Pedagogy 8 (3): 2008

Using Assessment to Introduce Incremental Change, Lynne Rhodes, USCA

Because I have become very aware, most recently, that our department is changing, as folks retire, as institutional memories can be lost, it’s essential to bring in, coach, and mentor new faculty, who are tenure-track junior faculty, can be encouraged and shown how to do this kind of assessment research and scholarship. To those ends, I have become a new faculty mentor, engaged and informing a newly instituted peer review process.

Special attention in WPA preparation programs now gives many initiates seeking WPA positions at least some exposure to leadership and management skills. Perhaps most importantly, a WPA needs to delegate and maintain balance, as well as finding ways to recharge and renew one’s energies. For myself, finding new challenges (such as recently becoming a National Writing Project site director) has been essential in two ways: With new responsibilities, I am more able and more willing to ask others – particularly new junior faculty - who have expressed interest in assuming writing assessment duties to do so, thus I can become a mentor to new, younger faculty who need to develop scholarship and service interests. In turn, I can recharge and develop new scholarship interests of my own; in fact, the incremental changes that I advocate making as a WPA are reflected in my own development as a scholar.

Institutional changes are mostly incremental, and some set backs must be anticipated. Realistically, as a WPA, I know that certain times each semester will require managerial skills: recruiting graders, setting up databases, reporting results. Other periods of the semester allow for more creativity: holding meetings, setting up workshops, visiting with interested faculty and establishing allies, submitting proposals, attending conferences. As a WPA, I’ve sampled a number of texts, publications, and workshops which have helped me to rethink and hone such skills and concepts (see Ward, in WPA Spring 2007, pp. 66-67), but for me, attending the WPA conferences and lurking on the WPA list have been the most productive steps that I have taken in this regard.