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WHETHER composition should remain in the English department or become a separate program or department has been a topic of some discussion in recent years. in the chair's address at the 1985 CCCC convention. Maxine Hairston called attention to the problems that arise when faculty members specializing in composition and rhetoric are given lower status or less professional respect and recognition than are others in English departments (“Breaking”). In a later article, published in WPa , she concludes that “it is in our best interests, the best interests of our students… for writing and rhetoric programs in major research-oriented…universities to think about moving out of English departments (“Speculations” 13). At the University of Southern California, the Freshman Writing Program became autonomous in 1978, long before Hairston raised the issues of equality and professional recognition and for different reasons. The separation occurred during a major restructuring of USC's General Education Program and was motivated by the university's desire to eliminate a fragmented arrangement in which four departments could offer freshman composition courses and to introduce coherent and unified instruction based on the latest advances in rhetoric and composition studies.
Although administrative structures can and do influence the direction and success of academic programs, my experience at USC suggests that individuals—chairs, composition directors, deans, and senior faculty member—as well as the institution's history and traditions can influence a program's development as much as or even more than its organizational structure does. Certainly, Joseph Flora and Erika Lindemann not only illustrate that English department chairs and composition directors at research universities can have a productive and collegial working relationship but offer a model for managing the conflicts and tensions that can arise when the composition program is part of the English department. Within USC's decentralized and entrepreneurial administrative structure, separate status has been an asset for the Freshman Writing Program. However, I have also had the good fortune of working under a dean committed to improving the quality of all humanities departments and programs as well as with three English department chairs who have been open-minded and congenial colleagues. Because Freshman Writing is an interdisciplinary program, I also work closely with a faculty policy committee, and its members have been invaluable in resolving conflicts among competing departmental, program, divisional, and institutional priorities.
To explain the dynamics of the interaction between the English department and Freshman Writing at USC requires a bit of institutional history. Freshman Writing was established, in 1978, as an interdisciplinary program in the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Its rhetorically based, process-oriented curriculum and pedagogy were at the cutting edge of theory and practice in the emerging field of rhetoric and composition studies. To provide for guidance of the new program, the dean of the college established a policy committee including faculty members from the English, comparative literature, linguistics, religion, and business communication departments and charged it with overseeing curricular content and the TA-training program as well as the selection of new instructors.
Freshman Writing initially maintained a close relation with English because the first two directors were faculty members in the English department, and the director of the department's Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature Program had conceptualized the curriculum and training program. In addition, English faculty members served on the policy committee and taught courses in rhetorical history and theory to many graduate students teaching in the program. Between 1978 and 1991, however, administrative changes and the natural evolution of the writing program increased Freshman Writing's autonomy and loosened these ties.
The first significant shift occurred in 1980 when the program moved from the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences to the Humanities Division, one of three divisions within the college. Over the years, the dean and humanities departments other than English have come to view Freshman Writing as a divisional program rather that as part of the English department's undergraduate program. Increasingly, the Freshman Writing policy committee, although usually chaired by a professor from English, has reflected this divisional perspective in its membership. In 1984, the dean of humanities converted the position of program director from a faculty to a staff position. As a result, the director of Freshman Writing is no longer part of the English department's discussions about its undergraduate and graduate programs or its interaction has increased the potential for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Although moving the writing program outside the English department changes the dynamics of the relation, the shift does not end differences of opinion or the need to resolve them. At USC, some problems are more troublesome than others. For example, I never discuss budgets with Richard Ide, the current chair of the English department. Freshman Writing's budget is completely separate from the English department's and I negotiate directly with the dean of humanities for the program's resources, an arrangement that has been particularly advantageous for Freshman Writing and beneficial to a lesser extent to the English department. Freshman Writing courses are designed to develop the critical thinking, reading, and writing skills that students must learn to do successful college-level work. Moreover, our courses are the common educational experience of students during their crucial first year. By stressing the high payoff and wide influence that relatively modest budget increases will have, I have been able each year to garner additional resources to improve the curriculum, TA-training program, and support for classroom instruction.
In USC's decentralized budgeting system, additional resources are allocated from the dean's discretionary funds, so the “cost” of improving instruction in Freshman Writing is spread over all humanities departments. If the writing program were still within the English department, it would be difficult to avoid direct competition with other departmental programs. Having a separate budget enables me to present the strongest possible arguments for more resources to improve writing instruction, and Richard has one less budgetary headache when he begins to divide the English department budget among its programs and priorities.
On the other hand, we've had scheduling conflicts that would be unlikely to arise if the writing program were still part of the English department. For example, all new Freshman Writing instructors attend an intensive two-week orientation before the fall semester and then enroll in a semester-long practicum where they plan assignments and lesson and discuss common classroom problems under the guidance of experienced TAs. Every fall, several new instructors along with one or two of their mentors predictably discover that an essential English department seminar has been scheduled at the same time as the practicum. In the fall of 1990 we were able to move the time of the English seminar ahead 30 minutes and the TA practicum back 30 minutes to resolve the conflict, but in other years solutions were harder to find and less satisfactory. Fortunately, Richard eliminated this scheduling problem by reserving Wednesday afternoons for departmental meetings and speakers, thus creating an open slot for the fall 1992 practicum.
Differences over scheduling, although annoying, are insignificant compared with those that can arise over the curriculum, the TA-training program, or the selection of TAs, and these issues have proved the most difficult to resolve. At USC, such differences are mediated by the Freshman Writing Program policy committee rather than through the English department's internal deliberations. Over the years, the policy committee has served as a forum where conflicting viewpoints on controversial issues could be discussed and carefully considered. Strong leadership by the three faculty members—two from English and one from linguistics—who have chaired the committee during my term as director and the skill of committee members in balancing the interests and priorities of departments and those of Freshman Writing have enable us to resolve even the thorniest issues.
Between 1984 and 1986, the policy committee was concerned primarily with the curriculum and TA-training program. The program's innovative curriculum reflected some of the best theoretical work at the time it was instituted in 1978. Students enrolled in a single continuing workshop course that spanned up to three semesters (although they could receive credit for no more than two semesters' work). They were not graded on course work until they completed the workshop, and the grade for the final semester was applied retroactively to cover the work of previous semesters. Although theoretically strong, the innovations led to unanticipated problems in implementation and student motivation. As a result, the program became an administrative nightmare, and the workshop course was intensely disliked by the students, who were unwilling to do more than the minimum required to pass during the ungraded semester but became antagonistic and panic-stricken during the graded semester.
Shortly after I became director in 1984, the policy committee undertook a review of the entire program. The committee, whose membership included four professors from the English department (two from the Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature Program), one from linguistics, and one from business communication—along with three student representatives, two undergraduates and one graduate—met regularly for over a year to discuss and evaluate my proposals for eliminating the program's inherent structural problems as well as incorporating new advances in the field into the curriculum. After considering such topics as the best instruction for underprepared students, the appropriate balance between theory and practice in the TA-training course, and the goals and objectives for three new and discrete courses to replace the single workshop course, the committee agreed on a revised curriculum, which was introduced in 1986.
In 1989 the dean of humanities arranged for an outside review of the revised program, and two WPA consultant-evaluators—Lynn Bloom from the University of Connecticut and Jim Slevin from Georgetown University—confirmed our own impressions that the new curriculum represented “a significant improvement” and was generally “perceived as a great success” (2). They also had high praise for the new training program instituted in 1986, describing the Tas as “competent and well-trained” and as having “access to continual faculty development” (1). Since then, the policy committee has continued to monitor the program's progress, implemented recommendations for further improvising the curriculum and strengthening the TA-training program, and supported ongoing efforts to incorporate the latest research and theory into the program's curriculum and pedagogy.
Since the spring of 1990, however, the policy committee has focused its attention on the issue that proved most troublesome when Freshman Writing was first established: TA selection. Before 1978, USC's tradition of academic entrepreneurship enable the departments of comparative literature to offer Freshman composition courses. In addition, other departments—history, philosophy, cinema—offered courses that would be displaced by a required second semester of freshman composition in the university's new General Education Program. To reassure departments that they would not lose TA positions by supporting the new centralized writing program, the first policy committee divided TA positions among the concerned departments according to a quota system based on past use.
Fortunately, TA positions were not an issue during the years when our energies were concentrated on revising the curriculum. Between 1984 and 1988, enough freshmen enrolled at USC to provide TA positions for all the graduate students that English and other humanities departments wished to support. In fact, I had to recruit graduate students from departments and programs outside the humanities—journalism, the Professional Writing Program, and cinema—to find enough qualified instructors to teach all the sections needed. In the spring of 1990, however, USC's freshman enrollment declined 20% and Freshman Writing lost 15 TA positions. Although this budget cut hit hardest in the English department—whose graduate students make up more than half our TAs—all humanities departments were affected by the reduced level of support available for the following year.
Because TA positions are the lifeblood of graduate programs at USC, no topic has greater potential for divisiveness or conflict. When faced with the loss of positions, the policy committee considered ways that departments' need to support new graduate students could be balanced with Freshman Writing's obligation to honor commitments to those already teaching in the program. Finally, the committee opted for a smaller number of new positions so that Freshman Writing would be able to offer contracts to all continuing instructors who were eligible for additional support. It was a difficult time for everyone involved, however, and to avoid repeating the unhappy scenario, the committee undertook in the fall of 1990 a complete review of policies on Ta selection and reappointment and revised them. Nevertheless, unanticipated problems arose during the 1991 selections. The demand for new positions far exceeded the number available, creating tensions among departments over the allocation of openings. In addition, disagreements emerged over the relative importance of different selection criteria. Predictably, Freshman Writing was more concerned about applicants' potential to be effective writing teachers, while English and other humanities departments were, understandably, more concerned about their potential as graduate students.
Unfortunately, tensions over TA positions are likely to continue unless our freshman enrollment increases or humanities departments lower their expectations. For the foreseeable future, the policy committee will need to reconsider TA selection policies each year and to revise them in a way that continues to balance conflicting needs and priorities. And I have had the unenviable task of explaining to Richard and five other department chairs why—to quote Steven Sample, USC's president—they have to “do more with less and do it better.”
After seven years as director, I must admit that there are costs as well as benefits to our separate status. The greatest cost, without question, is the time required to manage and maintain ongoing working relations with six humanities departments, the dean and his office, and the policy committee. During my tern as director, however, the benefits have far exceeded the costs. Autonomy has given us higher visibility and status as an university program, enabled us to set our own goals and priorities, and allowed us to take advantage of USC's entrepreneurial tradition to improve writing instruction. In addition, curriculum and instruction in USC's freshman composition courses have received greater attention because of our separate administrative structure. All the program's resources and my time and energy as well as that of Freshman Writing's three assistant directors and its administrative support staff are fully committed to improving the curriculum and to training and supervising more than 120 instructors. Through our efforts we have been able to create a laboratory for testing pedagogical applications of current research and theories. As a result, the curriculum and TA-training program evolve and improve continually as we incorporate successful experimental approaches into the regular curriculum.
Writing programs can exist as separate entities in research universities without the complex structure that has evolved at USC. But whatever the administrative arrangement, there is likely to be a continuing and reciprocal relation between English departments and writing programs because of the graduate students they share. Even in USC's self-consciously interdisciplinary program, a majority of the TA positions have always been held by graduate students from the English department, and the same would probable be true at other institutions. Although we have had a number of excellent instructors from other departments, TAs from English are more likely to see teaching writing as central to their graduate studies and future academic careers. Graduate courses in the English department frequently complement and extend our practicum in teaching writing because many students take at lease one course in rhetorical theory or history, and students in the Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature Program are actively engaged in translating theory into practical rhetorical strategies. Moreover, the professional interest and graduate course work of TAs from the English department have generally made them the program's instructional leaders, and they play an essential role in training new TAs, developing innovative pedagogical approaches, and improving the program's curriculum and instruction.
Trying to strike a balance between autonomy and accommodation has been a challenge at USC and will undoubtedly continue to be one. From my perspective, the ideal relation between Freshman Writing and the English department would be an academic partnership that acknowledges their sometimes different priorities but accommodates these differences by working to achieve their common goals. Such a partnership offers the best chance of finding the elusive balance between autonomy accommodation that will advance the goals of both the English department and the Freshman Writing Program.
The author is Director of the Freshman Writing Program at the University of Southern California. This paper was presented at the 1991 ADE Eastern Summer Seminar at Skidmore College.
Bloom, Lynn, and James Slevin. “Evaluation of Freshman Writing Program, University of Southern California.” WPA Consultant-Evaluators Report. 1989.
Flora, Joseph M., and Erika Lindemann. “English Chairs and Writing Program Administrators: An Antiphonal Reading.” ADE Bulletin 100 (1991): 3540. [Show Article]
Hairston, Maxine. “Breaking Our Bonds and Reaffirming Our Connections.“ CCCC Annual Convention. Minneapolis, 21 Mar. 1985.(Rpt. in College Composition and Communication 36 [1985]: 27282 and in ADE Bulletin 81 [1985]: 15.)
——. “Some Speculations about the Future of Writing Programs.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 11.3 (1988): 916.
© 1992 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
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