Reforming CCCC

I think I've read most of the postings in these cross-bloggings on the CCCC review process. I'm likely the only former C's chair to have done that, since so far I'm the only active blogger in that group, although some of them are blog readers.

Generating new ideas for organizing the conference has great merit. I suggest all those with ideas put them forward to members of the Executive Committee, that you volunteer to serve on C's committees, and that you consider running for C's office. And I'm not being coy here. C's is actually very responsive to member input. It's just that a lot of the talk doesn't get to the leadership.

I can offer my own perspective on some of the speculations about the review process that have been made in the various blog discussions. The list of reviewers develops from a mix of the forces Collin describes, and is not primarily a reflection of the chair's personal network. The first round of reviews--where most panels are judged--requires close to 70 reviewers across a broad set of topics. I had a list of those who had reviewed in previous years in various categories. The chairs immediately ahead of me were Wendy Bishop, Keith Gilyard, and Victor Villanueva. I consulted with each of them about specific reviewers in areas I didn't know well. I called on a number of previous reviewers, I approached new reviewers based on recommendations of others, and, here's where it can get specific, I insured that each topic had at least one two-year college reviewer, something that had not been done before. These were all established two-year college faculty who had participated in TYCA or CCCC leadership roles.

As for the topics: this is after the 1992 study Clancy references. There had been unhappiness that they did not reflect current concerns and emerging fields. But the job of putting out the call for proposals comes to the new assistant chair with not a lot of lead time. You are elected in October and you have to have your call ready for review by the Officers' meeting in mid-January. It goes to press not long after that so it's in the mail before the March conference.
Victor Villanueva devoted the November 99 Executive committee retreat to an intensive brainstorming about all the categories and sub-categories. I facilitated the discussion, took all the notes from all the groups, and revised the topics and sub-topics. They've been tweaked a couple times since then.

My year there were over 1500 submissions for perhaps 425 session slots. Kathi Yancey and Doug Hesse modified the schedule to try to make more sessions available. The number of meeting rooms in the hotel is the finite limit here. There's a strong mentoring tradition among the officers: Wendy helped me anticipate many problems in the process; I gave all the help I could to Shirley Wilson Logan.

I'll make another point. Like most professional organization, CCCC is led by volunteers. All the reviewers are volunteers, both first and second stage (the 10 who meet in Urbana to review individual proposals and organize them into panels). Not every one I asked agreed to review. That's a limitation in any approach. You may feel that so-and-so is the best expert in a given area, but so-and-so has to agree to do this work, and not be ill, and not be in Europe or Japan, etc. etc.

I can't speak for other Program Chairs, but once I had all the proposals in hand and access to this very funky database (C's has since upgraded), I did a lot of checking of proposals on topics that were not well-represented in the acceptances. And I found several proposals that I thought were scored too low and included them. The program chair has about 10% of the sessions for these purposes. And of course, some accepted panels change their minds and you have to fill in there. While I suppose it could have happened, I've never heard of a panel created by Stage II reviewers being rejected by a Chair.

I'm not trying to defend the WAY THINGS ARE, because my entire professional career has been about change, choice, and improvement in my own teaching and in our profession. The idea of more publicly developing the pool of reviewers has merit. My experience has been that CCCC has a strong membership orientation and is one of the most progressive organizations I've ever participated in. But maybe that's an "insider" view because I served on the Executive Committee for seven years in a row, first in the TYCA rotation and then in the CCCC Officer rotation. I was generally a voice for change, including asking the Committee on Women's Issues (not the correct name--it's late) why their membership included no males. I was the only Officer to vote for the initiative to support part-time/adjunct members with partial subsidies.

This discussion is a good one. It makes the concerns of members more public than they usually are. Now I suggest you all develop a plan of action for getting the views to the Officers and the Executive Committee and see how they respond.

John Lovas
De Anza College
I was CCCC Program Chair in 2001 in Denver.

The ratio of 1500 proposals: 452 slots underscores the conference's crisis. Could be the only way around the slot crunch is to regionalize Cs into three or four split venues. In theory, this kind of move would open up the conference(s) to more graduate students, moderate travel costs, and allow Cs to be generally more representative. And what would be compromised, exactly? Anything more than the field's wish for centeredness or the convenience of meeting times with colleagues scattered far and wide? I don't know what the ratio of proposals:slots is this year, but it will continue to be a problem for as long as Cs holds on to the idea of a single conference. Will the burst come when it hits 5000:452?

Might be worth reading Cs present predicament (re: too big) against its historical grabs for membership, particularly when the contested fourth C was formalized, when the role of two-year colleges came to bear, and when ESL and Zero English research reconciled places in the program. In 1953, when membership dipped to 339 (down from 446 in 1950), the scramble toward inclusion and, in effect, legitimacy by majority, had the conference considering "logic, literature, linguistics, semantics, grammar in the composition course; and we were asked to discuss the composition-communication course in the junior college, the liberal arts college, the technical and engineering college, in large schools and universities, in general education, and for the superior, the remedial, and the foreign student" (Gordon Wilson, CCCC in Retrospect). And sure those categories and, to a lesser extent, constituents have shifted over time. But those shifts remain gradual and, I'd argue, none too friendly to the work *least* familiar to the reviewers (which is pretty much what Collin has already pointed out). No good reason, from my humble perspective, that the conference should contribute to disenchantment with the field, professional attrition (in a profession where attrite forces are already plentiful) and untraceable exoduses at the expense of the NCTE. -DM

on all of the above hotlinked blogs. How do other large, academic professional organizations structure their conventions? Do they have conventions like the 4 C's, or are there other formats that they follow? I'm interested in hearing how we could reimagine structuring the yearly meeting.

--here's my question of the day: what if your 4 C's proposal WAS accepted? Does that make you part of the herd instead of the dynamic, state-of-the-profession dynamo that you thought you were? I myself am not concerned, but I have a friend. . . ;)

Joanna