Teaching, Research and Service in the Twenty-First Century English Department: A Delicate Balance

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Pages:304
ISBN:0-7734-6420-4
978-0-7734-6420-9
Price:$219.95 + shipping
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This work brings together divergent English professionals to discuss the question of balance between teaching, scholarship, and service in English departments. The selected essays by faculty, composition directors, graduate studies directors, tenure and promotion committees, department heads, deans, vice presidents and those is related fields give this collection a wide array of perspectives from research, comprehensive and teaching departments.

The essays examine how departments establish criteria, weight, and reward for these areas; how expectations are spelled out to faculty; how these elements are deemed to be accomplished satisfactorily; how graduate programs prepare English professionals or how they can more adequately prepare them for work in these areas; how well departments work with new faculty to define expectations; how expectations change as institutional missions change; how post-tenure review processes evaluate these elements; how “well-rounded English professionals” are defined, developed and encouraged; how new faculty can develop professional profiles; how new and established faculty would like to see these areas weighted; and how what we say we want our “well-rounded faculty” to look like and what we actually reward varies.

This work will be an important addition to the English studies cannon, faculty development circles, graduate English programs across the country, those interested in educational administration and planning, and generally in all college and university libraries.

Reviews

"Noting the ways in which professions are changing and evolving has become commonplace ... New knowledge, new client expectations, even new legislation have had significant impacts upon both the definition of professions and their missions ... This book addresses exactly these issues: what should our expectations of faculty be, what balance should exist among traditional expectations, and how should these expectations be translated into the twenty-first century? This work not only deals with such questions, but frames them within the context of a specific academic discipline ... there is a need for this book, just as there is a need to address these issues seriously and objectively. I can only hope this work will result in fresh ideas and approaches which help solidify and shape our thinking as we move deeper into the twenty-first century." Russell Long, President, West Texas A&M University

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction (Ray Wallace and Joe Marshall Hardin)
Discovery
• Scholarship of Teaching and Administration: An Elusive Goal for English Studies (Richard C. Gebhardt)
• Reconfiguring the Role of Service in the Traditional Academic Triad: Exploring New Options for Professional Development and Mentoring (Christina Murphy)
• All This Without a Net: Balancing Teaching, Research and Service (Barry Maid and Duane Roen)
• A Dialogue on the English Department: Utopian Visions and Unfortunate Realities (Ray Wallace, Joe Marshall Hardin, and Alan Jackson) Integration
• Uniting Teaching, Research and Service: Restructuring the 21st Century English Department for Communities of Learning (David Alan Sapp)
• Merging Teaching and Scholarship: The Creation of Dual Status in the University (Patricia Jenkins, Kerri Morris and Jeff White)
• The Service Component: How Can We Lessen the Shock? (Lynn Burley)
• A Will to Believe (Joseph Bodziock and Christopher Ferry-McCarrick)
Application
• Is Your Cup Half Empty or Half Full? On Seeking Fullness in Academic Places (Wendy Bishop and Melissa Goldthwaite)
• English Studies at Illinois State University: Growing Old, Growing New (Janice Witherspoon Neuleib, Ron Strickland and Ron Fortune)
• Redefining the Terms of Faculty Work: A “Metropolitan University” Mode (Lynée Lewis Gaillet)
• Implementing Faculty Evaluation, Tenure and Promotion Procedures at the Branch Campus: A Texas Case Study (Gary Ross)
Teaching
• WANTED: A Collegial Teacher Who Publishes Often, Writes Grants and Loves Committee Work (Gina Claywell)
• Being Online: Teaching, Scholarship and Service (Peter Sands)
• Dancing around the Pyramid: Community College Instructors and the Triad of Teaching, Scholarship and Service (Beth Maxfield)
• A Shifting Weight of Responsibilty: “Balancing” Teaching, Service and Scholarship (Lynne Belcher)