  Dean   Kirby.       Probably  the  most  important  information  we  learned  in  this  interview  was  about  the  way   graduate  studies  programs  will  be  judged  in  the  new  plan  for  integrated  budgeting  (which   is  still  under  development).  Under  this  type  of  budgeting,  graduate  programs  will  be   funded  through  the  academic  deans’  offices,  rather  than  centrally  through  the  Graduate   Dean’s  office.  The  budget  for  a  department,  including  its  graduate  studies,  will  be  based  on   the  values  and  benefits  overall  of  its  programs,  rather  than  requiring  that  each  program  be   independently  self-­‐supporting.       Dean  Kirby  encouraged  the  department  to  think  about  the  program  as  anchored  in   Rhetoric,  Writing,  and  Communications  but  essentially  interdisciplinary,  belonging  to  the   Faculty  of  Arts,  drawing  on  and  contributing  to  other  elements  of  its  culture.  The   department  needs  to  demonstrate  what  benefits  its  program  can  contribute  in  these  terms,   to  the  department,  Arts,  the  university,  and  the  community.  These  values  include  but  are   not  limited  to  financial  contributions  from  graduate  tuition  or  research  funding.  Among   those  we  discussed—not  an  exhaustive  list—were  these:     •  exerting  upward  pressure  on  undergraduate  students,  making  graduate  work  visible  and   achievable  for  them   •  contributing  to  the  university’s  reputation   •  strengthening  other  graduate  programs   •    fostering  student  research   •  increasing  faculty  research  capacity  through  access  to  research  assistants   •  contributing  to  the  Arts  faculty’s  community  profile  and  connections   •  offering  opportunities  for  internships  or  employment  that  benefit  other  units,  community   organizations,  and  companies  .     The  department  does  need  to  pursue  the  whole  range  of  options  for  funding  students  that   can  make  a  small  program  sustainable.  In  the  case  of  this  program,  this  might  include  not     41   only  faculty  research  grants,  but  also  support  from  foundations,  paid  internships,  or  local   organizations  and  companies,  and  relations  to  other  funded  programs,  e.g.,  in  links  to  the   sciences  or  business.       Suggestions  for  Revision     I  turn  back  now  to  the  substance  of  the  proposal.  Based  on  these  discussions  and  my  own   further  reflections,  I  want  to  explain  and  extend  my  recommendations  for  revision.     In  my  original  evaluation,  I  recommended  to  the  M.A  Subcommittee  that  the  proposal    give   more  weight  and  importance  to  the  academic  option  of  completing  coursework  without  the   practicum.  The  proposal  includes  it,  but  it  seems  almost  an  afterthought  rather  than  an   appealing  alternate  track  deliberately  designed  for  future  academics.  In  doing  so,  I  was   thinking  of  the  number  of  undergraduate  majors  in  the  department  who  expressed  strong   interest  in  a  master’s  degree  that  could  launch  them  on  an  academic  career.  I  also   suggested  highlighting  a  broader  range  of  placements  beyond  nonprofit  community   organizations  (a  point  later  reinforced  by  Dean  Kirby).       I  would  like  now  to  enlarge  this  point  to  suggest  that  the  proposal  be  recast  so  that  it  is  not   quite  so  highly  specialized  to  prepare  community-­‐based  advocates  for  social  change,  while   retaining  this  ethic  of  citizenship  as  a  strong  philosophical  element  in  the  degree.  I  believe   that  with  relatively  minor  changes,  the  program  can  become  somewhat  less  of  a  niche   program  and  appeal  to  a  broad  range  of  prospective  students.  In  doing  so,  the  Master’s   degree  will  become  a  closer  fit  with  the  generalist,  integrative  character  of  the  department   and  will  have  a  greater  pool  of  potential  students.  It  will  not  take  a  great  deal  to  make  this   revision,  because  the  proposal  anticipates  its  broader  appeal  in  many  places.     First,  let  me  reflect  a  bit  on  the  students  the  program  could  attract.  Its  fundamental   strength  (like  that  of  its  undergraduate  programs)  lies  in  its  firm  roots  in  practice,  coupled   with  academic  study  of  rhetoric,  its  audiences,  and  its  social  contexts.  As  the  proposal   notes,  this  kind  of  generalist  rhetorical  education  is  needed  in  a  wide  range  of  careers,  not   limited  to  activist  work  with  community  organizations.  The  proposal  itself  lists  a  variety  of   employment  destinations  where  strong  communication  skills  are  needed.  It  also  recognizes   that  it  is  desirable  for  the  ethic  of  social  justice  and  citizenship  that  it  emphasizes  in   rhetorical  practice  to  be  diffused  across  contexts  like  government  departments,   corporations  and  small  businesses,  law,  politics,  and  education.  It  seems  to  me  that  the   department  can  reconceive  this  degree  to  prepare  students  for  ethical  and  skilled   rhetorical  practice  in  any  such  real-­‐world  contexts  where  advocacy  and  strong   argumentation  are  needed.  Internships,  as  stated  in  the  proposal  (and  as  emphasized  by   Sandra  Kirby)  should  be  open  to  a  wide  variety  of  settings  including  corporations,  the   communication  industry,  and  the  university  itself.  At  the  same  time,  the  ability  to  prepare   students  for  careers  and  volunteer  activities  in  “public  life”  and  community  advocacy   constitutes  a  unique,  niche  feature  of  the  program.     A  second  theme,  however,  needs  to  be  brought  out  and  enhanced:  that  is  preparation  for   careers  in  literacy  and  rhetorical  education.  A  number  of  students  will  want  to  take  the     42   Masters  as  a  route  into  doctoral  studies  and  a  career  in  the  academy.  The  department  has   already  conceived  internships  that  support  this  goal,  including  the  literacy  internship  and   Writing  Centre  internship,  with  a  companion  course.  But  this  strand  of  the  program  can   also  serve  to  prepare  students  to  use  the  M.A  degree  as  a  terminal  degree  to  prepare  them   for  secondary  or  postsecondary  teaching  or  for  community  literacy  education  and  adult   education.  In  this  connection,  the  department  might  want  to  study  a  recent  report  on  U.S.   Master’s  degrees  in  English  from  the  Modern  Language  Association.31  The  report   demonstrates  that  in  the  U.S.,  the  increase  in  numbers  of  non-­‐tenure-­‐track  faculty  has  led   students  to  treat  the  M.A  degree  as  a  route  to  a  career  in  post-­‐secondary  education.  “The   master’s  degree  in  English  has  acquired  increased  complexity  and  significance  as  a   credential  and  route  to  employment  in  higher  education,  secondary  and  elementary  school   teaching,  and  business,  government,  and  not-­‐for-­‐profit  organizations”  (1).  The  M.A  in   Rhetoric,  Writing  and  Public  Life  could  easily  be  adapted  and  presented  as  serving  this   additional  purpose.     The  kinds  of  changes  to  the  proposal  I  am  suggesting  are  largely  rhetorical,  in  how  the   degree  is  conceptualized  and  presented  to  a  broader  range  of  audiences,  emphasizing  more   its  generalist  nature  and  the  range  of  career  possibilities.  The  internship  would  be  valuable   for  all  these  kinds  of  students  and  possible  careers,  with  the  possible  exception  of  students   heading  for  doctoral  studies,  who  may  want  to  emphasize  research-­‐oriented  coursework,   academic  writing  experiences,  and  perhaps  research  internships.  However,  there  are  some   possible  implications  for  the  curriculum,  in  particular  the  companion  courses  and  research   methods.       The  companion  courses  as  they  stand  are  extremely  specialized  and  matched  up  almost   one  to  one  with  types  of  internships.  If  the  range  of  the  practicum  is  as  broad  as   anticipated,  this  kind  of  specialization  will  not  be  practical.  The  department  can’t  keep   adding  companion  courses  for  every  new  setting  for  the  practicum.  I  can  think  of  two   solutions  to  this  problem.  First,  it  is  not  entirely  clear  to  me  why  it  takes  a  3-­‐credit  course   to  reflect  on  the  practicum  and  connect  theory  to  practice.  It  seems  to  me  the  companion   course  could  be  conceived  as  an  appropriate  theory  course,  even  available  as  an  elective  to   those  not  taking  the  practicum,  with  the  third  credit  of  this  course  being  devoted  either  to  a   discussion  of  the  internship  experience  in  terms  of  theory-­‐practice  relations,  or  (for  those   taking  the  academic  option)  to  writing  a  seminar  paper  with  workshop  support.  (The   workshop  support  for  the  latter  could  be  organized  to  include  students  from  all  companion   courses.)  A  second  alternative  is  to  have  only  one  or  two  companion  courses  that  are   broadly  designed  for  students  in  any  internship  to  compare  and  analyze  their  experiences,   perhaps  with  differentiated  theoretical  readings  for  the  different  types  of  practicum.       Currently,  the  research  methods  course  is  extremely  specific  in  its  focus  on  community-­‐ based  action  research.  I  question  whether  this  will  be  appropriate  to  all  internships  and   practicum  experiences  and  also  to  the  academic  option,  even  though  it  does  cover  a  wide                                                                                                                   31  “ADE  Ad  Hoc  Committee  on  the  Master’s  Degree,  “Rethinking  the  Master’s  Degree  in  English  for  a  New   Century,”  Web  publication,  June  2011.           43   range  of  methodologies.  It  is  difficult  to  offer  two  versions  of  such  a  course  when  classes   are  expected  to  be  small.  The  department  should  think  about  how  to  accommodate  student   needs  for  research  methods  that  are  not  limited  to  community-­‐based  action  or,  perhaps,   not  even  to  qualitative  social  science  methods.  Although  the  department  may  be  reluctant   to  outsource  a  required  course  to  another  department,  the  faculty  might  consider  working   with  partner  departments  to  match  up  some  students  (especially  in  the  academic  option)   with  research  methods  courses  that  fit  different  needs.     Experience  suggests  to  me  that  when  a  department  offers  a  strong  degree  in  an  attractive   subject  matter  not  well-­‐represented  in  the  region,  it  is  likely  to  attract  local  students  who   are  very  diverse  in  their  interests  and  goals,  as  distinct  from  the  more  homogeneous  group   of  students  drawn  from  a  national  pool  who  seek  a  highly  specialized  degree.    I  believe  this   degree  is  more  likely  to  experience  the  former  situation  than  the  latter,  especially  in  view   of  the  undergraduate  major  and  its  range  of  students,  and  recommend  that  the  department   conceive  its  proposal  and  curriculum  accordingly.       The  department  is  understandably  impatient  to  move  forward  with  this  proposal,  but  I   would  counsel  avoiding  haste  and  taking  the  time  to  refine  and  strengthen  it,  in  response  to   Dean  Kirby’s  advice  and  my  suggestions  above.  Given  the  complexity  and  length  of  the   approval  process,  she  indicated  that  admitting  students  for  a  Fall  2012  startup  would   require  working  at  a  very  rapid  pace,  beginning  immediately  (i.e.,  in  May).  Besides  the   formal  steps,  with  the  information  gathering  they  require,  she  also  suggested  multiplying   connections  and  partnerships  that  could  add  value  to  the  program.  There  is  an  element  of   political  and  rhetorical  work  in  any  such  process,  not  only  to  consult  and  gain  the  RWC   faculty’s  endorsement  of  changes,  but  also  to  cultivate  support  from  other  faculty  and   administrators  on  campus.    In  light  of  the  various  priorities  the  faculty  will  be  weighing  for   curricular  work,  I  believe  a  2013  start  would  be  more  realistic.         A  final  word  with  respect  to  all  curricular  innovation  and,  especially,  expansion:   department  planners  need  to  analyze  budgetary  implications  and,  where  necessary,  look   for  sources  of  new  funding.  Some  program  renovation  can  be  done  within  an  existing   instructional  budget,  but  if  the  department  is  adding  sections,  courses,  tutorial  functions,  or   other  new  responsibilities,  these  will  require  additional  funding.  One  of  the  virtues  of  small   experiments  and  pilots  (discussed  below)  is  to  demonstrate  concretely  what  value  they   add,  whom  they  serve,  what  synergies  they  create.        Sometimes  the  pilots  themselves  can   be  funded  with  micro-­‐grants.  The  department  needs  to  build  this  kind  of  thinking  into   curriculum  planning  and  program  renewal.       44            Process,  Governance  and  Leadership,  and  Hiring     PROCESS     The  process  modeled  during  my  visit  and  in  this  report  represents  a  pattern  or  cycle  of   program  development,  as  visualized  in  the  attached  diagram  (Appendix  3).  It  asks  a   department  with  responsibility  for  a  curriculum  at  several  levels  to  operate  as  a  teaching   community  with  a  built-­‐in  think  tank.  As  I  have  tried  to  demonstrate,  the  department’s  own   scholarly  and  curricular  materials  are  among  its  richest  resources,  but  the  process  also   connects  the  curriculum  and  teachers  to  scholarly  communities  through  relevant  readings.       The  process  begins  with  research—gathering  and  analyzing  data,  seeking  input  through   broad  consultation  with  multiple  constituencies,  reading  and  discussing  curricular   materials  and  scholarly  writing.  This  research,  which  continues  recursively  through  other   phases  of  curriculum  development,  produces  the  kind  of  concrete,  hands-­‐on  materials  that   should  be  the  focus  and  catalyst  for  any  group  discussion:  syllabi,  assignments,  faculty   publications,  survey  data,  student  work,  scholarly  readings.  It  is  usually,  though  not  always,   a  group  responsibility,  taken  up  in  committees,  subcommittees,  task  forces,  and  reading   groups  that  may  include  faculty,  staff,  and  students.       Another  component  of  the  process  is  experimentation.  I  strongly  advocate  experimenting   with  pedagogical  ideas  and  approaches  in  small  pilots  to  test  them  at  low  risk  before   formalizing  the  most  successful  in  broader  curricular  change.  Many  innovations—for   example,  uses  of  new  technologies,  perhaps  pioneered  by  a  few  early  adopters—can  simply   spread  informally  by  diffusion.  I  recommend  that  in  multi-­‐section  courses  these   experiments  be  in  pairs  or  trios,  in  what  I  call  co-­‐teaching  arrangements.  Each  person   teaches  a  similar  version  of  an  experimental  course  design  or  pilots  new  pedagogical   strategies  in  the  company  of  a  partner  teaching  a  parallel  section.  They  compare  and   discuss  their  experiences,  then  report  back  their  results  and  student  response  to   appropriate  groups.       These  processes  of  research  and  experimentation  are  knitted  together  by  conversations,   sometimes  simply  exploratory,  other  times  critical,  often  debating  problems  and  choices,   their  consequences,  the  benefits  and  costs  they  represent,  the  conflicts  they  embody.  Many   faculty  members  spoke  of  the  importance  of  respecting  one  another’s  positions  and   expertise.  That  is  certainly  a  prerequisite  for  collective  action  and  mutual  coexistence  by  a   diverse  faculty.  But  it  is  not  enough.  The  faculty  needs  to  cultivate  the  hermeneutical   quality  of  appreciation.  Appreciation  is  closely  linked  with  respect  because  not  being   appreciated  is  felt  as  disrespect.  But  it  requires  more  than  distanced  respect  or  tolerance;  it   requires  knowledge:  learning  what  others  believe  and  feel  strongly  about;  what  their  work   actually  is,  whether  in  curriculum,  leadership,  published  scholarship,  teaching,  student   mentorship,  or  something  else;  what  talents  and  commitments  it  expresses.  Reading  one   another’s  scholarship  and  curricular  materials  when  there  is  nothing  at  stake,  or  reading   scholarship  together  from  one  another’s  disciplines  and  influences,  lays  the  ground  for     45   more  productive  debates  when  decisions  need  to  be  made.  Appreciation  also  involves   patience,  listening  instead  of  defending,  seeking  people  out  before  putting  together   proposals  in  order  to  learn  their  thoughts  and  hopes  and  to  take  into  account  the  impact   decisions  will  have  on  their  own  work  and  priorities.       The  department  has  a  tradition  of  mutual  respect,  in  the  sense  (as  explained  to  me)  of   “everyone  being  equal”  regardless  of  rank  or  status.  This  can’t  realistically  mean  that   everyone  does  the  same  things,  has  the  same  role  and  responsibilities  in  the  department,  or   has  the  same  talents  or  “credentials.”  What  it  can  mean  is  that  the  values  that  determine   rank  or  status  are  not  equivalent  to  levels  of  respect  and  appreciation.  It  means  not   stereotyping  people  by  category.  I  think  this  idea  is  expressed  in  President  Axworthy’s   concept  of  a  community  of  learners:  “One  of  the  most  effective  ways  to  .  .  .  [achieve   significant  change]  is  to  treat  the  entire  University  and  surrounding  community  as  a  place   of  learning  and  to  encourage  University  faculty,  staff  and  students  to  all  see  themselves  as   teachers  and  as  learners  prepared  to  challenge  and  be  challenged  by  the  ideas  and   experiences  of  the  people  with  whom  they  share  the  campus  and  neighborhood”  (“The   University  and  Community  Learning”  5).       Two  specific  questions  on  administering  curriculum  came  up  during  my  visit.  The  first  is   the  principle  of  faculty  autonomy;  the  second,  the  question  of  “ownership”  of  particular   course  designs.       Faculty  autonomy  with  respect  to  teaching  is  historically  an  important  principle  in  the   department,  which  I  fully  endorse.  However,  it  can  be  taken  to  an  extreme  if  it  cuts  off  the   kind  of  communication  over  pedagogy  that  fosters  shared  principles  and  practices  in  a   teaching  community,  especially  where  multiple  teachers  have  responsibility  for  the  same   required  course  (Academic  Writing)  in  which  many  constituencies  have  a  stake  and  an   influence.  I  think  the  pendulum  did  swing  too  far  in  that  direction  when  Academic  Writing   was  first  introduced  without  a  program-­‐wide,  systematic  professional  development   initiative,  and  it  became  a  habit  for  teachers  to  teach  their  sections  in  relative  isolation.   This  is  problematic  enough  with  experienced  teachers;  it  will  become  a  serious  challenge   whenever  the  department  hires  new  faculty.       The  answer  is  not  to  reduce  faculty  autonomy,  but  to  encourage  a  process  whereby   individual  faculty  invention  can  inform  the  curriculum  while  faculty  communication  can   keep  a  collectively  taught  course  or  major  from  fragmenting  into  isolated  parts.  That  is  the   goal  of  the  process  I  have  described  for  experimentation,  assessment,  and  diffusion  of   successful  ideas  and  strategies,  developing  consensus  for  broad  changes  in  framework,  but   never  imposing  a  single  model  on  all  teachers  and  instantiations  of  the  curriculum  in   sections  or  courses.     Some  members  of  the  Curriculum  Committee  indicated  they  had  struggled  with  the   sensitive  question  of  the  extent  to  which  individuals  can  “own”  courses  they  have   developed.  When  someone  develops  a  new  course,  especially  one  reflecting  personal   expertise,  perhaps  in  a  highly  specialized  area,  it  is  natural  that  he  or  she  should  feel  a   sense  of  ownership.  That  translates  into  wanting  to  continue  teaching  the  course  or  to     46   prevent  others  teaching  it  who,  perhaps,  lack  the  expertise  necessary  to  teach  it  well.  It  is   often  desirable  when  developing  a  course  to  experiment  with  it  over  several  terms  in  order   to  perfect  it.  That  said,  ultimately  decisions  about  course  assignments  must  be  made  for  the   benefit  of  the  department.  Decision-­‐makers  must  take  into  consideration  the  impact  on   students  and  the  need  to  balance  teaching  assignments  to  meet  various,  possibly  conflicting   criteria:  putting  faculty  talents  to  best  use;  ensuring  variety  in  faculty  teaching   assignments;  taking  into  account  the  kind  of  records  faculty  need  to  build  for  tenure  or   promotion  applications;  filling  in  for  faculty  on  leave;  and  so  on.  No  one  “owns”  a  course— it  is  developed  and  approved  by  the  university  as  part  of  a  curriculum,  and  it  is  unwise  to   add  a  course  to  a  curriculum  that  only  one  person  is  capable  of  teaching.  If,  as  I  suggest   below,  the  department  hires  for  versatility,  it  can  expect  faculty  to  learn  how  to  teach  new   courses,  with  the  aid  of  the  original  developer.       GOVERNANCE  AND  LEADERSHIP     The  process  described  generally  in  the  previous  section  can  be  operationalized  at  different   levels  from  an  individual  course  designer  to  the  department  as  a  whole,  but  it  is  most  often   carried  out  by  groups  who  have  a  departmental  mandate  to  solve  a  problem,  make   decisions,  develop  proposals,  or  carry  out  other  tasks  on  behalf  of  the  department.  These   are  typically  standing  committees,  special  committees  or  subcommittees,  or  task  forces  set   up  by  department  leaders  or  personnel  committees,  with  consent  (tacit  or  explicit)  from   the  faculty  at  large.  Sometimes,  though,  volunteer  groups  or  individuals  can  develop  ideas,   read  materials,  or  conduct  experiments  on  their  own  which  eventually  enter  the  broader   cycle  of  program  development  through  diffusion  or  through  a  formal  proposal.  Many  of  the   thematic  ideas  in  earlier  sections,  as  well  as  individual  course  designs,  technology   innovation,  and  participation  in  partnerships  outside  the  department,  fall  in  this  more   informal  category.     To  the  extent  the  department  decides  to  proceed  with  suggestions  in  this  report  for   curricular  renewal  or  reform,  the  faculty  at  large  must  conduct  discussions  to  make  the   initial  decisions  which  are  prerequisites  for  the  broad  process  of  program  renewal.  These   include  prioritizing  faculty  time  and  departmental  resources  among  the  various  potential   projects  and  elements  of  the  curriculum;  distributing  responsibilities  to  particular   committees  or  other  groups;  planning  schedules  that  determine  the  pace  and  intensity  of   various  groups’  work;  and  correlating  decisions  with  external  facts  like  available  funding  or   administrative  encouragement.  While  each  group,  once  underway,  will  function  semi-­‐ autonomously,  it  is  important  that  their  processes  be  coordinated,  so  that  groups  can  share   information  where  appropriate  and  their  recommendations  will  in  the  end  be  mutually   relevant  and  compatible.  I  would  suggest  that,  once  the  faculty  decides  on  particular  goals,   tasks,  and  assignments,  it  should  establish  a  coordinating  mechanism.  For  example,  this   could  be  a  coordinating  committee  consisting  of  the  department  chair  plus  all  chairs  of   committees  or  other  groups  working  on  a  major  curricular  project,  which  would  meet   periodically  to  share  information  and  problem-­‐solve  about  potential  conflicts,  overlaps,  etc.   The  coordinating  committee  would  maintain  a  master  schedule,  make  the  committee  work   as  transparent  and  accessible  as  possible,  and  (particularly  but  not  only  the  department     47   chair)  take  important  responsibilities  for  liaison  with  administrators  and  units  outside  the   department.         At  some  point,  groups  conducting  focused  research  and  discussions  among  themselves,  like   a  Curriculum  Committee,  need  to  make  recommendations  for  decisions  that  need  broad   review  in  the  department,  votes,  and  presentation  to  university  committees,   administrators,  granting  organizations,  and/or  higher  bodies  for  approval.  This  requires   departmental  “deliberation”—a  rhetorical  concept  that  implies  a  slow,  careful  process  that   can  be  used  to  build  agreement.  Although  “consensus”  without  dissent  may  not  be  possible,   it  is  best,  for  curricular  additions  or  changes  that  will  affect  everyone,  to  strive  for  very   broad  support  by  the  time  they  are  formalized.  The  pattern  of  program  development  that   I’ve  described,  which  incorporates  persuasive  mechanisms  like  dialogue,  questioning,   research  and  appeal  to  evidence,  experiments  and  demonstration  of  success,  is  conducive   to  building  such  support.       In  times  of  stability,  a  department  can  afford  routines  of  governance  that  assume  little   conflict.  However,  governance  in  liminal  periods  like  this  one  require  practices  adapted  to   deal  with  the  conflicts,  traumas,  and  passions  that  inevitably  arise  under  conditions  of   accelerated  change.    Besides  the  processes  of  curriculum  development  and  attitudes  of   respect  and  appreciation  I  have  already  advocated,  I  want  to  offer  advice  on  a  few  other   issues  that  were  discussed  during  my  visit.     What  is  the  role  and  prerogative  of  committees  when  they  take  up  tasks  on  behalf  of  the   department?  In  general,  all  committee  decisions  in  a  department  are  at  least  reported  to   the  full  faculty,  and  often  formal  approval  by  faculty  vote  is  required  for  the  report.  This   process  is  usually  sufficient  for  relatively  routine  tasks,  or  sometimes  for  sensitive   decisions  (involving  confidential  information)  delegated  formally  to  the  committee.  Under   these  conditions,  departmental  approval  is  typically  a  formality.  However,  for  any   substantive  decision  or  proposed  change  affecting  the  department  at  large,  committees  can   have  no  expectation  that  the  faculty  will  automatically  approve  its  choices,  no  matter  how   hard  the  committee  has  worked  and  how  much  expert  knowledge  it  has  developed.  This  is   a  rhetorical  situation  and  the  committee  must  treat  it  as  such,  not  only  when  bringing  the   final  proposal  or  decision  to  the  faculty,  but  throughout  the  process  of  developing  it.  If  the   proposal  or  decision  is  going  to  be  reviewed  and  approved  by  bodies  beyond  the   department,  consulting  with  external  stakeholders  and  seeking  allies  should  begin  long   before  the  proposal  comes  forward,  rather  than  springing  it  on  other  faculties  suddenly  in  a   formal  setting  like  the  Senate,  where  it  is  likely  to  provoke  pushback  based  on  fear,   misunderstanding,  competing  agendas,  and  so  on.  (That  is  one  reason  that  I  strongly  urge   the  department  to  take  this  coming  year  to  build  support  for  the  new  M.A  proposal  before   presenting  it  the  following  fall.  Faculty  members  and  administrators  indicated  that  there  is   some  general  resentment  of  adding  research  and  graduate  studies  to  the  traditional   commitment  to  undergraduate  teaching,  and  the  faculty  may  need  to  address  other   concerns  and  objections  specific  to  this  M.A  proposal  or  to  the  department.)     In  these  circumstances,  within  the  department  a  committee  with  responsibility  for   planning,  proposing,  or  recommending  future  actions  or  decisions  should  start  by  openly     48   soliciting  opinions  and  ideas  from  the  entire  faculty  in  a  variety  of  ways,  for  example,  open   meetings,  surveys,  informal  interviews  and  discussions.  As  particular  ideas  come  up  and   are  drafted  for  action,  the  committee  should  keep  communicating  informally  with   department  members,  discussing  potential  choices  with  individuals  and  small  groups   outside  the  committee,  based  on  their  expertise  or  investment,  to  get  feedback  and  test  out   the  limits  of  consensus.  It  is  particularly  important  to  seek  out  the  opinions  of  potential   critics  and  dissenters.  In  the  case  of  proposals  to  be  judged  ultimately  outside  the   department,  the  committee  should  begin  consultations  with  external  stakeholders  early  in   the  process  as  well.  These  discussions  will  lead  the  committee  to  make  revisions  to  meet   some  objections  and  plan  responses  and  refutations  to  others.  When  the  committee’s  ideas   solidify  enough  to  agree  on  a  full  draft,  it  should  bring  that  draft  to  the  faculty  for   discussion,  and  then  take  its  feedback  into  consideration  before  returning  with  the  final   proposal,  decision,  statement  (or  whatever)  for  discussion  and  vote.  At  this  point,  ideally   the  committee  should  know  enough  about  sentiment  in  the  department  to  be  able  to  put   forward  a  motion  that  will  pass.  Because  the  proposal  is  already  familiar,  both  the  faculty   and  the  committee  will  understand  the  various  positions,  what  is  at  stake,  what  the  various   factions  and  positions  are,  and  what  kinds  of  arguments  might  be  persuasive.  Outbursts   and  emotional  responses  in  department  meetings  happen  most  often  when  faculty  are   taken  by  surprise,  especially  when  an  unexpected  and  consequential  proposal  is  suddenly   presented  for  immediate  action.  Faculty  resent  the  lack  of  consultation  along  the  way  and   suspect  the  forced  urgency  that  prevents  deliberation.     Transitional  times  inevitably  raise  the  issue  of  leadership.  In  the  first  place,  transition  is   defined  partly  by  the  very  fact  that  personnel  changes  are  imminent:  senior  faculty  retiring,   administrators  ending  terms,  maturing  young  faculty  enlarging  the  pool  of  potential   leaders.  To  these  recurrent,  natural  changes,  program  renewal  adds  a  new  set  of  leadership   challenges  and  leadership  roles:  assessment  and  the  research  it  entails;  curriculum  and   course  design;  building  departmental  consensus  for  change;  professional  development  for   new  faculty  and  for  continuing  faculty  teaching  a  new  curriculum;  fund-­‐raising;  forming   partnerships  with  other  units;  the  rhetorical  labor  of  taking  proposals  through  an  approval   process.  These  tasks  require  a  broad  range  of  talents.  Part  of  leadership  is  to  recognize  who   has  which  talents  and  match  them  to  tasks  and  roles.    It  is  a  broad  department   responsibility,  but  especially  that  of  the  department  chair  and  senior  faculty,  to  plan  for   leadership  well  before  a  crisis  arises  and  to  cultivate  the  leadership  abilities  of  younger  and   maturing  faculty.  This  means  not  only  giving  them  opportunities  to  play  a  leadership  role   on  a  committee  or  in  a  project,  but  also  mentoring  them  in  these  roles  with  frank   assessment  and  sympathetic  advice,  helping  them  to  make  plans,  solve  problems,  assess   their  own  performance,  and  learn  from  their  mistakes.  While  some  people  have  natural   leadership  abilities,  leadership  is  also  a  learned  skill.  In  a  small  department,  it  is  important   to  recognize  that  almost  everyone  is  a  candidate  for  some  level  of  leadership,  and  many   reveal  hidden  potential  when  their  nascent  abilities  are  cultivated  and  nurtured.       FUTURE  HIRING   I  turn  now  to  advice  on  future  hiring,  which  is  inextricably  tied  up  with  planning  long-­‐term   for  curriculum  development  and  program  renewal.     49   While  on  campus,  I  sensed  that  anticipation  of  future  hiring  decisions  was  centering  around   the  departmental  organizing  terms  and  their  (mis)identification  with  disciplines.  I  hope  I   have  shown  convincingly  why  that  is  not  the  most  productive  approach.  Instead,  I  suggest   the  following  criteria  in  proposing  new  faculty  hires,  as  turnover  permits,  and  in  selecting   among  prospective  applicants.   In  general,  in  a  small  department  hiring  should  build  strengths  on  strengths  rather  than   moving  into  unrelated  new  areas,  unless  it  is  expanding  its  total  size  or  taking  on  new   responsibilities.  I  have  tried  to  describe  these  strengths  and  needs  throughout  this  report.   In  general,  the  faculty  should  seek  new  faculty  who  will  preserve  the  character  and   distinctive  identity  of  the  department  while  also  helping  it  to  evolve.  In  filling  in  gaps,   priorities  should  follow  identified  needs  for  current  or  planned  programs  and  their  future   directions.  The  purpose  should  be  to  correlate  faculty  appointments  with  curricular  plans   and  initiatives  rather  than  disciplinary  background  per  se.  These  directions  create  needs   for  intellectual  leadership,  expertise,  and  perhaps  administrative  roles,  and  they  also  create   opportunities  for  faculty  research  that  will  attract  good  faculty.  Based  on  my  analysis  and   recommendations  for  such  directions,  the  department  might  seek  faculty  with  expertise  or   knowledge  in  these  areas:   1)  Genre  studies  and  writing  in  the  disciplines,  possibly  professional  communication  and   writing  in  the  workplace;  special  interest  in  most  promising  disciplines  for  partnership   (e.g.,  sciences,  business,  urban  studies)   2)  “Basic  writing,”  ESL  writing,  and/or  applied  linguistics   3)  First-­‐year  writing  programs  and  writing  centres  (usually,  generalist   composition/writing  studies  background,  sometimes  WAC/WID  interest);  possibly   administrative  experience  with  one  or  both.       To  these  I  would  add  for  all  new  faculty  hires  a  preference  for  a  strong  capability  in   evolving  technologies,  digital  communication,  and  their  uses  in  teaching.  The  department   will  be  able  to  expect  this  from  almost  any  new  graduate  in  the  fields  it  will  be  hiring  in.   Although  I  don’t  think  it  is  necessarily  an  immediate  priority,  projecting  into  the  future,   ultimately  it  will  be  important  to  add  faculty  members  with  research  specialties  and   scholarly  expertise  in  these  areas.       There  is  no  need  to  predetermine  the  disciplinary  backgrounds  of  candidates  with  these   qualifications.  Rather,  whatever  their  training,  the  department  needs  to  hire  faculty   members  who  will  support  the  generalist  integrations  and  dialogue  among  scholarly   traditions  that  represent  the  department’s  strengths  and  distinctive  synthesis.  They  should   also  share  the  social  commitments  to  pedagogy  and  community  learning  that  typify  the   faculty  and  institution.  They  should  not  be  hyperspecialists  in  their  research  and  teaching   interests,  but  versatile,  able  to  teach  a  range  of  courses  and  ready  to  take  up  new  topics  or   approaches.  With  this  kind  of  a  profile  in  hiring  descriptions,  candidates  most  likely  will   bring  some  combination  of  strengths  in  disciplinary  knowledge,  research  methods,  and   specializations.       50   The  department  should  also  consider  leadership  capacity  and  administrative  savvy  in   future  faculty.  It  is  a  delicate  matter  to  decide  how  much  faculty  time  should  be  allocated  to   formal  administrative  roles  beyond  that  of  department  chair.  The  advantage  of  having  the   department  chair  also  act  as  de  facto  head  of  all  the  curricular  programs  is  that  faculty  time   is  freed  up  for  research,  teaching,  and  extracurricular  work  in  the  community  or  with   partners  around  campus.  However,  this  begs  the  question  of  where  the  intellectual   leadership  of  each  program  will  come  from,  and  how  centralized  or  diffuse  that  leadership   will  be.  As  the  department  revisits  and  assesses  its  established  programs,  it  will  need  to   decide  what  kind  of  administration  or  leadership  arrangements  each  will  need  in  the   future.  I  do  think  that  the  first-­‐year  program,  at  least,  will  need  some  more  formalized   leadership  structure  when  a  new  plan  is  decided  on,  perhaps  coinciding  with  the  election  of   a  new  department  chair.  This  could  be  a  committee  whose  members  could  take   responsibility  for  professional  development  for  teachers  as  well  as  intellectual   development  of  the  course,  perhaps  headed  by  a  coordinator  taking  some  administrative   responsibilities  now  handled  by  the  department  chair.  In  the  same  time  frame,  the   department  will  need  to  consider  appointing  a  director  for  the  Tutorial  Centre,  which  may   then  be  expanding  its  responsibilities.       51              Appendices                                             52