NDSU English Department Annual Report

Fiscal Year: July 1. 2007 - June 30, 2008

I. Goals/accomplishments 2007-2008 (AHSS/English)

The academic year 2007-08 was incredibly busy in English: we sought for and hired a new administrative assistant, Michele Sherman; we sought for and hired and English Education faculty member, Kelly Sassi; and we sought for and hired a Renaissance faculty member, Verena Theile. The Sassi hire involved a spousal accommodation for her husband, Enrico. The department hosted the Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota, a conference that drew participants from across the U. S. and Canada; the Red River Graduate Student Conference, which now draws participants from North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin; and, in cooperation with Modern Languages, the Red River Conference on World Literature. One of our faculty members, Amy Rupiper Taggart, went up for tenure and was awarded it, and another, Linda Helstern, was on a one-year professional development leave. This year also saw the official start up of the upper-division General Education writing requirement.

Much of our effort this past year, as in the previous three years, has been aimed at positioning our department so that we will be able to make a strong entry into the world of Ph.D. programs in professional writing. Our success in hiring leading faculty can be attributed to our already strong faculty and to our expectation that we will have a Ph.D. soon. Having now assembled a faculty to support what we expect to be a leading program in the field regionally, we have been disappointed that final approval of the program has been delayed repeatedly. These delays have begun to have a serious impact on faculty moral, and they have brought much of our strategic planning to a standstill, because the shape of the future for our department will depend to a large extent upon whether or not we have the doctoral program. In lieu of investing in the doctoral program, many of the faculty members have turned their energies to outreach, building ties with the community and participating in University projects like the Advance program. These efforts have strengthened our position even further because of the connections that grew out of them. These new connections and the UND’s new president’s statement that he has no problem with degree that the degree has buoyed our spirits and rekindled our expectation.

A. Instruction and Student Success

The English department prides itself on its service to the university in teaching. Not only do we offer a substantial lineup of service courses, we also offer courses in support of a MA program with two areas of emphasis, four undergraduate bachelor degrees, and two minors. We analyzed and revised our entire curriculum three years ago, deleting classes that we no longer had expertise in and that were not essential to our degree programs. We have now begun adding to our curriculum as new we hire new faculty with new areas of expertise. The faculty continue to explore innovative teaching methods, including cooperative efforts with European classes and judicious use of technology, especially in the use of hybrid (partly face-to-face and partly online) classes, class blogs, audio and video files for instruction, and online portfolios).

1. Teaching initiatives and innovation

Kevin Brooks taught English 120 and visual communication and culture as hybrid classes in spring 2007. Others who taught hybrid classes (part face-to-face and part online) include Jo Cavins, Linda Fricker, Dale Sullivan, and Andrew Mara.

Kevin Brooks also assigned first-year TAs to produce online portfolios.

Linda Fricker’s students in English 120 created exhibits on non-profit agencies and a PowerPoint presentation on Nobel Peace Prize Winners for NDSU’s Boxes and Walls, and her students in English 320 created mock business journals. She also taught them how to use Publisher.

Linda Helstern implemented a service-learning component in Engl 336 in cooperation with Riverkeepers. Students provided 80 hours of service to two projects: the Red River Water Festival, a week-long environmental education program targeting local fourth graders and the annual Riverkeepers newsletter, which the organization would have been forced to cancel for spring 2007 without NDSU help. Also her students in Engl 120 received training in Publisher as preparation for graphic design assignments in the course. Helstern’s students in both Engl 336 and Engl 474/674 were required to utilize graphic design skills in preparing handouts for the class.

Linda Helstern also developed and taught a class at the Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies.Spring 2008, Block 2: Altered Landscapes: Literature and the Changing Environment.

Gayle Johnson custom-published an anthology of essays for her 112 and 122 students, Readings for Writers.

Eunice Johnston used new courses at the sophomore, junior, and senior levels in literary publication to teach students how to produce our creative writing and visual arts collection, Northern Eclecta.

Andrew and Miriam Mara instituted pilot projects using library blogs in their classes.

Bruce Maylath partnered with Hogeschool Gent in Belgium on a collaborative project pairing NDSU ENGL-320 students with students in Ghent studying translation/localization during fall semester. The project involved writing professional proposals and translating them into Dutch. Topics included an influenza pandemic response plan, an anthrax vaccination plan for cattle, and a physical education plan for schools to combat obesity and diabetes. He also Coordinated tech writing/translation project between students in ENGL-321-001 and translation students at University of Trieste, Italy, in spring semester.

Mary Pull incorporated TaskStream online portfolio system into EDUC 482.

Amy Rupiper Taggart was especially active in innovative teaching projects. She worked with Giving Youth a Voice, in which 1/3 of the Literacy, Culture, and Identity course students mentored writers through CHARISM’s Giving Youth a Voice project. She also worked with the National Writing Project, in which 1/3 of the Literacy, Culture, and Identity students conducted video/oral history interviews about people’s experiences of writing. The videos will go to the National Writing Project archive. Also 1/3 of her Literacy, Culture, and Identity students worked in Literacy Summit Mentorships in preparation for the Literacy Summit. She began a research project with Composition Theory students that involved studying a year’s worth of Journal of Advanced Composition to look for patterns in the contemporary research. Out of this they developed an article idea based on affect in composition studies. She continues as Writing Partners Program Coordinator. She coordinated 17 NDSU and 17 Ben Franklin classes in spring 2007. As far as technology goes, she set up a course blog in Composition Theory and Literacy, Culture, and Identity, used video recordings of writing oral histories (National Writing Project), and used video clips in classes for instructional purposes.

Julie Sandland used a series of case studies in English 321, Writing in the Technical Professions. The case studies for the technology and society unit feature a number of public controversies, from the Challenger explosion to Kazakhstan’s “nuclear babies” to the Crandall Canyon mine collapse. They feature audio, video, and text links to news media stories, scientific reports, and other communication examples so students can see how these events have unfolded and been reported on. She also gave her 120 students a group assignment to write a newsletter. Her English 320 students attend a session at the Group Decision Center, where they learn how to use a groupware program called Think Tank in order to brainstorm with their group members. They also attend a training session with the TLC on Dreamweaver for their professional website assignment

Maureen Scott collaborated with the International Students office, CHARISM of Fargo and the Volunteer Network to bring community experiences to her students.

Dale Sullivan experimented with a hybrid graduate class, accommodating a distance student along with a regular class, Summer English 759. He mentored Deona McEnery and Louise Hanson as they audited his English 324 class and met with him to learn how to teach writing in the sciences.

2. Advising initiatives and innovation

Eunice Johnston now advises all of English Liberal Arts undergraduate majors. Mary Pull advised all of English Education majors. This arrangement has turned out to be a much better system for assuring our students get good advice than when we parceled our students out to faculty advisers. English faculty still advise graduate students, and that load is now heavy enough that they are fortunate not to have to combine it with undergraduate advising.

3. Curriculum development including new programs, deletion of programs, administrative changes

The English department has not developed any new degrees, certificates or minors this year; however, we have continued to develop new classes and to gain General education approval for others. For instance Elizabeth Birmingham developed Writing in the Design Professions this year, and she developed the syllabus and assignments Creative Writing I—Engl 322 for general education approval. Andrew Mara developed and proposed a new graduate level class titled Invention to Innovation. Miriam Mara developed and proposed another new graduate class,Studies in Irish literature. Both went through this semester.

4. Accreditation or other reviews

5. Activities in student recruitment/retention, enrollment management, and other student activities

6. Distance education (including on-line) progress

The English department continues to offer several courses online, including English 120, 220, 320, and 321. We do not expect to offer a full degree or minor online in the foreseeable future; however, we are building our capabilities by seeking out qualified teachers who can teach online, especially those specialized writing classes much in demand at the junior level.

7. Assessment - describe how each department makes use of assessment data in decision making within the framework of the institution’s mission and purpose.

The English department takes assessment seriously and, based on feedback from the University’s assessment committee, is a leader in this effort. We assess the undergraduate liberal arts major in English, the upper division writing program, and the first-year writing program extensively. Assessment reports for each of these programs are attached as appendices to this annual report. The graduate program has not developed an assessment program to rival these undergraduate assessment plans, but we expect to turn our attention to developing a more through plan in the next two years.

B. Research/Creative Activity

1. Research and creative activities

The English department’s efforts in research and creative activity have increased each year as we move toward becoming a Ph.D. granting department. As the following sections show, some of our faculty, especially Betsy Birmingham, are becoming aggressive in seeking grants, despite the limited availability of grants in our field. Article and book chapter publication is now a taken-for-granted expectation of tenured and tenure-track faculty. Presentations at national and international professional conferences, thanks in part to our increased expectations and to President Chapman’s generous professional development and travel policies, are now common place.

2. Grants/contracts

Elizabeth Birmingham submitted a grant request to Elsevier Foundation titled “Early Career Mentoring as a Strategy for the Retention of Women Faculty: Changing the Gendered Institution.” P.I. $149,000. Submitted Oct. 1, 2007. Betsy also worked with the NDSU—ADVANCE Program, “Institutional Transformation: A Proposal for Recruiting, Retaining, and Advancing Women in the STEM Disciplines.” She was CO-PI and one of three principle writers. The grant requested $3.75 million. She was awarded a DCE Grant ($4,000) to develop on-line certificate program in fundraising (Okigbo/Schmidt/Bimingham). Betsy also submitted to a grant proposal to NSF—PAID Program: “PROMOTE: Improving Promotion to Full Processes at Western Public Universities.” She was an NDSU CO-PI. The amount requested was $250,000 grant/$22,500 NDSU.

Miriam Mara solicited and received a Faculty International Development Grant from International Programs for$2000 and traveled to Limerick, Ireland to develop articulation arrangements for summer school in areas of Irish Literature and Technical Communication.

3. Articles/books/publications

Faculty, Lecturers, and Graduate Students have been active this year publishing articles, writing reviews, and giving papers at professional conferences. The next two sections (B. 3 &4) lists the work done in this past year. The faculty and lecturers produced 29 publications between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, including several book chapters and refereed articles, a few reviews, and one book.

  1. Birmingham Elizabeth, et al. “First-Year Writing Teachers, Perceptions of Students’ Information Literacy Competencies, and a Call for a Collaborative Approach.” Communications in Information Literacy 1.2 (2007).
  2. Birmingham, Elizabeth and Molly Flaspohler. “First-year Composition, Information Literacy, and the Research/Writing Gap.” Library Orientation Series 40 (2007).
  3. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Shifting Discipline in Women’s Studies: Studies of Masculinities, Pornographies, and Sexualities.” NWSA Journal 19.2 (2007): 230-239. (Invited and reviewed/revised).
  4. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Modernity and the Renegotiation of Gendered Space.” NWSA Journal 19.1 (2007): 201-210. (Invited and reviewed/revised).
  5. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Lies, Damn Lies, and Autobiography: How and Why We Read Architect’s Lives.”Wright Angles 33.1: 2007. 3-8.
  6. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Reading Between the Lines: The 75th Anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s An Autobiography.” Wright Angles 33.1: 2007. 9.
  7. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “I See Dead People: Archive, Crypt, and an Argument for the Researcher’s 6th Sense.” Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Eds. Elizabeth Rohan and Gesa Kirsch. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 2008. 139-146.
  8. Bilen Green, Canan, Elizabeth Birmingham, and Ann Burnett. “Institutional Transformation at North Dakota State University.” Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network: 2008 Proceedings.
  9. Brooks, Kevin and Andrew Mara. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 11.3 (Summer).
  10. Helstern, Linda. “My Ántonia and the Making of the Great Race.” Western American Literature 42.3(Fall 2007): 255-74.
  11. Helstern, Linda. “Dark River.” Encyclopedia of American Indian Literatures. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
  12. Helstern, Linda. “The Light People.” Encyclopedia of American Indian Literatures. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
  13. Helstern, Linda. Review of Geronimo after Kas-ki-yeh: Poems by Rawdon Tomlinson. Southwestern American Literature 33.1 (Fall 2007): 97-98.
  14. Helstern, Linda. Review of I Swallow Turquoise for Courageby Hershman R. John (Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2007). Southwestern American Literature.Spring 2008.
  15. Helstern, Linda. Review of Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey in the American Grasslands by John Price. (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004). North Dakota Historical Review. Forthcoming Spring 2008.
  16. Mara, Andrew. “The Classical Trivium: An Information Storage Device and Curricular Heuristic for New Media and Digitial Communication Studies,” Kairos, summer 2007. (with Dr. Kevin Brooks)
  17. Mara, Miriam. “(Re)producing Identity & Creating Famine in Nuala O’Faolain’s My Dream of You.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 48:2 Heldref Publications, 2007. 197-216.
  18. Mara, Miriam. Review of Hungry Words: Images of Famine in the Irish Canon, ed George Cusack and Sarah Goss New Hibernia Review 11:4 (Winter 2007) 157-158.
  19. Martinson, David. “The River Otter” in Lovechild Journal 2: 2007: 41. (poem).
  20. Martinson, David. “The Red River Conference on World Literature: A Ten-Year History: 1998-2007.” Available at <
  21. Maylath, Bruce. "Preparing Students across the Technical Communication Program for a Global Economy," Proc. of the Council for Programs in Technical & Scientific Communication. 12-14 October 2006. San Francisco State U. Pittsburgh: CPTSC, 2007.
  22. O’Connor, Robert. “Strategy in Philip K. Dick’s The Game-Players of Titan: Competing in the Rigged Game.” Playing the Universe: Games and Gaming in Science Fiction. Ed. David Mead and Pawel Frelik. Lubin, Poland: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej, 2007. 45-54.
  23. O’Connor, Robert. “The Bounty Hunter and the Hired Gun: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the Post-McCarthy Era Adult Western.” When Genres Collide: Selected Essays from the 37th Annual Meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association. Ed. Thomas J. Morrissey and Oscar De Los Santos. Waterrbury, CT: Fine Tooth Press L. L. C., 2007. 73-80.
  24. Rupiper Taggart, Amy. “Tensions with Authorship and Evaluation in Community Writing.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 13 (Spring 2007): 53-64.
  25. Sullivan, Dale L. “Extending the Rhetoric of Science into the First-Year Composition Classroom.” A review of Michael Zerbe’s Composition and the Rhetoric of Science: Engaging the Dominant Discourse. The Review of Communication 8.3 (July 2008): 292-295.
  26. Totten, Gary, ed. Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2007.
  27. Totten, Gary. “Introduction: Edith Wharton and Material Culture.” Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture. Ed. Gary Totten. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2007. 1-16.
  28. Totten, Gary. “The Machine in the Home: Women and Technology in The Fruit of the Tree.” Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture. Ed. Gary Totten. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2007. 237-64.
  29. Totten, Gary. “Southernizing Travel in the Black Atlantic: Booker T. Washington’s The Man Farthest Down.” MELUS 32.2 (Summer 2007): 106-31.
  30. Totten, Gary. “Critical Editions of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: Theoretical and Pedagogical Considerations.” American Literary Naturalism Newsletter 1.2 (2007): 16-21.

4. Presentations

  1. Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Rhetoric as a Tool for Rebuilding Architecture’s Canon.” Colloquium on Interdisciplinary Rhetorical Studies.” University of Minnesota, Duluth. (Invited, compensated speaker.)
  2. Brooks, Kevin. “From ‘Hot and Cool’ to ‘Film and Database’: Mapping New Media Concepts.” Great Plains Alliance for Computers and Writing. Dakota State University, Madison SD, November 8, 2007.
  3. Brooks, Kevin. “Understanding New Media Composition: From the Complexity of Interdisciplinarity to the Symplexity of the Trivium.” Interdisciplinary Symposium. University of Minnesota, Duluth. October 4 and 5, 2007.
  4. Helstern, Linda. “Fossil Love, Carbon Footprint: Gary Snyder in the Post Natural Moment.” Western Literature Association, Tacoma, WA, October 17-20, 2007.
  5. Helstern, Linda. “Ortiz and Vizenor: Two Theories of Survivance.” American Literature Association. San Francisco, 2008.
  6. Mara, Andrew. “The Muscular Memory of Activity Systems,” LCMND, Fargo, ND. September, 2007.
  7. Mara, Andrew. “Technical Writing, Cyborg Motivation, and the Problem of Desire,” SWPCA Conference,Albuquerque, NM, February 2008.
  8. Mara, Andrew. "The Summit Is Down Here: Hybrid Service-Learning through Performance,"ATTW, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2008.
  9. Mara, Miriam. “Remembering Identity? Irishness and Globalism in Nuala O’Faolain’s Memoirs.” Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota. Fargo, ND. September 28, 2007.
  10. Miriam. “Global Ireland in Film” American Conference on Irish Studies.Davenport, Iowa, April 19, 2008. Mara, Miriam. “Spreading the Disease: HPV and the Gendering of Risk” Conference on College Composition and Communication.New Orleans, LA. April 4, 2008.
  11. Mara, Miriam. “Communities of health care and technical writing: Roundtable for teaching themes, techniques, and technologies”Annual Conference of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. New Orleans, LA. April 2, 2008.
  12. Martinson, David read from poetry and gave a presentation at the Linguistic Circle conference in Fargo.
  13. Maylath, Bruce. "Building Language Awareness in the Technical Communication Curriculum." Council for Programs in Technical & Scientific Communication, Greenville, NC, 12 October 2007.
  14. Maylath, Bruce. "The Words That Jog Our Memories--and Those that Don't," Linguistic Circle of Manitoba & North Dakota, Fargo, ND, 27 September 2007.
  15. Maylath, Bruce. “Pioneering the Writing in the Health Sciences course in the 1980s,” ATTW, New Orleans, April 2, 2008.
  16. O’Connor, Robert. “’The Language of Music and the Language of Poetry: The Description of an Interdisciplinary Couse in Art Song Taught in the North Dakota State University Scholars Program.” The 75th Annual Conference of the College Music Society. Salt Lake City, Utah. 17 November 2007.
  17. Rupiper Taggart, Amy. “Remembering Discourse Communities: Declared Dead Too Soon?” Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota. Fargo, ND. September 2007.
  18. Rupiper Taggart, Amy. “Teaching Problem Solving Through Community-Based Writing.” China-US Conference on Literacy. Beijing, People’s Republic of China. July 2007.
  19. Rupiper Taggart, Amy and H. Brooke Hessler. “What We’re Doing When We Say We’re Doing ‘Critical Reflection.’” National CASTL (Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Institute: Developing Scholars of Teaching and Learning. Omaha, NE. June 2008.
  20. Scott, Maureen. Presentation, with other NDSU personnel, about learning communities at the First Year Experience Conference in Dallas.
  21. Sullivan, Dale L. “Sophistic Rationality and Divine Madness in C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.” 2007 National Communication Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
  22. Sullivan, Dale L. Keynote Address, “Growth and Community: A Few Thoughts on the Organics of Professional Communication.” 2007 Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, October 2007, Greenville, NC.
  23. Totten, Gary. “Embodying Segregation: Ida B. Wells and the Cultural Work of Travel,” International Society for Travel Writing Conference, Madrid, Spain, Sept 19-21, 2007.
  24. Totten, Gary. “Women Who Do: Ideological Affinity in the Works of Dreiser and Grant Allen,” American Literature Association Symposium on Naturalism, Newport Beach, CA, Oct 4-5, 2007.

5. Technology transfer