Draft 9/23/05

Department of English

Action Plan

October 6, 2005

The Department of English’s Action Plan is derived from the Departmental Sself-Sstudy, the Chair’s overview letter, the Dean’s Office Response, the external reviewers’ report, and the APACE report.

According to the Outside Evaluators’ Report, the Department of English is “one of Georgia State’s most intellectually robust and vibrant humanities departments,” and the Dean’s Office Report suggests the Self-Study and the external report “provide the opportunity to move the English Department forward significantly again.” The following Action Plan details a strategy to do just that.

Progress Report since the 1994 Self-Study

Since the Department of English was the first department in the College to go through program reviewsubmit an Action Plan 11 years ago, it seems helpful to provide a brief overview of just how much the program has flourished in the past decade with the support of the university. under the leadership and support of the past and current higher administration.

Then we had 32 tenured and tenure- track faculty, 1 Graduate Teaching Assistant, and 0 Instructors or Lecturers; w. e relied heavily on part-time instructors. Today we have 44 tenured or tenure-track faculty, 100 GTAs, 32 Visiting Instructors, and 2 Lecturers. . During this time the number of graduate students enrolling in our programs grew by over 30%. One key to our 1994 Action Plan was to concentrate on hiring strong junior faculty. The Department has been enormously successful in this regard. While always maintaining a strong faculty in British and American literature over the past decade, we have – again, thanks to the university’sProvost’s support of our last Action Plan – broadened theto scope and range of both our faculty and our programs.the resulting new course offerings. This is particularly true in the fields of Creative Writing, Rhetoric and Composition, and Secondary Education. We have also helped to establish a college-wide program in Jewish Studies. Additionally, our composition program has grown into a nationally recognized model, and we have developed the Writing Across the Curriculum Program (WAC) as well as the Writing Studio, where an average of 5,500 students per year from the entire university find help honing their writing skills. (Please see appendix for further notes on WAC and the Writing Studio.)

. Not surprisingly, 3 English professors have been named Regents’ Professors since the last self-study was completed. During the past decade, 25 the faculty have won numerous prestigious external grants from such programs as the (Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the HumanitiesEH, National Humanities CenterHC, and, among many other granting agencies, the American Association of University Women Research Fellowship. Faculty the like), published over 50 books with some of the profession’s most distinguished presses and hundreds of articles while maintaining excellence in the classroom. Several faculty publications have garnered important awards within the profession. In 1999 and 2004 English professors won the College’s Outstanding Teaching Award. One of our professors was named Poet Laureate of the state of Georgia. Three English professors have been named Regents’ Professors since the last self-study was completed.

Other selected enhancements and achievements since the last Action Plan include, in addition to the well-respected journal, Studies in the Literary Imagination, now in its 38th year, the establishment of 5 Points, an award-winning and nationally recognized creative writing magazine, which complements the department’s other publications: The Eudora Welty Newsletter, GSU Review, Journal of Advanced Composition electronic archive, and the South Atlantic Review, the scholarly journal of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, which has been headquartered in the department since 1995. The Toni Morrison Society and its newsletter were stationed within the department for 10 years before their recent move to another university. We establishedand the joint degree program with the University of Northumbria, which won the Board of Regents’ top award of $10,000 for “Best Practices in International Education.” Since the last Sself-Sstudy, the Ddepartment has embarked on an ambitious international plan, establishing exchanges with universities in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy, and we are currently negotiating with other universities in Spain, China, South Africa, and France. English has played an important leadership role in collaborating with other departments in the university as we continue our internationalization efforts. The Writing Across the Curriculum program, thanks to the generous support of the Provost, continues to benefit students throughout the entire university, as does the vastly-improved Writing Studio housed within the department. The South Atlantic Modern Language Association and its scholarly journal, the South Atlantic Review, have been headquartered in the department since 1995. Finally, the department has established two endowed chairs and one major creative writing fellowship over the last decade.

An important result of the 1994 Action Plan is that the Department created a Secondary English committee and subsequently hired two tenure-track faculty members to strengthen the Department's involvement in teacher preparation. These faculty members worked with the College of Education's MSIT faculty to align the Secondary English concentration to the expectations of their Masters of Education Alternative Preparation Program (TEEMS), and they initiated several outreach programs for secondary English teachers, including the Conversations among Partners in Learning series, the Annual Lecture series on Rereading Significant Texts, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in July, 2002.

The Secondary English concentration provides many essential services to students preparing to become secondary English teachers, including specific English courses with a pedagogical focus, advisement about the courses best suited for pre-professional study, and priority consideration for the Masters of Education Alternative Preparation Program (TEEMS) offered through the College of Education. As a result, students in this concentration, with its rigorous requirements, leave our department well-prepared for certification programs in English Education grades 7-12 or for provisional certification.

In sum, thanks to the support from the offices of the Dean, the Provost, and the President, weThe specifics of the Department’s more recent achievements are detailed out in the Self-Study and affirmed by the external reviewers’ and Dean’s reports, but we stress here that, when the offices of the Dean and the Provost support English, the department takes full advantage of such opportunities. We have raised the national visibility of the English programprogram, bringing increased distinction to both the Ddepartment and the Uuniversity.

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Progress Report since the Completion of the Current Self-Study

As of September 2005, the Department of English has 44 tenured or tenure-track faculty, 2 Lecturers, and 3 Visiting Instructors.

The search for an African Americanist continues, and we shall interview candidates at the MLA Convention in Washington, D.C. in December 2005.

The Ddepartment continues to produce a significant number of credit hours: 18,179 in Fall 2004; 16,547 in Spring 2005; and 4,313 in Summer 2005.; and 16,163 in Fall 2005. There are approximately 560050 undergraduate majors and 20025 graduate students. . The Writing Studio continues to serve the needs of the entire student body, and Writing Across the Curriculum continues developing campus-wide writing proficiency. About 100 GTAs teach for the department each semester. As can been seen in faculty 2004 Annual Reports, English faculty have continued their professional productivity, publishing three books and 42 chapters, articles, or creative works in some of the profession’s most distinguished presses and magazines; participating in 57 conferences here and abroad; receiving 7 substantial external grants, and so on. The department continues to expand its interests in international exchange programs, and we are constantly re-thinking our curriculum to besttter serve the global interests of our students and faculty. We will continue to address a number of needs outlined in the Self- Study and the Outside Evaluators’ Report.

Graduate Program. In response to the Ddepartmental Sself-Sstudy’s focus on the problem of excessive time-to-degree in the doctoral program, we have instituted a sixfive-year time limit on funding for doctoral students and implemented a structured time-table for completion of degree within those sixfive years. Still, we are pleased with our overall graduation rate in the graduate program in recent years (please see following chart).

Number of Graduates in our graduate programs:

Fall 2002-Summer 2003 / Fall 2003-Summer 2004 / Fall 2004-Summer 2005 / Fall 2005*
MA / 24 / 33 / 25 / 18
MFA / 3 / 5 / 1 / 1
PhD / 8 / 9 / 10 / 10

*These numbers are based on projections provided by the Graduate Office in conjunction with English department records.

We have greatly enhanced TA training. Lower Division Studies has revamped the pedagogical mentoring and professional development for graduate students teaching in the department. Pedagogical and curriculum training takes the form of conferences three times a year. In 2004-05, GTAs and faculty in the Department offered concurrent sessions, Lower Division Studies brought in several keynote speakers, and publishers sponsored book fairs. The mentoring program created 14 Professional Development Communities of 8-10 graduate students and a faculty mentor which met once a month to discuss teaching and professional issues. GTAs report that the involvement of faculty has greatly enhanced their growth as teachers and professionals in academia. They also build their own curriculum vitae through participation as presenters at the various conferences. OFinally, our graduate program added an additional pedagogical course for the teaching of writing in 2004 and will offer, and will offer a pilot course for the teaching of literature in Fall, 2005. Finally, we are very proud that, in an extremely competitive job market, 95% of our PhDs have found jobs in 2002-04.

Undergraduate Program. Our undergraduate students are eager to take courses beyond the more-standard British and American literature class offerings. Hence there have been ongoing discussions regarding transnationality and how the Ddepartment can become more comprehensive in terms of ethnic literatures and post-colonial/global literatures. Our hiring plans are informed by these many ongoing discussions of our priorities; for instance, the English Literatures Post-1900 section has begun discussions about how to integrate planned new positions in global, ethnic, and postcolonial literatures into our curriculum, and how to expand the range of literary contexts that we teach in our courses (which will also aeffect our heavily-enrolled core course in World Literature), and the other sections within the department have held similar discussions in recent months, including debates on hiring priorities at the Department’s Faculty retreat in September 2005. Further, the department has played major roles in its participation in the Honors Program and the Graduation with Distinction option for students, and the department has made major contributions in Secondary English. Also, we have identified a staff position for workforce reduction with the intent to convert that half-time position to an internship/service-learning coordinator, allowing us to initiate a program that the Self-Study identified as a strong departmental priority.

Technology Support. The Ddepartment received some 70 new computers in 2005 (20 from the Dean’s Office, 20 from the department’s budget, and 30 from new Tech Fee monies), a new copy machine, voice-mail for all faculty telephones, and $175,000 Tech Fee grant to establish a second computer classroom and to create a technical writing classroom/usability lab.enhance the other one. Our technological infrastructure has improved in many ways: we have replaced most of our outdated computers with new Dell workstations for faculty and staff. With Tech Fee funding, we have ordered A/V and presentation equipment for the Troy Moore Library, new classroom computers, graduate lab computers for GTA use, and new laptops for tutors in the Writing Studio. Also with the support of a Tech Fee grant, we are constructing two new classrooms -- one for our technical initiative in Composition and the other for a Technical Writing/Usability Lab.

We have purchased a new Windows server that will house a departmental web portal, serve applications to the Usability lab, and contain the application depot for iCommand. We have acquired a second departmental copier that is networked and has the capability to scan to the desktop. We have implemented a telephone system with individual numbers and voicemail for all faculty and staff. And we have upgraded a staff position from Departmental Technology Coordinator to Departmental Tech Manager.

We have made considerable progress with 1101T, our technological initiative in Composition, . We have begun offering several freshman composition courses each semester with an emphasis on technology. We have surveyed incoming students and know that 90% have computers and over 50% have laptops, indicating that our students are ready for this initiative. During 2004-05, we borrowed a classroom (403CS) and used our existing computer classroom (303CS) to offer English 1101 in an electronic environment each semester. Through Tech Fee funding, we have attempted to secure a second electronic classroom (302UL) but will not be able to teach there until Spring, 2006. Making this goal as far-reaching as we had hoped has been hampered by space issues. However, so far we have offered 15 sections of this course, and trained 5 graduate teaching assistants to teach in an electronic environment; we will be expanding the effort over the next academic year with more specific training for the GTAs.

We feel, then, that the department needs relatively modest yet key enhancements over the next 5 years to increase yet further the overall excellence of the program and its national visibility.

Recommended Action Plan

In the last Action Plan, we hired new faculty to enhance our programs. With this new Action Plan, we would like to enhance support for our Ph.D/MFA students, to increase and consolidate office space, and to make two key faculty appointments at the senior rank and several appointments at the Lecturer level. Such enhancements will enable us, not only to keep pace with our peer research institutions in terms of the level of stipend support for graduate students, but to respond to the changing nature of the profession and the needs of our students.

Primary Needs:

1. Enhanced GraduateGraduate Student Stipend Support

2. Office Space

3. New Faculty

1. Enhanced GraduateGraduate Student Stipend Support

Need:

While the number of graduate students enrolled fluctuates from year to year, we currently have approximately 100 students in our MA program and approximately 100 in our MFA/Ph.D program. A key problem is that our graduate students are teaching far too many courses a year, which slows their progress toward graduation. (Some were so pressed for money that they were moonlighting at other colleges, a problem we’ve now corrected.) Both the external reviewers and the APRC recommend additional stipendiary supportfunding for graduate assistantships and that we decrease the teaching load to a 2-1-1 model..