Michael Cripps co-authors article in ‘Composition Forum’
Michael J. Cripps, associate professor in the Department of English, co-authored an article published in the current issue of Composition Forum: A Journal of Pedagogical Theory in Rhetoric and Composition. The article, "Writing Program Building in a Compromised Space: Relative Agency in a Small College in a University System," appears in the Program Profile section of the spring 2014 (Volume 29) issue of the journal. Cripps' co-author, Heather M. Robinson, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of English and director of the, writing program at York College of the City University of New York.
Through a review of ten years of writing program initiatives and decision points at York College of the City University of New York, Cripps and Robinson argue that writing program administrators adopting a stance of relative agency can help shape the structures that support undergraduate writing even as upper-level administrative demands exert pressures that compromise those structures.
The article treats two watershed moments in the recent history of the City University of New York (CUNY) as bookends: the end of remediation in CUNY's senior colleges in 1999 that brought to CUNY a university-wide Writing Across the Curriculum mandate while eliminating developmental writing, and CUNY's 2013 Pathways initiative that mandated a university-wide general education program across all CUNY colleges. The analysis demonstrates the relative agency of writing program administrators as they helped shape, adapt, and preserve central elements of writing in the college curriculum.
is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition with the support and financial assistance of Pennsylvania State University.