Focuses on a survey of 10 questions that the author gave to all tenured and tenure-track faculty members in English at the University of Louisville. Notes that the questions focused on the perceived positive and negative results of a major cultural change (faculty teaching first-year composition) for the department, the composition program, the…

Describes a program that gives first-year students the chance to have a small course, 15 to 20 students, taught by a full-time faculty member on a special topic conceived by the professor. Notes that their program set an implicit parallel of time and value between teaching at the most advanced and at the most introductory levels of the curriculum.…

Notes that writing instructors want to resist authoritarian classroom arrangements because they want students to be active in their education and in their lives. Describes efforts to develop a "new model of authority, a new space," using peer group leaders, advanced standing students who facilitated writing groups in a first-year basic writing…

Tells what has happened the last two years at the University of Louisville's English department. Presents a brief explanation of why the University of Louisville's English department decided to redefine their mission--moving all professorial faculty into first-year composition. Offers some general comments about what the author has learned as a…

Describes background and content of a library skills course paired with an English composition course in a developmental studies program for high risk university students. Several principles for teaching developmental students are listed, and suggestions for pairing courses are offered. (nine references) (MES)

Advocates making large-scale writing assessment consistent with the view that writing is fundamentally about making and sharing meaning. Argues that this is possible through a writing portfolio system of assessment. Describes how such a portfolio program was begun at the University of Michigan to assess beginning students. (HB)

Describes the liberal arts curriculum at Albany College of Pharmacy, New York. Reports that the curriculum reflects the college's philosophy that students must learn to think by writing. Notes that teaching writing as a skill, a process, and a liberal art is a recent addition to the humanities core courses. (RS)

Offers four perspectives on dynamic changes in the architecture of power and leadership in one university's large Freshman English writing program as it implemented a more collaborative approach in its administration, reforming a top-down administrative structure into a more egalitarian one. (SR)

Offers perspectives of 3 members of a 10-member coordinating committee that has collaborated in the administration of their university's first year writing program for the past 10 years. Discusses how such partnerships come to be created in a hierarchical university environment, how power is acquired, and how collaboration works on a daily basis.…

Analyzes scholarship on administrative leadership styles. Describes the writing program co-directorship model the author and a colleague developed at a Southern public university, and offers a critical analysis of both the possibilities and pitfalls of collaborative administration for untenured writing program administrators. Points out ways in…