Chair’s Brief Overview
The first year writing committee held its inaugural meeting for Fall 2018 on Thursday, September 27 in Namm 522. All committee members attended: Robert Lestón (chair), Aaron Barlow, Patrick Corbett, George Guida, Carrie Hall, Leigh Gold, Anne Leonard (Library), Suzanne Miller, Jody Rosen, Patricia Rudden, and Jennifer Sears.
Leigh Gold, who is an adjunct professor, rescheduled her office hours in order so that she could attend. She attended without pay. Many thanks for her attendance as her contributions were incredibly valuable for helping the committee reflect and deliberate.
Our newest member of the full time faculty, Professor Carrie Hall, was nominated and voted in as Secretary.
Professor Leonard provided an update in how the library is proceeding concerning library orientations for First Year students. A more detailed overview of this discussion is forthcoming.
The chair’s report included a number of items that centered around a more comprehensive development of the writing program. Top priorities included beginning a professional development program for part time faculty in order to create consistency across the first year writing curriculum. Professor Lestón had a productive meeting with Dean Vazquez-Portiz in the potential funding of this initiative. To achieve these goals for the year, a number of action items were discussed:
- A professional development program for part time faculty that would include pre-semester orientations and ongoing seminars centered on Composition Pedagogy and Practice over the course of both semesters.
- An online seminar made available for faculty who could not attend face-to-face sessions that would lead towards furthering the goals of creating consistency across the curriculum.
- Revising the syllabus to include a mixture of common requirements, common readings, and at least one common assignment while still providing flexibility for faculty to design components of their individual sections.
- An Annual Report conducted by the First Year Writing committee that provides an ongoing self study and evaluation that outlines the profile of the program, activities conducted throughout the year to bolster the efficacy of the program, and an ongoing needs assessment. Such a project would help create programmatic consistency from year to year, aid in the identity formation of the program, and create institutional memory.
- There was a brief discussion of other related matters, especially the needs for programmatic assessment, the revision of learning outcomes, and workshops to be conducted for professional training. Time ran out before the committee could discuss any of these items in depth, and so they will be moved to agenda items for the next meeting.
- Professor Lestón and other committee volunteers will be working on drafting a syllabus with common components to present at the next meeting. The committee will discuss the syllabus with the intention of having the committee vote to adopt the curricular changes. The next step would be to bring the matter to the English Department for a vote.
- Professor Lestón will soon be meeting again with the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences to discuss professional development for part time faculty. He is soliciting input from committee members and all faculty for models and strategies for developing a training program. Please leave your thoughts and ideas below about this or any other items.
