From the Chair

As the fall 2006 semester draws to a close, I look with anticipation to the coming spring 2007 semester, for it promises to be both interesting as well as demanding.

I'm pleased that Dr. Menno de Jong will be joining us in January as a Visiting Professor in Technical and Professional Communication.  Coming to us from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, Dr. de Jong will be joined in early February by his wife and three children; numerous departmental faculty have been very helpful in assisting Dr. de Jong find suitable housing in Greenville.  Throughout the spring semester, Dr. de Jong will be offering workshops focusing on research methodology for both our graduate students and our faculty.  He also hopes to identify areas for collaborative research between faculty at the University of Twente and those at ECU.

We'll have other, somewhat more familiar, new colleagues this spring as well, for joining the department as fixed term faculty are four of our M.A. graduates: Josh Hasty, Suzanne Nichols, Leanne Smith, and Susan Thananopavarn.  All will be teaching one or more sections of English 1200.  I hope that each member of the department will introduce her/himself to our new faculty colleagues and welcome them to the department.

Several members of the department are generously taking time from their intercession recess to meet with approximately fifty job applicants in Philadelphia at the end of the month.  Although each of the following will not be interviewing all fifty of the candidates, the MLA convention will provide the venue for interviews by Seodial Deena, Tom Douglass, Thomas Herron, Donna Kain, Jim Kirkland, Joyce Middleton, Sherry Southard, Mikko Tuhkanen, and me.

The entire department will have the opportunity to participate in the recruitment of additional faculty colleagues shortly after the spring semester begins, for the first on-campus interviews are tentatively scheduled for the week of January 8, which is the first full week of the spring semester.  While the MLA interviews should assist search committees in identifying the two or three candidates that they wish to bring for on campus interviews throughout January and February, with the number of searches that we have ongoing, it is likely that on campus visits will continue into March.

It is most important for all members of the department to attend the presentations and to meet with candidates informally; search committees not only need to receive meaningful input from faculty concerning their evaluations of the candidates, but the candidates themselves need the opportunity to evaluate their potential new colleagues so that they, as well as we, can be assured of a good "fit" for both the candidate and the department.

In addition to the activities associated with new colleagues, the department will also be examining several issues of great import to its future.  For example, this coming semester the department will be dealing with a revision of its Unit Code; with several issues related to fixed-term faculty that have been under study for a considerable period of time; with the relationship between teaching and research within the department and how that relationship should be incorporated into teaching assignments; and, undoubtedly, with other issues that are only dim shapes within my crystal ball at the moment.

This coming spring semester, indeed, promises to be both interesting and demanding.