Paula Patch discussed opportunities for non-tenure-track writing faculty as part of a panel, "Surviving and Thriving while Working off the Tenure-Track: Gender, Contingent Labor, and Writing Instruction in the 21st Century," at the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication.
Paula Patch, lecturer in English and Coordinator of the College Writing Program, was a panelist in a Featured Session at the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication, held March 19-22 in Indianapolis.
The panel, “Surviving and Thriving while Working off the Tenure-Track: Gender, Contingent Labor, and
Writing Instruction in the 21st Century,” was sponsored by the CCCC Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. In her presentation, titled “Who Are You Calling Contingent? Making the Case—and a Place—for Permanent Non-Tenure Track Faculty in Today’s English Department,” Patch described ways the ways that permanent non-tenure-track positions in composition are mostly invisible in organizational documents and media conversations; argued that this underrepresentation misrepresents the full scope of life and work “off the tenure track”; and called for members of the profession to make the permanent non-tenure-track faculty visible and to begin having a conversation about how the work performed by faculty on these lines complements the work done by tenure, tenure-track, and adjunct faculty on our campuses.