[CBW_Exec] Personal/Professional updates

[Tabetha Adkins]

Hi everybody.  

I¹m writing from (surprisingly snowy) Commerce, Texas to introduce myself.
As Shannon indicated, I met some of you at the SIG last year in San
Francisco, but I want to extend a cheerful hello to those of who I haven¹t
had the chance to meet yet.

A  lot has happened, both on personal and professional fronts, since we last
met at Cs.  I defended my dissertation at the University of Louisville on
Amish literacy practices in April, graduated in May, got married in June,
moved to Texas later that month, and began my position as director of the
Writing Center and basic writing program at Texas A&M University- Commerce
in July.  I¹m really happy here‹ this is the job I hoped for during graduate
school, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have it.

We have a lot of exciting things going on here, including the details
Shannon gave about the CLiC GARs and our first Commerce Week on Writing.
I¹ve been busy making updates to the Basic Writing curriculum.  Students in
our ENG 100 class are now reading and writing about popular culture as a
sponsor of literacy.  So far, so good; the students in the classes and the
graduate students teaching the classes seem to like this sequence.

As far as my scholarship goes, I¹ve recently completed an article about an
Amish newspaper, and I¹m working on a manuscript about literacy and
assimilation in the Amish community.  I feel lucky to have found a project
for which I have so much excitement!  Shannon, our colleague Donna
Dunbar-Odom, and I are also working on an article together, with many more
great projects, I suspect, to follow in the future.

I look forward to seeing and/or meeting you in Louisville, my previous home,
next month.  Safe travels too all.

Best, 
Tabetha


Tabetha Adkins, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Director of the Writing Center and Basic Writing Program
Department of Literature and Languages
phone: 903.886.5269
fax: 903.886.5980 
tabetha_adkins at tamu-commerce.edu




On 2/10/10 5:40 PM, "Shannon Carter" <Shannon_Carter at tamu-commerce.edu>
wrote:

> Thanks for pulling the agenda together, Hannah, and for getting the ball
> rolling on updates/accomplishments. Such a great tradition!
> 
> Here¹s me since the last update:
> 
> Big news for us is Tabetha Adkins. I hope Tabetha will update you guys on her
> accomplishments since she¹s on this list, deeply involved with BWe, and (we
> hope) soon on the Executive Board. Tabetha joined us last July to direct our
> Basic Writing Program and Writing Center and is a key player in our Converging
> Literacies Center (CLiC). Yay! The grad students love her, as do her new
> colleagues. We expected as much. ;) Several of you met her at the CBW SIG.
> 
> Also big news is that the Converging Literacies Center was granted three
> Graduate Research Assistantships, which we filled with the likes of JP Sloop
> (to focus on BWe/CBW, but also community outreach and other matters of
> ³convergence²). The other positions are about the National Conversation on
> Writing, our Special Collections, and relevant studies in local literacies.
> Much, much good work is going on in each of these areas The GARs selected for
> this are some of our absolute best PhD students, all doing meaningful work at
> multiple levels. Of course, I¹m not at all biased. :) Fingers crossed that
> funding continues into the next academic year.
> 
> Other news, both professional and personal.
> 1.  In August, Kairos published an article Donna and I wrote about the
> Converging Literacies Center.  (Fall 2009 issue)
> 2. With Bump Halbritter (current editor of CCC Online), I am serving a Guest
> Editor for a Special Issue of Kairos  dedicated to undergraduate research in
> writing and rhetoric (digital scholarship). Submissions were plentiful and of
> very high quality, and we are excited about the lineup we were able to invite.
> We¹ll work with authors quite closely throughout the process. Special Issue to
> appear Summer 2011.
> 3. Last September, my CCC article finally came out (³The Writing Center
> Paradox: Talk about Legitimacy and the Problem with Institutional Change²)
> 4. In July, the National Conversation on Writing rolled out its public
> interface during the WPA conference in Minneapolis. As a reminder: NCoW was
> established by the Council of Writing Program Administrators-Network for Media
> Action in 2006. Texas A&M-Commerce became the institutional home for NCoW in
> 2008. Since that time, the collection has grown considerably. Our second
> campaign will be available soon, focusing this time on the various ways
> programs celebrated the National Day on Writing.
> 5. Our own local celebration of the National Day on Writing was a smash,
> involving writers at multiple levels from multiple disciplines and in the
> community and covering an ENTIRE week (see
> http://galleryofwriting.org/writing/1089923 for NDoW submission, including
> schedule of events).
> 6. Submitted a grant application for the National Science Foundation. Who
> knew? Of course we could lose, lose, lose. But an NSF was never something I
> thought I¹d be involved in, even via the application phase. Feeling good about
> that accomplishment, where ever it may take us.
> 
> Most consuming for me (and exciting!) has been a local literacies project I
> found myself involved with. For the past several months, I¹ve been working
> with our Director of Special Collections to collect oral histories and other
> artifacts from the local African American community. I got involved because of
> NCoW and because these local histories matter to the National Conversation on
> Writing. I got involved because I want our students involved, and because we
> are committed to getting researchers working with primary source materials
> (from the first year to the PhD).  I got involved because the HeirLoom Project
> he leads is WAY cool, funded via a state grant for which he serves as Co-PI. (
> http://heirloomprojecttamuc.blogspot.com/)
> 
> The big, unexpected bonus: I found my next book project! Yahoo! A big thanks
> to folks like Kelly Ritter who helped me get to that project with probing,
> smart questions. I¹m still in the earliest of stages (fieldwork and reading,
> reading, reading), but I have put in for a sabbatical so I hope to meet the
> CBW 2011 Call for Good News with draft of that sucker in hand or, better yet,
> under review somewhere.
> 
>  So that stuff, plus Stephen and I are trying to sell his house (and later
> mine) so we can finally buy one together and get married, already.
> 
> The sad news: As I believe you know, I lost my dear grandmother about the time
> our CCCC 2010 proposal came due. It¹s been almost a year and I miss her
> terribly. But you know what they say about the healing powers of time and a
> life-long relationship without regrets. Her memory continues to bring me a
> great deal of comfort. She lived every inch of her life, and I was able to
> spend my all of my first 38 years alongside that incredible woman (if not near
> her physically, always in contact by phone and certainly via frequent visits).
> She was 88 when she passed. At her insistence, we hired an Elvis impersonator
> for her (last) birthday and  invited nearly 100 of her closest friends and
> family members. The vast majority came and from around the country. Here¹s a
> clip of a 5¹2¹¹ Mexican-American Elvis singing ³Happy Birthday² to her in her
> living room in Corpus Christi, the same home where she raised her seven
> children and hosted countless parties for friends and grandchildren and great
> grandchildren. 
> 
> http://grace-carter.blogspot.com/
> 
> She¹s wearing zebra and hot pink. This isn¹t a costume. That¹s just Grace. ;)
> 
> Sorry to get so sappy. Just feeling the need to share.
> 
> Yours, 
> Shannon
> 
> 
> On 2/10/10 3:08 PM, "Ashley, Hannah" <HAshley at wcupa.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Happy Snow Day (for those of us on the East Coast)--
>>  
>> I have attached the agenda for our meeting for Thursday afternoon at CCCC.
>> Please review for maximum efficiency (you all know how I like efficiency).
>> This should include reading BWe when it is ready to roll, as our first
>> discussion point is about the Social Justice Policy Statement.
>>  
>> We did a nice job last year of providing personal and professional updates
>> over e-mail, and I would encourage anyone who wants to do that this year to
>> do so as well.  I'll start:
>>  
>> My program, Writing Zones, is going well.  I have fantastic core mentors with
>> whom I presented at NCTE. The field placement mentors are getting more
>> consistent hands-on experience, prior to student teaching, with a diverse
>> range of students. We are in a really interesting district, where the mentors
>> get to work with a huge range of students, from youth who have just
>> immigrated from Mexico themselves, to kids from quite privileged families
>> (educationally, liguistically and economically).  I am presenting about the
>> program at IWCA and at a conference in Costa Rica!  Of course, there is still
>> no real money to support it, but I am ever hopeful.  My personal life, as
>> they say on fb (Facebook):  "It's complicated."  But my kids are in
>> kindergarten and first grade and, when not incredibly difficult, incredibly
>> cute and brilliant (of course, I am not biased).
>>  
>> Hannah
>>  
>> Hannah Ashley, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of English, Composition & Rhetoric
>> Director, Writing Zones 12.5  ( <http://www.writingzones/> www.writingzones
>> <http://www.writingzones.net/> .net)
>> 551 Main Hall, West Chester University
>> West Chester, PA 19383
>> 610-738-0499
>>  
>> 
>> "It is mildly unnerving to reflect that the whole of meaningful human
>> history--the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of
>> mathematics and writing and science and all the rest--has taken place within
>> an atypical patch of fair weather." --Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly
>> Everything
>> 
>> 
>> From: cbw_exec-bounces at tamu-commerce.edu [cbw_exec-bounces at tamu-commerce.edu]
>> On Behalf Of Shannon Carter [Shannon_Carter at tamu-commerce.edu]
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 7:03 PM
>> To: Conference of Basic Writing Executive Board
>> Subject: [CBW_Exec] BWe update and request
>> 
>> Hi, all--
>> 
>> Thanks for your hard work in reviewing and reviewing again the various
>> submission to BWe. We had more submissions than I¹ve seen in my handful of
>> years with BWe, and they covered an exciting range.
>> 
>> JP, Susan, and I will provide a Table of Contents within the week. Stay
>> tuned. 
>> 
>> The excellent news: BWe 2009 is on track for publication before CCCC.
>> 
>> Status as of 2/8/10: Six rich and interesting articles and book reviews have
>> gone through two full rounds of review/revision/review and have been accepted
>> for publication. Two additional articles are currently being revised in
>> response to reader feedback and will likely appear in the next issue of BWe
>> as well. 
>> 
>> Here¹s a very rough outline:
>> 1. Editor¹s introduction (Susan and I are working on that)
>> 2. Articles (nice range of topics, approaches, genres, and modalities)
>> 3. Social Justice Policy (two articles responding to Susan¹s 2009 article
>> proposing CBW adopt a Social Justice Policy)
>> 4. Book Reviews (two, I think)
>> 5. Awards (article from CBW Award winner Dawn Terrick; we¹d love to make this
>> a regular part of each BWe issue [see below])
>> 6. Linkages (Peter Adams)
>> 
>> 
>> Request: We¹d like to include introductions to each of our ongoing features,
>> especially since each of these features are brand new to BWe. As you may
>> recall--at our last meeting, we reorganized BWe to include Associate Editors
>> of several new sections. For the most part, the  articles accepted shake out
>> along the lines drawn last March.
>> 
>> http://orgs.tamu-commerce.edu/cbw/cbw/BWE_-Co_Editors_and_Associate_Directors
>> .html
>> 
>> To that end: Can the associate editors provide introductions for each of the
>> sections proposed? By 2/24/10? It needn¹t be more than 250 words. Shorter or
>> longer works too. Up to you.
>> 
>> Book Reviews: Sonya and Kathleen
>> Linkages: Peter Adams
>> Awards: Gregg and his team [?]
>> [We¹d like to propose a new section in which award winners describe their
>> programs in award-winning terms. Perhaps this will help yield more winning
>> years? Certainly help honor previous award-winners. Gregg: I¹ll be contacting
>> you about this in the next day, especially in terms of a current article]
>> 
>> Goals for each introduction? Up to you, of course. Maybe to get potential
>> authors interested in submitting to future issues or  current readers excited
>> about reading the items published in this particular section of the current
>> issue or perhaps something on what makes this feature important. Whatever you
>> think!
>> 
>> Signing off for now.
>> 
>> Yours, 
>> Shannon (and Susan)


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.tamuc.edu/pipermail/cbw_exec/attachments/20100211/23d9dc59/attachment.htm