Going Public
Going Public
Going Public
Shirley K Rose & Irwin Weiser
6x9, 264 pages

Published: 2010

ISBN 978-0-87421-769-8
paper $29.95

ISBN 978-0-87421-770-4
e-book $23.00
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SHIRLEY K ROSE, professor of English and director of writing programs at Arizona State University, also teaches graduate courses in writing program administration. Her publications include two previous collections on writing program administration research and theory, also co-edited with Irwin Weiser, along with articles and chapters on writing teacher preparation and issues in the professionalization of graduate students in rhetoric and composition.


IRWIN WEISER, professor of English at Purdue University, has served as director of composition, head of the department of English, and interim dean of the college of liberal arts. He teaches graduate courses in contemporary composition theory, writing across the curriculum, composition research methods, and writing assessment, as well as undergraduate composition courses. In addition to two previous collections co-edited with Shirley K Rose, he co-edited with Kathleen Blake Yancey Situating Portfolios (1997, Utah State UP) and has published articles and chapters on the preparation of teachers of writing and portfolio assessment.

Going Public

What Writing Programs Learn from Engagement

Shirley K Rose and
Irwin Weiser, eds.

An important new resource for WPA preparation courses. In Going Public, Rose and Weiser moderate a discussion of the role of the writing program vis-a-vis the engagement movement, the service learning movement, and the current interest in public discourse/civic rhetoric among scholars of rhetoric and composition.

While there have been a number of publications describing service-learning and community leadership programs, most of these focus on curricular elements and address administrative issues primarily from a curricular perspective. The emphasis of Going Public is on the ways that engagement-focused programs change conceptions of WPA identity.

Writing programs are typically situated at points where students make the transition from community to college or from college to community, and are already dedicated to developing literacies that are critically needed in communities. As institutions begin to include more explicit engagement with citizen and stakeholder groups as an element of their mission, writing program administrators find themselves with an opportunity to articulate ways in which writing program goals and purposes can significantly contribute to achieving these new institutional goals.

Book Review Book News Inc. August 2010

Also by Irwin Weiser: Situating Portfolios