This essay revisits and expands on Gary A. Olson and Joseph M. Moxley's 1989 article "Directing Freshman Composition: The Limits of Authority" by looking at revised notions of writing program administrators' work and authority in 2012. Whereas the original essay surveyed only department chairs, our study includes data from both…

Many teachers have known of (or been members of) departments in which all of the potentially successful chairs--after having proven themselves by running subunits or graduate programs--have decided to devote themselves solely to research or teaching, and to leave department administration to whoever is willing to do it or whoever can be talked…

Student resistance to critical thinking emblematic of a liberal arts curriculum is often painfully obvious in freshman writing classes that impose a process-based approach to writing and thinking. Criminal justice students, like their peers in other majors with strong vocational orientations, often resist taking any more than the required liberal…

In this case study, you are the associate superintendent and chief academic officer (CAO) of a large school district in the southwest. The case involves the complex issue of how to serve the burgeoning adolescent immigrant population in your school district. The study considers how a school that is situated in the heart of a Hispanic/Latino…

Evidence indicates that the quality of a high school English department directly depends upon the effectiveness of the departmental organization. Despite the dangers of fragmenting and departmentalizing knowledge, some organization must be established for departmental work to be carried out. Among the variables which influence the organization and…

Reflects on being selected as the first female head of the English department. Discusses the selection process (done at a poker game), women's academic advancement, power, and job related responsibilities. (EL)

Describes dividing up the responsibilities of the department chairperson among senior members of the department, then reconsiders the profession and the state of the humanities. Discusses views advocating "excellence," cultural literacy, great books, and a core curriculum in the humanities. Identifies political tasks and continued…

Perceived influences of biology and English department heads were investigated using a discriminant analysis test of Biglan's model. Attention was directed to the influence of discipline versus the structural variables of department size, type of institution, and highest degree awarded. Questionnaires completed by 586 heads of biology and English…

Describes the art of effective English departmental administration in a difficult time of budget constraints, calls for accountability, and intellectual turbulence. Considers the effect on departmental management of sustained scholarly interest in oppositional stances, powerlessness, and marginality. (HB)

Discusses the role of the teacher as authority in the classroom. Questions whether an assertive teacher can be understood as anything less than an abuser of students. Considers the place of the text in four classroom scenarios with regard to these questions of authority. (HB)

Communication among teaching assistants can be as complicated as communication among full time faculty members, so that power relationships influence the rhetoric they use when they talk about being students, teachers, and professionals. Analysis of the political dimensions of teaching assistant interaction in the English department at the…

Examines the dilemmas of mid-career feminist professors, including: escalating demands on their time; pressures of work and family; high casualty rates among women hired; friction between generations and among feminists; and doubts about what professionalism means to the collective participants in the feminist venture. Discusses strains of this…

Argues that the integration of computers into English departments will have an immediate and significant impact on the social systems and communications within those academic communities. Suggests ways of responsibly distributing and using computer resources. (MM)

Discusses a process of acculturation in three stages by which fledgling Writing Program Administrators can be transformed into change agents: (1) critically reading the program to locate key allies, potential advocates, and proven adversaries; (2) implementing changes on an infrastructural level to convert positive relations among colleagues into…

Surveys past graduate-student administrators (now in professional and academic careers) involved in the consensus-based management system of a composition program. Finds that such involvement exposed graduate students to the most challenging aspects of university life, in all its political, structural, and interpersonal complexity; and was central…