Next semester will be fairly momentous for my department. We are trying to hire three new faculty to support our teacher education programs. Meanwhile two of our traditional literary studies faculty are retiring. It’s a significant shift in the dynamics of our department.

We are moving from a 4-3 to a 3-3 load, which should be good news, but it means changes in our course offerings. We’ll be offering the same literature courses, but we’ve eliminated a general advanced writing course and shifted those students into our professional writing curriculum. That means big changes for professional writing. It also gives PWR a larger presence, with instructors teaching some of our courses. Again it is another shift in department dynamics.

Finally, I’ve proposed a change in our master’s curriculum to incorporate teaching rhetoric/composition courses into the MA. We have three professional writing faculty who are interested and more than capable of offering such courses. It strikes me as illogical to not offer our graduate students coursework in this area, since we can provide it. It also seems inappropriate to me to single our a certain group of faculty and exclude them from graduate teaching. Now it may be that one might see my timing as pouring gasoline onto an already volatile situation. However, I do not see it that way. I’ve waited several years, until I was tenured, to make this proposal. Secondly, if we are going to hire three non-literary studies faculty into this department, the department needs to demonstrate that it recognizes and values the breadth of intellectual work in English Studies.

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, the department is going to have a retreat. I think it’s clear that we need to deal with the changes our department is undergoing. While many of our faculty remain very traditional literary scholars, our department is far from a traditional one. 8 of our 17 faculty will be in non-literary areas. It is no longer practical for literary faculty to look upon the rest of us as a necessary evil or some annoying appendage to the "real work" of English. Instead, we require a conception of discipline that is inclusive and a vision for the department that is collaborative rather than combative.

But what does it take? What does it take for an English department to recognize professional writing as its own and take up the task of building a new program rather than leaving it in the lap of a few faculty? What does it take for an English department to realize that teaching pedagogy and technology are integral parts of our discipline (particularly in a department where the vast majority of majors are in teacher education)?

While clearly each faculty member has their own special knowledge, their own contributions to make to a department, no one of us, or group of us, can simply work independently. Academic freedom has always hinged on an implicit agreement with a concept of discipline, just as freedom in research has always hinged on the validation of one’s peers through publication. For example, I do not believe it is anymore intellectually valid to say, "I don’t believe technology has any value in the study of English," than it would be to say "I don’t believe women authors have any value in the study of English." And just as we are ethically obligated to be inclusive of cultural difference in literary study, we are each obligated to contribute to the developing technological literacy of our students.
The student who enters Cortland in 2005: what are we going to start doing now to make sure that student is prepared for the work world of 2010? And I don’t mean simply in terms of professionalization, but in terms of a liberal arts education as well. What are we going to do to ensure that student is prepared to be a critical, engaged, and thoughful member of his/her profession and community?

In short, what does it take for an English department to realize the world is changing around them, that their College is changing, that their students are changing, that their own colleagues are changing and finally begin to change as well?

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