Letter from the guest editors

Letter From the Guest Editors

SUSAN LANG

Texas Tech University

JANICE R. WALKER

Georgia Southern University

KEITH DORWICK

University of Illinois–Chicago

An annual rite of passage for new faculty at most institutions of higher education is the“new faculty orientation.” At one such recent orientation, the administrator in charge ofdiscussing matters related to tenure and promotion told the roomful of new faculty thefollowing (or a reasonable facsimile of the following):

I know that you think you would like me to stand here and give you numbers—1 book, 8–10articles, 12 conference presentations, 2 university-wide committees, teaching evaluations aver-aging a 4.3 on a five point scale, and the like. Numbers sound good now. But trust me, in 6 yearsyou’ll be thankful I didn’t give you numbers or absolutes, and that we don’t grant or deny tenurebased on absolutes.

Although the tenure process has always seemed obscure—both to those seeking tenure inthe academy and those observing the process from outside—those seeking tenure deci-sions based mostly or entirely on their work in the area of computers and writing, or whatEric Crump has dubbedtechnorhetoric, have found themselves facing more than the usualnumber of questions and problems with the process. Central to the dilemma is the questionof how work with technology fits into the traditional categories of research, teaching, andservice. Although individual English departments have made some effort over the last fewyears to directly address the role that work with technology will play in the tenure andpromotion process, the job is far from complete, and brings with it further complications.As Seth Katz (1997) observed in the Spring 1997 issue ofKairos: A Journal for Teachersof Writing in Webbed Environments, his own work on a committee charged with revisingdepartment guidelines on tenure and promotion placed him in the odd position of helpingto write the guidelines by which his own tenure would be decided. He also explained theresults of the committee’s work:

In settling for a temporary revision, we have recognized the reality of our situation: we are caughtbetween tradition and transition, attempting to evaluate a technology and practice with which wehave inadequate experience, and which keeps evolving as we watch. Our department has accepted

Direct all correspondence to: Susan Lang, Department of English, Texas Tech University, Box 43091, Lubbock,TX 79413. Email:,slang@ttacs.ttu.edu..

Computers and Composition17, 1–7 (2000) ISSN 8755-4615© 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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that the best we can do is to openly recognize, first, that many fine teachers and bright researchersare doing good and interesting academic work with computers; second, that in the course of time,as members of our department and colleagues, friends, and acquaintances at other institutions domore work with computers, the whole field of computer-related activity in English studies willtake shape for us; and, third, that through argument, conversation, and compromise, a consensuswill develop as to how that activity is to be evaluated and rewarded. (online)

One of the most significant observations in Katz’s work is that his department’s reeval-uation of departmental tenure and promotion guidelines only occurred when candidatesfor promotion who had worked with technology neared their tenure decision date.

Partially in hopes of sparking more general discussions of tenure-related issues, severalpanels at the 1997 Computers and Writing Conference in Honolulu addressed variousaspects of academic employment. Mick Doherty, Susan Lang, and Cynthia Selfe (1997)considered tenure from a variety of perspectives in “The Bonfire of the Humanities,” whileKeith Dorwick, Ken McAllister, Tharon Howard, and Dickie Selfe (1997) discussedvarious facets of facilities management and alternative roles for professionals in academicenvironments. What became obvious to a number of us was that these discussions oftenured positions, alternative careers to the academy, and the changing nature of academicemployment deserved further consideration; given the preferences of most tenure andpromotion committees, at least some of this discussion needed to occur in print media thatcould be easily copied and distributed to members of candidates’ departments. Thisspecial issue ofComputers and Compositionrepresents one part of that continuedconversation, though by no means the final word on any of the complex and interestingtopics that emerge anytime the words “academic employment” are uttered.

If anything, the issues have become ever more complicated during the three years sincewe began work on this issue. Although some individuals who have built their careersworking with computers in writing programs or English Departments have been awardedtenure, others have not; as more tenure-track faculty claim technorhetoric as their primaryarea of research and teaching, the drive to determine what counts and why intensifies.

Perhaps, because there is more at stake for junior faculty, most of the articles includedin this issue have been written by those on the tenure track, with the exception of BarryMaid, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, andFred Kemp, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication at Texas TechUniversity. Those who have successfully negotiated the trial by fire of tenure committeesfailed to respond to our call for submissions to this issue. (The one exception, “LookingElsewhere,” referenced below, represents the experience—for the most part—of thosewho have eschewed both the tenure track, and tenure itself.)

We believe that the experiences of senior faculty articulating the ways in which workwith technology should be evaluated (and valued) could provide models for departmentsas they rewrite guidelines for the twenty-first century. Of course, many of those techno-rhetoricians who have successfully gained admission to the ranks of the tenured profes-soriate did so by fulfilling traditional requirements for teaching, scholarship, and servicein addition totheir work with technology. These stories, too, would help as we recognizethe double bind many of us will face if we choose to continue our work in new forms.

Presumably to help answer this question, both the Modern Language Association(1998) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (1998) haveissued a number of statements discussing the general nature of teaching, research, and

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service as well as more specific discussions of the responsibilities of both individualfaculty who work with technology and their departments. What most of these guidelinesultimately recommend, however, is that candidates for tenure and promotion adequatelyrelate their work to existing criteria.

As Barry Maid attests, this just isn’t as easy as it sounds. Ultimately, the local criteriaof each institution are what will determine the tenure decisions of individual faculty. Maidexplores some of the elements of the local nature of tenure in “Yes, A TechnorhetoricianCan Get Tenure” by considering the way departmental and institutional missions andobjectives can contradict and complicate the candidate’s path to tenure. Maid alsoexplores the connections between technorhetoricians and other nontraditional players inEnglish departments, most specifically writing program administrators. Finally, Maidconsiders the guidelines set forth by Ernest Boyer and evaluates the potential effectivenessof applying Boyer’s principles to technorhetorician tenure portfolios.

Rebecca Rickly argues, however, that it may not even be possible, let alone desirable,for candidates to attempt to make the work they do with technology fit more traditionalcriteria. Thus, she further problematizes the notion of locality and community in “TheTenure of the Oppressed” as she considers the fact that many technorhetoricians seem toneglect essential networking activities on their own campus in favor of cultivatingface-to-face or virtual communities with other technorhetoricians around the world. Theproblem ensues, according to Rickly, when technorhetoricians place priority on imposingthe values of their online community onto their home departments rather than seekcompromises between the technoretorician community and the local climate of eachcampus.

Changes in the technology we use to write and to teach writing may ultimately bechanging the very nature of pedagogy as well as the nature of what we teach. In the faceof such changes, many technorhetoricians find themselves wondering if existing criteriaare even adequate to evaluate current pedagogy, let alone to evaluate teaching in these newenvironments. Michael Day considers the difficulties the evaluation of teaching in elec-tronic environments can pose for technorhetoricians and other faculty in “Teachers at theCrossroads,” noting that evaluating online teaching may require a level of familiarity withthe unique requirements of the online classroom. Thus, teachers who feel competent toevaluate teaching practices in traditional spaces may not be adequately equipped toevaluate teaching when it moves online. Day presents some guidelines for job seekers,candidates for tenure and promotion, tenure and promotion committee members, andothers involved in or affected by these decisions which he hopes will supplement theguidelines already formulated by the Conference on College Composition and Commu-nication (1998) and the Modern Language Association (1998).

Further complicating the attempts to articulate tenure and promotion guidelines thatrecognize work being done with technology is the mandate at many institutions to includetechnology in the curriculum. Although it would seem that this mandate would make oursituation easier, in reality this is often not the case. Administrators do indeed recognize thenecessity of including technology in the mix; however, they often do not reflect this intenure and, especially, promotion criteria that still value traditional forms of scholarshipand publication over emerging ones. Often the work done by technorhetoricians is eitheroutside the purview of traditional forms or is lumped into the category of “service.” Muchof the problem centers on the lack of knowledge about just what it is that technorheto-

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ricians do and how these new forms should be valued. The CCCC (1998) Committee onComputers in Composition and Communication recently published guidelines for promo-tion and tenure committees designed to help bridge this gap by recommending, amongother things, that

the candidate’s work be evaluated by persons knowledgeable about the use of technology. Ifqualified reviewers are not available on the candidate’s home campus, it is appropriate to solicitoutside reviewers, particularly for work that is not normally offered as part of a candidate’s tenurefile, e.g., course web sites, instructional software, MOO spaces, or personal or institutional homepages. (online)

Nonetheless, as Sibylle Gruber considers in “Technology and Tenure: Creating Opposi-tional Discourse in an Offline and Online World,” the complex and everchanging rolesplayed by technorhetoricians in various communities within a single institution may placeindividuals in positions simultaneously marginalized and central to the interests of theiracademic departments and institutions. Gruber problematizes the image of the techno-rhetorician as “outsider” that many in the computers and composition field apply tothemselves by emphasizing the elements of “insider” status that one acquires simply bybeing hired in a tenure-track position. She also discusses how technorhetoricians may needto counter the perceptions of our senior colleagues who, ironically, view the new hires asthe new insiders who pose an irreparable challenge to humanities-based education.

But not all tenure issues involve established departments and senior colleagues. Thestory of one department wrestling with the complexities of defining promotion and tenureguidelines that incorporate work with technology is told by Angela Crow and Lori Amyin this issue. Their story is unique in that, as newly hired tenure-track specialists in anewly-formed stand-alone writing department, they are not only charged with helping towrite the guidelines by which their work will be evaluated; they are also helping thedepartment to author its mission statement as the members of the department try to forgea distinct academic identity. At every level of administration, from the new department’schair to the University’s new president, work with technology is encouraged. Nonetheless,many faculty still resist using computers as more than fancy typewriters and resent therequirement that all first-year composition classes meet several times during the semesterin one of the department’s computer classrooms. And, as Crow and Amy note, many ofthese same faculty will ultimately sit on tenure committees, helping to decide the fate ofthe newer, more technologically oriented faculty.

Of course, not all technorhetoricians have chosen to join the tenure battle. Many haveinstead opted out of the fray entirely. The uncertainty of the rewards involved have ledsome technorhetoricians to consider alternatives to traditional tenure-track teaching lines.In “Looking Elsewhere: Career Options Other than the Tenure-Track Teaching PositionFor M.A.s and Ph.D.s in English,” four techrhets and one librarian now working as aninstructional technologist discuss and reflect on their choice to find the kind of jobs notusually presented as normative or “available” or “desirable” by faculty advisors, place-ment directors, and even other peers. Therefore, although tenure occupies the attention ofmany graduate students and tenure-track faculty, a question asked by an increasingnumber of those working with computers and writing is not “how do I get tenure?” but“what other options are available outside of the traditional tenure-line teaching jobs?” Ourannotated MOO session features a number of individuals who have chosen, for thepresent, to explore these so-called “alternative careers,” as it interweaves both an edited

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version of a synchronous discussion and subsequent individual reflections of the partic-ipants in the original conversation, and offers an opportunity for these professionals todescribe both the strengths and the sometimes substantial costs of the employment choicesthat they have made.

Still, given the desire of many technorhetoricians to succeed in traditional tenure-trackand tenured positions, it may not be possible to avoid playing the game by limiting oneselfto nontenurable positions. A given individual might desire to stay in the academy for itsrelative freedom, or may have such a strong desire to do scholarship that taking anine-to-five job in the corporate world may simply not be a viable option. For our finalessay, “Zen and the Art of Tenure (A New Pilgrim’s Progress),” Fred Kemp, AssociateProfessor of English at Texas Tech University, co-director of the Alliance for Computerand Writing, and founder and current President of the Daedalus Group, Inc., offers readersa screed on the role of tenure and its often negative impact not only on those who teachwith computers but on the many talented junior faculty who work in departments ofEnglish. Kemp argues that the tenure process is a “hanging sword,” and explores thetension between what we do as technorhetoricians and what the field values from itsprofessionals.

Above all, what we have been reminded of in assembling this issue is that for everyquestion addressed by one or more of our authors, several others remain unanswered and,on occasion, unvoiced. For example, we wonder how the local idiosyncrasies of tenurewill be affected in the face of increasing federal or state legislative intervention in highereducation, or where technorhetoricians will fit into the unionized university. If individualdepartments can’t adequately articulate how the work of technorhets fit, what willuniversity-wide unions do? This question is far from resolved. One of our editors has beenrecruited by both the faculty and the administrative-professional union at her university,which apparently indicates that the unions, too, cannot decide where technorhetoriciansbelong in the order of things.

As the articles in this issue plainly show, requirements for tenure in the year 2000 andbeyond may be significantly different from the requirements faced by our predecessors inthe academy. As departments seek out those with technological expertise to fulfill themandates from administrators, from legislators, from students, and even from other facultyand staff, it is imperative that those who choose to work with technology also considerbeforehand exactly how, or even if, this work will be evaluated—and by whom. It is quitesimply not enough to simply try to justify work in technorhetoric using traditional criteria.Instead, we need to consider whether or not the criteria are themselves justifiable. Evenmore importantly, how long can those of us with technological expertise be held respon-sible for teaching those who will evaluate us how to access and understand what it is wedo? For now, as Jane Lasarenko points out in her Web text for this issue, “TenureDisorder” atComputers and Composition Online(http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/;ccjrnl/),we are being asked not only to use technology ourselves, but to help other faculty learnto use it as well—and to help those who sit in judgment of us understand it. Tenure itself,of course, is under attack from many quarters, and, perhaps, it is time we considered justexactly what tenure and other forms of work evaluationshouldlook like now and in thefuture. In particular, if tenure needs and indeed deserves protection, it may requiresignificant reconfiguration as the new century begins. The essential challenge for tech-norhetoricians, indeed for any technologically savvy faculty and staff members in the

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twenty-first century, will be to determine when new projects and duties should bepresented in ways to meet existing criteria for hiring and promotion, and when thesetwentieth-century criteria should be reconfigured to more precisely reflect the work ofthose who work with technology in the new millennium.

Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher forencouraging us to submit a request to do this special issue—withoutComputers andComposition, attempts by tenure-track faculty to surmount the barriers to promotion thatexist in many institutions would have been much more difficult; special thanks are due toTeri Gil, editorial assistant, for her help and support and to the editorial staff atComputersand Compositionas well.

Susan Langis Director of Technology and English Studies at Southern Illinois Univer-sity–Carbondale. She is on leave for the 1999–2000 academic year and is currently avisiting assistant professor in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric program atTexas Tech University. Lang is Associate Chair of NCTE’s Assembly on Computers inEnglish. She has published inComputers and Compositionand Kairos, and her book,Resisting Assimilation: The Relationship Between Hypertext and English Studies, isforthcoming in 2001. You may contact her at,slang@ttacs.ttu.edu. or,slang@siu.edu..

Janice R. Walkeris an assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Linguisticsat Georgia Southern University in Statesboro where she teaches courses in first-yearcomposition and technical communication. She has published books, articles, and Webpublications in the field of computers and writing studies and is co-author ofTheColumbia Guide to Online Style(Columbia University Press, 1998). Her most recent workincludes two books,writing@online.edu(Longman, 1999) andBookmarks: A Guide toResearch and Writing(Longman, 2000), both co-authored with John Ruszkiewicz. She iscurrently continuing to study the ways technology is impacting literacy, society, and theacademy. Visit her home page at,http://www2.gasou.edu/facstaff/jwalker. or email herat ,jwalker@gasou.edu..

Keith Dorwick earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois–Chicago (UIC), where hecompleted the first Web-based dissertation at UIC, available at,http://www.uic.edu/depts/engl/projects/dissertations/kdorwick.. With Alison Regan, he is the queer studiesthread coordinator for Computers and Writing 2000. Keith has been a member of theCommittee on Computers and Composition of the CCCC, and serves on the EditorialBoard ofKairos. He is currently an Instructional Media Planner at UIC. Contact him at,kdorwick@uic.edu..

REFERENCES

Conference on College Composition and Communication. (1998). CCCC promotion and tenureguidelines for work with technology. Available: http://www.ncte.org/positions/4c-tp-tech.html [Accessed August 30, 1999].

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Doherty, Mick; Lang, Susan; & Selfe, Cynthia. (1997, June).The bonfire of the humanities.Presentation at the 1997 Computers and Writing Conference, Honolulu, HI.

Dorwick, Keith; McAllister, Ken; Howard, Tharon; & Selfe, Dickie. (1997, June).Issues in systemadministration and design. Panel presentation at the 1997 Computers and Writing Confer-ence, Honolulu, HI.

Katz, Seth. (1997). One department’s guidelines for evaluating computer-related work.Kairos: AJournal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments, 2(1). Available: http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/2.1/coverweb/katz/art2.html [Accessed August 29, 1999].

Modern Language Association. (1998). Guidelines for evaluation computer-related work in themodern languages. Available: http://www.mla.org/reports/ccet/ccet2guidelines.htm. [Ac-cessed August 29, 1999].

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