Dual Citizenship for Faculty in the
Institute for Writing Studies and the Institute for Core
Studies
The First Year Writing (FYW) Program at St. John’s University is a
unique experience in American higher education. Currently,
the universal requirement of freshman composition finds a home at
over 4000 post-secondary institutions in the United States with
more than 13 million undergraduate students in attendance. At many
of these institutions, students seldom have a tenure-track faculty
member teach them composition and, instead, experience their most
critical, introductory college literacy experience from part-time
workers/contingent faculty and graduate students who oftentimes
have little, no, or inconsistent decision-making power and presence
within departments and universities. At St. John’s
University, this model has been eschewed in favor of a program that
nests writing within a comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated
approach to the first year college experience. We are striving
to create and sustain a program where all faculty are tenure
track members. Faculty will have a kind of dual
citizenship: the Institute for Writing Studies (IWS)
is the unit where the First-Year Writing Program is
located; meanwhile, the Institute for Core Studies (ICS)
is the larger program to which all first-year writing faculty
belong.
The first year experience is central to the achievement of the
St. John’s mission and to the foundation of undergraduate
education. Together, IWS and ICS strive to approach the first
year in intentional ways based on an institutional commitment to
student learning as well as social and academic engagement; the
offering of a rigorous academic curriculum; and implementation of
effective, “best practices” approaches to teaching and
learning. Achieving such goals for the first-year experience
requires that faculty and administrative partnerships be maintained
and that ongoing faculty collaboration be enhanced.
As vital members of IWS, FYW faculty are charged with delivering
intentional curricular and co-curricular learning experiences that
engage students with critical literacy and the lifelong pursuit of
knowledge. FYW faculty are familiar with current practices,
engage with research and scholarship on first year writing, and
maintain associations with relevant professional organizations in
order to achieve ongoing improvement for first year writing.
FYW faculty also conduct assessment within IWS that is specific to
writing as a distinct time period and set of literacy experiences
in the lives of first year students. These IWS assessment measures
are also part of the university’s larger assessment
imperative.
We embrace collaborative conversations
with our colleagues as a way to improve the
teaching of writing and, therefore,
we:
• attend an annual 2-day Fall Orientation
where we collaboratively engage an inquiry into teaching and
learning (usually the week before classes start)
• understand and implement the vision of the
program in alignment with program policies
• are available and present on campus on the day
before classes start, during the week of final exams, and the week
following final exams
• meet deadlines for the digital posting of
syllabi and portfolio guidelines to the IWS shared drive; hard
copies of these items are also provided to the IWS Coordinator who
transfers these items to the Writing Center
• consistently exchange information with one
another by responding to various communications (usually via email)
related to FYW, IWS, and ICS
• attend regular, scheduled faculty meetings
related to the teaching of writing for IWS
• attend all meetings related to the first year
experience sponsored by ICS
• hold office hours two days per week to engage
our students (not counting additional one-on-one student
conferences as needed throughout the semester)
• complete an online pedagogy class in order to
teach hybrid courses (even if students meet online only one day in
the semester)
• maintain ongoing communication with the
Freshman Center about students’ academic progress
• attend end-of-fall-semester and
end-of-spring-semester assessment meetings to help articulate the
shared vision and pedagogy of our program
• complete PAF and AFAR forms as tenure-track
members of St. John’s in accordance with University policies
• create a teaching portfolio for the PAF as
tenure-track members of St.
John’s
For advice on preparing a teaching portfolio, please
consult:
Preparing
a Teaching Portfolio (UT-Austin)
Developing a Teaching
Portfolio (Ohio State University)
The Teaching
Portfolio at Washington State University
We see ourselves as important
contributors to larger disciplinary and professional conversations
in relation to current research and
scholarship on the teaching of writing
and, therefore, we:
• maintain an active membership in a
professional organization related to teaching and/or the teaching
of writing
• attend and, preferably, present at a national
or regional conference in relation to writing instruction once per
year
• pursue ongoing research/writing project as it
relates to the teaching of writing (dissertation,
collaborative journal article, teacher research, textbook design,
etc)
For comments and questions, please contact the director of
First-Year Writing, Dr. Carmen Kynard at kynardc@stjohns.edu