Rhetoric & Writing at BGSU

Issue Nine: Spring 2004

New Journals List in the R&W Program Website
During the Spring 2004 semester, ten R&W Ph.D. students in the Scholarly Publishing seminar worked to develop an extensive listing of courses in rhetoric and composition studies. Work on the project helped students develop familiarity with the range of journals serving or related to our broad and complex field. But it also resulted in one of the most comprehensive lists of journals and web links--readily available to scholars and students in the website of the Rhetoric & Writing Ph.D. Program www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/rcweb/rchome.htm; just click the Journals button at the bottom of the left-side of the page.

The students responsible for the new R&W Ph.D. Program Journals List are
Richard Colby, Heather Fester, Brennan Thomas, Alex Chege, Justin Felix, Alec Fleschner, Robin Murphy, Rebekah Shultz, Eric Stalions, and Thai Tran. Their approach was to list journal titles as live web links, and to group journals in several broad categories: Journals of Rhetoric and Composition, Related Journals in Education, Language, and Literacy, Related Journals in Communication and Technical Writing, Related Journals in Cultural and Literary Studies, and NCTE State and Regional Journals.

Liz Monske Takes Louisianna Job
Advanced R&W Ph.D. student Liz Monske has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in English at Louisiana Tech University beginning with the Fall Quarter of 2004. Liz will be responsible for teaching introductory and upper level technical communication courses for their undergraduate technical writing major and Master's degree in English. In addition to teaching, the department also expects that she will develop curriculum for the technical communication program as well as working with other departments on campus, specifically the Natural Sciences and Engineering, to set up contacts for student technical writing internships.

Alumni Updates
Our program’s alumni have also volunteered information about themselves, their current teaching positions and previous conference appearances, publications, and awards. (Note: Alumni are listed in alphabetical order below.)

Kitty S. C. Burroughs
Graduation Date: December 1998
Current Position/Job: Full-time Instructor; Bowling Green State University
Publications and Conference Papers include: “Threat to Communal Identities: Interpreting the Audience as ‘It’ and ‘We.’” 2001; "The Visible/Invisible Job Search: Specializations and Their Impact on Marketing Oneself as a Rhetoric Ph.D." 1999; Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America, 1998. Conference in Peer Tutoring in Writing, 1993.

Scott Calhoun
Graduation Date: August 1999
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature, Cedarville University
Conference Presentations include: The Romance of Faith: A Conference on the Fiction, Drama, and Theology of Dorothy L. Sayers. Grove City College. Grove City, PA. October28, 2000. Paper title: "Means and Ends: Loving the Word in The Lost Tools of Learning"; Mideast Conference on Christianity and Literature. Bluffton College, October 17-18, 2003/ Paper title: "Common Grace: A Shared Perspectivefor J. R. R. Tolkien and Flannery O'Connor"
Awards: Faculty Scholarship Grant, Summer 2003

Keith Duffy
Graduation Date: 1999
Current Position/Job: Assistant Professor of Humanities and Writing, Penn State Capital College
Publications and Conference Papers: "Digital Recording Technology in the Writing Classroom: Sampling As Citing." The Writing Instructor. 2004; "Community, Spirituality, and the Writing Classroom" JAEPL (Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning). (2003/4): 79-86. Peer Reviewed; "Imperfection: The Will-to-Control and the Struggle of Letting Go." JAEPL (Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning) 7 (2001/2): 1-9. Peer Reviewed; Conference on College Composition and Communication San Antonio, Texas, March 2004. "Community Matters: Their Citizenry and Boundaries" ;Conference on College Composition and Communication San Antonio, Texas, March 2004. "Discovering our Teaching Selves: Teaching as Suffering."; Conference on College Composition and Communication Chicago, Illinois, March 2002. "On the Streets Where We Live: Residing in the Gaps"; Conference on College Composition and Communication Denver, Colorado, March 2001. "Staying Connected: A Community of Ex-Grad Colleagues Gone Professional--Learning How to Teach Teachers on the Job"

John Fallon
Graduation Date: June 1998
Positions/Jobs: Professor of English, Rhodes State College
Publications and Conference Papers: "Sisyphus and the Boulder of Faculty Involvement: Successful Methods to Increase Faculty Involvement in the Assessment Process." 106th Annual Meeting of the Higher Learning Commission: A Commission of the North
Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Chicago, April 2001; Thomas Beery, Lima Technical College, and Earl Keese, President, Lima Technical College, co-presenters. This presentation was also given at the 81st Annual Conference of the American Association of Community Colleges, Chicago, April 2001; "MOOs: Internet Classrooms of the Future." 78th Annual Conference of the American Association of Community Colleges, Miami Beach, April 1998. Rich Higgason, Longview Community College, Cynthia Haynes, The University of Texas, Jan Rune Holmevik, University of Bergen, Norway, and Lawrence Clark, Tomball College, co-presenters; "Using the Internet to Internationalize Your Curriculum." Regional
Curriculum Workshop of the Midwest Institute for
International/Intercultural Education, Lima, Ohio, March 1997. Lynn
Child and Thurman Grass, Lima Technical College, co-presenters.

Carolyn Keefe
Graduation Date: August 1997
Current Position/Job: Associate Professor of English, Lindsey Wilson College
Conference Presentations and Publications: Last presented at the 4Cs in 2000, in Minneapolis. Have presented at the Appalachian College Association (ACA) Summit and the Kentucky Council of Teacher of English/Language Arts (KCTE/LA)
Awards: Student Government Association Advisor of the Year, 2001-2002; Recipient of four Horizons grants (grants awarded to support off-campus academic activities with students) that supported trips to Washington, D.C. as well as sites in Kentucky and Tennessee

Steven D. Krause
Graduation Date: 1996
Current Position: Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI
Conference Presentations and Publications: “Blogs as Collaborative Writing Tools: A Modest Experiment,” Presented at the Computers and Writing Conference, West Layfette, IN, May 2003; “Why Weblogs Should (and Shouldn't) Count as Scholarship,” Presentedat the Conference on College Composition and Communication, New York City, NY, March 2003.
"From Quills to Ballpoints: A Selective History of the Pen and It's Impact on the Teaching of Writing," Presented March 2002 at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL; "Where Do I List This on My CV? Considering the Value of Self-Published and Maintained Web Sites," Presented at the Modern Language Association Conference, New Orleans, LA, December 2001; Hart-Davidson, Bill; Steven D. Krause, Nick Carbone, Michael Day, Joel English, Trish Harris, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Ted Nellen, Mike Palmquist, Rich Rice, and Rebecca Rickly. “Re: The Future of Computers and Writing: A Multivocal Textumentary.” Computers and Composition. 21.1, March 2004.147-159. (Available online via ScienceDirect); "Where Do I List This on My CV? Considering the Values of Self-Published Web Sites." College Composition and Communication Online. 54.1 September 2002. http://archive.ncte.org/ccc/2/54.1/krause_copy.html; "'Among the Greatest Benefactors of Mankind': What the Success of Chalkboards Tells Us About the Future of Computers in the Classroom." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 33.2, Spring 2000. 6-16.

Rich Miller
Graduation Date: Summer 1999
Current Position: Director of Composition (Tenure-Track)
English Department, Suffolk University
Publications and Conference Papers: Book Chapter. "The Horizon of Martin Buber in Composition Studies." Judaism and Composition. Edited by Andrea Greenbaum and
Deb Holstein. Accepted for publication by Anker Press, 2003. forthcoming;
Pearson Exchange. (website facilitating collaboration/peer review). and Exchange Instructor's Manual; Instructor's Manual for CompSolutions website;The Writer's Warehouse for Composition. (comprehensive FYC website for Longman); Odyssey Print-Pack of Activities. (developmental writing textbook supplement); Instructor's Manual for The Writer's Warehouse;The Writer's Warehouse. website and CD-ROM. (comprehensive developmental writing website); SUNY Cortland English Studies Conference (2002) & (2003); Bay Area Writing Directors Conference (Boston WPA org) (2001, 2002)

Michael C Morgan
Graduation Date: August, 1996
Current Position: Prof of English, Director of Composition, Department of English, Bemidji State University, Bemidji MN
Publications and Conference Papers: Goodfellow, Robin, Michael Morgan, Mary lea, John Pettit. "Students' Writing in the Virtual University: An Investigation into the Relation between Online Discussion and Writing for Assessment on two Masters Courses," in Rewriting Literacy in the Network Society. Ilana Snyder and Catherine Beavis, eds. Hampton Press, 2003; "Students Writing in the Virtual University: A Rhetorical Review of the Data." Project report for SWIVU Research Team, IET, Open University, UK. July, 2001. Also published online by the Open University at http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/r.goodfellow/swivu/contents.htm;" Hands Off: Ten Techniques for Tutoring Writing with Word Processors." ERIC/REC. 1997; "Notes on a Rhetoric of Wiki," CCCC, March 2004; "That Course in Blogs and Wikis": A Student Panel. Great Plains Alliance for Computers and Writing, April 2004.
Awards (and Grants): Electronic Academy Award for Creating Academic Computer-Mediated Conferencing Suites Using the World Wide Web, fall 1996.

Alan Rea
Graduation Date: August 1997
Current Position/Job: Associate Professor, Computer Information Systems Program, Business Information Systems Dept. Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University
Publications and Conference Presentations: 2004 Rea Alan. Visual Basic for Applications. Irwin-McGraw-Hill: January 2004. (ISBN Forthcoming); 2003 Haag, Stephen, Maeve Cummings, and Alan Rea. I-Series: Computing Concepts: Complete, Second Edition. Irwin-McGraw-Hill: October 2003. (ISBN: 0072834110); 2003 Haag, Stephen, Maeve Cummings, and Alan Rea. I-Series: Computing Concepts: Introductory, Second Edition. Irwin-McGraw-Hill: October 2003. (ISBN: 0072830816); 2003 White, Doug, and Alan Rea. (October 2003). "The Jing An Telescope Factory (JATF): A Network Security Case Study," Journal of Information Systems Education, 14:3; 2003 Chen, Kuanchin, and Alan Rea. (2003). "Protecting Personal Information Online: A Survey of User Privacy Concerns and Control
Techniques," Journal of Computer Information Systems, Forthcoming Summer 2004; 2004 White, Doug, Alan Rea, and Lou Glorfeld. "Server Hardening Model Development: A Methodology-Based Approach to Increased System Security," In proc. 2004 Meeting of the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute, Atlantic City, NJ, March 2003; 2003 Chen, Kuanchin, and Alan Rea "Protecting Personal Information Online: User Application of Privacy Control Techniques," In proc. 34th Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, Washington, DC, November 2003.
Awards: Over $250,000 in grants awarded.

Virginia (Ginny) Skinner-Linnenberg
Graduation Date: December 1993
Current Position: Associate Professor, Director of Writing Programs, English Dept. Nazareth College, Rochester, NY (1998-present)
Publications and Conference Papers: "Finding Work in Technical Communications," presented to Society for Technical Communications, January, 2003; "Mastering Change/Creating Balance," presented at New York Counseling Association Conference in October, 2002; "‘Saying I Do’: The Critical Menage a Trois of Core Curriculum, WAC and Writing Center," presented at National WAC Conference, Houston, TX, March, 2002; "When the Student Suffers: Teachers as Counselors," Conference of the New York Counselors Association, October, 2000; "The PASS-key to Better Communication," presented to Society for Technical Communication, January, 2000.
Awards: Teacher of the Year, North Central Michigan College; Employee of the Year, North Central Michigan College

Rosalee Stilwell
Graduation Date: August, 1997
Current Position: Associate Professor of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Publications and Conference Papers: The Rhetoric of Ethos in the Journal of James Morris. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2001. “De"Death and Its Rhetoric in The Old Redstone Presbytery: Anecdotes of Scotch-Irish Settlers in Western Pennsylvania, 1750-1810.” 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, And Inquiries In The Early Modern Era. Eds. Theodore Braun, John Radner, and Kevin Cope. New York: AMS Press. 2002. (peer-reviewed journal article); "The Role of Literacy In The Founding of Sable Island Humane Station.” In Sable Island Journals, 1801-1804, by James Morris. Transcribed by Rosalee Stilwell. Ed. Ian Mclaren. Halifax, NS: The Sable Island Preservation Trust, 2001. 155-166. 2002. (book chapter; invited); “Panic and Desire on the Page: Rural Women Writing Their Worlds," 1999; "Challenging Institutionalized Writing" (accepted, 2004); International John Steinbeck Conference, “John Steinbeck and the Beat Ethos.” Hofstra University, March, 2002; National Conference of Teachers of English, “Vexing the Issue: Social Equity Issues and Participation in the Classroom,” Baltimore, November, 2001
Awards: Interdisciplinary Teaching Award, Center for Teaching Excellence, IUP, 2003

R&W PhD Program And the BGSU Academic Plan
While you probably won’t find the administrative-report feel of this article particularly appealing, you may be interested in details about the Rhetoric & Writing Ph.D. Program included in the following excerpt from our 2003-04 Academic Plan Report. Each of the sections included here has been shortened; for instance, the specific strategic goals--revising the Prelim process, hiring more faculty, detailing an internal web-based assessment portfolio, etc.--have been left out of each section. But the following excerpts, each a featured part of the University Plan, give a sense of the R&W Ph.D. Program, its strengths, and its relationship to the mission and goals of Bowling Green State University.

Leadership in Learning
Since its founding in 1980, the PhD in Rhetoric & Writing has emphasized writing instruction, a focus which distinguishes it from the majority of the nation’s rhetoric and composition doctoral programs. This conclusion is based in part on our study, in preparation for the recent Department Review, of the program descriptions in the Rhetoric Review survey of composition and rhetoric programs. In one of the periodic surveys we conduct to gauge the program’s reputation, William Covino of the University of Illinois at Chicago commented on the distinctive focus of our program: “BGSU's program, setting itself apart from others that include some attention to composition studies within the interdisciplinary study of rhetoric, literature, culture studies, etc., is distinctive for its clear emphasis of the teaching of writing . . . . [A]s dozens of programs have emerged over the last decade, BGSU's has maintained its mission and its distinction.” In 1995, Douglas Hesse of Illinois State University noted the program’s focus and said that, compared to many programs, ours is “more centrally preparing college writing teachers for the 90% of institutions of higher education in the country that are not heavily research institutions.” Hesse (who has since served as President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators and is now Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication) reiterated that view during an October 2003 consulting visit about the program’s goals-based advising, assessment, and portfolio activities.

The Program’s focus allows the Department to deploy resources so as to serve students who seek to be (and colleges that seek to hire) “scholar-teachers who understand the professional synergy of mastering knowledge, advancing it through their own inquiry, and sharing knowledge and habits of inquiry with students in the courses they teach and administer.” The ideal stated in that excerpt from our mission statement is reflected in the seven goals of the R&W PhD Program, goals which guide curriculum development, teaching, and assessment of student learning and program effectiveness.
1. Graduates are prepared to teach a range of rhetoric and composition courses.
2. Graduates are prepared theoretically and practically to work in computer environments in their professional and scholarly lives.
3. Graduates understand and can discuss the rhetorical tradition and significant disciplinary texts and authors/theorists that shape the field of composition.
4. Graduates understand the impact of rhetorical history on contemporary rhetorical theory and composition practice.
5. Graduates understand major competing theories and contested issues within rhetoric and composition.
6. Graduates are familiar with research in a variety of methodological systems.
7. Graduates are oriented to the place of scholarship in faculty work and rewards, and they have begun to work in professional contexts, for instance by developing ideas for submission to editors and conference chairs and by giving conference papers.

Redefining Graduate Education
With its long-established emphasis on writing instruction as a focus of scholarly as well as teaching endeavor, the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program anticipated developments in the definition and reward of faculty work initiated by Scholarship Reconsidered (Carnegie Foundation, 1990) and advanced by various other recommendations from organizations in higher-education and English studies [e.g., "The Work of Faculty” (AAUP, 1994), Making Faculty Work Visible (MLA, 1996), Evaluating the Intellectual Work of Writing Administration (Council of Writing Program Administrators, 1998), and the “Final Report” of the Committee on Teaching (MLA 2001).]. The Program’s focus also reflects the BGSU Academic Plan’s concern (in Sec. 3) that graduate programs prepare students to work in a climate of “[c]hanging definitions of faculty roles and responsibilities,” and that graduate programs should provide “balanced learning experiences that foster independent research . . . , assure acquisition of the tools for effective teaching, and expose graduate students to the realities and responsibilities of academic service and governance” so that graduate students are pointed “tenure and promotion and, ultimately, toward personal and professional achievement throughout academic careers.”

That intention is embodied in the goals of the R&W Program (for instance goal 7 says that graduates “are oriented to the place of scholarship in faculty work and rewards . . . .”). It is advanced by initiatives and plans described in the section on Leadership In Learning, as well as by those in the section on Learning Outcomes and Electronic Portfolios and in the section on New Media and Emerging Technology.

Learning Outcomes and Electronic Portfolios
The goals of the Rhetoric & Writing Program are more than definitions of program focus and guides for curricular development and teaching. They also form the basis of the Goals-Based Assessment Sheet (considerably more detailed than the general goals) which helps students keep track of experiences and products that demonstrate their achievement of program goals. We see the Goals-Based Assessment Sheet (which includes general Department learning outcomes) as the basis of two kinds of electronic portfolios: an internal one intended for data accumulation by students, as well as advising and assessment of student work and program effectiveness, and a public portfolio intended for presentation of professional and job-seeking information. (Our work in this area is reflected in the E-Portfolio section of the R&W Program website <http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/Portfolio/home.html>.)

The foundation of our work with electronic portfolios is ENG 728 “Computer-Mediated Writing,” where R&W students develop electronic professional development portfolios for use in documenting learning outcomes as well as for the academic job market. Because of the success of this initiative, we are beginning to formalize the portfolio as something every student completes as part of his or her doctoral education. To ensure that the portfolio has both a developmental and showcase component, we hope to offer the ENG 728 each year. In addition, our program has begun to offer electronic portfolio development workshops for graduate students as a refresher to skills and literacies gained in more formal coursework (at the Tutorials button on our E-Portfolio page).

New Media and Emerging Technologies
Since the mid-1980s (when Bruce Edwards wrote Processing Words: Writing With a Microcomputer and developed a grant for a GSW Computer Lab), Rhetoric & Writing faculty have been on the cutting edge of technology at BGSU. Individual faculty endeavor is still significant in this area (for instance, Bruce Edwards’s University leadership in distance education, and Kris Blair’s development of such courses as “Computer-Mediated Writing” and the web-based “On-Line Learning for English Educators,” as well as her editorship of the national refereed journal Computers and Composition Online). Even more significantly, the R&W PhD Program emphasizes technology within its core goals--one of which is to prepare students “theoretically and practically to work in computer environments in their professional and scholarly lives.”

In support of that goal, the Program has developed graduate courses and provided opportunities for its students to teach ENG 207 and other courses in computer environments, and (as the Learning Outcomes and Electronic Portfolios section makes clear) it has begun to utilize computer technology in the service of advisement, assessment, and the professional presentation of graduates as they seek academic positions. The Program has also identified a number of venues for practical graduate student experience with emerging technologies. One of these, work with Computers and Composition on Line, gives some R&W PhD students a measure of professional visibility in their field before they graduate. The Program has also developed an in-house learning community for graduate students titled Digital Language and Literacy, a group that seeks to assist faculty and students integrate technological literacy into the classroom and the community. . . . A final component to the Rhetoric & Writing Program’s emphasis on new media and emerging technologies includes the development and delivery of fully online courses. Given the emphasis on graduate education in the professional development of public school teachers, the demand for our courses includes two fully online doctoral seminars.

Sharing Responsibility for Teacher Education
The Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program centers on writing instruction, and its faculty, selected because of their scholarly expertise and professional commitment to writing instruction, understand the importance of well-prepared writing teachers in the public schools. So it is natural that Program faculty are much involved in the undergraduate Integrated Language Arts major, for instance as teachers of ENG 484 “Foundations of Teaching Writing,” ENG 483 “Advanced Writing,” and ENG 381 “Grammar and Writing.” R&W Program graduate students are involved, as well, as teachers of ENG 207 “Intermediate Writing,” which has long been taken by some ILA majors and which will soon be part of the required core of ILA courses. Graduates of the R&W Program often play important roles in undergraduate teacher-preparation at their colleges and universities.

Besides their involvement with pre-service teachers, R&W Program faculty contribute to the ongoing education of teachers in Ohio and the region. An important part of this work involves graduate courses taken for professional development by public school teachers, most often in the summer and increasingly in web-based offerings of courses like ENG 620 “Teaching Writing” and ENG 780 “On-Line Learning for English Educators”. But faculty also contribute to ongoing teacher preparation--and to the University’s connection with area schools--by their consultatancies and workshops with teachers. R&W Program graduate students sometimes assist faculty in such workshops. And our graduates often participate in similar professional development efforts at the their future institutions. (One recent graduate, in fact, developed and led several multi-year state-funded EECAP projects for public school teachers in the Lima, Ohio area.)