Composition Forum 45, Fall 2020
http://compositionforum.com/issue/45/

Heuristic-Based Learning and Doctoral Preparation: Revising Georgia State University’s PhD Exam in Rhetoric and Composition

Ashley J. Holmes, Michael Harker, and Lynée Lewis Gaillet

Abstract: This program profile describes a restructure of the PhD exam intended to enhance graduate-level instruction and advisement within the Rhetoric and Composition program at Georgia State University. We explain how a mix of institutional constraints and mentorship opportunities drove revisions to our doctoral exams and processes of doctoral advisement. Shifting away from a gatekeeping model to a heuristic-based approach, the revised exam is intended to decrease time-to-degree and to better support students’ job preparedness. Our reflections on these programmatic changes speak to the necessity of graduate programs in Rhetoric and Composition to not simply replicate the models of doctoral studies through which we were educated and to instead imagine new possibilities.

The current crisis in graduate education in English studies is well documented, with too many studies to count identifying time to completion, disparity in degrees granted versus job opportunities, and the cost of graduate school as existentially problematic to the field’s future (Bérubé 2015; Casuto 2015). Similar to other Research One (R1) institutions of its size, at Georgia State University (GSU)—despite awareness of these issues and concerns—graduate student recruitment and program growth persist as priorities for administrators, department heads, and program directors. In response to these trends in higher education, institutional pressures, and a commitment to valuing various forms of intellectual labor in the humanities, our graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition (RC) at GSU began revising its doctoral curriculum and comprehensive exams over the last decade.

Not unlike rhetoric and composition programs in other parts of the country, our previous exam was heavily influenced by traditions endemic to literary studies. Such exams aspire to evaluate students’ mastery of periods or authors. Described by some as a form of academic hazing, preparation for this exam model often requires reading for extended periods of time with little to no knowledge of how answers to prompts/questions will be evaluated. The logic underlying preparation for this type of exam is often at odds with the logic of the type of preparation required to be successful on the academic job market. Requiring an awareness of how evidence of research and teaching effectiveness applies in a setting beyond one’s home institution, the academic job market values teacher-researchers who can work at the intersections of research specialities (as evidenced by increased need for “cluster hires” and growth in the Digital Humanities). Conversely, prioritizing field-specific diction, concepts, and development, preparation for the traditional comprehensive doctoral exam sometimes requires a level of specialization that betrays the type of professional development rewarded by academic job searches in our current moment. While our students have the option of developing specializations and expertise—using the exam to demonstrate a command of a particular rhetorical figure or pedagogical movement/concept—we have shifted away from a gatekeeping model to a heuristic-based approach. As such, our doctoral exam process serves not only to evaluate command of concepts and ideas, but it also reveals to faculty how students, over an extended period of time, use exam prompts to meaningfully join ongoing academic conversations related to theory, methodology, pedagogical philosophy, and course design.

For the following program profile, we focus specifically on our concentration’s revisions to the doctoral exams, which we believe reflect current trends in higher education with respect to our goal for reducing students’ time to completion of degree and offering lessons relevant to academic careers. Institutional context, as explained in the first part of the profile, significantly shaped how members of our concentration valued the shifting nature of what counts as effective graduate student preparation. In an educational moment characterized by crisis and decline—and in the face of unsustainable professional expectations—how might graduate student curricula value intellectual labor, allow for personal and distinctive intellectual growth, and offer meaningful, pragmatic professionalization? This question formed the rationale for a consequential shift in our doctoral preparation, a reform that bucked the trend of asking more and more of our graduate students in favor of valuing personal discovery, invention, agency, and the contributions our students were already making to our program.

Institutional & Program Context

Georgia State University, a large urban campus in downtown Atlanta, has a vibrant history of graduate instruction. Founded in 1913, GSU was established as Georgia School of Technology’s Evening School of Commerce to serve the needs of working students. The school shifted affiliations and changed names throughout the early twentieth century, becoming Georgia State University in 1969. In 1995, the Georgia Board of Regents granted the institution “research university” status, and today GSU is the largest research university in the state, with 54,000 students as a result of the January 2015 merger with five-campus Georgia Perimeter College and recent record enrollments.

As GSU shifted its mission to an R1 university status, hiring practices and faculty requirements necessarily adjusted as departments added graduate programs and degrees. This expansion correlates with the rise of RC as a field in the US. GSU’s English department expanded its already dynamic graduate program in literary studies to include undergraduate, MA, and PhD degrees in rhetoric and composition. The first full-time faculty member in RC was hired in 1990 with a firm commitment from the department to build the first MA- and PhD-granting Rhetoric and Composition program in the state. While GSU was in the process of program building and hiring faculty trained in RC, literary studies faculty who held graduate faculty status served on RC graduate student exam and thesis/dissertation committees. This trend echoes what was happening across the country as English departments sought ways to bridge the reading and writing gap in the wake of widespread growth of RC programs (see essays collected in Horner).

In the intervening years, the GSU English department established a respected comprehensive Rhetoric and Composition program, offering undergraduate, MA, and PhD degrees focused in history of rhetoric, composition theory and pedagogy, and professional communication. Since the program’s inception, we’ve hired eleven tenure-track faculty members specifically trained in rhetorical history, composition theory and pedagogy, and professional writing.{1} Our nationally-recognized faculty publish widely in their disciplines and have won fellowships and awards. We have a robust program, offering on average 22 undergraduate and 8 graduate courses in Rhetoric and Composition per academic year. Our graduate students have an excellent job-placement record, despite the declining numbers of traditional, tenure-track academic positions. We typically have 10 - 12 graduate students and 20 - 25 undergraduate RC students graduating each year. Our undergraduates typically go on to teach, work as professional writers in non-profit or for-profit companies, or attend graduate school. Our graduate students place locally, nationally, and internationally in post-doctoral, tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and administrative positions within higher education or as professional writers, researchers, and usability experts within industry.

Recent changes in GSU’s strategic mission plan, hiring practices, promotion and tenure guidelines, and mandated growth in graduate programs have dictated a reduction in teacher:student ratios within our program. This situation is further complicated by the administrative assignments routinely undertaken by RC faculty members over the years, including the predictable positions of Writing Program Director, Director of the Writing Center, and Writing Across the Curriculum Director. RC faculty at GSU served in other less typical appointments as well, including: Executive Director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (housed at GSU), Director of the GSU Confucius Center, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, and most recently Chair of the English department. All these positions come with workload adjustments and competing demands upon faculty members’ time, but they also provide unique opportunities for graduate students to simultaneously refine research interests and work alongside faculty in a variety of administrative positions.

Rationale for Revised Programs

By the time graduate students complete doctoral exams in our program, they have participated in a wide variety of scholarly, pedagogical, and administrative activities. In addition to completing required coursework and identifying a research specialty, they have likely taught composition courses, worked as research assistants, tutored students in our writing studio, and presented research at local or national conferences. Our faculty have numerous opportunities to observe and evaluate graduate students in medias res as they acquire—often through a process of trial and error—the insider knowledge and expertise needed to navigate the day-to-day demands of our profession. We recognize that our program is not unique in this regard. Indeed, our profession, as evidenced by numerous CCCC position statements and our well-documented history, is founded on a distinct appreciation and attention to the ethical stakes of labor in English studies and the varied activities associated with research, teaching, and service (The Wyoming Conference Resolution). This ethical imperative extends to the labor we engage in with our graduate students. As recently as November 2019, CCCC published a Statement of Professional Guidance for Mentoring Graduate Students. “Ethical mentorship,” they write, “requires ongoing institutional and interpersonal efforts to move graduate students into, through, and beyond degree completion toward satisfactory job placement beyond or within the academy” (CCCC 2019). To that end, faculty recently revised the rhetoric and composition curriculum in several ways: we increased the number of digital production courses, required the existing academic publication class for all Ph.D. students, and reduced the history of rhetoric sequence from four courses to a two-course survey requirement. We added a graduate internship course and worked diligently to include options for multimedia projects in all graduate courses. With these curricular revisions, our course requirements of Ph.D. students are as follows:

• Nine hours in history and theory courses, including History and Theory of Rhetoric and Composition I, History and Theory of Rhetoric and Composition II, and Contemporary Issues in Writing Studies

• Six hours in research and publishing courses, including Writing for Academic Publication (Pro-Seminar) and Writing and Research Methodology

• An additional fifteen hours of coursework to complete the thirty hours required beyond the M.A.; students choose from a range of our regular offerings, such as Rhetoric of Digital Media, Digital Media Production, Composition Pedagogy, Grant and Proposal Writing, Archival Research Methods, Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Rhetoric, Technical Writing, and special topics courses on Writing Program Administration, Literacy Studies, Global Rhetorics, Public Rhetorics, etc.

As students transition out of their coursework into independent study and preparation for doctoral exams, they also have opportunities to gain additional experience through professional development opportunities—such as serving as a tutor in the Writing Studio, a writing consultant for the Writing Across the Curriculum program, a research assistant, a co-teacher with a faculty member, a teacher of record for an upper-division undergraduate course in our Rhetoric and Composition program, or as an intern with SAMLA or another organization. Considering this broad range of experiences students acquire as doctoral students, we re-imagined an exam that would allow students to both demonstrate expertise in the field while drawing on their wealth of professional, editorial, and pedagogical knowledge. In many respects, theoretical justifications for our exam revision overlap with the underlying ethical considerations of CCCC’s most recent position statement on mentoring graduate students, acknowledging and actively preparing students for a diverse set of career pathways.

Our program joins a number of other programs in English and Rhetoric and Composition across the country who are beginning to rethink the role of doctoral education, exam preparation, and dissertation research. In Beginning at the End: Reimagining the Dissertation Committee, Reimagining Careers, Amy J. Lueck and Beth Boehm argue that, with the increased attention to both “alt-ac” careers and publicly engaged research, graduate programs should consider the potential of a committee that “insists on collaboration, diversity and interdisciplinarity—one that has members with different kinds of expertise, including different academic and practical/professional expertise” (139). In agreement with Lueck and Boehm, our aims in reimagining doctoral exams at GSU were intended to rectify what we believe are outdated models of assessing graduate students’ learning; indeed, without developing the “theoretical and material structures” to support innovation in doctoral education, we will not be able to pursue “tradition-challenging dissertations” (138). At GSU, we see the value in addressing these limiting structures at the stage of the exam, which can provide a foundation from which to further reimagine dissertation committees, as Lueck and Boehm suggest, along with the form and structure of the dissertation itself. Given these field-specific priorities and the ubiquity of concerns about graduate student mentorship and professionalization, it seems both sensible and timely to offer students a doctoral exam that serves less as a gatekeeping mechanism and provides instead the opportunity to craft and refine research and teaching interests in relation to professional goals. Such an exam, we believe, must embrace a more inductive approach, one that employs heuristic-based prompts.

A number of rhetoric and composition scholars have investigated the nature and importance of heuristics to the rhetorical past and the teaching of writing.{2} Richard Leo Enos and Janice M. Lauer describe a heuristic as “... not only an instrument for inventing techniques to articulate to others but also a techne enabling the rhetor and audience to cocreate meaning” (204). This characterization of heuristic is important because although we emphasize the practical and programmatic benefits of our revised exam structure in this article, we also believe our approach is pedagogically sound and connected to our field’s most respected scholarship. However, our approach has faced unintended consequences and challenges.

One positive result of the new exam structure is that since both students and faculty have a clearer sense of the nature of expected deliverables upon completing coursework, some graduate-level seminars offer assignments that mirror the exam in form and function. It is possible, then, for advanced doctoral students to have significant portions of the exam completed well in advance of the deadline for submission, hopefully allowing students quicker turn-around time to write and defend the dissertation prospectus. But with more time to complete the exam comes higher expectations for the quality of deliverables. Because doctoral candidates now have more time to develop thinking and frameworks for a dissertation-length research project, the prospectus defense has become more of an intellectual and procedural threshold, providing evidence of mastery of a subspecialty as well as progress toward the completion of degree. Our program maintains high expectations for the prospectus defense, which include—among other points of assessment—clear and rigorous descriptions of the methodology, scope, and implications of the project for the field as well as a manageable and job-market sensitive timeline.

Revised Comprehensive Exams Structure

Our heuristic-based comprehensive exams structure for doctoral students in the Rhetoric and Composition concentration represented a series of departures from the previous, more traditional structure: 1) altered time frame, 2) common set of four questions that all students know in advance, and 3) revised prompts that balance the academic requirements of the degree with the shifting needs of Ph.D. candidates preparing for academic and/or alternate job market paths. These revisions were intended to serve as a response to the localized needs of our students, program, and institution, as well as to address national conversations about the changing nature of jobs in higher education (Grossman and Swafford; Polk and Wood; Weisbuch and Cassuto).

From a programmatic perspective, RC faculty noticed that many doctoral students experienced a slump between the comprehensive exams and dissertation prospectus—a slowing of their time-to-degree as they re-evaluated what it was they actually wanted to pursue in their dissertation research. Our revised structure, timeline, and questions were intended, in part, to capitalize on the energy and scholarly proficiency students have coming out of their exams to make the progression to prospectus more smooth and timely. This is not to say that we rush students through these important scholarly benchmarks that require them to prove mastery of their specialization, but one of the goals of the revised exam structure was to clear the pathway and make the process of advancement more transparent for students.

The altered time frame of the exam is a significant shift in structure. Previously, most exams in the English Department at GSU were taken around the mid-term of the semester, timed, and on-site in faculty offices over a weekend. Because the RC exam structure is not timed and because students know their questions in advance, there is no particular reason students need to take exams at a common designated time. To ensure accurate record keeping, students in Rhetoric and Composition continue to designate an exam week for the Director of Graduate Studies, but they can choose the week that best suits their schedule during their designated exam semester. For students who have spent over a semester preparing for their exams, this shift may mean taking the exams within the first month of the term, whereas other students choose to schedule their exams later in the semester (often during fall or spring break). In some cases, students who perform extremely well on their exams early in the semester and have a clear vision for their dissertation can defend their prospectus later in that semester, progressing through both of these requirements in one term.

Our choice to create a common set of questions that are publicly available to students in advance of the exam removes the surprise—or “gotcha”—element. By being transparent with exam questions, students can redirect their nervous energies toward reading, writing, and revising a polished set of essays, rather than trying to guess what questions their committee will ask. Of course, as scholars in a field that has built its foundations on theories of writing process and revision and one that has consistently identified problems with timed writing tests, we were keenly aware of the ways a traditional exam structure undermined the very scholarship we teach in our classes (see, among others, Adler-Kassner and Wardle; Anson Closed Systems and Process; Broad and Boyd; Sommers). Because students know the questions well in advance of their designated exam week, many began preparing exam essays in their coursework as they craft literature reviews, research proposals, and seminar papers. We also encourage students to begin preparing their essays as they read their self-selected lists of articles, chapters, and books for the exam, which are identified in their exam intent form submitted at least one semester prior to their exam semester. For students who follow the advice to start writing early, the designated exam week functions as a time for final revisions, edits, and polishing, rather than drafting exam essays from scratch. This advance preparation also means, though, that committee expectations for the development of ideas, sophistication in arguments, and quality of writing and research overall are considerably higher than what we would use to judge a timed piece of writing produced in an on-site testing environment. Relatedly, instead of turning in a hurried, unpolished set of timed writings, students now produce polished exam essays. Though shorter and limited by the constraints of the exam format, these essays represent first drafts of practical writing that students can use as they progress toward the dissertation prospectus, design courses for a range of teaching contexts, and submit their writing for peer-reviewed publication.

The complete exam description (publicly available to students in the program) is included in the Appendix. In preparation for the exams, students submit to their committee and the Director of Graduate Studies in English a list of 50 sources (a mix of books, articles, and chapters) within their self-selected area of focus and specialization within rhetoric and composition. For the exam, students write four essays, each limited to ten pages, addressing the following broad areas: Review of the Literature, Application of Pedagogy/Praxis, Revision of a Scholarly Writing Project, and Proposal for Research (see more detailed prompts in the Appendix). In the following pages, we offer information about and a rationale for each part of the exam.

Exam Essay 1: Review of Literature in the Specified Field

The first essay students write for the exam is likely the most traditional in its style, form, and purpose. The literature review requires students to demonstrate their understanding of the major arguments and historical foundations within their specialized field of study; students are asked to define key terms, address a debated issue, and/or identify a gap within the scholarly conversation related to theory, history, or practice. Some recent examples of identified fields of study include “composition studies and retention,” “public rhetorics,” “civic engagement and new media writing,” “museum studies and archival curation,” and “autism rhetorics and literacy studies.”

While the review of literature most aligns with a traditional exam structure in its purpose, our approach to this question allows for increased student agency and provides a more explicitly-situated genre for students. We acknowledge that many doctoral programs’ comprehensive exams ask students to identify a field of specialization; however, our revised exam at GSU explicitly invites students into the process of setting out the terms and defining the question for this exam essay: “You work with your advisor/committee to define a research question that is answered in the literature review” (Appendix). This choice encourages students to, again, write towards the exam that they have been studying and preparing for all along. The review of literature essay also helps students progress to the dissertation prospectus stage, where they will again be asked to situate their research within the literature and join contemporary scholarly conversations in RC. Many responses to this prompt result in students building to the claim that further research on the issue is necessary, which can establish the rationale and exigence for the research study they themselves design and advocate for in Essay 4 of the exam. However, this is not a requirement of the exam, and some students’ literature review and proposal for research are not related.

Essay 2: Application of Pedagogy/Praxis

The Application of Pedagogy/Praxis essay question presents a departure from the traditional style and structure of many doctoral exams in the ways it values the scholarship of teaching and learning. For this essay, students are asked to design a course of their choosing and to contextualize the course and assignment progression within composition theory and pedagogy. Successful responses describe the course’s focus and purpose, defining its role within a broader curriculum (i.e., whether it’s undergraduate or graduate; first-year writing or upper-division; for university, secondary, or community contexts; among other descriptors). Students must also provide a rationale that situates the course within RC and demonstrates sound pedagogical theory and practice. Students are encouraged to connect their course design and rationale to their personal philosophy of teaching as well. As a final component, students may attach additional pedagogical materials beyond the 10-page essay, including a sample syllabus with student learning outcomes and course goals, assignment descriptions, and/or a tentative course calendar. Examples of recent course designs include the following: an upper-division English course titled “Qualitative Research and Workplace Writing,” an upper-division English in “Visual Rhetoric: Rhetorical Looking and DIY Activism,” a cross-listed undergraduate and graduate course titled Multimodal Composition: Performative Modes for Writing the Self, and a community-based course offered through a local historical society labelled Introduction to Archives: Principles and Practices of Archival Management and Research.

As we restructured our comprehensive exams, we wanted to include a pedagogy/praxis question for a few reasons. First, a majority of students in our program take a course in Composition Pedagogy—a requirement for English graduate teaching assistants—and all doctoral RC students are required to take Contemporary Issues in Writing Studies (formerly Composition Theory); thus, we saw this exam question as an opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding of praxis. This response primes students for a common request on the academic job market: to tell a committee about their “dream course” or to provide pedagogical materials for a course they would be interested in teaching. While many doctoral students work as GTAs and receive tuition waivers, not all students in our program receive funding—either from a lack of available funds or because the student is employed elsewhere. The Application of Pedagogy exam question gives all students an opportunity—whether or not they have experience as a teacher of record in the classroom—to apply their understanding of composition theory and pedagogy into a course design of their choosing. The majority of students design college-level courses for this essay, but we have also seen how this question allows for exploration of alternate career pathways by designing community-based courses that might be taught through a non-profit organization or in secondary schools. A final consideration we discussed herein was the applicability of the writing for this essay to serve students who (1) actually teach their designed course at GSU as a teaching assistant or in other positions outside of GSU, and/or (2) pursue publication of their course design. For the latter, we considered the Course Designs section of the journal Composition Studies, which requires a “theoretical rationale” to accompany a “course description” and “institutional context” (Course Designs).

While the impact of our changes to the exam in 2013 are still rippling out, we have seen a few instances where students teach a version of the course they designed for their exams. This works especially well for students who redesign a section of English 1101 or 1102 and happen to be a GTA. However, because our undergraduate English major at GSU offers a concentration in RC, doctoral students who receive Advanced Teaching Fellowships regularly have an opportunity to teach or co-teach 3000-level courses—such as Multimodal Composition, Visual Rhetoric, or Exposition: History, Theory, Practice—which can provide a venue for enacting the course they designed for their exams. In 2019, the department added a new program whereby advanced graduate students can co-teach upper-level undergraduate as well as graduate courses with sponsoring professors. This initiative expands opportunities for our large pool of graduate students to gain experience teaching throughout the vertical curriculum.

Essay 3: Revision of a Scholarly Writing Project

Our third essay in the revised exam structure invites students to revise a piece of their scholarly writing for publication. Students submit to the exam committee the original version of the paper and an essay of no more than 10 pages offering a revision plan for preparing the piece for publication in a targeted journal. After the exam, though typically within the same semester, the student works with their exam committee chair to enact the revisions laid out in the plan and submit the article for publication. To be clear, students are not evaluated on the final article revisions, rather their exam essay is evaluated on its ability to diagnose issues in the original draft and develop a clear revision plan for an appropriately targeted publication.

For this essay, students begin by situating the original piece they wrote, providing a rationale for the research, an outline of the original piece, and a contextualization of the original purposes and goals (e.g., was it written for a particular course?). The majority of the essay, though, centers on students’ plans for revision and their ability to articulate how to revise toward a targeted disciplinary journal or publication venue. Students must identify a specific journal or venue for submitting the revised essay and articulate the series of revisions necessary to prepare the essay for this new rhetorical context. The most successful responses to the essay show that students have spent time researching the publication venue by reading other articles published in the journal to understand its role and contributions to the field, the readership, and typical format structures. The essay students submit should describe the planned revisions, explaining why these changes are necessary. Again, the most successful responses show a rhetorical awareness of the necessary shifts needed to transition a piece of writing from a seminar paper for a graduate course to an article read and peer reviewed by scholars in the field. Areas of revision students commonly discuss in the Revision of a Scholarly Writing Project essay include the following: reorganizing the essay, shifting the theoretical framing, conducting additional research, and/or shifting the style of the essay to meet new genre or audience expectations.

We intend for this prompt to help our graduate students pursue scholarly publication in the field and to develop the rhetorical savvy and awareness of how to prepare one’s scholarly arguments with a particular publication venue in mind. Our graduate curriculum already includes a pro-seminar, ”Writing for Academic Publication,” that supports students in revising and submitting their writing to conferences and publication venues. The exam question encourages students to follow through with their revisions and submissions, most especially at this critical moment when they are to demonstrate mastery of their specialization, along with a generalized understanding of the field of rhetoric and composition. Being keenly aware of the increasing competitiveness in academic job searches, we also knew that entering the job market search with a “revise and resubmit” or an accepted publication would increase their chances of finding positions. Since implementing these changes to our exams, a number of students have gone on to publish articles resulting from the revision work they completed for their exams, including the following:

• Jessica Estep’s keyword essay The Streets, published in Community Literacy Journal

• Anne-Marie Francis’s chapter Community-Engaged Learning in Online Technical Communication Classes: A Tool for Student Success, published in the edited collection Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication

• Lauri Goodling’s article MOAR Digital Activism, Please, published in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

• Jessica Rose’s co-authored chapter with Gaillet Archiving Our Own Historical Moments: Learning from Disrupted Public Memory of Temperance, published in the edited collection Nineteenth Century American Activist Rhetorics

• Nathan Wagner’s article Rhetorical Distinctions in Augustine’s Early and Later Writing, published in Rhetorica

• Laura Williams’ chapter Platforms with Purpose: Clicktivism and Crowdfunding Campaigns in the Era of Citizens United published in the edited collection Social Media and Politics.

Essay 4: Proposal for Research

The final essay prompt in our revised exam asks students to submit a research proposal that could guide their dissertations. We emphasize methodology and methods in our evaluation, asking students to outline research questions, theoretical frameworks, and the research design for one specific study. While we do not require a set structure for this exam question, most students submit essays that follow a typical research proposal format, providing a rationale for the research study, situating it within the context of the field, and outlining the plan for research. Our students often refer to this as the “dissertation question,” but we typically advise that they need not commit to this specific research study and design for their dissertation. However, an ideal scenario for many students occurs when the study they design for their essay exam is closely tied to their research plans for the dissertation; students can use this exam question—often in combination with the literature review in Essay 1 of the exam—as a first draft of their dissertation prospectus. While the progression and building of ideas from exams to dissertation is not always this seamless, the proposal for research primes students to begin thinking about methods and methodologies, and how to design and carry out a study that is robust yet manageable enough for the dissertation.

Lessons Learned and Questions for Future Consideration

Since implementing the revised doctoral exam structure in 2013, our division has seen overwhelmingly positive benefits for students. As noted above, the exam’s revised structure shortens time-to-degree by streamlining progression from exams to prospectus, providing opportunities for pedagogical innovation, and increasing support for students pursuing publication. As we reflect upon the exam’s successes, we also want to acknowledge lessons learned along the way and highlight ideas we have for our ongoing assessment and development of the revised exam’s implementation:

• Increased support and clarity for atypical genres: Exam essays 2 and 3 (Application of Pedagogy and Revision of Scholarly Writing Project) provide beneficial opportunities for doctoral students to demonstrate various kinds of pedagogical knowledge and professional expertise. However, these questions are the most non-traditional in their style and form, especially compared to Essays 1 and 4 (Review of Literature and Proposal for Research). Some students struggle with the style, voice, and organization of these atypical genres, and as exam readers we have seen a variance in how students approach these essays. While this open-ended form may be advantageous by not imposing a set structure, some students feel overwhelmed and unsure about how best to perform in an unfamiliar and hybrid-style genre. The faculty members in our division have begun discussing how we might make these instructions more transparent and provide increased support and clarity for the expectations, perhaps providing a checklist of required components and a suggested essay outline

• More explicitly suggest the genre of a “philosophy” statement: Related to our first lesson learned, we also see how we might increase clarity and recommendations for Essay 2 (Pedagogical Application) by more broadly addressing teaching philosophies. The prompt for Essay 2 beckons students to articulate how a thematic commitment or research interest informs learning outcomes and methods of assessment for a writing course. It also requires students to provide pedagogical questions and context that explains the origins or larger purpose of a proposed seminar. As students prepare to apply for teaching jobs, we have noticed that they pull language from the pedagogical component of the exam to develop teaching philosophies. Raising the stakes for this rationale and foregrounding this reflective work during the exams has led to more complete and convincing drafts of job market materials. Given the recent variations within required types of philosophies for the academic job market—statements of faith, administrative statements, diversity statements—our division is considering an additional prompt embedded in Essay 2, one asking students to compose comprehensive teaching philosophies from which they can draw information to provide job materials.

• Restricting the scope of the Proposal for Research: Essay 4—the Proposal for Research—is usually interpreted by students as the “dissertation question.” As mentioned earlier, while we remind students they are not required to propose a dissertation-length project, many advanced graduate students do, in fact, propose projects linked with the dissertation. This integration proves beneficial for students in a couple of ways. First, students gain multiple perspectives on dissertation-related research in its nascent stages. In the past, such feedback, evaluation, and direction might be delayed well after the exam and come only from a mentor or faculty member identified as the director. Second, students catch a glimpse of how a proposed research project impacts the culture and communication among committee members. This information often becomes important for students as they assemble dissertation committees. Given how useful this process is to students, and the potential for reducing time to degree, our division is considering restricting the scope of this prompt to the dissertation topic exclusively.

As noted in the institutional context section, our program has come of age amidst profound institutional and technological pressures. It would be easy in hindsight to characterize the demystification of our exam process as a natural response to these pressures. However, it is important to remember how the field of rhetoric and composition inspires curricular reform, not simply for the sake of doing so, but because such changes connect programs—and their students—more meaningfully to a community of scholars who share certain values in common, especially those ideals that shape relationships between graduate students and their mentors.

Taken together, lessons learned from the revision of our exam bring into focus important questions related to the role of mentors in the advisement of graduate students:

• How might heuristic-based doctoral examinations foreground dissertation-related research practices in ways that shift entrenched understandings of traditional committee roles?

• In what ways might existing CCCC guidelines provide exigence and language to question the form and function of doctoral examination processes and the makeup of dissertation committees altogether?

• To what extent might programmatic reform prefigure or even help shape disciplinary conventions related to graduate student advisement and mentoring?

• What constitutes programmatic effectiveness at the graduate level when programs of study, exam procedures, and dissertation committees are restructured to accommodate graduate students and the needs of junior faculty members who will serve as mentors in varying capacities and at different times?

• What types of programmatic reform (in addition to shifting exam practices) might leverage technology to archive professional practices in order to document and preserve the knowledge and legacies of influential mentors for future generations?

With these questions in mind, we are encouraged by the growing number of calls to reimagine doctoral education and career pathways in the humanities, and we look forward to the continued programmatic and curricular work ahead to enhance mentorship and professional opportunities for graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition.

Appendix: Revised Comprehensive Exam

In the Rhetoric and Composition concentration, doctoral examinations are a 7-day off-site written exam consisting of four questions. This exam draws on both a primary field of specialization and a research focus within that field.

General Information

The Comprehensive Exam consists of responses to 4 questions and a manuscript-quality text (e.g., a revision of a seminar paper written to a targeted venue for publication). Students have 7 days to complete their responses after receiving their questions and the remainder of the term in which they take exams to complete revisions of their manuscript.

Students must submit paperwork with the signatures of all three committee members and a reading list to the Graduate Studies office the semester in advance in order to take the exam. In addition, the student will select a major seminar paper or project to revise and submit as their manuscript-quality text (see item 3 below). The original paper must be submitted to the exam committee director along with the responses to the four questions. Students will choose a week within a specified time frame as announced for fall and spring semesters by Graduate Studies in which to complete their 4 responses. Exams are evaluated separately by each exam reader and also given an overall evaluation as determined by the exam chair.

This exam structure builds upon coursework (at least four courses specified in the primary field), moves students toward prospectus and dissertation, increases professional development in teaching, and provides publishing opportunities.

Expectations

The student, in consultation with the exam committee, will compile a reading list with a minimum of 50 sources organized into a field and a focus. Based on coursework (four courses specified for the primary area), previous writing, and a review of new scholarship, the student will be asked to create responses in the following categories:

1. Review of Literature in the Specified Field (addresses an issue, key term, or gap in the scholarly conversation related to theory, history or practice).

   • You work with your advisor/committee to define a research question that is answered in the literature review.

2. Application of Pedagogy/Praxis (designs a course syllabus and rationale, statement of connection to personal teaching philosophy, and sources that include composition theory and pedagogy).

   • You identify which course or curriculum you will design.

3. Revision of Scholarly Writing Project in Area of Focus (provides rationale for research, outline of the piece chosen, and describes the targeted disciplinary journal/publication venue).

   • You explain (in a working revision plan and shorter response than the 10 page maximum) how you will revise the scholarly project in the following ways: identify the paper/project; identify the journal/venue; outline the original paper/project; outline the changes/revisions planned; and explain why these changes are necessary.

4. Proposal for Research (outlines research questions, theoretical frameworks, research design and methods for one specified study).

   • You explain and propose a methodology for a study that you could use as part of the dissertation.

Each Response Demonstrates

1. Well-structured, focused, detailed, accurate and revised writing in the genre indicated by the question;

2. Strong voice that indicates how you are entering the scholarly conversation with a clear positioning of yourself within the dialogues of the field and focus—not merely a recap of everything you’ve read;

3. Accurate and detailed evidence that emphasizes references to the literature in your field and focus. Particularly we look for the appropriate and selective use of direct quotations, internal citations or data.

Length and Scope

We expect the equivalent of 10-page maximum responses for each of the four questions, followed by a complete Works Cited for each response. In addition, the manuscript-quality text will be a substantial revision of existing research from a completed doctoral course in the field or focus area and must be the equivalent of a 20 to 25-page written project.

Updated September 12, 2013

Notes

1. Current rhetoric and composition faculty include: Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Baotong Gu, Michael Harker, Mary Hocks, Ashley Holmes, Elizabeth Lopez, and George Pullman. Past faculty members include Beth Burmester, Jennifer Bowie, Jeff Grabill, and Marty Singer. Over the years, all faculty members contributed to the growth of the program in various capacities. To learn more about the Rhetoric and Composition division at Georgia State University, please visit http://sites.gsu.edu/rhetcomp/. (Return to text.)

2. Hermagoras Press’s Landmark Series has devoted numerous chapters to the concept of heuristic. See in particular Richard E. Young’s Concepts of Art and the Teaching of Writing. See also Janice Lauer’s pedagogical characterization of heuristic in The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. (Return to text.)

Works Cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Utah State University Press, 2015.

Anson, Chris M.. Closed Systems and Standardized Writing Tests. College Composition and Communication, vol. 60, no. 1, 2008, p. 113-128.

---. Process. in Tate, Gary, et al. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bérubé, Michael. Abandon All Hope. Pedagogy, vol. 15 no. 1, 2015, p. 3-12.

Broad, Bob, and Michael Boyd. Rhetorical Writing Assessment: The Practice and Theory of Complementarity. Journal of Writing Assessment, vol. 2, no. 1, 2005, p. 7-20.

Cassuto, Leonard and Paul Jay. The PhD Dissertation: In Search of a Usable Future. Pedagogy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2015, p. 81-92..

CCCC Committee on Professional Standards for Quality Education. CCCC Initiatives on the Wyoming Conference Resolution: A Draft Report. College Composition and Communication, vol. 40, no. 1, 1989, pp. 61-72.

CCCC Position Statements. Accessed 1 Jan. 2020 from https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions.

CCCC Statement of Professional Guidance for Mentoring Graduate Students. Conference on College Composition and Communication. November 2019. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/professional-guidance-for-mentoring-graduate-students/.

Course Designs. Composition Studies. Accessed 17 Dec. 2019 from https://compstudiesjournal.com/submissions-2/course-designs/.

Enos, Richard Leo and Janice M. Lauer. The Meaning of Heuristic in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Its Implications for Contemporary Rhetorical Theory. A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse in Honor of James L. Kinneavy, edited by Stephen P. Witte, Neil Nakadate, and Roger D. Cherry, Southern Illinois UP, 1992, pp. 79-87.

Francis, AM. Community-engaged learning in online technical communication classes: A tool for student success. Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication: Scholarly and Pedagogical Perspectives, edited by Natalia Matveeva and Godwin Agboka, Routledge, 2018, pp. 223-242.

Gaillet, Lynee and Jessica Rose. Archiving Our Own Historical Moments: Learning from Disrupted Public Memory of Temperance. Nineteenth Century American Activist Rhetorics, edited by Patricia Bizzell and Lisa Zimmerelli, MLA, forthcoming 2020.

Goodling, Lauri. MOAR Digital Activism, Please. Kairos: Rhetoric Technology, Pedagogy. vol. 19, no. 3. Summer 2015. http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.3/topoi/goodling/index.html.

Grossman, James, and Emily Swafford. The Purpose-Driven PhD. Perspectives on History. 15 Apr. 2019. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019 from https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2019/the-purpose-driven-phd-the-third-stage-of-career-diversity-emphasizes-history-as-a-public-good.

Horner, Winifred, ed. Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap. University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Johnson, W. Brad. On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Lueck, Amy J., and Beth Boehm. Beginning at the End: Reimagining the Dissertation Committee, Reimagining Careers. Composition Studies, vol. 47, no. 1, 2019, pp. 135-153.

Polk, Jennifer, and L. Maren Wood. Overcoming the Ph.D. Stereotype. Inside Higher Ed. 27 Mar. 2019. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019 from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/03/27/three-ways-phds-can-rebrand-themselves-alt-ac-career-opinion.

Sommers, Nancy. Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers. National Institute of Education, 1982.

The Wyoming Conference Resolution. 1987. Accessed 1 Jan. 2020 from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/1.1/news/cwta/wyores.html.

Wagner, Nathan. Rhetorical Distinctions in Augustine’s Early and Later Writing. Rhetorica, vol. 36, no. 2, 2018, pp. 105-131.

Weisbuch, Robert, and Leonard Cassuto. Reforming Doctoral Education, 1990 to 2015: Recent Initiatives and Future Prospects. Report submitted to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 2 June 2016. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019 from https://mellon.org/media/filer_public/35/32/3532f16c-20c4-4213-805d-356f85251a98/report-on-doctoral-education-reform_june-2016.pdf.

Williams, Laura. Platforms with Purpose: Clicktivism and Crowdfunding Campaigns in the Era of Citizens United. Richardson, Glenn W. (2017). Social media and politics: A new way to participate in the political process, edited by Glenn W. Richardson, Praeger, pp. 21-42.