Directing Freshman Composition: The Limits of Authority

Abstract

The Wyoming Conference Resolution, reported on in the March 1987 issue of College English, expresses the collective frustration of composition faculty over the powerlessness they experience daily in their departments. Undoubtedly, many of us in composition do feel voiceless. Yet, despite our frustration over our individual plights, there nonetheless seems to be a general feeling in the field that composition has gained some influence in recent years, principally through the writing program and the writing program administrator. But has it? A close examination of the role of the writing program administrator suggests that even this tacit optimism may be unfounded-that, in fact, the Wyoming Resolution speaks just as much for writing directors as for composition instructors. Despite their ostensible authority within the English department, many freshman English directors possess little administrative power. We are beginning to understand more about the role of the composition director because in the last few years the field of writing program administration has been experiencing a period of intense self-reflexivity. This ongoing scrutiny of writing programs and their directors recently took on special significance when, to the surprise of many of us in composition, the Modern Language Association published two book-length studies on the subject: Carol P. Hartzog's Composition and the Academy: A Study of Writing Program Administration and Paul Connolly and Teresa Vilardi's New Methods in College Writing Programs: Theories in Practice. Yet these two studies remain largely descriptive and do not delve into underlying departmental power structures to determine the actual authority directors have. Linda G. Polin and Edward M. White's excellent study, reported on in 1985 in WPA: Writing Program Administration, comes closer to exploring writing program directors' authority. Polin and White interviewed 57 people on