Newsletter Story 2
“New Program Director’s Column”
It is a delight to be serving as C&T’s newest director. One reason is because I have a chance to interact with students and faculty who come from a great diversity of cultural backgrounds. Students in our programs presently come from Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burundi, Canada, Costa Rica, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, Peoples Republic of China, Poland, Republic of Taiwan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Venezuela. Such diversity of cultures certainly provides opportunities for us to see teaching, learning, and research from multiple perspectives, as well as enriches our lives through our day-to-day interactions.
Closely related, I am delighted to be the director because I have chances to interact with talented faculty, students, and alumni who approach academics and their lives in thoughtful, reflective ways. The very fact that our programs place emphasis on concepts found in qualitative research further builds a C&T culture in which many of our students seek understanding through nonjudgmental description, analysis, and multiple interpretations rather than follow uninformed prescriptions based on hearsay. Understanding within our C&T culture also is often from emic and wholistic points of view, not from a self-centered narrow perspective, and it is indeed wonderful to be a part of this culture.
I am also delighted to be the director because I feel as if I am part of a community of learners. During my eighteen plus years of teaching in our doctoral and MA programs, I have seen C&T students come together to work on academic course projects, co-author publications, and support each other in times of need. Over the years, I have come to realize how truly special the collaborative aspect of our C&T culture is. As the director, I will do my best to maintain this community-based attitude within our program.
I am also delighted to be the director because of the respect I have for the dedicated directors who have preceded me. During my tenure at IUP, I have experienced four directors, including Dan Tannacito (1985-1988; 1997-1999), Mike Williamson (1989-1993), Barbara Hill Hudson (1993-1997), and Don McAndrew (1999-2003). These four committed professors have shown me that the director’s job is to understand the needs of the students and faculty in our programs and to set the C&T agenda based on their academic, political, and personal needs. Through their tenures as director, we have had two major program curriculum revisions, including a name change from Graduate Studies in Rhetoric and Linguistics to our present Graduate Studies in Composition and TESOL name, a name that more closely defines who we are as a program.
Being director is also delightful because we are in the midst of a wonderful transition. Our program transition has included a considerable increase in our student population over the past four years. We now have 212 Ph.D. students, 67 MA TESOL students, and 49 MA TE students. It is wonderful to see many of these students moving through our new curriculum, including taking new course offerings, such as Second Language Literacy, Second Language Teaching, Advanced Seminar in Literacy, and Technology and Literacy, developing their Qualifying Portfolios, and prepare for their proposal defenses with three fully developed chapters in hand. I am especially happy that our transition has included hiring three faculty members: Jean Niemkamp and David Hanauer, last year, and Nancy Bell, our brand new hire this year. How refreshing it has been to add their voices to our C&T community!
It is also delightful to be the director because I am working in a program where the students, alumni, and faculty are so productive. For example, I am happy to be coordinating a program where students, such as Kathy Kellerer Sohn and Beth Garber, have won the prestigious James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award (both directed by Carole Bencich). Likewise, I am proud to coordinate a program where faculty member David Hanauer has collaborated with colleagues at UC Berkeley to win a prestigious $2,500,000 National Science Foundation grant, Seeds in Science/Roots in Literacy, a developmental project devoted to research on literacy activities in K-3 classrooms, as well as edit a special issue of the Canadian Modern Language Review on Literature and Applied Linguistics: New Approaches. Similarly, I am honored to have taught such students as alumnus Tom Farrell who has done such extensive publishing, including scores of journal articles in major journals (e.g., ELT Journal, Teaching and Teacher Education, RELC Journal), as well as a variety of books — Reflective Practice in Action: 80 Reflective Breaks for Busy Teachers (Sage Publications, 2004), Reflecting on Classroom Communication (Prentice Hall, 2002), and Classroom Discourse: An Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2002).
I also am delighted because I do not have to face the administrative tasks alone. Thank goodness for Cathy Renwick, our talented secretary! Without her rich experience and vital participation within our C&T community, I would surely be at a loss.
Although I am delighted to be the director because of all the reasons I have just given, the number one reason is because of the everyday interactions with the students, alumni, and faculty. I enjoy talking with students about their class schedules and future plans, reading email from alumni about their everyday lives as language teachers, talking with prospective students about their hopes and dreams, talking with students about their first conference presentation, hearing the Teaching Associates talk about their teaching, participating with a faculty member to bring in a guest speaker, networking with people on campus to create support for our programs, and seeing the smiles on the faces of students on graduation day. As the director I get to be a bigger part of such interaction, from the mundane to the very special days, and to me, this is what makes life interesting and worth celebrating!
I look forward to my tenure as the director of our C&T programs. I welcome the challenge of coordinating our Ph.D. Composition and TESOL program and working with the MA program coordinators, Lynne Alvine (MA TE) and Lilia Savova (MA TESOL).
If you want to talk with me, feel free to drop in, call (724-357-2263), or email me (jgebhard@iup.edu). I try to keep Wednesday afternoons (1:00-6:00) free for open (walk-in) office hours, although sometimes a meeting will cut into this time. I also save Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for scheduled office hours. If you would like to meet with me on one of these days, simply email me to schedule a time.