"As a WPA who recently transitioned into being a department chair, I was pulled in from the first paragraph. . . . A Critical Look at Institutional Mission is a welcome gap-filler, focusing on the 'mission' as a fulcrum for academic writing/program-building activities. I think it's a critical collection that confronts the rhetorical power of institutional goals rather than connecting alignment to a more ethereal 'big bad.' . . . T]he book focuses on the mission statement as an artifact that offers insight into our institutional discussions about what we value, how we imagine learning to...

Writing Program Administration Series - Series Editors: Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven

A RHETORIC FOR WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATORS (2nd Edition) presents the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration. The collection provides aspiring, new, and seasoned WPAs with the theoretical lenses, terminologies, historical contexts, and research they need to understand the nature, history, and complexities of their intellectual and administrative work. Each of the thirty-six chapters asks a direct question about an issue WPAs will need or want to answer,...

The concept of institutional mission is central to contemporary academe, and a worthy topic of study for writing program administrators, writing center directors, and writing faculty. For many colleges, mission serves as a marker of identity and accomplishment. It denotes distinctive institutional history and important traditions of learning and service. Institutional mission also evokes a legacy of scholarship and pedagogy that contemporary administrators and faculty can use to recruit students and steward their programs forward.

Yet such legacy practices can be at odds with the...

Writing Program Administration
Series Editors: Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven

Labored: The State(ment) and Future of Work in Composition offers both a retrospective and a prospective look at the 1989 Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing and its relation to the changing nature of work in composition. Stemming from an investigative project to strengthen the Statement with data culled from national reports on labor conditions, Labored draws on the expertise of scholars whose research agendas and lived experiences...

Writing Program Administration

Series Editors: Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven

Labored: The State(ment) and Future of Work in Composition offers both a retrospective and a prospective look at the 1989 Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing and its relation to the changing nature of work in composition. Stemming from an investigative project to strengthen the Statement with data culled from national reports on labor conditions, Labored draws on the expertise of scholars whose research agendas and lived experiences...