Rethinking General Education and Increasing the Number of Professorial Faculty Members; or, When Opportunity Knocks

Abstract

In the English department of the University of Louisville we have, in the last year, made major changes in the ways we define ourselves and our mis sion. As of 1998-99, all our full-time professorial English faculty members teach at least one section of first-year composition annually; in return, the administration has allocated seven new tenure-track positions to the En glish department. To put this in context: we were a department of twenty seven full-time faculty members, none of whom regularly taught first-year writing; we offered about 180 sections of 101 and 102 each year; and all our first-year composition sections were taught by graduate teaching assistants and part-time lecturers. With this change, we will be a department of thirty-four full-time faculty members, and if we continue to offer 180 sec tions of composition, about twenty-five percent will be taught by full-time faculty members. This is a momentous change for us, for several reasons. First, although we have a PhD program in rhetoric and composition, the teaching of first year writing has not been seen?by the department or by the administra tion?as a primary responsibility for the full-time faculty members. Faculty members direct the program and observe and mentor instructors but?with the exception of the director of composition?have not as a rule taught first-year writing. Second, we have long argued that we are an understaffed