As noted in our charge, two-year college (TYC) faculty are not represented within or engaged within CCCC in proportion to their role within the field. Likewise, given the increasing casualization of labor in the academy, CCCC needs to more proactively engage with all sectors of higher education if it is to build membership in the coming years. The number of college students who will either be solely enrolled at or who will have taken courses at TYC campuses is huge. There is financial, material, and practical benefit to be gained by bringing more two-year college faculty into the CCCC professional community.
Therefore, we the Task Force on Engaging Two-Year College Faculty in CCCC have been charged with investigating and making recommendations about what ways CCCC is meeting the needs of two-year college members and what ways it could better meet the needs of two-year college faculty.
You can find more about this (and other current CCCC task forces) here.
Members
Jess Kubiak Greetings! I'm Jessica Kubiak (Jess, she or they pronouns), and I'm serving as chair of this CCCC task force on two-year faculty engagement. I've worked at the State University of New York's Jamestown Community College since 2010, mostly as a full-time instructor of reading and composition. My background in adult and community literacy gave me a strong foundation for becoming a specialist in developmental English, and as I continued to teach, I continued to expand my training and education, focusing on composition and rhetoric through additional graduate credentials. This confluence of study and practice is largely what led to my winning an inaugural Outstanding Teaching Award from CCCC in 2021.
Like most two-year composition faculty, the bulk of my development and professional networking has not come as a result of making moves like attending Cs (which I've done once in person and once virtually). So I'm eager to learn more about not only why this phenomenon exists (which has been studied extensively by colleagues such as Christie Toth and others), but what can be done to ensure that Cs better responds to the needs of the thousands of two-year faculty who teach in the areas of composition and writing studies.
Jamey Gallagher I (Jamey Gallagher, he/him/his) have been teaching in community colleges since 2006— at the Community College of Baltimore County since 2011. I have been heavily involved in the Accelerated Learning Program and have more recently worked on Self-Directed Placement. I have attended and presented at many C’s over the years. I have published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College and the Journal of College Reading and Learning, among other places. I am devoted to changing the way we think about student capacity. I am also interested in promoting the work of two year faculty and believe that theory should come up from these spaces, in which diversity by all measures is richest.
Sarah Z Johnson I am Sarah Z Johnson, Chair of National TYCA and the Writing Center Director at Madison College in Madison, WI. My experience with CCCC and TYCA go all the way back to the 1900s when I was a graduate student! I have been on the Cs Executive Committee during two separate terms, and been involved in both Regional TYCA and National in various capacities throughout my career. I have done extensive policy work for Cs, TYCA, and NCTE, including chairing task forces on teacher preparation and dual enrollment. I come to this work as an advocate for two-year college voices in the Conference on College Composition and Communication. There is much to be gained on both sides from our involvement, and I hope this research will foster greater collaboration and participation.
Erin Doran I (she/her/hers) am an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Community College Leadership at Iowa State University. I have attended 4C's once in person (in Houston) where I participated in TYCA pre-conference session and in 2020 when CCCC was virtual. I am the recipient of a CCCC Research Grant which I studied English faculty members who work with Latina/o/x students in two-year colleges in the Midwest. My research on faculty professional development has been published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC).
I was recommended to this task force by Holly Hassell, who was the editor of TETYC when my research was published. Among my research interests are the professional development of two-year college faculty who specifically work with students in developmental reading and writing. A personal motivation behind my research and professional service activities is to uplift community colleges, their students, and their faculty. So I welcome any opportunity to help make professional organizations more accessible and relevant for two-year faculty.
Charissa Che I am an Assistant Professor of English at Queensborough Community College at the City University of New York (CUNY). Among my research interests are intercultural awareness, Asian and Asian American rhetorics, and translingualism. I am invested in creating equitable learning opportunities and spaces for students at two-year colleges, and believe that in order for us to do so, we must interrogate and rethink longstanding frameworks used to refer to students in our placement, assessment, and pedagogical practices.
In addition to serving as the TYCA National 2022 Program Chair, I have worked alongside Darin Jensen as the Editorial Fellow for Teaching English at the Two-Year College (TETYC), where I currently serve as Book Review Editor. In 2020, I presented in NCTE’s TYCA Teaching in a Time of Change webinar series on how to write a successful conference proposal.
As a first-generation college graduate, child of working-class immigrants, and Asian American, my scholarship and service to the discipline are both professionally and personally motivated. My work in this taskforce is an extension of my efforts to assist fellow two-year college faculty in their professional development and ultimately advance how we teach two-year college students in ways that consider their diverse backgrounds and competencies.
Sharon Mitchler I am Sharon Mitchler (she/her), and I teach at Centralia College, a rural community college half way between Seattle, WA and Portland, OR. I first attended 4Cs and TYCA regional conferences in the late 1990s. Since then, I have served as the TYCA National Chair (2004-2006) and on the 4Cs executive committee (2003-2007). I have also served on numerous committees, initiatives, research groups, and projects, along with having publications in TETYC, regional TYCA publications and CCC.
Holly Hassel asked me to join this task force, and I enthusiastically agreed. There have been long-standing barriers keeping two-year college faculty from participating in 4Cs. These barriers are both internal to the organization of 4Cs and external, in the working contexts for two-year college faculty. I am hopeful that through this work we will find ways to better include, support, and serve two-year faculty members of 4Cs.
Taija Noel I am Taija Noel (she/her/hers), and I teach College Writing and English Strategies at Minnesota State Community and Technical College. Prior to my work at M State, I taught a variety of English courses at Red Lake Nation College, a tribal college in northern Minnesota. During my time there I became passionate about the unique needs of underrepresented, first generation, and/or nontraditional college students. I began my involvement in CCCCs during graduate school and began engaging with TYCA during my first year as a community college instructor.
I have done developmental education placement work with my previous institution and as part of a CCCC panel in 2022. As the only English instructor at my prior institution, CCCC and TYCA were a great resource for me. I was thrilled to be asked to participate in a task force that looks more closely at two-year faculty involvement, and I look forward to learning how we can better serve the needs of all of our two-year faculty members in CCCC.