Published June 9, 2022 by

End-of-Year Message from the PDC

So much has happened during the 2021-22 Academic Year! It’s been inspiring to see all the ways we’ve come together in the Writing Program to support each other throughout this year’s unique challenges. In the Pedagogical Development Committee, we’re really excited about some of the projects we began this year.

In the fall, PDC launched a new blog version of The Rhetorical Situation, with the goal of creating a more accessible format and featuring a variety of content for WP faculty. We look forward to continuing to develop this resource for WP, and we hope it will be a way to amplify faculty voices, stimulate discussion, and collaborate with one another. 

In the winter, PDC hosted our first WP “mini-conference,” in which some of our faculty presented recycled work from other conferences or contexts. (Presentation materials linked here.) It was a wonderful opportunity for our colleagues to share and learn from each other, and we intend to make this an annual event. Please stay tuned for more about next year’s conference. 

Throughout the year, we’ve been gauging faculty interest in establishing teaching circles to foster more collaboration and discussion among our colleagues. And this spring, we’ve begun making steps toward this goal for next year. The diagram below shows the results from our most recent survey. 

A circle diagram shows that 35% responded that they would be interested in joining a circle, 55% that they may be interested, and 10% said they they would not be interested. 20 people responded.

We’re excited to continue finding ways to connect with each other and support pedagogical growth in the Writing Program, and wish you all a wonderful summer!

Best,

PDC Committee

Lisa Schilz, chair

Steve Coulter

Madeline Lane-McKinley

Kate McQueen

Announcements

Published June 9, 2022 by

Faculty Accomplishments

The PDC wanted to highlight what our faculty was most excited about accomplishing this past year or this upcoming summer–conferences, publications, teaching awards, classes, hobbies, children’s or students’ achievements, etc. Thank you to those of you who responded!

“I consider it an accomplishment simply to have made it through this academic year.” 

— A common sentiment 

Small dog collapsed on what looks like a wood patio. Text says, "There's no tired like teacher tired."

Gail Brenner: Guiding/helping several of my W1E students who previously failed W1 or W1E to develop skills needed for passing-quality work this time around. Participating in a wider scope of WP involvement on WPPC, Leadership Committee and as Acting Chair of MLC. 

Steve Coulter: This summer I will be taking twenty UCSC students to Ireland for a 5-week Writing 2 course. I lived in Dingle, County Kerry, for about ten years, and on the occasion of returning, I have released a CD of Celtic harp music that I recorded in my studio there. You can listen to it here: https://stevecoulter.bandcamp.com/releases

​​Lara Galas: After this academic year, I am very much looking forward to getting back to the basics of mindfulness by practicing meditation, getting into nature, and creative writing. I also started a puzzle during spring break that I’d love to finish as a nice closing to this year. Finally, I am most excited about the collaborative work I did with the other members of the ELWR committee. I had such a lovely time getting to know and learning from faculty–who knew meetings could be so fun?! Happy summer everyone!

Joy Hagen: Star is graduating from UCSC with their degrees in Art: Games and Playable Media and Fine Arts! Spring 2022 marks my twentieth year working with the Writing Program. For myself this summer, I will make all the ribbon skirts I currently have planned (five!) and finally manage my first vacation break since the start of the pandemic (it’s remarkable how difficult it is to do these “for myself” things). 

Roxi Hamilton: My poetry book, The Songs that Objects Would Sing, was accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press for 2023.  I was awarded a Professional Development Fund grant for a trans-genre event I organized at the Philadelphia AWP.  My daughter, Emma, won an award in Biology at her high school.  And, for my family, just getting through the year feels like award enough.

Madeline Lane-McKinley: This year I published literary reviews and poetry in Boston Review and Protean Magazine, and in the fall my first book, Comedy Against Work, will come out from Common Notions Press. My kid started playing saxophone, and now reads an average of 2 cat fantasy novels per week. And this summer we’re going to Istanbul for a couple weeks to visit a friend. 

Phil Longo

Kate McQueen: This year I made strides in defining a new-ish area of specialization for me as a scholar: prison journalism. Three highlights: my book chapter on the Literary Journalism of the American Prison press coming out this summer in the anthology Literary Journalism and Social Justice, Journalism History published a short research essay of mine on the history of the American Penal Press Context, and  I was invited to introduce a new open-source digital archive of American Prison newspapers for JSTOR Daily.  I’m also excited to share that Prison Journalism Project launched a print digest of our online magazine this year, called PJP x Inside, with me as the managing editor. The purpose of this publication was to reach an incarcerated audience. The fall issue won an award of excellence from the Society of News design ! The spring issue was just published and the PDF is available online for free/ 

Brenda Sanfilippo: Teaching Excellence Award. Teach Access Faculty Grant. Completed Digital Instruction Project. Offered two trainings on working with student veterans. Continued working on accessibility, equity, and online teaching. I am looking forward to incorporating new digital tools into my pedagogy this summer.

Lisa Schilz: Not really an accomplishment, but my spouse and I adopted (aka “foster failed”) our long-term foster pup, Lola. She now joins our other 2 pugs (all adopted from TPPR) for a totally-unplanned grumble of 3. There can be a lot of snoring and snorting. 🙂 

Terry Terhaar: I’m trying to grow as many cherry tomatoes as possible as my pet ducks adore red tomatoes. (They’ll eat yellow tomatoes but reds are the favorite!)

Kristen Terry: I had two publications come out this past March that I wrote during the summer of 2020. It feels great to finally see them come out!

Amy Vidali: I gave a paper – a manifesto – on food access for those with food allergies at RSA (Rhetoric Society of America). It was nice to get fired up about it!

Tiffany Lynn Wong: In July, I am going on a month-long retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society) Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts, and in August-September, I will visit in Mexico to work with my COIL/VE (Collaborative Online International Learning/Virtual Exchange) partner Dr. Maria De Lourdes Perez Cesari who is a Theater Arts Professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Hidalgo. 

Faculty Spotlight

Published June 9, 2022 by

Conference Round-Up

With your help, the PDC has rounded up a list of conferences and workshops we as a faculty have loved in the past….

Instruction-focused Conferences

Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)

What: The Conference on College Composition and Communication is committed to supporting the agency, power, and potential of diverse communicators inside and outside of the postsecondary classroom.

For: Scholars and teachers of composition

When: The 2023 annual convention on the theme “Doing Hope in Desperate Times” will be held February 15-18, 2023 in Chicago, IL.

ESCALA Educational Services

What: ESCALA is a consortium of higher education consultants based in the U.S. Southwest who are committed personally and professionally to increasing the retention and graduation rates of underrepresented students in higher education. It works specifically with Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) to close the gap in educational access and completion rates for Latinos, mainly through faculty development programming and remedial program evaluation.

For: teachers interested in developing culturally responsive teaching to benefit Latinx students

When: ESCALA’s Faculty Summer Institute on Teaching & Learning in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) offers multi-day programming; dates and info for 2023 are still TBD.

The Institute for Writing and Thinking 

What:The Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking seeks to enrich learning in all disciplines through collaborative writing practices. Their July weeklong workshops help teachers deepen their understanding of writing-based teaching, its theory and practices, and its application in the classroom.

For: Teachers of writing

When: The next round of workshops will be held July 10-15, 2022

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

What: The National Council of Teachers of English is devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.

For: Teachers of English/composition

When: The 2022 conference will be held November 17-20, 2022, in Anaheim, CA. No info yet on the 2023 conference.

Online Writing Instruction Symposium

What: The Online Writing Instruction Community is an academic resource that provides a sense of community for online writing instructors around the globe and that encourages the use of recent online writing instruction (OWI) scholarship, the sharing of assignments, feedback, and course design ideas. 

For: online writing teachers

When: Symposia were held in August and September of 2020 and 2021. No info currently available on the website about 2022 or 2023 dates. 

Young Rhetoricians Conference

What: This is a college composition conference and retreat held historically in Monterey, California.

For: College composition teachers

When: The current conference will be held virtually June 16-18, 2022. No dates have been announced for 2023, but it looks like this conference tends to take place in mid-June.

 

Linguistics and Other Genre-based Writing Conferences 

International Association for Literary Journalism Studies 

What: IALJS is a multi-disciplinary learned society whose essential purpose is the encouragement and improvement of scholarly research and education in literary journalism (or literary reportage).

For: Scholars, teachers and practitioners of literary journalism

When: The date of the 2023 conference has not yet been posted but this conference usually takes place the second week of May. 

Note: this conference is a great resource if you are interested in adding reported work to syllabi and or want to teach the art and craft of reported storytelling across genres. It’s an inviting place for first-time presenters.

Investigative Reporters and Editors  

What: Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting. IRE was formed to create a forum in which journalists throughout the world could help each other by sharing story ideas, newsgathering techniques and news sources.

For: teachers interested in learning to scrape data and use spreadsheets for reported stories

When: IRE has ongoing virtual and in person workshops, boot camps and two annual conferences. See their website for more information.

Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

What: This is an annual conference hosted by the University of North Texas’ journalism department.

For: teachers, students, and practitioners of literary nonfiction

When: The next conference is October 28-29, 2022, in Dallas, TX, on the theme “Diary of a Storyteller: Crafting Words that Matter”

​​New Ways of Analyzing Variation

What NWAV is a yearly conference for the presentation and discussion of new research on sociolinguistic variation

For: anyone interested in sociolinguistics/language variation

When: The 2022 conference will be held at the Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, from October 13-15, 2022. 

Note: NWAV is at Stanford this fall, so it’s highly recommended to anyone is interested in sociolinguistics/language variation

 Society for Professional Journalists MediaFest

What: MediaFest is a journalism convention, bringing together professional journalists, student journalists and college media advisers from every area of journalism, from across the country.

For: teachers, students, and practitioners of journalism

When: MediaFest22 will be held October 27-30, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Announcements