The Roundtable
Faculty/Librarian partnerships as a component of a first year writing program can facilitate the transition to the scholarly academic discourse required of students in their college careers. It can also facilitate the intellectual shift from writing for a closed community – typically only a student/teacher exchange to a larger and more public discourse community. Our presentation will highlight some of the possibilities of such partnerships in helping students make the paradigmatic shifts necessary to successfully undertake academic research and writing projects.
This conversation will center around common themes of inquiry and exploration that both describe and inspire our ongoing collaboration. We will share elements of our conversations over the semesters, which include our deliberate engagement of questions about disciplinarity; our philosophies (both shared and learned) about research and writing as recursive and generative practices; trial and error with assignment design and implementation; and our use of freewriting in the classroom.
While we will offer observations about our own collaborative model, it is imperative to ask: What other kinds of things are going on? What are other people doing? What are other creative ways that faculty/librarian partnerships are working? Finally, it is important to ask questions of these partnerships, such as what defines success? What happens when they aren’t working? And how can we work to make them better?
Institutional Description
Located in Washington, DC, George Washington University welcomes approximately 2,300 first year students each year. GWU has a significant international student population; Political Science and International Affairs are top majors. The First Year Writing Program has been in place since 2003. For more on the background of the University Writing Program see "Teaching Research Rhetorically" by Jennifer Nutefall and Phyllis Mentzel Ryder Academic Exchange Fall 2005 pp307-311.
Handouts and Resources
Selected Bibliography
Bizup, Joseph. "BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing." Rhetoric Review 27, no. 1 (January 2008): 72-86.
Giroux, Henry A. "Neoliberalism, corporate culture, and the promise of higher education: The University as a Democratic public sphere." Harvard Educational Review 72, no. 4 (January 1, 2002): 425-463.
Hillard, Van E. “Information Literacy as Situated Literacy,” in Kathleen A. Johnson and Steven R. Harris. Teaching Literary Research : Challenges in a Changing Environment. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2009.
Hillocks, George. Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.
Jacobson, Trudi and Thomas P. Mackey. Information Literacy Collaborations that Work. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2007.
Jenkins, Paul O. Faculty-Librarian Relationships. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2005.
Kraat, Susan B. Relationships between Teaching Faculty and Teaching Librarians. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press, 2005.
Mackey, Thomas P. and Trudi Jacobson. Using Technology to Teach Information Literacy. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2008.
Miller, William, and Rita M. Pellen. Libraries Within their Institutions : Creative Collaborations. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press, 2005.
Nutefall, Jennifer and Phyllis Mentzell Ryder. "Teaching Research Rhetorically." Academic Exchange Quarterly (Fall 2005): 307-311.
Troutman, Phillip. "How to Use Sources Effectively in Expert Writing." UW20 News and Notes (April 1 2009) <http://gw-uw20.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-use-sources-effectively-in.html>