Special

Rhetoric & Composition / Other Languages & Literatures

Kelly Ritter (Georgia Institute of Technology)
kell@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Many faculty in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies (RCWS) are trained to become WPAs for FYW or WAC programs, yet not aided into transitioning to other leadership roles, such as department chair, dean, or provost, or engaged in succession planning for such transitions. This session invites examinations of individual and institutional experiences that draw upon best practices to engage with questions such as, how are we training and mentoring faculty to move into institutional leadership roles? What does RCWS offer to the intellectual work done in such positions? How might RCWS faculty reify the work of academic leadership? What challenges are unique to RCWS faculty in advancing as leaders on our campuses?

Abstracts that address the above questions and also invoke the conference theme are especially welcome. By May 31, 2024, please submit an abstract of 300 words and a brief bio to Kelly Ritter, Georgia Institute of Technology, kelly.ritter@gatech.edu

This session responds to the emerging conversations on academic leadership, including the series of how-to leadership texts published by Johns Hopkins UP, the growth of leadership advice columns in CHE, and ongoing leadership development by MLA and ADE, each of which aims to address and potentially remedy the relative paucity of leadership candidates in academia for positions at or above the level of department chair. While reticence to serve in leadership roles is an issue across various academic fields, faculty in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies are uniquely positioned to do such work, due the centrality of writing program administration within their disciplinary training, but often lack the larger critical perspectives, or institutional mentoring, needed to advance into it. Recent volumes addressing this topic, for example Ballif, Davis, and Mountford’s Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition (Routledge 2008) and Wooten, Babb, and Ray’s WPAs in Transition: Navigating Educational Leadership Positions (Utah State UP, 2018), have begun this conversation in RCWS. What needs to be further amplified now is the processes behind advanced leadership work, including how one assumes roles that are often eschewed by colleagues as being corporate or neoliberal in nature, antithetical to the professoriate. Such rejection of administrative work results in more and more holes filled by unqualified individuals who ascend to leadership within our institutions (see for example the rise of corporate-trained university presidents), which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy threatening shared governance. This session aims to further this critical conversation about mentoring, succession planning, and the integrity of academic leadership in a setting (SAMLA) where faculty from areas of language and literary study can provide input and ask questions of RCWS-focused presenters, in a productive dialogue.