"It's STILL Not Far to the Frontier: Encouraging Students To Become Active Professionals in C&W"
Bill Condon
Washington State University
"It's STILL Not Far to the Frontier: Encouraging Students To Become Active Professionals in C&W"
Bill Condon
Washington State University
I want to keep this simple and straightforward. All of us in the field of computers and writing have benefited tremendously from the experiences of those who preceded us. For me, that was people like Cindy Selfe, Gail Hawisher, Hugh Burns, Lisa Gerrard, Trent Batson, and others who I hope won't be hurt or offended at not being mentioned. Back then, I was landing on the shore, so to speak -- and I could see the frontier from where I stood.
Not much has changed, aside from the fact that our cast of characters is larger. Everywhere I go, in every workshop I do, every class I teach, every session in which I participate, I see people who are landing on the shore, and they can still see the frontier from the landing. As a result, this is an exciting, appealing field-a fact that I'm sure does not come as news to anyone in the audience for this Town Hall Meeting. It's particularly exciting because the frontier is so close, because those entering the field today can easily find good work to do, can easily and quickly become valued members of the field. This fact sets our field apart from most others in English Studies. No one has to become a Full Professor in order to make her voice heard. In fact, as everyone here knows, graduate students have-and long have had-a major presence in advancing our studies.
Today's list of mentors in the field includes many who were graduate students when they became prominent-Becky Rickly, Tari Fanderclai, Eric Crump, Wayne Butler, Fred Kemp-and many who still are graduate students: Amy Beasley, Rich Rice, C.J. Jeney, just to name a few. The active involvement of graduate students in the field-testimony both to the nearness of the frontier and to the energies and abilities of the students-makes us special, and it creates a high level of responsibility for all of us practitioners. All of us bear the responsibility to facilitate the passage of newcomers to the frontier and to make certain that their explorations there are successful. In doing so, we help ourselves even as we help others.
Basically, I'm arguing that those of us already active in the field have a duty to cheer on those just entering it. As we fulfill that duty, we almost instantly create new colleagues whose work helps ease our paths at the same time as we ease theirs. I'm also arguing that in other fields, graduate students represent the future of the field; in ours, graduate students have always represented the present as well-starting with a graduate student named Hugh Burns, whose dissertation about computer-assisted Topoi basically founded the field. These patterns are emblematic of computers and writing, and they are patterns I want us to discuss, and use, consciously, to help our field expand, to help it progress.
