a delayed beginning to the fall semester

Well, actually, the fall semester wasn’t delayed at all.  Only my post to this blog .

Welcome back everyone!  I have to say that  it was pretty incredible coming back this semester and having seven–SEVEN– comp/rhet faculty at our first meeting.  We’ve come a long way in terms of faculty hiring and program development in a very short time.  When I took over the Coordinator position, we had three comp/rhet faculty members.

There has also been a pretty rapid increase in student interest in upper-level composition courses.  ENG 430 Rhetorical Traditions/Contemporary Renditions, went live in the Spring 2007 semester and this coming Spring, my new course ENG 316 Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy will be offered for the first time.  Amy Lynch-Biniek authored a new course, ENG XXX Composition and Rhetoric Studies which is making its way through the curricular process and will be one of the key courses for our proposed concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies.  Linda Cullum will be submitting her new course, ENG XXX Women, Writing, Rhetoric to the curriculum committees this semester.  In addition, our ENU 405 Teaching of Writing, continues to fill every semester with graduate and undergraduate students. Needless to say, we are excited about the direction our program is headed!

This semester I hope to get all our comp/rhet faculty up and running on this blog too.  This way you can hear from all of us…of different approaches to teaching, latest scholarship, thoughts on writing and rhetoric, musings, and random contributions to this little space.

I am going to leave for now…but will return soon!  Thanks for taking the time to check in.

Thanks to all who helped make the Composition Conference Possible!

Last week’s Composition Conference for First-Year Student Writers was an unqualified success! Over 150 230 students participated in the conference!

Amy Lynch-Biniek and Kevin Mahoney would like to thank the members of the Composition Conference Committee for helping make this event possible: Barbara Belejack, Tony Bleach, Liz Casner, Linda Cullum, Todd Dodson, Joanne Emge, Dan Featherston, Melissa Nurczynski, Carissa Pokorny-Golden, Patty Pytleski, Don McNamara, Rebecca Stewart, and Todd Williams. A special thanks goes out to Annette Christman, the English Department secretary, whose knowledge of the university and help has been indispensable.

Thanks to Janice Chernekoff, the Chair of the English Department, for her continued support of the conference; to Joanne Emge for helping bring the Foust Lecture and the Composition Conference together this year; to the Provost, Dr. Carlos Vargas for his moral and institutional support; and to LAS Dean, Dr. Bashar Hanna for supplemental funds to help bring Keith Gilyard to KU. Thanks to all of the faculty who have encouraged their students to participate in this conference as panelists and audience members. Finally, thanks to all the students who took a big step in submitting and presenting their papers. We welcome you to the conversation.