Fall 2009 Meeting

Agenda

Wednesday Evening, October 14 | 7:00-9:00
Composition Coordinators Meeting | Kim Costino (San Bernardino) | Del Mar
Discussion with Allison Jones, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, Student Academic Support, Office of the Chancellor, California State University. Proposed agenda includes 1) a possible EC resolution opposing fees for remedial courses and any other issue related to funding all writing courses in the wake of the latest budget crisis; 2) CSULA’s report on the EPT and “remediation”; 3) John Edlund’s latest survey of EPT cut scores and how we might want to use this information; and 4) the CSU outcomes/philosophy statement we began to discuss at our meeting last October.

Thursday Morning, October 15 | 8:00-8:30
Registration ($55) | Sarah Nielson (East Bay) and Sugie Goen-Salter (San Francisco) | Del Mar
Continental Breakfast | Del Mar

Thursday Morning, October 15 | 8:30-8:45
Announcements | Glen McClish (San Diego) | Del Mar

Thursday Morning, October 15 | 8:45-10:15
Panel Presentation: “Teaching Graduate Student Writers” | Sugie Goen-Salter (San Francisco), Coordinator | Del Mar
The goal of this panel is to stimulate conversation among colleagues in English Studies about how we approach teaching graduate student writers. This panel represents some of the various disciplines within English Studies and the presentations describe both specific assignments and specific approaches used to help graduate students acquire a disciplinary discourse.

Tara Lockhart, Assistant Professor of English/Composition, San Francisco State University
This presentation charts the tensions and paradoxes that shape graduate writing and its instruction, including the apprenticeship model of graduate education, the myth of individual struggle, and the belief undergirded by remediation that would say that advanced students should already know how to write. To this end, I reflect on my attempts to try to reconcile some of these pressures and better meet the needs of MA students by examining, first, my own overarching philosophical and pedagogical beliefs which inform my graduate writing instruction; second, our institutional responsibilities in terms of student support and mentorship; and finally, the types of roles we can play as readers of and responders to our students’ written work.

Dennis Bennett, Assistant Director of the Oregon State University (OSU) Center for Writing and Learning and Coordinator of the Campus Writing Center
Dennis will discuss how the OSU Writing Center assists graduate students as they transition from undergraduate consumers of knowledge to professional knowledge producers, a shift that must be echoed in their writing. The OSU Writing Center looks at students’ past writing experiences to determine their knowledge of disciplinary conventions and whether or not there is adequate support for students in their home department. When there is a gap between the graduate student’s disciplinary writing ability and the expectations of faculty advisors, writing center staff assist graduate students by helping them first to recognize and then to enact disciplinary conventions in their writing.

Da’an Pan, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of English Composition & Basic Writing, Cal Poly Pomona
“Writing Is a Many-Splendored Thing: A Comparatist Perspective on the Issues & Strategies in Teaching Graduate Literary Writing”
This presentation explores the issues and strategies in teaching graduate literary writing from comparative perspectives, arguing that to help grads unlearn their unhealthy and unproductive habits, we need to strengthen their training with a holistic pedagogy that integrates critical thinking, abstract thinking, and aesthetic thinking. The presentation demonstrates an interactive writing assignment consisting of research proposal, research paper, and a rhetorical analysis of scholarly writing. It also proposes a holistic regimen that reinforces the training of graduate writing through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary comparison.

Casey Keck, Assistant Professor of English in the MA TESOL Program, San Francisco State University
“Designing Graduate-Level Writing Courses for International Student Writers”
This presentation focuses on the teaching of graduate writing to international students in their first year of US university study, and emphasizes the importance of viewing international student writers as competent, multiliterate professionals, rather than as deficient, non-native speakers of English. Drawing upon recent discussions in the field of applied linguistics, the presentation describes what has been called a deficit model of second language acquisition (i.e., one in which second language users are viewed as incomplete monolinguals unable to achieve native speaker norms) and discusses how such a view may inhibit our ability to effectively teach second language writers at the graduate level. The presentation then describes how graduate courses for international students might be designed in such a way as to capitalize on international students’ linguistic strengths, such as their ability to analyze English syntax, discourse organization, and the formal conventions of academic disciplines and genres.

Thursday Morning, October 15 | 10:15-10:30
Break

Thursday Morning, October 15 | 10:30-12:00
Discussion with Jeri Echeverria, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer, California State University | Del Mar

Thursday Afternoon, October 15 | 12:00-1:15
Buffet Luncheon | Ventana

Thursday Afternoon, October 15 | 1:30-3:15
Special Budget Panel | Kathryn Rummell (San Luis Obispo) | Del Mar

Thursday Afternoon, October 15 | 3:15-3:30
Break with Refreshments

Thursday Evening, October 15 | 5:30-6:30
Beer and Whine Soiree | Suite of Past President

Please follow this link to download a printer-friendly version of this document.

Spring Meeting
April 14-16, 2010 | Doubletree Hotel | Burlingame

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As usual, we’ll be meeting at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego, October 14-16. The rate for the Bahia is $139 per night, single or double occupancy. Here is a toll-free number to call: 800.576.4229. For the conference rate, please specify you will be attending the California State University, English Council Meeting. Please follow this link to glorious photographs as well as information about reserving your rooms.

Our current room block is set for 35, which will be held until September 21. After this time, the room rates and reservations will be based upon availability. Reserve rooms now to ensure EC group rate of $139/night.

CSU English Council