Join Us at CCCC in March!
The annual meeting of the Master's Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists will take place at the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Louisville. We look forward to seeing you from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Marriott, Kentucky Ballroom G, First Floor, on Wednesday, March 17th . If you have just developed or significantly revised your MA program, created a new MA program, or are doing a scholarly project related to MA programs, students, or curricula at the Master's level in rhetoric and composition/writing studies, please contact the Consortium Chair.
The Composition MA Remixed: Preparing New Community College Faculty, Addressing Diverse Student Needs
In this half-day CCCC workshop, we hope to make the work of preparing students for community college teaching visible by inviting faculty who teach in MA-granting institutions, faculty at community colleges, and recent MA graduates into dialogue with each other. We expect our proposed activites will address a series of rich questions: What is the relationship between theory and practice, and how can we imagine the balance between them? What role does the graduate student's own writing and research play in MA education? What roles do reading, new media, and writing across the curriculum play in community college curriculums and how can MA education best attend to these issues?
To address these questions, our workshop brings different stakeholders together to discuss and generate possible models for successful MA education. Our objectives are: 1) to provide a much needed forum to discuss the needs and goals of MA students in composition; 2) to make visible the work of preparing graduate students for teaching composition at the community college by talking with community college faculty; 3) to discuss key aspects of composition MA programs (core courses, culminating experience projects, teaching writing at the MA graduate level); and 4) to invite participants to share and reflect on productive changes in programs that participants have or may implement. In addition to sharing knowledge and generating possibilities for better preparing MA Composition students, we aim to begin a publishable statement concerning these goals that could more broadly serve our profession.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
1:30 pm-5:00 pm
Workshop Organizers: Kory Lawson Ching, Tara Lockhart, Mark Roberge, Sugie Goen-Salter, Jennifer Trainor (San Francisco State University)
Are Your MA Graduates Being Properly Counted? (08-07-09)
You may not have given it much thought, but even if your program is focused on writing and rhetoric, your students are most likely being counted in Higher Ed statistical categories as students of literature.
Thanks to a great deal of hard work over several years by Louise Phelps (Syracuse University) and her taskforce, the Department of Education has finally officially recognized "Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies" as a classification code in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). What this means, in short, is that if you arrange with your registrar to change the Classification of Instructional Programs code or CIP code, your graduates will be identified in rhetoric and composition or writing studies in government statistics.
Phelps has pointed out how crucial these data are in underscoring the legitimacy of the field and its graduate programs with administrators and funding agencies. When administrators at your institution survey graduation data, or when you need such data for program review, your graduates will not be lost among those with literature or creative writing degrees. And Rhet/Comp scholars attempting to establish new programs will now be able to point to these new, specific CIP codes to verify for colleagues, deans, and curriculum committees that rhetoric and composition/writing studies is more than a local invention.
How to Make Your Students Count
Contact the head of your institution's student records office or registrar. Ask him or her to put you in touch with your institution's IPEDS "keyholder" (the DOE's official on-campus designate), or more informally, the person who reports graduation data to the government. Explain that you're aware that as of July 1, 2009, the CIP codes have been revised, and that you want to make sure your students are accurately counted. Provide him or her with a link to the code that most accurately represents your program:
23.13) Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies.
It is in the institution's best interest to have accurate data. Those who have followed this route so far have received thanks for keeping the reporting data current. Consider sharing your success stories with the Consortium listserv.
CCCC 2010 Meeting
The Master's Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists will meet at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Louisville this coming spring. If you have just developed or significantly revised your MA program, created a new MA program, or are doing a scholarly project related to MA programs, students, or curricula at the Master's level in rhetoric and composition/writing studies, please contact the Consortium's Chair.
List Your Program at the Consortium Website
Would you like to join the Master's Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists by listing your program at this site? Download the Call for Program Representation information sheet.
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