Reaching All Writers: What Was It Made For?

With apologies to Billie Eilish, in this blog post I want to say a little bit about Reaching All Writers: A Pedagogical Guide for the Evolving Writing Classroom, a book I recently coauthored with my colleagues Joanne Giordano, Jennifer Heinert, and Cassie Phillips, in part because it can be hard just from a publisher’s email or a blurb or even sample chapter to understand the exigency of a text. 

This book is the one that we as coauthors wished had when we started graduate school and transition to faculty positions at open-access contexts, and it is the book we wished we had as we developed our programs at the open-access two-year campus where we collaborated together: developing and revising curriculum; adapting curriculum from face-to-face to asynchronous online instruction and competency-based education; assessing our programs and tracking student success; revising our placement mechanisms, and more.

Between the four co-authors, we have taught collectively full-time for a century, with full-time loads of developmental and first-year literacy courses at a breadth of campuses: community colleges, technical colleges, junior colleges, regional comprehensives, branch campuses, research 1 and 2 campuses, online and hybrid, and in a dozen states. 

Our major impetus for writing this text was to create a resource that could be used in spaces by instructors, program administrators, or in courses to support the development of writing studies knowledge/writing pedagogical knowledge in contexts where the need is high and immediate. The book aims to respond directly to structural problems in the field as a resource to help bridge at least some of those gaps that place stress on writing programs.

Here is what I mean. There are things that we all know to be true about the teaching of first-year composition in America:

• There are significant gaps in training between what graduate programs offer and what is expected in teaching-intensive positions. Organizations like MLA, with their MLA Institutes on Reading and Writing Pedagogy at Access-Oriented Institutions (AOIs), are actively seeking to bridge these gaps, but are one effort among a much larger set of interventions that are needed. . 
• First-year writing courses are the largest curricular component of English Departments or their corollary structures, and subsidize most of the rest of the curriculum. 
• Writing studies/composition and rhetoric exists as a discipline, with its own body of knowledge that undergirds effective instructor of courses at all levels of the college curriculum.  
• A majority of first-year writing courses are taught by contingent faculty-–graduate students, teachers in adjunct position, dual credit sections with high school instructors credentialed by college program, and typically hold a masters-level credential that may or may not have included coursework or training in the teaching of writing. 
• Instructors with background in composition pedagogy, writing assessment, just assessment practices, linguistic justice, and/or composition theory can play an essential role in the retention and success of first-year college students.
• Many contingent faculty teach at multiple institutions, with curricular responsibilities across different campuses, requiring multiple course preps and alignment with curricula specific to each campus. 
• Many instructors of any employment status move between varying types of institutions. They may have primarily learned to teach first-year writing as graduate students with a 1/1, 1/2, or 2/2 load, and are now entering  into teaching-intensive positions that include first-year writing course responsibilities as part of their load. 

Writing Program(s) Administration(s): 

At the same time, writing programs are overseen by a wide range of administrators–sometimes a program coordinator, composition director, writing program administrator, or department chair.  Sometimes a course lead, or team of instructors, sometimes by committee. Sometimes by no one, really. 

The oversight structures that shape teaching and learning conditions varies whether community college, private liberal arts college, HBCU or HSI, Research 1, Research 2….many of us are teaching in institutional situations that differ from those that we were trained in, and take on a variety of program roles and responsibilities that we may or may not be prepared for. 

So here is what we created Reaching All Writers for, as we imagined its use to address these challenges of writing teachers and writing programs: 

*Two chapters on pedagogical adaptability and inclusive and equitable pedagogies lay out principles of pedagogical content knowledge in the teaching of writing

*Five chapters organized around five key threshold concepts for first-year writing include: 

Each of these chapters is structured around the following: 

• A synthesis of key disciplinary research and position statements that establishes the boundaries and importance of each concept. For instructors who have had maybe a single course on the teaching of writing (which often focuses on teaching writing in that graduate program rather than on adaptable principles across contexts), the book aims to lay a foundation of knowledge that those with specializations in the field take for grant. 
• A section on what instructors need to know about that concept, specifically linked to student expectations, background, and learning goals
• A section on what students need to know in relation to that concept
• Sections in each chapter on course design, assessment practices, and pedagogical strategies (with specific suggested examples of activities that readers can use to adapt to their classrooms). 
• Application and connection prompts and scenarios at the end chapter for reflection or discussion. 

We wrote this book imagining it could be used in the following settings: 

• By faculty in graduate programs teaching a composition pedagogy course
• By writing program administrators responsible for supporting instructors in a program regardless of their employment status; perhaps that are the only writing specialist in their context and want a touchstone text to support and engage colleagues. 
• By writing program administrators or composition committees looking to refine or revise their curriculum with specific prompts to think through the needs of their students, programs, and teaching staff
• By small departments of English or related fields with a distributed administrative structure and hoping to engage colleagues in conversation about writing in their courses and programs
• By instructors moving to a new kind of job/position, institution, or responding to the needs of a student population and looking for a structured way to think through the transition. 

We are happy to answer questions about how or why to use this book! Feel free to reach out by email or social media. 

Continuing Meditations on Jeopardy! Play, or Jeopardy Pipelines (And We Can’t ALL Be Masters)

Back in the day, participation in Jeopardy had limitations by resources and geography. The pandemic has forced some changes that, for at least some would-be contestants, auditioning is more accessible, as they moved to zoom rather than on-site, in-person auditions that used be held in major metropolitan areas. As I’ve spent the last year “adjacent” to Jeopardy (after having made it to the 3rd stage in June 2022 I started following Jeopardy folks on twitter, reading up on it in the various entertainment spaces online, etc). One thing that stands out to me is the increase in spaces and services that aim to give would-be contestants a competitive edge in the selection process. Likewise, the increase in particular digital communities (like Jeopardy reddit, the Learned League, etc). In this blog post, I put on my cultural critic hat and offer some thoughts on the effect of the expansion of these kinds of spaces and resources on “America’s Favorite Quiz Show.” 

—Learned League: As I started to prep for Jeopardy competition, I discovered a website called the “Learned League,” an ‘invite-only” daily trivia competition that is run a lot like a sports league with ‘rundles,’ head-to-head competitions, rankings, and about the most robust statistical data offered as I’ve seen about anything short of Major League Baseball. Not knowing anyone who was part of this group, I sort of read up on it and hoped that somehow I would run across an opportunity to get invited (which I did, at lunch on my Jeopardy tape day, when the LOVELY Suresh Krishnan offered to invite me for the next game season which started last month). 

Frankly, I did a pretty mediocre job at this style of competition which differs from Jeopardy or other timed trivia competitions in that it incudes a wider range of topics, has some (but fewer) ‘clues’ written into the language of the question, and includes a defensive component where point values are assigned to the questions for each day’s opponent for that match. This aspect requires some level of meta-awareness of the commonness of any given topic knowledge reflected by that question, and if relevant, any prior gameplay data about your opponent that you get. I’m doing about how you would expect at the things I know and like and about how you would expect on topics I don’t care about or bother to learn: 

But what I think is interesting about the invite-only learned league (it’s participants are called “LLamas”) is that it seems to be a sort subculture that’s then tied to various Reddits and a place where aspiring Jeopardy (and past champions/players) circulate to create a little bit of an insider culture. That insider culture is emerging from the increase in professionalizing opportunities that are available for game show participation. 

–-Game Show Boot Camp: An example of the above is the upcoming “Game Show Boot Camp,” established by “Bad Boy” Sports gambler super champ James Holzhauer (who has come to define the aggressive/high risk play strategy that has emerged in recent years with the game and his self-declared “game show supervillain” persona). The boot camp, benefitting Project 150 – Las Vegas, a local organization founded by Holzhauer and his wife, is described as “ Advanced training for people who want to get on their favorite ​show…and WIN!” and though it is not billed as having a formal relationship to Jeopardy, in 2022, Jeopardy contestant coordinators held in-person auditions at the event.  

Because I am endlessly fascinated by cultures of knowledge, I’ll be part of a panel at the event and look forward to the opportunity to get more insight into how these kinds of pathways to participation are shaping/reshaping the game. 

—School of Trivia: 2015 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions winner Alex Jacob, a currency trader and professional poker player who has created his own trivia newsletter and quiz league; whenever a subscriber/participant of School of Trivia appears on Jeopardy, Jacob tweets out a recognition that the player is a participant in SoT.  A difference of SoT from Learned League is that “”When you submit your answers, you will also rank your answers by your confidence level. 5 points for the answer you’re most confident in, 4 points for your second-most confident answer, and so on down to 1 point for your least confident answer.”  I have not participated in this league, so I can’t say much more than that about it, other than it is an example of one of the farm league/training-type events or communities that highlight links to Jeopardy participation. 

I wonder whether, even in the entertaining form of a TV game show, knowledge competition becomes the province of an increasingly narrow group of people, those with connections, money, resources, and free time to pursue intense training (thought that may have always been somewhat true). This suggests that the “Jeopardy selection process” is as much the product of an investment of strategies and training as it is true “having contestant qualities.” (See, for example, the tabloid coverage of TOC qualified Ben Goldstein for even suggesting that Jeopardy might even the playing field by paying for contestant travel). 

I also wonder whether the intensification of high-stakes/high risk play that has emerged from players like Jacobs and Holzhauer has reshaped the game in ways that work against players who use more traditional approaches, knowing that a typical woman player may be less likely to use such play styles (see articles on “confidence’ and gender here and here). I’m sure a lot of people will say that the point of a game is to win. I just can’t help but think that something is lost as aggressive gameplay strategy has superceded the aspects of Jeopardy that the average viewer enjoys: learning new facts, shaking loose info from their own brains, laughing at clever clue word play, and enjoying or mocking contestant personalities.

The development of new, essentially higher leagues of play–like the Master’s Tournament–is probably the right path forward as more players join the elite rather than average levels–a look at some random Jeopardata comparing a Masters game against a run-of-the-mill player game is illustrative here. 

For those of us who have been Jeopardy lovers for decades, it might be an adjustment to our expectations about who plays Jeopardy and how, changes that have been afoot since Jennings and Holzhauer and their ilk have come to dominate game-play. A recent Sun story (a publication that uses a breathless TMZ style tone about topics like game shows rather than/in addition to celebrity gossip) had the headline “BIG CHANGES: Jeopardy execs beg fans to ‘keep an open mind’ after they announce complete overhaul to 2023 Tournament of Champions” gets at the issue: Jeopardy times are a-changing and perhaps with no harm to the fan base. As the New York Times recently wrote, even as streaming services transform TV-watching, “This Broadcast TV Genre Continues to Thrive. (What Are Game Shows?).” As someone who spent tens of hours of 1980s summers gorging on Press Your Luck, The Price Is Right, Sale of the Century, Bumper Stumpers, and about every other game show there is, I’ll quote Sam Buttrey and say “Bring it on!”

What Does It Mean to Know Things: Jeopardy, Social Media, and Perceptions of Knowledge and Smartness

Jeopardy*  celebrates knowing things! And that is great!! I love knowing things, and I love that we have a TV show that bills itself as “America’s Favorite Game Show” whose raison d’etre is showcasing knowledge. In this blog post, I reflect on the discourse of Jeopardy as a measure of what it means to have knowledge and what Jeopardy signals about “knowing.” 

Many of you know that my primary job is as a feminist writing teacher and scholar—I teach first-year writing, do research about writing and writers, and train graduate students to do that same work. During my Jeopardy preparation—from the point at which I went through the audition steps up through when my episode airs, whenever it would come up in conversation with colleagues—all of whom are by many measures very smart, knowledgeable people, I would hear “Oh, I’m just not very good at that kind of thing” or “I would be so terrible on that show—I don’t know that sort of stuff” or “I don’t have any trivia knowledge.” I’m not sure whether those were accurate self-assessment or not.

I think these responses are in part overestimating  how much of trivia is actually knowing things and how much is deduction (and some other theories I’ll get into in a subsequent post). My academic colleagues often know a great deal about a relatively narrow subject, and the labor required to produce new knowledge is intense. They are obviously very smart people, as are Jeopardy contestants. And it’s in part confusing knoweldge, deduction, and confidence levels/risk-taking behavior.

And yet on Jeopardy Twitter hashtags (admittedly a niche social media channel), over and over again, social media commentators suggest that contestants’ responses are an indication of their knowledge:

To some extent this is trolls or bots or bored and mean-spirited curmudgeons with no investment or accountability for semi-anonymous internet crabbing.  To another extent, it’s a reflection of culturally dominant knowledge that people (mostly in the US) assume is a default indicators of smartness.

For example, this month, the internet has lost its mind when all three contestants didn’t take a swing at this clue. 

And Jeopardy redditors lamented contestants “not knowing” the Preamble lto the Constitution: 

I can’t help but wonder, though, if the show’s premise–that the ability to know something and know it quickly suggests to viewers that Jeopardy knowledge is KNOWLEDGE (and that getting something right or wrong is the measure of knowing). Quite often, getting a clue correct is “guessing” or “deducing” and an answer to a clue that is wrong is the product of the accelerated cognitive activity necessitated by the buzzer and the lights.

This assumption leads me to think about the relationship between Jeopardy‘s function as metonymy for intelligence when it is really a kind of a super-accelerated version of high stakes testing, performing knowledge for rewards (whether its money, credit, scholarships, recognition, etc), and that fans conflating not knowing with not guessing leads to problematic cultural PR, include social media panic about some kind of cultural decline (usually of dominant ideas about what should be known). 

On the other hand, a leveling  aspect of Jeopardy play is that it is not just about what you know, it’s about what you can figure out—what kinds of puzzles you can solve and what associations you can make between categories, and in theory, these are skills that, for example, repeated game viewing and practice can enhance so that the lay viewer/Jeopardy! fan is on equal footing with more advanced or experienced trivia fans (for example, those with extensive prior knowledge competition experiences, such as two of the participants in my mock game audition who chatted at the start about playing against each other in college academic bowls; or those who regularly participate in some of the Jeaoprdy training grounds like School of Trivia, -Game Show Boot Camp, or Learned League–more on this later).   

That clues usually are worded in such a way as to offer an allusion, reference, or hint is one way that players can access or connect to other parts of their knowledge and make a logical guess even if they don’t, for example, know every river in South American or all the world capitals or every Shakespeare play. This rewards players with broad and even shallow knowledge of any given topic, along with deductive skills. Check out this article theorizing about why computer science is good training for Jeopardy. The increasing numbers of data scientists (and, I think, folks with journalism backgrounds) is another example of Jeopardy-aligned careers.

I’ve got some further thoughts on how these intersect with other features of the game and related knowledge competitions, as well as some hot takes on gender, race, and Jeopardy–and what it means to not know things.

*PS I know that Jeopardy has an exclamation point at the end of the name but honestly I’m not detail-oriented enough to go through and uncapitalize every single word that succeeds the title so just imagine it there in your head.

Reflections on Playing Jeopardy! From a Teacher-Scholar-Nerd

As someone who has always loved knowledge and had a curiosity about the world, being a college professor is my dream job. However, getting to play Jeopardy! is my dream bucket list experience. If you have ever read any of my published research on composition pedagogy or on how students develop as writers and readers, you know that one of the things I’m interested in as a teacher and scholar is how people learn things (particularly how they develop different literacies). Because I process things through writing, I thought I would write out a few different blog posts on the experience of being a Jeopardy contestant, which was truly a once in a lifetime and something that not very many people get the opportunity to do!

This is the first in what I think will be a series of blogs saying a little about what I learned from this awesome opportunity, how the different skills required to perform well are, and how my own kinds of knowledge (or lack of knowledge) shaped the game. First, I look back on my game play and tell you what I learned. But next, I will share some preliminary analysis of what I think Jeopardy, as a “test of knowledge” and America’s favorite game show, says about knowledge, smartness, cognition, and metacognition. I think I will also want to write about school knowledge, book knowledge, and other kinds of knowledge, but I will see where this takes me.

Game 1: Wed, June 14, 2023, Playing Against Suresh Krishnan and Neilay Amin

First, there is an incredible trove of data and analysis available about Jeopardy which in and of itself makes me as a data nerd giddy. The J! Archive has a detailed breakdown of each game and the Jeopardy website has “Jeopardata” which honestly I spent a lot of time studying prior to my appearance, doing some analysis of what statistical data could tell me about what successful players do.

My game play lined up pretty well in the first game with the topics I would expect to know. I was kind of shocked and embarrassed to see I only even made 5 buzz attempts of 30 clues. I guess it ended up okay, but if I were ever to try to improve the quality of my game play, I have several knowledge domains that I need to beef WAY up. 

In single jeopardy in Game 1,  my strength here was “A Novel Category” and “3, 4, and 5 Letter Words,” and allowed me to get some high value answers (“Remains of the Day,” $800; “Hone,” $1000). But I got crushed on “Go Canada” (I am pretty sure I didn’t attempt any of those 5). 

In Double Jeopardy, I really nailed Latina/o Actors and Actresses, and I would have run that category if I’d been able to outbuzz Suresh and Neilay, but my deep-cut knowledge of TV and movies helped me here, along with some of the other literary/philosophical clues sprinkled in other categories (like the two I scooped from the other players–Jungian, $2000, which is what I would have guessed but Suresh buzzed in before me with “Jung” as a guess). I’m not sure I would have led with “Groucho” (1200) in “Gimme 5” but Neilay’s wrong answer helped me narrow things down a bit. As in single jeopardy, I got killed on UNESCO Heritage sites (literally did not make an attempt on any of these) and “eMpires” (though I should have buzzed in on the $2000, just didn’t feel confident enough–the correct answer, “Ming” also seemed too easy for a $2000 clue so I outthought myself on that one). 

FJ: If I was basing my wager just on my confidence in this topic, I would have gone all-in, but given the scores at the end of DJ, there was no way for me to win by betting it all.  Check out this cool breakdown on the J! Archives [although I don’t love that the strategy adjectives in the site glossary reinforce gender stereotypes:  venusian aka ‘conservative’ and martian aka “aggressive“–guess I’m Martian].  Because it was more important to bet to win than anything else, I chose to bet with the possibility in mind that Neilay would get it wrong; so that it wouldn’t matter if I got it wrong or right; and still with the potential to cover a full bet by Suresh).  This turned out to be the right approach as the triple stumper meant that I came out on top. 

Game 2: Thursday June 15, 2023 Playing Again Suzanne Goldlust and Kiran MacCormick: More guesses, more wrong answers!

When I look at my own stats, I see a progression across my two games that is interesting as well as examples of what I would absolutely expect when I think about the limits (and capacities) of my own knowledge.

In this second game, my stats definitely changed in terms of buzzer attempts, probably mostly about the category selection and because Suzanne and Kiran were both really strong competitors on the buzzer. In my second game, I had more buzzer attempts than in my first game but that also meant more wrong answers, sometimes just because my mouth got ahead of my brain and/or I needed to be more Cris Pannullo-esque and take that 1-2 seconds before the time runs out and after Mayim has called on me to confirm my initial instinct. 

In game 2, my SJ attempts were similar in attempts but lower in correctness

•  Game 1: 13 attempts, 9 successful buzzes (69%), 8 correct responses, for an 89% correct answer rate of the 9 guesses)
• Game 2: 14 attempts, 8 successful buzzes (57%), 6 correct responses, for a 75% correct answer rate

 My knowledge of books and music here were the strong points (21st Century Horror, Rolling Stones Lyrics), allowing me to get some big money (“What is Pinhead for $1000; Lovecraft for $800; “Beast of Burden” for $1000).  However, the World History/Geography Category “The Czar” did me no favors and Kiran and Suzanne really dominated here. Likewise, some surface knowledge of cities and bridges helped me in “The Golden Gate Bridge” but I couldn’t really make any inroads with scoring. The “Dating/Apps” category completely threw me through about the $1200 (I couldn’t stop processing this as ‘applications’ and was trying to think through Tinder and Ok Cupid before I realized it was appetizers which of course seems obvious now). By then, Suzanne had hit the daily double and my knowledge of appetizers is honestly not very substantive (I’m a vegetarian). 

As with previous games/rounds, in DJ, having a deep bench of knowledge on self help books (“7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” which would have been my response even before Kiran incorrectly guessed it as ‘Successful People,”) and my love of crime TV (Criminal Minds for $2000 and The Wire for $1200) were a help. But I also just didn’t have enough confidence on responses I should have buzzed in on but couldn’t quite follow up on my initial impulse. For example, on the triple stumper answer, The  Boys, that is the response I would have given, based on some vague cognitive fog in my mind due to seeing adds on Amazon Prime, but I didn’t feel sure enough to guess. Samewith the American Caves. I LIVED IN WISCONSIN FOR 16 YEARS, and if I hadn’t spent 3 seconds going “well, okay, Lacrosse is in Wisconsin, sure, that could be it, but it’s also commonly French, so maybe it’s Michigan…. Etc. etc,” I could have just gone for it and trusted my gut.” Being an overthinker is not really an asset in Jeopardy. 

Also, it helps to look at the picture when there is a picture clue, as in the case of “What is gossamer?” which I keyed in too quickly on the “Fabric that starts with G” part of it and had buzzed and guessed before I realized there was a picture accompanying the clue. 

Some takeaways from my experience for Jeopardy nerds (but I repeat myself haha)

• For the average Jeopardy player, you CAN win a game with gaps in your knowledge, and with deep cut knowledge on a few key topics. For me, that’s popular culture, books, and words. I can’t help but think that, even though Masters is fun, and awesome to watch, it’s not really the bar that most average Jeopardy players can reach. They are the elite of what is already a pretty selective winnowing process for appearing on the show.
• Knowing things doesn’t just mean knowing things about traditionally academic topics. This is probably counter to the advice you’d find in some guides, like this excellent and thorough blog put together by Jeopardy contestants, So, You Got “The Call!”: Preparing To Be On Jeopardy! One contestant suggests the value of studying/improving knowledge of the foundational academic topics (History, Geography, Literature etc). That is not wrong, and I’m not going to underestimate that I bring 10 years of formal education and hyperspecialized coursework in traditional literature, because that definitely helps me. But I also needed to have at least some expertise in a couple other general topics, knowing that my world history and geography knowledge is weak, and for me, celebrity gossip and pop culture is my jam. See this picture of my Us Weekly Archive. 
• Personally, I varied between processing the clues super quickly and readying myself to buzz in with an answer over taking an even additional 1 or 2 seconds to review and confirm whether my first instinct was right. That hurt me in a couple of cases (like guessing Megan, thinking just “MOVIE BOOK HORROR GIRL FIVE LETTERS” rather than paying attention to the embedded clue, “Looking Glass”). 

Those are my current reflections on the game! I’ve got a few more things I’m going to write down for those interested in this kind of thing. More later!

(Re)Building the CCCC 2021 Program (update)

One of my core values is transparency. In my current role as a CCCC officer, that has been a guiding principle for me with the convention planning process (from making Stage 1 peer review feedback comments available to submitters to posting regular blog updates about the process as we’ve moved through from submission to final program content). Since the convention has moved to a virtual format, an additional layer of decisions has had to be made that wouldn’t typically be part of the process, reducing the total number of sessions that are able to be included on the program that have already been accepted through peer review. In this blog post, I’ll briefly describe the process used to make these difficult decisions, which included what amounts to a “Stage 3” review that used elements of the program review process that Stage 1 and 2 had required.  At those stages, of the sessions accepted through peer review, we used a proportional acceptance, where the number of final acceptances in any given cluster is proportional to the number of submissions in that category. Likewise, proposals are reviewed and ranked according to the criteria established by the program chair. 

To accommodate the new program capacity required for a virtual convention, I was asked to reduce the program from 562 to approximately 275 sessions (including TYCA). I started by asking presenters to confirm their continued interest in being on the program, and their preferred session types, as much as they could be accommodated.  They survey was used only to determine whether presenters were interested in remaining on the program (to account for changes in personal or professional circumstances, and the shift to a virtual context which some presenters may find unsuitable for their original vision).  Some presenters did choose to withdraw from the program. 

To make the next more difficult phase of  program reduction, I returned to the list of accepted sessions and recalculated the proportion of sessions that could be included relative to the total number in the program but reduced to the new target number.  I returned to the reviewer notes and prioritized those sessions for inclusion that had received the highest ratings by reviewers. In the case of relatively equal evaluation feedback, I erred as much as possible on the side of including as many presenters as possible, and sought ways to reconfigure or combine sessions in order to allow for maximum participation. 

Of course, program assembling is not just a quantitative exercise; I also sometimes made judgements about other issues like ensuring that there is a balanced and diverse set of sessions in each of the cluster areas for attendees within each of the session types (roundtables, panel presentations, workshops, etc).  I also took into consideration some of the pressing needs members have now including work on anti-racist pedagogy and assessment, online writing instruction, and engaging students in virtual learning environments, for example. 

In addition, the elements of the CCCC 2020 program, including the Engaged Learning Experience sessions, and the Documentarian role will continue. The ELEs revised acceptances were similarly made using the program criteria and the peer review feedback from Stage 1. 

I balanced other factors when making decisions about the program structure, too, in aiming to keep with some of the usual features of the convention. 

• Sponsored panels and roundtables (proposals that are reserved a spot because they are submitted by member groups like our caucuses, Special Interest Groups, and other standing groups) were retained whenever possible.  These include established CCCC events like the Research Network Forum and the Teacher2Teacher Event held on the Saturday of the conference.  This is because prior convention follow-up surveys show that events that are focused around specific interest groups and standing group subjects are of high interest and high satisfaction among convention-goers who responded to the survey form circulated after each annual meeting.
• Likewise, the sessions for our CCCC award winners were prioritized, and standing arrangements with partner professional organizations like the Modern Language Association, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and COmposition.  
• To retain space on the program for our peer-reviewed proposals, CCCC member groups were asked to hold their business meetings separate from the program.  The CCCC site will have a central list of those meetings so that participants can attend those that are of interest to them. 

Last, a note about session types and assignments. Around 110 of the included sessions could be offered in a live, or prerecorded with live Q and A scheduled format. The other accepted sessions were assigned to one of the approximately 170  ‘on-demand’ formats. In making session type assignments, I’ve prioritized creating a convention program that is as interactive, inclusive, and engaged as possible. Engaged Learning Experience sessions, workshops, and roundtables–because of their interactive nature–are more likely to appear in the program as live and prerecorded with Q and A.  And because on-demand sessions can accommodate a greater number of presenters, I sometimes combined sessions or speakers to maximize the ability of as many people as possible on the program. On-demand session assignments were also more likely for those for sessions that had a more traditional delivery model. 

Finally, in the continued commitment to accessibility, I note here that presenters should plan to make their materials accessible.  Recorded videos must be accurately captioned and/or accompanied by a full transcript. If you have visual images/photos/graphics in your recording, they should be accompanied by textual or verbal description (an explanation of the image for individuals with vision impairment).  The CCCC is committed to accessibility for all conference attendees, and the ADA requires by law that digital materials be shared in accessible formats.

This Session Types and FAQ Info: https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/cccc-2021-presentation-info provides important information about how the virtual platform and session types will work. 

If you have thoughts or questions, feel free to leave a “reply” to the comments, or to email me at 4csconvention2021@gmail.com.

More CCCC 2021 Program Updates

The goal of this blog post is to provide some updates about the transition from the original planning for CCCC in a face-to-face setting to a virtual setting, as well as to share new information available on the convention website. 

Continued Program Adjustments 

The primary and first step to program revisions started by determining what is possible for the organization and its members within the virtual platform.  Based on the scope of the platform (the same convention platform system that was used for the National Council of Teachers of English convention last November) and the number of sessions that can be hosted and coordinated, I was asked to reduce the total number of sessions to about 60% of what was originally accepted to the program (and the target number also included the number of sessions allocated for the TYCA National Conference on Wednesday, April 6).  This was a deeply unhappy task, given the incredible quality of the accepted proposals, and how important it is to CCCC professionals to have a place on the program for their personal and professional purposes. Our hope is that notifications of which accepted proposals are on the final list of program sessions (including type of session–live, prerecorded with Q and A, or on-demand) will be sent out by March 1. 

In order to be as transparent as possible about how I approached this difficult task, I’ll outline here what has been taking place since there was a formal decision to meet virtually rather than in-person in Spokane.

A few weeks ago, we circulated a survey asking accepted presenters to confirm whether they still intended to participate on the program, and for their preferences about formats. The survey closed formally about 10 days ago, and I used that information to return to our list of accepted sessions. Here is how I’ve been approaching this next stage:  

• I returned to the list of accepted sessions and recalculated the proportion of sessions that could be included relative to the total number in the program by cluster category but reduced to the new target number.  
• I returned to the feedback from the peer reviewers in Stage 1 and Stage 2 last year and prioritized those sessions for inclusion that had received the highest ratings by reviewers. 
• In the case of relatively equal evaluation feedback, I erred as much as possible on the side of including as many presenters as possible, and sought ways to reconfigure or combine sessions in order to allow for maximum participation.  

Of course, program assembling is not just a quantitative exercise; I also sometimes made judgements about other issues like ensuring that there is a balanced and diverse set of sessions in each of the cluster areas for attendees within each of the session types (roundtables, panel presentations, workshops, etc).  I also took into consideration some of the pressing needs members have now including work on anti-racist pedagogy and assessment, online writing instruction, and engaging students in virtual learning environments, for example. 

Half day and full-day workshops needed to be reduced quite substantially (from 37 to 8)  because of constraints related to the online space, zoom licenses, and overall capacity.  My decision-making there followed similar logic as to above, with the desire to ensure there is at least one workshop in all the cluster areas for which workshop proposals were submitted.  I collaborated with Julie Lindquist (the 2020 program chair) on some components of these program decisions including the Engaged Learning Experience proposals.  

This is to say, now that this “third stage” of review has been completed,  NCTE and CCCC staff are in the midst of labor-intensive work to update the proposal database. I am now returning to the new list of sessions on the program to assign formats to the sessions, which will take into account the requests by presenters, the balance of available session types, and as varied as possible representation of area clusters. Once that work is done, the proposal system has to be updated by staff and notifications are generated.

I do want to note that Virtual CCCC 2021 will continue the use of the Documentarian Role  which will be coordinated by 2020 program chair Julie Lindquist. In her 2020 CFP, she described the documentarian in this way: “a new non-speaking role will be introduced: the Documentarian. The CCCC Documentarian role is an opportunity for attendees to participate in a new way, and to take part in a collaborative inquiry into what a conference is and does—and for whom—and to teach the rest of us.” After last year’s cancellation, the documentarians instead documented their non-conference/post-conference pandemic experiences. 

We see this as an exciting opportunity to gather real-time feedback about the convention experience and in particular this very first launch of an entirely virtual event. This year (see the section at the bottom of the 2021 CFP describing the documentarian role) the original vision of the documentarian–to gather a diverse, prismatic picture of how the CCCC convention is experienced by its participants, will be more fully realized. It’s hard to know what the impact of the documenting of the virtual convention will be, but one outcome, we hope, is that this textured picture of the conference experiences will be important data that can help shape our organizational future post-pandemic.  If you are interested in being a convention documentarian (and if you did NOT indicate interest when you submitted your proposal)  please reach out to Julie Lindquist lindqu11@msu.edu.

Also, as with 2020 Documentarian project, those who choose to participate in this role will complete morning and evening surveys each day of the convention, and will have an opportunity to publish an essay produced from their archived surveys in an edited collection of essays in the Studies in Writing Rhetoric series (NCTE). 

Additional Information Available

You can find some additional information now available on the CCCC website. First, I have consulted with the NCTE/CCCC staff along with review from other stakeholder groups like the TYCA conference planning community and members of CDICC to develop an FAQ document. I hope this gives you more information about how the virtual platform and session types will work. 

• Session Types and FAQ Info: https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/cccc-2021-presentation-info

In addition, registration is now open and a preliminary schedule is available (for when convention events will be held. 

• Registration: https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/conv
• Schedule (General):  https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc-convention-schedule/ 

I am thankful for the hard work of the NCTE and CCCC staff members (Kristen Ritchie, Lori Bianchini, Stephanie Casad, and others) and to Julie Lindquist with whom I have been collaborating in the last year to create a 2021 convention experience that allows us to gather together in some way during this public health crisis. 

I know that this short timeline for planning session content and delivery is challenging and I thank you for the patience you have shown as we have worked to make CCCC 2021 happen virtually.

CCCC 2021: Virtual Convention April 7-10

Hello colleagues–I’m glad to be able to finally provide an update on CCCC 2021. A series of complex negotiations and decisions have had to take place over the last six months between NCTE’s leadership and the Spokane hospitality community. I am happy to be writing to confirm at last that the CCCC 2021 Convention will be exclusively virtual. 

It has been a long process to get to this point, and up until now, we’ve been following the usual convention planning process (See page 143 in the CCCC executive committee handbook if you are curious about that). Now the planning process has to shift gears somewhat to account for the online format but also for the material realities of people’s lives in the middle of a global pandemic. 

Typically, the conference program chair works over the period of 12-18 months to plan a local/onsite convention and to build a program that is constrained by space in a specific location. The program in a virtual format will still have some constraints, of course. We will use the convention platform that was used for the NCTE Annual Convention in November.  As you may know, that convention was very successful.

So what I am asking CCCC members and convention attendees and presenters to do is to reimagine the convention process and experience. As someone who has taught online asynchronous courses for almost 20 years, I know like many of you do that course planning in an online environment is not just copying and pasting my f2f syllabus and handouts into Blackboard or Canvas. It requires a thoughtful redesign to match the needs of students who are interacting with the material and activities in different ways. 

Likewise, I”ll be taking that same thoughtful redesign to Virtual CCCC 2021. This means the following: The online version requires us to reimagine things differently

• Realities of pandemic life: we have simultaneously more time and less time. As academic workers, we’ve had to learn new ways of teaching, of doing research, and of collaborating. Further, we’ve taken on additional labor that includes care work on top of paid work. 
• Time: Our time may be more or less flexible. With the movement of some courses online in an asynchronous format, teaching work can be done more flexibly; others are teaching in the same scheduled format but through videoconference technology. This is to say, our work lives are transformed. 

I am hopeful that this opportunity to try out a virtual convention format will offer some benefits to members of our field. 

• For many of us, the pandemic has been accompanied by fluctuating enrollments and significant financial cuts or constraints; a virtual convention will ideally allow more of us to participate for just the cost of registration rather than the thousands we may spend through institutional or personal funds on travel and lodging
• The virtual format will make it possible to participate in the organizational work that is important to us while still being as safe as possible and eliminating travel. 
• There are opportunities in the online format to move between sessions in ways that are more difficult in person: further, the on-demand and recording of live session options will allow registrants to return to sessions that they may not have been able to attend at their scheduled time; and those sessions will be available on the conference platform for 50 days after the convention, allowing registrants to view as many of the sessions as they would like. 
• The primary goal of the conference program will be to provide a similarly enriching level of professional resources, support, knowledge and learning, as well as the networking and informal conversation that members value about the conference. 
• Accessibility will be a priority: The Committee on Disability Issues will be developing an accessibility guide as they have in the past. 

Some other logistical changes: 

• Session Length. Typically, the session length for a CCCC convention is 75 minutes. I’ve reduced those to 60 minutes simply because of zoom fatigue and because of the reality that, with a virtual conference, I suspect that most of us will be continuing to manage our regular teaching and personal lives. Many of us are spending many more hours on meetings and classes than pre-pandemic. I’m hoping this slightly shorter time slot will allow for better participation and conversation in sessions, along with a longer break between sessions (30 minutes). 
• Business Meeting. The annual business meetings of SIGs and Caucuses will be arranged separately from the convention program planning process. Additional information will be forthcoming from Kristen Ritchie, the CCCC liaison, about this component of the conference. The idea here is that the Convention Platform will be used for concurrent sessions, workshops, and keynote sessions, and member groups will provide information that will be assembled in a single location so that members can attend constituent group meetings as desired. 
• Timing of sessions: Unlike the collocated convention, a virtual convention has to account for the multiple time zones that we’ll be participating from. All times for the convention will be listed in Eastern Standard Time. The NCTE Convention typically started in late morning (11:30 Eastern) and sessions ran through the early evening (one as late as 9:15 Eastern). This is just a reality of time and space; we’ll do our best to make it possible for members in US time zones to attend as many sessions within the normal range of the working day as possible but need to account for the three-hour difference between Eastern and Pacific. 
• Documentarians: For the 2020 convention, Dr. Julie Lindquist and her team created the documentarian role (see the bottom of the CFP link), a way of conference participation in which documentarians would “record some observations about the things you see and hear, and then compose a reflective narrative about your experiences. To help you along in this work, you’ll be given a prompt and a set of guidelines for planning, attending, documenting, and reflecting on your experience with the convention.” In 2020, the documentarian role became documenting the “non-conference” experience, with participants capturing the early pandemic and their reflections on the annual convention’s cancellation. This year, we’ll continue the Documentarian role, which we hope will serve the dual purpose of helping CCCC learn more about the virtual convention going experience as part of longer-range organizational planning work, as a well as a publishing opportunity with SWR/NCTE Press. More information will be forthcoming about the documentarian role in Virtual CCCC 2021.

Right now, presenters have been asked to confirm whether their panelists are still able to participate in this format. I’ll just acknowledge here that, in collaboration with Julie Lindquist, the 2020 conference program chair and current CCCC chair, we are essentially rebuilding the program from the summer review process. The condensed program may not allow for every session that was originally accepted to be included, due to space constraints, and because of limitations on the kinds of session formats available (for example, live webcasting). We’ll do our best to be as inclusive as possible. 

And last but not least (in fact, probably the best)–is that we have confirmed a keynote speaker for the conference. Dr. Roxane Gay, well-known for both her creative work and her nonfiction pieces (including regular column for the New York Times and podcast with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, Hear to Slay). Dr. Gay will be giving her keynote talk on Friday, April 9. More details on the conference schedule and registration are forthcoming.  

I’ll be providing these blog updates as regularly as possible throughout the next few weeks as we ramp up planning. My goal as program chair is to create the convention experience members need at this moment. We were unable to gather together last March 2020 in Milwaukee, and yet our professional work continues. We have new and pressing needs as professionals–our teaching, scholarship, service, and activism–it is my hope that Virtual CCCC 2021 will help us meet those needs until we are able to meet again in Chicago next year. 

For questions about the convention, contact Convention Chair Holly Hassel or Convention Assistant Andrea Stevenson. For questions about Documentarian roles or Engaged Learning Experiences, contact Julie Lindquist.

CCCC 2021 Proposal Review: Updates, Information, and Continuing Questions

Process

Ordinarily for the review of proposals submitted to the annual CCCC Convention, the organization follows a process like this. Proposals are submitted through the online system, and anonymized, then read and ranked by three reviewers. This is called Stage 1 Review. After all proposals are reviewed, the program chair (historically) has selected a smaller group of colleagues to meet in person at the NCTE office in Illinois to use the Stage 1 reviews of individual proposals and determine which to accept, and then assemble the accepted proposals into panels. The work takes place synchronously and in the same location. The program chair makes final decisions about the concurrent sessions that were submitted as panels and roundtables. 

Decisions about the program composition are made within some specific constraints, typically the number of rooms and time slots that are available based on the specific venue. The program chair and the Stage 2 reviewer group balance the values of inclusiveness (trying to ensure that the program includes a range of topics that meet the needs of the diverse CCCC membership) and quality (the proposed session will provide an effective, useful, and professionally valuable experience for attendees). The latter is judged according to the proposal criteria created by the program chair at the time of crafting the CFP. 

This year’s program review work, obviously, is different. In the context of the global pandemic, where time, resources, and mental energy are reduced and differently allocated. The process has had to be adapted. Because travel is less safe, the CCCC liaison, Kristen Ritchie, and meeting and events coordinator, Lori Bianchini, worked with me and my convention assistant, Andrea Stevenson, to design a process for Stage 2 review that is possible virtually. 

Over the course of several weeks in July, then, the materials were made available electronically, and as program chair, I created smaller groups of Stage 2 reviewers based on cluster areas. We started with an opening zoom meeting to talk through the process of electronic review, and the smaller teams coordinated with each other over the next few weeks to develop a process including synchronous and asynchronous components to determine acceptances and rejections, as well as the compilation of accepted individual proposals into 

This was a departure, of course, from the previous processes and had its ups and downs. Certainly for the group of reviewers, it was a different experience to collaborate from a distance, and rather than concentrating the work over the period of two or three days in a common space, it required adding the work on top of our other home and work responsibilities. At the same time, a flexible online approach meant that the issue of travel (which can be an inaccessible expectation for many folks) did not prevent participation. 

Moving Ahead

The process of decisions about the CCCC convention is complex, and the pandemic brings more uncertainty. Some of the complexity lies in  contractual obligations that are in place with the host city and because of the size of our convention, not only in the number of attendees but also in the unusually high number of session rooms required. The pandemic has forced faculty line retractions, a loss of substantial budgets and, in many cases, travel budgets being eliminated altogether. This is made visible by the reduced number of proposals received this year as well as news reports and direct conversations with colleagues.  

Looking ahead, we do know that the NCTE Annual Convention (CCCC is under the umbrella of NCTE, including for the purposes of organizing events like the national convention) has been moved to a completely virtual format. This was possible in part because the host city actually cancelled the in-person convention, as the convention center was being used for COVID-related medical purposes.  Currently, continued conversations between the Executive Director of NCTE, Emily Kirkpatrick, and the national groups that NCTE collaborates with for organization national meetings are ongoing regarding the on-site hosting of CCCC in Spokane in April 2021. To every extent possible, these conversations are proceeding with everyone in mind who is affected by the decision. 

What this means is that I’m approaching the planning process, from my end, as flexibly as possible. We know for sure simply because there were fewer overall proposal submission this year that any onsite convention held in Spokane would be smaller; we’re working on developing a process for proposal acceptance notifications that would also allow us to collect information from proposers about what is preferable and feasible for them, information that will then help inform the planning for any on-site versus virtual components. 

Likewise, we anticipate that the NCTE virtual convention will offer us important insights and lessons when it is held in late November, so that any of the planning between November and April can be supported by what we learn from that event. 

I think there are a lot of exciting possibilities for access and inclusion in a virtual conference, including access to the convention program for individuals who may not have previously participated in or attended CCCC. However the convention takes place, I am committed to making it as inclusive and accessible as possible for presenters and attendees. 

Important Dates

**We are hopeful that acceptances will be sent in mid-September. That communication will be accompanied by a set of questions that ask about your needs and preference related to virtual versus face-to-face convention attendance. This is important information for us to gather for the purposes of planning and of communicating with the sites in Spokane that are reserved for the convention at this time.

**Because the convention is scheduled later than unusual (April rather than March), and because there is a global pandemic, participants will not need to confirm their participation until mid-December. 

**We hope to make a final decision about the convention format by early January. 

Though it would be ideal to know more, earlier, about how CCCC 2021 will look, I ask for patience and flexibility as we work to adjust to the changing conditions in service of creating a meaningful and valuable professional experience next April, one that reflects the needs and values of the organization, field, and its members.

If you have questions, comments, or clarifications, feel free to send me an email: 4csconvention2021@gmail.com or holly.hassel@ndsu.edu.

CCCC 2021: Recommendations for (re)Submitting, and Transparency Goals

You have seen that we were able to extend the CCCC submission deadline to June 8 which, I hope, will allow some time for most people finishing up their work for the academic year to find space on their plates to draft and submit CCCC 2021 proposals. I wanted to offer some additional advice or recommendations for those who are thinking about resubmitting a previously accepted (or rejected) proposal from the 2020 convention. In this blog, I’ll talk about three items of potential interest to you: 

1. The differences in the proposal evaluation criteria between last year and this year
2. The changes to (and additional details about) the “Area Clusters” that proposers use to identify the topic of their proposal
3. A change for this year that will allow proposers to receive feedback from peer reviewers 

One: Proposal Review Criteria: each program chair develops their own proposal review criteria; this is one of the jobs of the program chair. For those who may be submitting a previously submitted proposal, it would be helpful to take a look at the two sets of criteria side-by-side. You’ll see that there are some similarities regarding engagement of session attendees, awareness of audience needs, etc. However, it would be a good idea to think about how reviewers will be applying the 2021 criteria to submitted proposals and make any changes that you think will allow the proposal to be a good fit for the program. 

2020

2021

* Does the proposal engage the idea of commonplaces in some way,  either directly or in terms of the work the presentation/session will do? · Does the proposal describe an experience for learners as much as content to be delivered (for example, will specify the role(s) audience members will be invited to fulfill during or in response to the presentation)?  Does the proposal give evidence that the proposer is thinking pedagogically about the talk or session, with the learning needs of audiences/participants in mind? ·        *Does the proposal articulate learning goals for the participants and means for how participants may pursue them? What will participants take away from the presentation? How do you plan to make it possible for them to do so? (For Engaged Learning Experience sessions, means could include–but are not limited to!–problem-solving groups, spoken-word poetry, dramatization/improv, making, role-playing, storytelling, etc. The number of leaders/facilitators listed should be guided by the goals of the session.)

The proposal… *reflects an awareness of audience needs relevant to the topic: The proposal shows an awareness of the diverse professional needs of CCCC’s members and the field more broadly. Successful proposals will be aimed at an audience of experienced professionals in the field but who may not be familiar with the specifics of your topic. *addresses postsecondary teaching and learning: The proposed session engages with the proposal theme, questions, or topics, as outlined in the Area Cluster and convention theme. Proposals are not required to engage with the theme in their titles but proposers should describe the pedagogical implications of their work for undergraduate or graduate education. *is situated within relevant research and scholarship in the field: Proposers are not expected to have a complete bibliography as part of their proposal, but the proposal itself should demonstrate awareness of prior research and scholarship on the topic of the proposal. Parenthetical citations are sufficient to demonstrate this. *demonstrates a clear and specific plan that aligns with the criteria for the selected session type*: The proposal clearly describes what will happen in the session and demonstrates that the authors have made careful and intentional choices in proposing a session type that is most suitable to the focus of the proposed activity.

Two:  Area Cluster Changes: You saw in the previous blog post CCCC 2021 Decisions and Advice | hollyjhassel some of the explanations for how 2020 convention chair Julie Lindquist and I had worked to manage the complex decisions around a transition that would allow for flexibility for participants to be able to share their work online, to delay sharing their work by resubmitting for 2021, or to document their acceptance in a different way on their professional documents. If you are reworking a proposal previously considered for 2020, here are some things to consider: 

The “area clusters” change each year because those are nearly exclusively within the purview of the program chair to update/change as they desire or as reflects new developments in the field or a particular emphasis in the program theme. I included in the call the previous 3 years’ clusters to show how those have shifted (and what has remained the same). I bring this to your attention so you can think about whether you might want or need to retool your previous proposal to align with a new area cluster: 

2018	2019	2020	2021
1. Pedagogy (#Pedagogy) 2. Basic Writing (#BW) 3. Assessment (#Assess) 4. Rhetoric (#Rhetoric) 5. History (#History) 6. Technology (#Tech) 7. Language (#Language) 8. Professional Technical Writing (#PTW) 9. Writing Program Administration (#WPA) 10. Theory (#Theory) 11. Public, Civic, and Community Writing (#Community) 12. Creative Writing (#Creativewriting)	1. First-Year and Advanced Composition 2. Basic Writing 3. Community, Civic & Public 4. Creative Writing 5. History 6. Information Technologies 7. Institutional and Professional 8. Language 9. Professional and Technical Writing 10. Research 11. Writing Pedagogies and Processes 12. Theory 13. Writing Programs	1. First-Year and Basic Writing 2. Writing Programs and Majors 3. Approaches to Learning and Learners 4. Community, Civic, and Public Contexts of Writing 5. Creative Writing and Publishing 6. History 7. Information Technologies and Digital Cultures 8. Institutions, Labor Issues, and Professional Life 9. Language and Literacy 10. Professional and Technical Writing 11. Research 12. Theory and Culture 13. Inventions, Innovations, and New Inclusions	1. First-Year Writing 2. College Writing Transitions 3. Labor 4. Writing Programs 5. Community, Civic, and Public Contexts of Writing 6. Reading 7. Access 8. Historical Perspectives 9. Creating Writing and Publishing 10. Information Literacy and Technology 11. Language and Literacy 12. Professional and Technical Writing 13. Theory and Research Methodologies

Program Clusters (View the detailed list of potential topic areas in each cluster here: Area Clusters). New clusters this year include “Labor,” “Access,” “College Writing Transitions” and “Reading,” and include subtopics like these: 

Access	College Writing Transitions	Labor	Reading
*Students, diversity, and access *Teaching and learning practices that support access, retention, and degree completion *Access to college-credit course work *Gatekeeping courses *Access to the profession *Accessibility for students, instructors, scholars *Barriers to college participation *Barriers to participation in the profession *Writing studies work informed by disability studies	*Basic writing curricula and pedagogies *Teaching non-degree credit courses online *Developmental writing, reading, and learning support programs *Teaching and supporting structurally disadvantaged students *Public policies and politics of remediation *Collaboration with secondary/K-12 writing writing programs and instructors *Methods and measures of placing students in writing, reading, and support courses *Dual credit/concurrent enrollment courses, programs, students, and training *Reform mandates facing two-year colleges and other access institutions	*Labor activism and advocacy *Contingency Studies *Ethical writing program labor practices *The state and status of labor in the field of writing studies *Institutional case studies *Teaching about labor issues *The labor of online writing instruction and equity for instructors *Organization and operations of educational institutions *Working conditions for contingent faculty and graduate assistants *Teacher support, mentoring, and professional development	*Integrated reading and writing courses and curriculum *Evidence-based reading instruction *The role of reading in writing courses *Writing about reading *Critical reading strategies *Designing curriculum to support critical reading *Preparing instructors for teaching reading *Relationships between reading and writing

Three: Transparency about Process: one of the issues that I have heard often about CCCC and read in member group reports and documents is concern about transparency. As program chair, I prioritized two changes that I hope will support transparency. First, as I noted in the previous blog and in the CFP, an open-invitation was issued for Stage 1 proposal reviewers. Thanks to all who volunteered their names and to do this labor! A majority of those who responded had not previously had the opportunity to participate in the review process, and I am excited that so many colleagues will have a chance to shape the program. 

Likewise, as part of responding to concerns expressed throughout formal and informal conversations in the field about how and why proposals are successful or not, I’ve asked NCTE to prioritize making proposal feedback available, and when reviewers volunteered to review proposals, they also committed to providing written feedback to proposals that will be available in the proposal system database once the decisions have been finalized. It responds to the CCCC Committee on the Status of Graduate Students (what is called in the CCCC constitution a “special committee”—or a committee formed for a period of 3 years to achieve a specific goal or purpose), which conducted a survey of graduate students presented in this report.

I will acknowledge that any time you break from the traditional way of doing things, unexpected issues can crop up, and I can’t promise that there won’t be new challenges by opening up the process. My leadership style has aimed for transparency about processes, clear and open communication, and visible expectations, so I’m hoping that some of these changes fulfill that philosophy. Again, as so many of the CCCC ways of doing things are determined and redetermined annually on the basis of who the convention program chair is (including all of these changes), I’ll seek to learn more from participants with a short follow-up survey about how they experienced these changes to the process. 

Questions: Send me an email at holly.hassel@ndsu.edu or 4csconvention2021@gmail.com

How Stuff Works: Timing, Siting, and Review for the CCCC Convention

Unless you’re the sort of person who finds bylaws, constitutions, and policies interesting, the specifics of how the CCCC Convention operates are likely unclear. Given that the organization has had to make some very significant decisions in the recent months, I thought it would be helpful to distill some of the ways things usually work and explain the levels of flexibility that are available, including how the convention might make use of some of the digital and online options that 2020 allowed us to pilot. 

Three to Five Years Prior to CCCC Meeting

• Site selection: Future CCCC Convention Dates and Sites: The usual process for selecting the convention site takes place over a period of a few years, with NCTE staff circulating a request for bids and then reviewing those bids from various locations. Historically, the convention location has gone through a cycle where it rotates from an East Coast site to a midwest site to a West coast site and then back to Midwest. This is to offer access to the Convention to our national membership in any given year. Making a commitment to a conference site comes with a significant outlay of funding–commitment for holding reservations in conference cities (as much as a million dollars of the CCCC budget for the period leading up to the conference).
• Most of the decisions around convention siting planning are brought to the Executive Committee (elected annually) and the Officers (who are elected by the membership in the summer elections, and who serve a four-year rotation through various roles and make up the Officers’ committee) by the CCCC and NCTE staff. Sites are approved by a vote of the committee. The EC meets officially twice/year, and the Officers Committee meets monthly to address issues that emerge in an ongoing way.
• Following the Milwaukee cancellation, the CCCC officers committee (whose responsibilities are outlined in the Constitution of the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English also the bylaws) discussed the possibility of having a more open rotation so that NCTE leaders–the umbrella organization for CCCC–can have more flexibility in pursuing cost-effective measures and have less rigidity in seeking convention locations. It also allows us to offset some of the penalties from Milwaukee commitments we had made if we are able to book a future convention in the city.

One to Two Years Prior to the Convention:

• CCCC Officer and EC Elections: CCCC officers rotate through four years in the Officers Committee. The first year is when the assistant chair starts to develop the program information and learn about the CCCC governance work; the Associate Chair year (the second year), is the year of the CCCC program that that person chairs. The third year is when the elected officer is chair of CCCC–the organization itself–and is responsible for convening meetings, developing the agenda, assembling and charging task forces and committees, etc. In the fourth year, the person elected serves as “past chair,” a member of the Officers Committee that votes on decisions and helps lead the organization as well as providing continuity. This election and governance information is relevant because it is connected to the timeline and planning that happens prior to the actual Convention. These don’t line up exactly with the convention planning years because officer terms change 30 days following the NCTE convention, which is held in November. So right now, I am Assistant Chair, Julie Lindquist is Associate Chair, Vershawn Ashanti Young is Chair, and Asao Inoue is Past Chair. David Green is secretary, a position that has a term of four years.
• Composing the Convention Program: During the 1.5 years leading up to the annual convention, the person elected to program chair follows a timeline that lays out when and how decisions need to be made.  This timeline is provided in the publicly available CCCC Executive Committee Handbook that describes how the convention is composed, how review of proposals take place, and the timeline for the events. However, this is a 180 page document so I direct your attention to Section 8, specifically page 147, where the process and timeline is described in detail. The information in the handbook reflects “pre-pandemic” planning timelines, and I have been working with the CCCC liaison, Kristen Ritchie, on adjusting those timelines in order to provide some flexibility in the timing of decisions in this uncertain time. For example, we were able to move the submission date back by a few weeks, and the process of putting the program together back by about a month (usually takes place in June on-site at the NCTE office in Illinois, now will take place online in July).

The Year Before the Convention

After the CFP is released, there is a lot of coordinating that takes place to assemble the program, schedule sessions, and coordinate with constituent groups or other professional groups who hold meetings at or in conjunction with CCCC. 

• Constituent Group Planning: A factor that is part of annual convention planning and the timeline between meetings is the constituent groups who plan events at CCCC or contiguous with CCCC. These member groups or groups who collaborate with CCCC include events like the Research Network Forum, the CCCC Feminist Workshop, the TYCA National Conference, the Council on Basic Writing, the Qualtitative Research Network, the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, among others. Each of those groups, of course, makes independent decisions about their relationship to the CCCC Convention. It is important for the CCCC program chair to be mindful of the other groups whose work has a mutually invested relationship to the annual convention planning process. 
• “Back Office” or Behind the Scenes Work: A few other factors that influence the timing of the convention planning include the other responsibilities that are handled by NCTE staff, the size of the convention, and the workload of members who serve as reviewers. While some professional groups are able to ‘carry over’ a full program from one year to the next, the CCCC Convention, because of its size, faces different challenges. Anywhere from 2,800 to over 3,300 professionals attend the annual meeting which amplifies the planning workload in ways that smaller professional groups perhaps can be more agile in navigating.

• Proposal Reviewing: Likewise, the workload for reviewing proposals takes place over the summer. Stage 1 usually happens when the proposal submission database closes (in most years, that is at the end of the first week in May) and reviewers have a few weeks to complete their work. This year, we’ve pushed the deadline back to the very end of May, which means reviewers will be looking at and evaluating proposals well into summer break. 

• In usual years, Stage 2 review (again, described in Section 8 of the CCCC Executive Committee Handbook), takes place in June. The current quarantine conditions will require that that part of the process (which includes assembling accepted proposals into panels, for those that were not submitted as a panel) happens remotely, and will be pushed back to July. 
• We are hopeful that even with that delay in the usual process of several weeks, that folks will be able to hear back about their acceptances by the start of the academic year, in part because we know that for many institutions, professional development funding needs are determined and requested near the start of the Fall term. 
• After each convention, the CCCC office sends out a post-convention survey, asking about the experience that convention-goers had at the meeting. This past year, for example, one of the subcommittees of the CCCC EC used that as an opportunity to ask participants about their most engaging experiences, which I then referenced when thinking about decisions for the 2021 conference planning. 

Participation for 2021: The cancellation of the 2020 convention in Milwaukee has given us an opportunity to try out some ways of fulfilling at least one goal of the convention for attendees which is public dissemination of their work. You’ll see also in the online sharing site that CCCC and TYCA have been able to distribute some of their materials which offers the advantages of dissemination—being able to read and reference that work and to continue the scholarly conversations on those issues.  I don’t know yet what will be possible for 2021—but we are exploring as many ways as possible to make the convention accessible and seeking all ways to make convention participation as safe as possible for members.

If you are interested in an accessible overview of how CCCC Governance works, consult the User’s Guide to CCCC, created by a CCCC Executive Committee Subcommittee on Committees (for real).