other recommendations of lesser importance may be excluded.

5. ALUMNI DEVELOPMENT

S.12-143

SFU

OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC AND PROVOST

University Drive, Burnaby, BC

Canada Y5.\ IS6

TEL: 778.782.3925

FAX: 778.782.5876

vpacad@sfu.ca

www.sfu.ca/vpacademic

MEMORANDUM

attention

Senate

date

September 12,2012

from

Jon Driver, Vice-President, Academic and

pages

1/ 1

Provost, and Chair, SCUP

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences: External Review of the Department of English

(SCUP 12-32)

RE:

At its September 5, 2012 meeting SCUP reviewed and approved the Action Plan for the Department of

English that resulted from its External Review.

Motion:

That Senate approve the Action Plan for the Department of English that resulted from its External

Review.

end.

c: B. Schellenben

J. Craig

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

ENGAGING THE WORLD

SFU

SCUP 12-32

OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC AND PROVOST

University Drive, Burnaby, BC

THE 778.782.6702

giiicholl@sfu.ca

Canada V5A 1S6

FAX: 778.782.5876

www.sfu.ca/vpaoidemic

MEMORANDUM

ATTENTION

Jon Driver, Chair,SCUP

DATE

August23,2012

FROM

Bill Krane, Associate Vice-President, Academic

PAGES

1/1

andAssociate Provost

1 //

RE:

External Review ofthe Department ofEnglish

''['/(-J?^

Attached are the External Review Report on the Department of English and the Action Plan endorsed by the

Department and the Dean.

Motion;

That SCUP approve and recommend to Senate the Action Plan for the Department of English that

resulted from its External Review.

Following thesitevisit, the Report of the External Review Team* for theDepartment of English was submitted

in March 2012.

After the Report was received, a meeting was held with the Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, theChair of

the

Department of English, and the Director of Academic Planning and Budgeting (VPA) to consider the

recommendations. The Department then prepared an Action Plan based onthe Report and these discussions. The

Action plan was then submitted to the Dean who endorsed it.

The Reviewers commented that"The Department hasa well-constructed undergraduate program that allows

students exposure to the full range ofthe discipline with appropriate coverage of historical periods, contemporary

literature, and theoretical perspectives.

The graduate program is equally effective and caters to a talented cohort ofMA and PhD students. Research is

impressive, both in quantity and quality."

The Reviewers made 9 recommendations covering the agreed Terms

of Reference.

SCUP recommends to Senate thatthe Department of English be advised to pursue the Action Plan.

Attachments:

External Review Report - March 2012

2. Department of English - Action Plan

* External Review Team:

Dr. Susan Bennett (Chair), University of Calgary

Dr. Roger Graves, University of Alberta

Dr. Thomas Schaub, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Lisa Shapiro (Internal), Simon Fraser University

John Craig, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

BettySchellenberg, Chair, Department of English

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

engaging the world

EXTERNAL APPRAISAL

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

By Susan Bennett, Department of English, University of Calgary;

Roger Graves, Department of English, University of Alberta; and

Thomas Schaub, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison

(MARCH 2012)

Introduction

We respectfully submit the following report, based on our site visit to Simon

Fraser University (8-10 February, 2012) as well as the self-study and ancillary

materials provided by the Department of English.

We would like to thank the faculty, staff, and students, as well as the university

administrators with whom we met, for welcoming us at a busy time in the

semester. Lisa Shapiro from the Department of Philosophy provided excellent

support and useful institutional context as needed. We found everyone very

helpful in providing necessary information before, during, and after our visit. On-

site discussions were open, rich, and engaged—and we appreciated the

generosity that people brought to our meetings. Special thanks to Bal Basi in the

Provost'soffice and to Elaine Tkaczuk in the Department for ensuring all the

small details were taken care of: both of them went the extra mile to make sure

our visit ran smoothly.

Susan Bennett, Roger Graves and Thomas Schaub

March 12, 2012

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary

Page 3

Recommendations

Page 4

Programs

Page 6

Faculty

Page 11

Administration

Page 13

Connection of the Facultywithin and outside the University

Page 14

Appendix A: Writing and Rhetoric at Simon Fraser University

Page 18

Appendix B: Departmental Collaboration

Page 22

Appendix C: Alumni Relations

Page 34

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Department has a well-constructed undergraduate program that allows

students exposure to the full range of the discipline with appropriate coverage of

historical periods, contemporary literature, and theoretical perspectives. The

comprehensive breadth of courses is excellent preparation for students who go

on to teach or to continue their education in graduate school. While we consider

the Department's undergraduate program to be strong across the board, there

are a few areas that might be further strengthened and we have made specific

recommendations for the honors program and for the development of co-op.

The Department's role in the delivery and design of "W" is another area that

requires attention and planning in the context of a university-wide review.

The graduate program is equally effective and caters to a talented cohort of MA

and PhD students. The level of support for graduate students is generally very

good, with the Department able to offer competitive financial packages for their

top-ranked students at admission. The Department plans to expand its program

and improve the quality of the graduate applicants it accepts—two goals that we

wholeheartedly support. Increased attention to professionalization and

placement is likely important over the short to medium term, but we believe that

strategies are already in development. A recommendation below emphasizes

the need to provide full-time status for the one staff person attached to graduate

study.

Research is impressive, both in quantity and quality. This Department effectively

engages traditional and more contemporary areas of the discipline. Faculty

members are also excellent contributors to more interdisciplinary ventures and

model how to collaborate across and between disciplines for their students. The

Messenger and other funds available in the Department do much to foster a

strong research environment. Nonetheless, we see support for increased

research ambition as an important next step in how the institution recognizes and

encourages such an accomplished unit.

While we regard this Department as very good in every area, we recognize that

this level of accomplishment is not without risk. Any further loss in

the faculty

complement will seriously compromise their ability to deliver programs and

research intensity at current levels, far less bring about the enhancements that

we encourage here. The Dean needs to address with the Chair more explicit

strategies for position planning and for career development.

Overall, it was a pleasure to visit the Department and to meet the community at

Simon Fraser University.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We would like to make nine recommendations that follow from our assessment of

the self-study documents and from the variety of meetings held during the site

visit. These are not listed in any order of priority. We feel that they all need

attention promptly and success in responding to these various recommendations

will put this already accomplished Department at the forefront of the field in

Canada.

1. Attention to the honors program

More students should be in honors. It needs to be better advertised and more

effectively administered. The current need to take a fifth year in order to

participate (the

experience of all the students we interviewed) must be

avoided.

2. Promotion and support for co-operative education option in English

We would suggest a faculty-wide initiative, spearheaded by the Dean's Office,

to reinvigorate co-operative education in this Department. See also Appendix

3. Capstone experience for MA students

With the move from a thesis-based program to a capstone research paper,

the MA has lost some of its presence in the Department and among the

graduate student cohort. The public presentations should become a

mandatory element of the program and an expectation of attendance

extended to faculty and graduate students at all levels.

4. Alumni development

The Department should prioritize the development of better alumni records

and a program that would re-establish contact with accomplished alumni

through regularly scheduled events.

5. "W'atSFU

There is an institution-wide commitment to writing at Simon Fraser and we

have taken seriously the examination of the Department's role in the delivery

of this commitment. We hope that the Provost's Office will bring together all

the relevant administrators and department representatives to review

Appendix A of this report where numerous directions are outlined.

6. Explore World Literature joining the Department

Contributions of English Departments to the literature and culture of a

globalized twenty-first century society have generally expanded to include—

and often focus on—what might be called "world literature." The current SFU

program in this area is small and would benefit from a larger intellectual and

administrative context. Many faculty in the Department would be very

appropriate as contributors to the strengths of this programs.

7. Career development/retention planning

Itis very important in the short to medium term that more attention is given to

effective career development and retention planning. We recommend that

senior administration in cooperation with

the Dean strike a task force to

examine how the university can best support a young faculty and encourage

their participation in the articulated strategic goals university wide.

8. Research ambition

Individually and collectively faculty in this Department demonstrate a very

high level of research accomplishment. Nonetheless we see a great deal of

opportunity for growth, especially in the area of team-based research

projects. The Chair should initiate meetings with SSHRC-funded researchers

to explore possibilities for future growth and increased ambition. The Chair

and the Dean may want to identify future leaders and proactively discuss

career planning with these targeted faculty members.

9. Graduate secretary to 100% position

The graduate secretary makes a remarkable contribution to the Department

and to the success and wellbeing of the graduate student cohort. This is

(more than) a full-time position and troubling that the incumbent is expected

to fulfill her responsibilities on a 85% time contract. We recommend that this

position is converted to 100% at the earliest opportunity.

1. PROGRAMS

Undergraduate program

The Department has a well-constructed undergraduate program that allows

students exposure to the full range of the discipline with appropriate coverage of

historical periods, contemporary literature,

and theoretical perspectives. The

comprehensive breadth of courses is excellent preparation for students who go

on to teach or to continue their education in graduate school. Coincident with

these offerings, the Department rightly takes pride in its focus on Print Culture,

contemporary poetry and poetics, West Coast and diasporic literatures, First

Nations writing, and interactions among literature, creative writing and rhetoric.

The Department's plan for its undergraduate programs includes four

initiatives: (1) develop core disciplinary knowledge among its students and

majors; (2) teach their students life-time and transferable skills in written and oral

communication, and critical thinking, and to increase opportunities for

"experiential learning" as a way of enhancing these skills; and (3) increase the

exposure of undergraduates to research, including the use of archives and other

scholarly resources (the Department is developing Research Assistant positions

for

use by its best students to work together with faculty mentors doing hands-on

research); (4) continue to involvefaculty and students in the cultural community

beyond the campus. [It already does so through faculty and student participation

in the Kootenay School of Writing, the Lacan Salon, the Flying University, and

the Department administered Writer-in-Residency program.]

The commitment to teaching writing in courses is discussed in an appendix to

this report, "Writing and Rhetoric at SFU."

While we consider the Department's undergraduate program to be strong across

the board (although we note, and discuss below, that the complement of faculty

positions cannot shrink beyond its current number ifthe range and quality is to be

preserved), there are a few areas that might be further strengthened.

(1)

English majorsdo not regularly take advantage of the co-op program and

indeed its existence does not seem to be much understood, either by faculty or

students. This may well be a missed opportunity, even ifonly a few students

were to sign up in any year. We suggest that the Dean's Office initiatea

campaign to promote the advantages of co-op study and that the English

Department play an active role in encouraging students to consider this

option. Information sessions and attractive, eye-catching posters can do a lot

here, but the secondment of a professor in the Facultyto spearhead this initiative

would be ideal.

(2) Of more concern was the under-subscription of the honors program. With

the size of the cohort of English majors (and with concern about attrition

generally in this program, a phenomenon that is common across Canada),

encouraging the best students to commit to honors is an important target. The

group of undergraduate students we metwith were largely drawn from the

honors program but they expressed some dissatisfaction with how they found out

about it—too late and with the effect of almost always leading to the need for a

fifth year of undergraduate study. Acouple of students at the meeting had not

heard of honors and were surprised that such a thing existed.

This suggests the need for the Undergraduate Chair to develop a system that

alerts the top-achieving undergraduates to the honors option and makes sure

that advising is in place so that students are taking the appropriate preparatory

courses at each level in the program. Only in an exceptional case should a

student need a fifth year in order to complete honors. Sending current honors

students out to speak to junior classes about its benefits is a simple strategy for

increasing

awareness. A more detailed promotion of why honors should also be

considered: giving undergraduate students a strong sense of how this will

prepare them better for graduate and professional school applications, what

value-added skills they will bring to the workplace, why working with a cohort of

top undergraduates is exciting and intellectually challenging, the delights of

pursuing independent research under the supervision of a faculty specialist, and

so on. The annual honors symposium, too, might be deployed as an awareness-

raising event in the larger community so that more people get to see the quality

of students that the Department is training.

Staffing of

the undergraduate program has challenges created from the need to

deliver curriculum in several different locations. Some instructors who teach

away from the main SFU campus expressed a sense of isolation. On the one

hand, they appreciated the trust put in them to do a good job with courses taught

at Surrey etc.; on the other, they wished for more collegia! engagement, an

opportunity to swap ideas, pedagogical strategies and so on. Perhaps the

Department might consider having mini teaching retreats from time to time that

would allow for this kind of interaction.

Our meetings with faculty in the instructor rank and with sessional employees

revealed stresses that are common in English Departments in this

country. Instructors find their workload very heavy and there

was a consensus

among them that it was nigh impossible to use their annual vacation

entitlement. This is surely something that can be explicitly planned for and the

Department Chair and Dean should convene a meeting to resolve this

concern. Sessional staff worry about the lack of security and, particularly, about

the lack of engagement with the Department. Many of them also teach at the

other post-secondary institutions in the city and juggle a complicated workload

across different locations. The Association for Canadian College and University

Teachers of English (ACCUTE) has created a forum for sessionals

(http://www.accute.ca/sessionals.html) to promote a sharing of resources, but the

issues raised at our meeting can be found in Canadian English departments

coast-to-coast. The sessional staff who met with us expressed enthusiasm for

orientation sessions that had been held before the start of each term and at the

end of the term and the Department Chair should ensure that these are

conducted on a regular rather than ad hoc basis.

We did not have the opportunity to review materials or meet with anyone who

was attached to the small World Literature program offered at the Surrey campus

(as outside our mandate to review the Department), but we do question the

viability of this free-standing unit and would recommend that the Dean and the

Department Chair discuss the viability and appropriateness of this area becoming

part of the English Department. There are certainly faculty and graduate

students who could play a key role in the development of this focus. World

literature is a key element of most contemporary English programs ("literatures in

English," for example)

and emphasizing this field for both undergraduate and

graduate students seems timely and sensible.

We should also note here that the undergraduate student group with whom we

met were uniformly enthusiastic about the education they were getting as English

majors. They stressed how much they appreciated the quality and range of

courses available as well as the ease of access to faculty members. The

students felt that the Department cared about them and were interested in their

success. Simply put, it is unusual to find this degree of satisfaction among an

undergraduate cohort—perhaps the best evidence that this is a Department that

meets its responsibilities very effectively indeed.

Graduate Program

This is a well-run graduate program that caters to a talented cohort of MA and

PhD students. The level of support for graduate students is generally very good,

with the Department able to offer competitive financial packages for their top-

ranked students at admission. Application to and success with SSHRC takes

place at a good rate and several students have had the opportunityto work as

research assistants on faculty projects (funded by monies held in the Department

and/or SSHRC).

The Department plans in the next three years to expand its program and improve

the quality of the graduate applicants it accepts.

In line with this goal, the

department also seeks to attract more students from outside British Columbia

and to enroll fewer of its own students (although itshould be noted that the

current percentage of SFU-trained students is only about 30%). Ithas revised its

MA and PhD curricula to enable students to move through their program more

quickly and to completetheirdegrees. By theiraccount, English has one of the

highest rates of completion

in the University and we had no concern about the

recent handful of withdrawals (all for reasons that do not raise red flags). The "3-

Year Plan" asserts "the Department believes strongly that [its] primary role is to

produce top quality graduate students whowill become leaders intheir

respective fields and contribute to the widercommunity as excellent teachers and

scholars." To accomplish this goal, the Department must maintain appropriate

faculty lines to offer the full range of English literary history, rhetoric and creative

writing. Since many MA and PhD graduates will go on to employment outside of

professorial positions, the Department needs to develop a more active career

development program. Within the city as well as in the alumni of the program,

there is surely a

rich source for talks and mentorship so that graduate students

are better prepared for the realities of the job market.

The students we met with expressed a high degree of satisfaction with their

program including the variety and accessibility of graduate seminars, the quality

of the teaching, and the availability of supervision. The one area of

dissatisfaction was with the canceling of a defense for the MA research

component. We had heard that there was an annual conference where work was

presented to other students and to faculty but the graduate students told us that

participation was optional and that it was in fact poorly attended by students and

faculty alike. This is a concern both in terms of a need for an intellectual

capstone to the MA experience and in terms of more general faculty-graduate

student interaction. A fixed date for the annual conference and an obligation to

participate for the MA students and their supervisors should be considered in

order to

energize this aspect of the program. If the Department were to host a

lunch or a reception

as part of the event, it might encourage others to see this as

a significant commitment to the wellbeing of students and to intellectual life

generally.

All the graduate students who came to our meeting expressed great admiration

(and gratitude) for the commitment and expertise of the graduate program

support staff member. She is obviously crucial to the smooth running of graduate

studies and a remarkable resource person for faculty and students alike. Itis

remarkable to realize that

she is not a full-time appointment and we urge that this

be regularized at the earliest opportunity. Itis more than apparent that the work

expected—and, indeed, delivered—is a full-time commitment and she should be

hired accordingly. This would allow her, too, to provide additional support to the

graduate chair for any initiatives beyond the day-to-day running that might be

pursued (see notes on career planning for graduate students that follow, for

example).

Graduate students are sensibly and effectively mentored—they are well aware of

the need to develop their professional CVs and regularly present at field

conferences with funding support from the Messenger Endowment and other

local funds.

The Graduate Chair realizes the need to coach graduate students to

think of employment opportunities beyond the academic job and this should be a

priority in the next year or two. Graduate study in English is an excellent

preparation for a variety of professional fields and SFU is well placed to draw on

resources in Vancouver for a lively speaker series and mentoring program. With

more attention to alumni relations, it should be possible to draw expertise from a

local community of former students.

Two MA programs provide a distinctive feature of graduate study in English at

SFU, the MA in Print Culture and the MATE targeted at secondary school

teachers.

The MAin Print Culture has a more than 10 year history and is recognized

nationally and beyond as a distinctive program that affords its students a strong

preparation in literary historical and technological studies. This is an important

"brand" for

the Department and we expect itto continue to thrive. Tracking the

successes of its alumni is important and this could be emphasized and used in

program marketing. The MATE program is much newer, offered since 2007 at

the Surrey campus. This program has been carefully designed with its objectives

for its secondary school teacher cohort clearly in view. The fall off in the number

of applications is a concern and the Department needs to develop a better

strategy for advertising this program and the professional/intellectual benefits that

accrue to teachers who pursue this MA. Many Departments of English have

linkages with high schools and this would be something to consider in general

terms: to advertise the advantages of studying English as an undergraduate to

high school classes and at the same time to meet the teachers and let them

know more about MATE.

Other items

Enrolment management is sensibly handled. Like all English departments, they

have significant demands from elsewhere on campus to deliver service teaching

and they have developed an interesting range of courses and various models for

delivery. The pattern of delivery has created good opportunities for graduate

students at all levels to be engaged in universityteaching, moving up in the

demands of the course according to stage of career. Size of classes has been

managed with care and we did not hear of particular concerns in this area.

FACULTY

This is a young Departmentwith an enviable cohort of Assistant and newly

tenured Associate Professors who, along with their more senior colleagues,

demonstrate excellent research accomplishment, strong teaching, and a

commitment to institutional service. That said, there are retirements on the

horizon and a number of medical and other leaves that result in this complement

being no more than a bare minimum for the delivery of service teaching needs, a

suitably broad undergraduate curriculum, and a rich MA/PhD program. Even the

loss of one or two positions will seriously inhibitthe strength that the Department

currently demonstrates. Also of concern is the lack of an articulated retention

plan (either in the Department or the Faculty) as there are obviously scholars

here who will be ripe for poaching in the medium term.

We recommend that the Dean's Office work closely with the Department Chair to

construct a sensible and staged plan that will be nimble and responsive in the

face of the challenges for replacement and retention that lie ahead. Already the

Department must rely on sessional appointments to deliver a good slice of their

undergraduate teaching and it would be inappropriate to expand this reliance

instead of maintaining the real strengths that result from teaching delivered by

active and accomplished researchers in the field.

Research in the Department is impressive, both in quantity and quality. The

range of areas where faculty demonstrate research strength suggests this is a

Department that effectively engages traditional and more contemporary areas of

the discipline. Faculty members are also excellent contributors to more

interdisciplinary ventures and model how to collaborate across and between

disciplines for their students. The Messenger and other funds available in the

Department do much to foster a strong research environment: the expectation

that faculty will be active and engaged is supported by the availabilityof modest

funds to underwrite a variety of activities and to do

so by way of a peer-review

process in the Department. This is to their very real advantage as some of the

most important and significant research outputs by scholars in English can be

achieved with only a modest input of funding.

But we concluded that the knowledge of this access to funds within the

Department perhaps produced some less desirable outcomes. For faculty there

was less motivation, it seemed, to apply regularlyfor other funding, especially

with SSHRC. Itwould be helpful for the Vice President Research office to offer a

workshop on "howto use your SSHRC funds," to suggest how larger amounts of

money might be used to expand research goals and, importantly, to support

more of their graduate students in an apprentice-style research relationship with

supervisors and other faculty. More generally, faculty need to be encouraged to

be more ambitious with their research goals, especially in the identified areas of

research strength (e.g. print culture, creative and contemporary writing and

poetics, community-university engagement): whatcollaborative projects might be

developed with seed funding from the Department and the University and move

towards larger partnership grants from SSHRC? There is responsibility here,

too, for the Dean'sand Vice President Research offices to initiate incentives and

supports for the mid-careerresearchers who might be productively encouraged

to develop more large scale projects: an important aspect of any retention plan is

the active fostering of the brightest talent.

The Department should review its current use of discretionary funds. They are,

of course, fortunate to have monies available to underwrite a range of important

activities—events that build and sustain collegiality, funds that enable regular

conference travel, and ensure a variety of enrichment activities are enabled. We

applaud this commitment but also wonder if the ease of access to modest funds

might inhibit the willingness of faculty to seek external funds and, too, to develop

existing research clusters on a larger scale. Each of the research groups that we

met with had an impressive track record with local, national, and international

impacts and we felt that they could further develop both the scope and ambition

of their areas. Itwould be useful in this regard for each research cluster to

develop a 3-5 year plan that charted out research goals and included price tags

for particulargrowth. The Department Executive might prioritize among these

plans and use at least some percentage of the Messenger funds to incubate

developments that might lead to larger individual or team-based grant

opportunities. Research leadership should be actively encouraged within the

Department and within the Faculty. It was a surprise that this very successful

Department had not had the benefit of a Canada Research Chair at either Tier

One or Tier Two levels. Nor did there seem to be any plans in place to work

towards an endowed chair or chairs. Certainly with the distinctive presence of

the Print Culture cluster where many, if not quite all, department members saw

some interest, it could be an obvious location for a CRC or other leadership

appointment.

Like most large Departments, this one contributes generously to all kinds of

faculty, university, scholarly and community service. This is further discussed

under section 4 below.

ADMINISTRATION

The Department is effectively managed by the Chair and two Associate Chairs,

one for each of the undergraduate and graduate programs. This appears to work

very well indeed with excellent lines of communication

and regular

interaction. Their work is supported by regular department meetings

and by a

range of committees that

address specific areas of responsibility.

There is, of course, a past history of conflict within the Department but this

seems to be thoroughly resolved now and we encourage the Department to

move forward from its current position of strength. The Department was kind

enough to host a reception while we were on campus and this was well attended

by faculty and staff across the ranks as well as graduate students—all evidence

of a collegial and pleasant work environment.

We met with the office staff including the office manager and again with the

manager alone. We were thoroughly impressed with the quality and dedication

of this staff complement. It is striking how committed they are to these positions

and how much they do to ensure the smooth running of day-to-day life in the

Department. The one anomaly is the reduced time position of the Graduate

Secretary (85%). The range and complexity of her responsibilities should be

tackled on a full-time basis and we urge the Faculty to address this as a top

priority.

We were asked to comment on library resources, computing, and office space.

There are no concerns in any of these areas. The library serves students and

faculty very well indeed and some collaborative ventures are both exciting and

meaningful. We hope that the interactions between special collections and

curriculum can be further developed. The Department has ample office space:

one area reserved for an undergraduate student club should be used more

regularly. The Department Chair should be proactive in meeting with student

leaders to devise a plan for next year and onward.

CONNECTION OF THE FACULTY WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE

UNIVERSITY

Members of the Department are well-connected to other units within the

University and to the larger community beyond the campus in myriad and

imaginative ways. Since there seemed to be some sense among senior

administrators with whom we met that the Department ought to do more beyond

its immediate teaching and research foci that was in marked contrast to what we

had learned from faculty during the site visit, we asked the Department Chair to

prepare a listing of all their interactions over the past year across campus, in the

scholarly community, and in the Greater Vancouver region. This document

confirmed our assessment that this Department is vitally active in all of these

areas (indeed, it is a model of leadership here) and is attached as Appendix B.

The Department Self-Study does a good job of identifying many of these

partnerships and connections (see pp. 51-52, "Local, National and International

Connections.") In fact, the review committee was impressed by the number and

extent of activities through which English department faculty members engage

with citizenry in the local community, and with researchers throughout SFU as

well as with other academic institutions-that is to say, activities over and above

teaching their majors and graduate students, and meeting their central

obligations to them: developing expertise, expediting completion rates, and

helping to place graduates.

Relationships with Other Units within the University

Even though the Department has done an excellent job of identifying the

impressive array of collaboration and exchange that typifies the work of many of

its faculty, it is worth noting a few salient examples here:

Joint major programs with French, Humanities, and Women's Studies

The Centre for Scottish Studies-a joint venture with History, Humanities,

English and the Community. Its current Directoris a member of the

English Department. This centre is notable for the way it draws upon

public knowledges and establishes knowledge exchange with the

community. See below.

First Nation Studies-which now or soon will offer a Major, based in

Humanities but has English department participation, along with

Humanities and MATE.

The Department's role in SFU's SRPpriority in "Technology and the Arts"-

-through its annual lecture series that brings local and international

researchers together

The Department's focus on print cultures has developed collaborations

with researchers in History, Communication, Contemporary

Arts, Interactive Arts and Technology, and Linguistics. These links, as the

"3-Year Plan" states, were "formalized in 2006 with the founding of the

Centre for Studies in Print and Media Cultures."

Participation (though small) in SFU'sCo-Operative Education Program,

and in

FASS's Integrated Studies Program,

SFU NOW,

FIC and

10.

the MATE program for high school teachers (for items 6-10, see "3-Year

Academic Plan, pp. 2-3)

11.

We note as well the considerable service provided to the University by

members of the English Department (see "Self-Study" 53-54)

Relationship between the Department and the community

Under this category, the Department'scontributions are truly exemplary. SFU's

English Department gives back to the public through conferences that involve the

community, through hundreds of lectures and readings, appearances on radio

and television, and service on arts boards and the like. (The Department

provides a

selective

list of community engagements on pp. 55-58 of the "Self-

Study.")

The conference on "Robert Burns in Transatlantic Culture" (2009) is a vivid

example of the ways English faculty members have combined research and

teaching with community involvement. This conference was part of the Scottish

Studies Centre's activities, and was supported by external grants. It included a

public lecture

and a "Community Research Forum." Papers from the conference

have been collected in a volume to appear soon from Ashgate Press.

Last year, a department member organized a symposium on "The Land We Are:

Arts, Culture, and the Politics of Reconciliation." This symposium brought artists,

community organizers, and scholars together from diverse Indigenous and

migrant communities in Canada. In August last year, five members of the

English Department held an interdisciplinary symposium.

These are just two examples of the many ways that English faculty are outside

the classroom, off-campus, not only sharing their scholarship and creativity, but

also directly engaging the public, from the Senior's Program and the workshop

for high school students to open community seminars, to involvement in the

Leaky Heaven Theatre, the Kootenay School of Writing, to the Writer in

Residence Program that is designed to include campus and community dialogue,

and numerous memberships on the boards of community organizations and

groups.

All of this and more testify to a culture within the English Department that

welcomes dialogue with the public and gives considerably of its energies and

time to the community that supports them. (Items 6-10 listed above are further

examples of the Department's relationships communities beyond its own ambit.]

Because the Department of English already does so much in this area, English

might consider maintaining a webpage that highlights their work in this area, both

for

themselves and for others (community, administration, alumni). This

webpage or blog might help support the knowledge mobilization already taking

place in these interactions between the university and the community. The

department is doing excellent work in this area, and they would do well to follow

the lead already taken with fundraising among former faculty and do more to

promote their good work.

Relationship with other Universities-Partnerships

The Department has strong and generative relationships with other

universities. For example, in August last year, five members of the English

Department held an interdisciplinary symposium on women and comedy that

brought scholars together from Canada, the United States, and Europe, and was

designed ahead of time to involve undergraduates and graduate students

through their coursework. Three Department members participate in the

TransCanada Institute at Guelph. One faculty member is taking part in a 3-year

program in Vigo, Spain, on "Cultureand Globalization. Other faculty have

research ties to the Universityof Alberta, Dalhousie, McGill University, and the

University of Ghent. This record indicatesthat the Departmentfaculty members

have the networking wherewithal, especially for a relatively young department.

The focus going forward should be on mentoring to increase their participation in

team-based funded-research so that this networking moxie is built into proposing

large partnership projects, the kind of thing that brings in millions of dollars at a

time, not tens of thousands. We commend the department on their current

efforts but urge them to a more ambitious use of SSHRC and other funding, for

the benefitoffaculty and graduate students, as well as the larger institution. To

facilitate this

growth, the Research VP should provide tangible support and

mentoring.

This is not to say more couldn'tbe donebeyond these funding goals. The

Department has identified a number ofopportunities in its "3-Year Academic

Plan" with which we agree. The interdisciplinary connections occasioned by the

Centre for Print and Media Cultures, the City Program, the Asia-Canada Program

and First Nations Studies are, we think, important to sustain and to develop

further with other partners on and off campus, and possibly with other

universities. In addition, these programs can be used to help the Department

rethink its curriculum to reflect the all too apparent internationalization of

English. Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time that English is increasingly a

world language, English literary history narrowly conceived is losing its footing,

what used to be its self-evident justification. The Departmentsees the value of

understanding literary studies to be increasingly international in scope (1.51, p.

5), and that recognition invites greater collaboration between English and the

World Literature program, and to thinkof its current curriculum and requirements

inways that recognize the international character of literaturesonce bounded by

the nation-state. A recognition that internationalization-from the standpoint of

migration and trade, trans-Atlantic and Pacific relations, the development of

languages-is characteristic of literature and culture all the way back, not just in

our current state of globalization, is central to thinking going on in English

Departments everywhere. This modest change in perspective might well bring

into being the viability of greater collaboration with other units on campus,

as well

as the value of research cooperation with scholars at other universities.

For example, the Department'sfocus on print culture might make valuable links

with digital humanities and with the University of Victoria, U of Alberta, U of

Toronto and others. In addition, this kind of partnership is the kind of thing that

both the federal (through SSHRC) and provincial governments want to

encourage. Partnerships of this sort would have several obvious benefits to both

the Department and the University, supporting not only faculty but also graduate

students in a multi-university research network.

the Department already recognizes, these partnerships extend to non-

academic institutions (as we saw with the Robbie Burns day work) and are

important to explaining who in the public benefits from this study/research. The

mobilization of knowledge recognizes that other kinds of knowledge can be

brought into the institution-it is a two-way street. The community partnerships

help provide a

venue for the exchange of ideas. Here, too, opportunities for

SSHRC funding present themselves that would greatly assist the Department in

its efforts to grow its Graduate Program, and stabilize funding in such areas the

Scottish Studies Centre. As noted above, internal grant monies might be made

contingent upon simultaneous application to SSHRC.

Alumni Relations

With respect to endowment funds under its control, the department is already in

an enviable position, with 24 endowments including the Messenger Fellowship.

(Though not a result of ties with Alumni, the Department

has also made canny

use of its revenue from FIC). Despite these income streams, the Department

has yet to

fully

tap the generosity and interest of its former students. A program

of reconnecting with those students will over a period of five to ten years yield

remarkable results, with marked benefits to the graduate and undergraduate

programs, as well as faculty members. A brief sketch of how the Department

might do this is provided in Appendix C.

APPENDIX A

Writing and Rhetoric at Simon Fraser University

This document comments on the some of the larger issues surrounding the "W"

requirement and the interdisciplinary Writing and Rhetoric certificate program,

curriculum initiatives that are within the terms of reference for the external review

but which also, by their involvement in university-wide curriculum requirements

("W" courses) and other university departments (Linguistics, Communications),

extend beyond the specific terms of reference.

Certificate in Writing and Rhetoric

The Certificate in Writing and Rhetoric offers students an answer to the question

of "how can my studies in language help me understand the world outside the

university and function productively in that world?" The interdisciplinary nature of

the program reflects the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of writing and

invites students from a variety of undergraduate programs to enroll in the

certificate. The certificate has a heavy emphasis on theory and the study of

various aspects of writing; it might benefit from balancing the theory focus by

adding courses such as those available through the Continuing Studies

certificate programs in Writing and Communications.1 Thesecourses, in areas

such as Communicating for Results and Grant Writing, would offer much to

English department undergraduates: currently, more than half of undergraduate

English graduates are employed in positions that do not use the skills from their

undergraduate degree programs in their current positions.2 It is not clear from the

Continuing Studies website ifthese courses (such as Communicating for Results

and Grant Writing), as presently constituted, could be taken by undergraduates

for

degree credit or ifthey are non-credit courses. Ifthey are degree-credit

courses, then they should be considered for inclusion in the Certificate in Writing

and Rhetoric. Ifthey are not degree-credit courses, then the University should

consider some mechanism for developing equivalent courses that could be

offered for degree credit.

Co-operative Education Option in English

The under-utilization of the co-operative education option for English

undergraduates may be one cause of the failure of more than half of English

alumni to find work that draws upon their university education. At the University

of Waterloo, roughly one-third of English majors are in the Rhetoric and

1http://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/programs-and-courses/area-of-study/writing-

communications.html

2B.C. Baccalaureate Outcomes: 2010 Survey of2008 Baccalaureate Graduates, item 25.

Included as part of self-study materials.

Professional Writing joint honours major, and most of those students are in the

co-operative education option. The self-study report for SFU'sEnglish

departmentlists only 8 co-op placements for 2010-2011, and the largest number

in the last five years being 22 placements in 2007-2008. For a program with

almost 600 majors in it, this is a very small uptake. If English majors enrolled in

the Certificate in Writing and Rhetoric and obtained positions through the co-op

program, their chances of finding employment upon graduation that draws on

their university education would be improved. SFU's location in a major urban

centre gives it an advantage because of the opportunities for co-operative

placements that abound in a large, urban, business and technology hub. Co

operative placements should be pursued more vigorously by the English

department.

EAL and the "W" requirement

The Department of English reports that "Our first-year courses provide the lower-

division —Wll (Writing Intensive)

requirement for 40% of SFU's undergraduate

student body" (p. 5) and 69% of FASS "W1"offerings (A. Burke, interview), a

number that seems to be over 3000 enrollments in 2011/2. As the report

remarks, "W" courses "are not simply a matter of courses involvpng] lots of

writing... The University defined a —Wll course by the core criterion of

revision"

(Self-study, p. 31;

http://www.sfu.ca/ugcr/for_faculty/Criteria_Explanation_Nov04.html). Revision is

a key element of learning to write well, but it also demands an attentive reader

who has time to devote to reading drafts of written work. The first-year English

courses use a two lecture (with 250+ students in a class) plus one small seminar

(with up to 17 students) format. Within these tutorials, there is a breakdown or

segmentation into two groups: high-functioning native speakers and EAL

students who are continuing to work at mastering standard edited English, the

dialect of the academy (A. Burke, interview).

This segmenting of students creates instructional problems for the tutorial

instructors who, in some tutorial sections, must attempt to work with students at

radically different levels of competency. The nature of the revisions that the EAL

students engage in and the extent of the feedback that they need imposes a

burden on tutorial instructors: how much time should they spend, both in class

and in commenting on drafts of assignments, on

EAL student writing? Should

they spend more time (proportionally) with these students and less time

developing

the writing abilities of native speakers? One answer to this that we

are currently experimenting with at the University of Alberta is to attach a trained,

graduate teaching assistant writing centre tutor to EAL sections of first-year

English courses. This GTA meets with the tutorial section to work on second

language writing skills; the pedagogy is specific to teaching second language

writing, which is the rationale for offering separate tutorial sections. These

tutorials can be offered every week or alternate weeks and could provide a

bridge from the pre-university writing students have done intotheir early careers

as student writers at SFU. Ifthe GTAs were associated with the Learning

Commons

writing centre, they could also build a pattern that would encourage

EAL students to continue to use the writing supports offered there after they

complete the first-year English course.

English courses and the "W" requirement

A related issue is the problem of having students throughout the university take a

"W" course that introduces them to discipline-specific writing in English. Since the

department has fewer than 600 majors it is likelythat only a very small proportion

of students who are introduced to writing in the discipline of English will be able

to transfer that knowledge to their major program of study. When

the external

review committee asked about resources/textbooks on writing used to support

the explicit teaching of writing (a requirement underlying the "W" approach to

teaching writing;

see W. Strachan, p. 49), we were told that there were no

textbooks on writing required for these courses (itturns out that one or two do

have textbooks and the majority do not). The question that the English

department should consider is what knowledge

about writing

do students transfer

out of their experience in first-year English courses to their other courses?

One of the ways to support the transfer of knowledge is to teach students to use

a resource, such as a handbook, to answer their own questions and to improve

theirwriting. It is a given that the specific knowledge of the discipline will not be

transferred (except for the small minority of English majors); the pedagogical

question/problem is howto support the transferof concepts and strategies for

writing from one disciplinary context to another. The response we were given

suggests that work remains to be done to answerthat question. Options that

other institutions in North America have tried include optional group writing

tutorials associated with courses in selected disciplines, a Certificate in Writing in

[discipline] (for example, a "Certificate in Writing in Arts," a Certificate in Writing

in Biology"); portfolios of student written work (a learning portfolio but with a

substantial component of written work) submitted as part of a graduation

requirement. These initiatives all extend beyond the first-year English course,

which is narrow in scope regarding the development of writing abilities.

Relationship of "W" courses in English to Learning Objectives (NWCCU

accreditation)

As partofthe review of university programs generally, SFU has proposed

adopting the 2006 Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents guidelines

regarding University Undergraduate Degree Level Expectations.3 The fourth of

(http://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/vpacademic/files/vp_academic_docs/pdfs/TFTL-

RecommendationstoVPA-final-revised.pdf)

these expectations lists"communication skills" as something that every program

of study (major, minor, certificate) needs to include among the outcomes of study

for that program. The "W" courses go some way toward satisfying that

requirement, but only if students take the "W" course in that program-taking a

"W" course in English would not demonstrate how a student in, for example,

business demonstrated how the business degree helped develop their

communication skills.

SFU has the right approach: situate the learning of academic writing in the

degree programs themselves through the

"W" courses and specific writing

courses in the disciplines where necessary. However, when degree programs

cede ownership of learning to write to English by having their students take the

first "W" course in English (outside the degree program), students lose because

they do not develop knowledge of how to succeed as writers in their major

program of study. While students in the humanities might arguably benefit from

taking an English course because the nature of the writing they do is closely

linked by

genre (the academic essay) and research method (textual study),

students in other faculties and from other research traditions (technical and

business report genres; experimental science research methods) cannot be said

to benefit in the same way or to the same degree. Departments can expect

pressure from the NWCCU accreditation process to explain how their programs

of study build student writing skills, and their explanations will be more

persuasive if they can show that they at least offer "W" courses at both levels of

the curriculum. Doing so would relieve the English department of the perception

that they are a "service" department and the implication that English can

somehow supply all the instruction students need in learning to write with

increasing sophistication throughout their careers at SFU. It cannot, and the

movement by some departments and programs to outsource "W courses to

English and other humanities departments undercuts the key advantage of the

"W" course strategy.

APPENDIX B (prepared by Dr. Betty Schellenberg)

Summary of English Department Faculty collaborations, Jan. 2011 to the

present/ongoing

Please note:

- "f/m" = faculty member(s)

- this summary is based on responses from 28 of a possible 36 faculty. This

is our reading week, and I put out the request late last Friday, when a few

people had likely left town; there are also 2 faculty on unpaid leave or

longterm disability

- if I have understood correctly, you wanted this information in a digested

format, stripped of details re: individual names, titles of talks, dates, etc. I

would

be happy to provide the fuller version of this list, which is 19 pages

long

- I have set a short-term timeframe of 1+ year in order to supply you with a

manageable snapshot of recent activity- obviously, a longer span would

have produced more conferences, public lecture series, etc.

1. Collaborations outside the department, but primarily within the

university

(in alphabetical order; service on university committees has been excluded, but

membership on steering committees of other units as well as cross-appointments

of various sorts have been included because of their scholarly and

interdisciplinary nature)

Asia-Canada Program

- 1 f/m on advisory board

Bill Reid Centre for Northwest Coast Art Studies

- 1 f/m on steering committee

Centre for Scottish Studies

Director is in Dept. of English; the Centre includes faculty from History and

f/m collaborating with

History

faculty member and

SFU library

on Oral

History Project on Scots in BC

Centre for Studies in Print and Media Cultures

Founding Director is in Dept. of English; 5 f/m have been on steering

committee during the

period from Jan. 2011; the Centre includes faculty

and graduate students from Communication, Contemporary Arts, History,

Interactive Arts and Technology, Linguistics

Certificates in Creative Writing and in Writing and Rhetoric

- these programs include courses in Communication, Contemporary Arts,

and Linguistics,

as well as in English. At least 8 of our f/m regularly

teaching within these certificate programs

Communication

- 1 f/m was a speaker in Communications' "Counter Cultures" series

1 f/m co-organized visit of speaker from University of Wollongong

Contemporary Arts

1 f/m: collaborative 4A (Vice-President Research) grant for $9600 on

subject of "Where the World was: Cities After Mega-events."

(also with

Emily Carr University)

- 1 f/m: collaborative article and photo-text essay; republication in German

- 1 f/m serving as consulting dramaturge for the Contemporary Arts student

main stage production

(Escapement)

directed by Steven Hill (Assistant

Professor, Contemporary Arts)

- 1 f/m is working with

Contemporary Arts to bring the Toronto based

dancer and choreographer Andrea Nann to Vancouver for a residency and

series of talks/workshops

- 1 f/m has organized events with the Audain Gallery of the Goldcorp Centre

for the Arts

1 f/m's poem "Libya Neoliberal Libya" is being used as an activating text

for the 3rd year Exhibition ofthe Visual Arts program

Continuing Studies

- 1 f/m on board for English Language and Culture Program

Convocation

- 1 f/m wrote and presented the honorary doctorate citation for William

Deverell at the October 2011 convocation

David Lam Centre for International Communication

1 f/m collaborated with faculty from the David Lam Centre for International

Communication and Communication to organize

Arts of Conscience,

one-day symposium and film screening that looks at radical postwar

Japanese art and politics

First Nations Studies

- 1 joint appointment

Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies

- 3 f/m serve as Associate Members of GSWS

Graduate Liberal Studies

- 1 f/m is on the steering committee and is on the selection committee for

the new Simon Chair

Humanities Institute

- 1 f/m on steering committee, has organized and participated in

approximately 15 events sponsored by the Humanities Institute, from

public talks on

the global debt strike movement, to the changing nature of

citizenship

and "cosmopolitics" in the twenty-first century, the role of

Canadian mining companies in Guatemala and Honduras, the neoliberal

university, the media and global occupy movement, the possibility of a

"world humanities,"

and psychoanalysis and the politics of fear. All are

public events, but focused primarily on students and faculty

- 7 f/m have organized and/or participated as speakers in one or more

Humanities Institutes events since Jan. 2011

1 f/m is poetry editor of

Contours,

the Institute for the Humanities online

publication, and organized the

Contours

website launch event in Sept.

2011

Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines

- 1 f/m assists with workshops for faculty applying for teaching grants

1 f/m will be assisting with workshop in Re-Thinking Teaching Course

Design Workshop, conducted by a faculty member in Education

Library

1 f/m is collaborating with 3 SFU Library personnel (Head of Special

Collections, English Library Liaison, and Head of Systems) to relaunch the

Lake District Collection on-line annotated bibliography

Performance Studies

1 f/m collaborating with faculty from Contemporary Arts, World Literature/

Explorations, and Anthropology on a cross-disciplinary, cross-faculty

curriculum initiative

Print Culture Speaker series

- 2 f/m have successively organized the annual Print Culture speaker series

for talks whose internationally recognized speakers have drawn faculty

from UBC and SFU departments such as French, Communication,

History, and the Library

Royal Society Symposia

- 1 f/m gave a lecture in the series

SFU Christian Leadership Initiative group

1 f/m is scheduled to give a talk

West Coast Line

(an interdisciplinary journal based at SFU, supported by the

SFU Publications Fund, the

Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Council for the Arts)

- 3 f/m are on the editorial board

- 1 f/m is incoming editor

World Literature

- 1 f/m on steering committee

2. Engagements with communities primarily outside of the

academy

Poetry Readings

readings by various f/m at Colorado College, Whitman College, Stadler

Center for Poetry (Bucknell University), University of Alberta, and in

Philadelphia, New York City, Prince Rupert, Prince

George

- 1 f/m partnered in a conversation with poet Lisa Robertson at Poet's

House, New York University

- 1 f/m organized Robert Burns Day marathon (involving

50 community

members who came out to read, plus 250 students, staff and members of

the public who attended)

- 2 f/m gave readings and talks at the "Vancouver 125" Poetry Conference;

one f/m co-hosted the closing event

Vancouver-area readings of creative work are too many to count; one

f/m gave almost 20 in the time period; at least 4 f/m are involved in

these regularly

Art Curation, and Other Arts Events or Publications

- 1 f/m is a member of the 3-member, Vancouver-Vienna based research

group Urban Subjects, which held a residency at VIVO (Video Out Video

Inn Media Arts Centre) in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, for 5

weeks; events included production of a multi-channel video, an exhibition,

several panel discussions, a public lecture by Neil Smith (distinguished

professor of Anthropology and Geography); some of these events were

co-organized with Community Outreach Woodwards and the Downtown

Neighbourhood Council

Urban Subjects &VIVO are producing a poster for the Downtown

Neighbourhood Council fortheir 10 Sites program, which identifies 10

sites that are in danger of demolition or gentrification and works with City

Council to save the buildings and develop social housing

1 f/m's short play

Positive ID

will premiere in Toronto in June as part of the

7th annual InspiraTO 10-minute Play Festival

Tech Gallery, SFU. "A Manifesto of the Long Moment" shown in "The

Manifesto Show." February 2011.

'The Rightto the City", reading seminar for "No Reading After the

Internet", VIVO

"A Manifesto for the Poetry of the Future", Urban Subjects with Neil Smith.

Broadsheet Manifesto for "We Vancouver" exhibition, Vancouver Art

Gallery (broadsheets postered throughout city)

1 f/m co-curated

Digital Natives,

public art project (using Burrard Street

bridge billboard), with Vancouver artist Lorna Brown, involving 30 artists

and writers from Canada and the US, funding from the City of Vancouver

and the Canada Council; online component: digitalnatives.co

2 f/m participated in a panel discussion on this project at the UBC

Museum of Anthropology

- 1 f/m is dramaturge for The Leaky Heaven Circus, a Vancouver-based

theatre company; the 2011-12 productions have been

Peter Panties

(winnerof Jessie Richardson Theatre Award, Critics' Choice for

Innovation) and project x [faust]

1 f/m co-organized (with Contemporary Arts) "Entertaining Ideas 1,"

thinkers and artists from a range of academic and scholarly disciplines

(visual arts, philosophy, theatre, language studies, gastronomy) to discuss

intersecting practices

1 f/m wrote the exhibition publication for a Holly Ward exhibition at the

Artspeak Gallery

Public Lectures (organized or given)

1 f/m spoke in lecture series "Musqueam 101" (on the Musqueam reserve)

about her book on "Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative

Authorship"

- 1 f/m will speak at a community forum/audience talkback accompanying

the premiere of Theatre Terrific Artistic Director

Susanna Uchatius's

premiere of her new play,

Egni's Eye

- for the 2011 Vancouver Early Music Festival, on Dryden's

KingArthur

- 2

f/m gave talks at Teachers' Association conferences

- 2 f/m gave talks at Vancouver Art Gallery; 1 also at the Surrey Art Gallery;

1 also at the Presentation House Gallery

1 f/m co-organized (with Community Outreach SFU Woodward's, Green

Left Book Club and People'sCo-op Books) a lecture by Christian Parenti

on climate change and capitalism

- 1 f/m gives annual lecture series for Bard on the Beach (also works with

some of the directors and casts)

- 1 f/m will give the keynote address for the Good Will Shakespeare Festival

in Summerland (also works with high school

students at the festival)

- 2 f/m are giving Philosophers' Cafe talks (4 in Burnaby, 3 in North

Vancouver)

- 1 f/m organized for the Centre for Scottish Studies: 4 public talks, 1

sponsored public lecture and celebration of St. Andrews and Caledonian

Society's 125th Birthday

- 1 f/m

delivered speech at annual Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner

- 1 f/m gave an invited talk at a festival of Canadian poetry at the University

of Pennsylvania, and another talk in New York City

- 1 f/m

was participant in panel discussion on "Aboriginal Oral Histories in

the Courtroom: More than a Matter of Evidence" at Liu Institute, UBC, with

media coverage in

The Tyee

and on CBC radio.

2 f/m

co-organized a 2-day event,

The Land We Are: A Colloquium on

Arts, Culture, and the Politics of Reconciliation',

this was open to the public

and had a high number of non-academic attendees

1 f/m programmed

We Demand: History/Sex/Activism,

a series of rarely

seen narrative and documentary, feature-length and short films and videos

made in Canada between 1971 and 2011 as a parallel event to

accompany the first conference in Canada since 1993 on the history of

sexuality

- 1 f/m gave guest lecture on poetics for the 2011 Early Music Baroque

vocal course "The Complete Singer"

1 f/m organized public (alumni) lecture on "Faulkner in Film" by Jack

Matthews, Boston University

Arts Board Memberships

(see #3 below for scholarly board memberships)

- Vancouver:

o Vancouver Public Library System (3rd largest system in Canada,

annual budget $35-40 million)

o Kootenay School of Writing (1 F/M)

o PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Society

o Scottish Studies Community Committee

o Other Sights for Artists' Projects

Artspeak Gallery (1 F/M)

Fillip

magazine (1 f/m)

o W. A. Deacon Literary Foundation

London:

The Happy Hypocrite

- Los Angeles: Clockshop (non-profit public art organization)

Other Collaborations

- Member, City of Vancouver arts funding jury

- Member,

The Social Mark, Transnational Poetry Collective

- at least 3 f/m are Members, Kootenay School of Writing

- Member, Lacan Salon, community-based study group in psychoanalysis

- Ad Hoc Member/Collaborator, West Coast Mammals (BC offshoot of

Toronto-based Mammalian Diving Reflex, an art and social research

atelier)

- Editor for Anvil Press (Vancouver)

Contributing editor,

The Capilano Review

Contributing Editor,

Cross Cultural

Poetics

(XCP), Minneapolis, USA

2006-

Principal Investigator, Scottish Oral History project (a joint university-

community collaboration to collect and digitally disseminate stories of

Scottish immigrants to British Columbia; also listed above in university

collaborations)

Scottish Studies Director has also created a "Community Research

Forum" webpage (on Scottish Studies website; see below) to feature

research on aspects of Scottish Studies done by members of the

community

Media Interviews and Communications

• various news interviews with CBC radio, News1013; AM640; CKNW;

Aboriginal Radio, StreetzFM, City TV; CTV; Global TV; BCIT-TV;

Toronto

Star, VancouverObserver.com

website,

24hrs, Globe and Mail, Vancouver

Courier,

TheTyee.com

- 1 f/m alone did 10 radio interviews or guest appearances (CKNWx 2,

CBC Radio 1x3, CJIF x 2, CFRO x 3), 6 newspaper interviews

(The

Vancouver Sun, The Province, The Globe and Mail

x 2,

24hrs, The

Optimist),

and was cited in numerous other newspapers; some of this

arose out of his work as media and communications volunteer for Occupy

Vancouver

1 f/m produced Scottish Studies newsletter (electronic and paper

circulation 500); revision of Scottish studies website; through these

venues, annual contacts from 50+ members of the public worldwide who

are interested in finding out more about particular Scottish topics

- 1 f/m was interviewed for the "Sound Trail Project - Life and Death in

Hampstead," sponsored by London Borough of Camden, to talk about the

^-century writer Lucy Aikin

1 f/m has created database of

Canada's Early Women Writers',

the

database has a wordpress site and blog, drawing comments and

contributions from the general public; graduate student researchers are

also involving families of many of these women writers in their research

Visits of Artists to Classrooms or of Class Groups to Arts Events

- in general, these have not been noted, but some of these include public

elements - e.g. a First Nations'Studies class-based event marking the

Annual Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women by means of a

poetry reading of writers featured in

the Talking Stick festival, a screening

of a film by Metis filmmaker Christine Welsh about Canada's history of

missing and murdered women, and a discussion moderated by Indigenous

filmmaker Dorothy Christian. The public was invited to attend, discuss,

take part in refreshments, etc.

3. Research collaborations beyond SFU

Research Groups

- Co-director (with faculty member at University of Wisconsin, Madison) of

Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile,

an international, multi-

institutional research project;

funded by the NEH

since 1994; contributing

researchers are from University of Illinois, Florida State University,

University of Iowa, University of Cambridge, University of Leiden,

University of Groningen, etc.

- Co-investigator, "Practicing Reconciliation: A Collaborative Study of

Aboriginal Art, Resistance and Cultural Politics,"

funded by Indian

Residential Schools' Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Canada);

team includes faculty from Thompson Rivers University, UBC Okanagan,)

the Director of Research at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, an elder

and artist of the aboriginal community, and PhD students from SFU,

Queen's University, and Carleton University

Co-applicant, "Situating Reconciliation: artistic and intercultural

relationships in Canada and Australia," group of researchers, artists, and

galleries in Canada and Australia applying for SSHRC partnership grant

Co-applicant, "Editing Modernism in Canada" (EMiC), based at Dalhousie

University

Member, "Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory" (CWRC), based at

the University of Alberta; includes membership on

search committees,

advisory board, research board, and editorial committee;

funded by CFI

- Member, "Globalized Cultural Markets: the Production, Circulation and

Reception of Difference," based at University of Vigo, Spain,

funded by

the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation

Member, "Literary Tradition, Cultural Identities, and Theoretical

Discourses in the Anglo-Canadian Fictions of the Late 20th Century," a

Spain, UK and TransCanada Institute collaboration

funded by the

Spanish Ministry of Education

Co-applicant, "Articulations and archives: Propositions from Under Mill

Creek Bridge," a collaborative, inter-disciplinarygrant proposal with a

faculty member from University of Alberta,

as well as a composer, a

musician, and a translator; to date

funded by SSHRC 4A grant money

from University of Alberta

Collaborator, "Interacting with Print: Cultural Practices of Intermediality,

1700-1900," an interdisciplinary research group at McGill University, with

collaborators also from Universite de Montreal and University of Toronto;

outcomes include a 2-volume co-edition of

Broadview Reader in Book

History

and

Broadview Introduction to Book History

with a member of

McGill University faculty (2 other PrintCulturef/m have either given a talk

[2010] or will give a talk [2012] in workshops held by this group)

Volume editor of

Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Samuel

Richardson,

an international project involving a 14-person editorial team

Member, "Global Scotland" research network, centred at University of

Glasgow

Series Editorships, Editorial Boards, Advisory Boards

- Series Editor, Indigenous Studies Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press

- Series co-editor, New Southern Studies series of University of Georgia

Press

Members (2) of editorial collective "FirstVoices, First Texts" formed to

republish Aboriginal texts that have gone out of print, using collaborative

editing practices, and working with the University of Manitoba Press.

Member, editorial board of

Canada and Beyond

(on-line journal),

Universidade de Vigo, Spain

- Member, editorial board of

Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and

Writing

- Member, editorial board of

Connotations

(based in Germany)

Member, advisory board of new journal

Punk &Post-punk

(out of England)

Member, editorial board of

International Journal of Scottish Studies

Member, editorial board of

Studies in Scottish Literature

- Canadian advisor, Association of Scottish Literary Studies

- Member, advisory board of "Research on Authorship as Performance

Project" (RAP), University of Ghent, 2009-2014

Member, editorial board of

MoEml: The Map of Early Modern London

(University of Victoria)

Member, editorial advisory board,

Canadian Literature

- Member, editorial

board of

nouvelles 'vues'sur le cinema quebe'cois

Member, editorial board of

thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory and

culture

Member, editorial board of

Mississippi Quarterly

Member, editorial board of

Southern Spaces

- Member, advisory board of "Correspondence of Elizabeth Montagu, 1718-

1800" project,

an international database project based in the UK

- Membre du comite scientifique, « Memoires du livre » (Universite de

Sherbrooke)

- Member, advisory board,

Canadian Research Experience Database

- Member, international advisory board, L.M. Montgomery Institute

(University of Prince Edward Island)

Conferences Organized

(note that many of these conferences included public

events and participation by non-academics; at the end of the list a number are

included which are actively being planned, but have not yet taken place;

organization of conference panels has not been included)

- 5 f/m co-organized a SSHRC-funded workshop on "Women and Comedy:

History, Theory, Practice," with participants from Canada, US, England, and

Italy (also involvement of practising comedians in panels and performances);

an essay collection is being prepared as follow-up to the conference

1 f/m co-organized LaConference 2011, an international conference on

psychoanalysis, culture, and society

1 f/m co-organized a SSHRC-funded conference on "We Demand:

History/Sex/Activism," with faculty from SFU (History) and Carleton

University (see also accompanying film series above, in "2. Engagements

with Communities...")

1 f/m assisted with organization of conference on "Canadian Women

Writers Conference: Space/Place/Play," Ryerson University

3 f/m are co-organizing (with one faculty member from Contemporary Arts)

the Summer Institute on Culture and Society (ICS) of the Marxist Literary

Group (affiliated with

the Modern Language Association), on the topic

"Capital, Culture, Communism"

1 f/m is co-organizing "Scientiae," a conference on early-modern natural

philosophy with a faculty member from University of Minnesota

1 f/m in early stages of planning an American Antiquarian Society

"Summer Seminar in the History of the Book" with Melissa Homestead,

Univ. of Nebraska - Lincoln

1 f/m is in early stages of co-organizing a medieval studies workshop with

Leslie Arnovick, UBC

Invited Seminars, Keynote Addresses, etc.

- 1 f/m was invited to give a 3-day graduate seminar on "North American

Cities at the Global Crossroads: Policy/Public

Space/ Affect/Gentrification"

at Universidade de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.

- 1 f/m gave plenary session talk as part of a University of Alberta

conference on "Cross-Pollination: Seeding New Ground for Environmental

Thought &Activism across the Arts & Humanities"

- 1 f/m gave keynote address on "Media Cultures and the Invention of the

Bluestockings" at inaugural colloquium of the "Correspondence of

Elizabeth Montagu, 1718-1800" project, Swansea, UK

- Faculty Respondent, Asian Australian Studies Research Network Pre-

conference, Melbourne, Australia; panel composed of Canadian and

Australian academics that gave feedback to graduate students and early

career researchers on their current research projects.

Co-edited Books

(co-authored articles have not been included)

2 f/m co-edited

From Textto Txting: New Media in the Classroom

(Indiana

UP, 2012)

2 f/m (with a 3rd, non-SFU academic) co-edited

Cultural Grammars of

Nation, Diaspora, and Indigeneity in Canada

(Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2011)

2 f/m co-edited

Media, Technology, and Literature in the Nineteenth

Century: Image, Sound, Touch

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

1 f/m co-edited,

as member of Urban Subjects, with 4 others,

Momentarily:

Learning from Mega-events

(Western Front, 2011)

- 1 f/m has co-edited, with 2 non-SFU academics,

Robert Burns and

Transatlantic Culture

1 f/m has co-edited, with 3 non-SFU academics or artists,

Tracing the

Lines: Essays in Honour of Roy Miki

(Talonbooks, 2011).

1 f/m has co-edited, with 1 non-SFU academic, a Fall 2011 special issue

West Coast Line

titled

New Directions in Asian Canadian Studies

consisting of selected and revised papers from a graduate student

conference.

Other

- Associate Dean of FASS has set up working relations and exchange

agreements with the University of Nottingham and the University of Tartu

(Estonia), and is presently working on the University of Bangor (Wales)

- Co-organizer (with colleagues from UBC and Thompson Rivers

University), Asian Canadian Graduate Student workshop, to meet a need

due to lack of regular conferences or workshops for Asian Canadian

Studies

APPENDIX C

Alumni Relations

We recommend the Department work with Advancement to identify highly

successful English Department alumni and visit with them individually. Typically

this would be done by the Department Chair and a person knowledgeable about

development. The goal of each visit is to discuss the Department'sdesire to

create a Board of Visitors (the term used at UW-Madison) to advise and support

the department's programs and goals. Advice and support could include helping

the Department design its website, reconnect with a broader range of alumni,

create an online Newsletter useful and interesting to former students, among

other insights these alumni can provide. By the way, each initial visit needn't

result in an invitation to join the Board. Though the alumni being visited have

already indicated their interest by their willingness to meet, the visit is a chance

to assess the suitability of each person-degree of interest, memories of time

spent as an English major, favorite teachers, connection between experience in

English and their success/quality of life. The Advancement liaison to the

Department and the Chair can consult later.

The Board should be large enough that 8-10 people are able to make each

meeting. Early meetings will necessarily involve educating board members

about the Department: what it does now, what its goals are, its finances and

constraints. A typical schedule for the Board for UW-Madison's English

Department

has members fly in (at their expense) for a dinner (paid by

Department or College) on a Sunday. Board members also pay their own hotel

costs, though the Department should try to swing group deals. We try to have a

Dean or some other "higher-up" at the Sunday dinner, to show administrative

support and increase interest. The Chair, a member from Advancement (the

development liaison for the Department), and board

members meet for business

the next morning, from 8-2 or so. Rolls and coffee should be available, with a

folder for each member, with writing pad, pens, handouts. Board members enjoy

meeting current students-pick articulate stars-and new faculty, who can present

briefly on their work. Several may be able to stay for a book discussion in the

early afternoon, which can be led by another faculty member.

The whole process creates a good deal of work, especially for the Chair, but it

works well if Board members are chosen who are genuinely interested in

reconnecting with the Department, and ifthe lead person in the Department

(usuallythe chair) takes a genuine interest in the members, respecting what they

have done since leaving SFU.

EXTERNAL REVIEW - ACTION PLAN

Section lnIo.be cpmpletedbyjhe Responsible Unit_Person^.g.Chajr or_Pjrector

Unit under review

Department of English

Date of Review Site visit

Feb. 8-10, 2012

Responsible Unit person,

Betty A. Schellenberg, Chair

Faculty Dean

John Craig

Note:

It is

not

expected that every recommendation made by the Review Team be covered bythis Action Plan. The

major thrusts of the Report should be identified and some consolidation of the recommendations may bepossible while

other recommendations of lesser importance may be excluded.

Should an additional response from be warranted it should be attached as a separate document.

1. PROGRAMMING

1.1 Action/s (description what

is going

to be done):

1.1.1 Undergraduate:

• Honours program -

a. Dept. willwork towards a cohort of 20 students/year

b. Dept. will consult with Honours students about impediments to application and timely completion

c. Dept. will improve advertising of the program via courses, advising, etc.

d. Dept. will address structural and administrative issues, including entrance GPA, sequencing, etc.

e. Dept. suggests that the university reconsider the requirement of 132 credit hours for Honours, since length of time to

completion appears to be a major disincentive

• Co-operative education option -

a. Dept. will work with new primary co-op coordinator for English to publicize co-op, beginning with invitation to speakto

a department meeting

b. Dept. will feature co-op student stories on its website

c. Dept. will clarify responsibilities among staff and faculty for co-op program publicity and oversight

d. Dept. will develop course links between its newWriting and Rhetoric Certificate and co-op opportunities, for example by

offering ENGL 371 (Writing: Theory & Practice) regularly, designed around practical themes such as "Writing for Non

profit Organizations"

• "W" courses -

a. Dept. feels the reviewers did not understand distinction between introductory-level "W" (WAC, not necessarily in

discipline) and discipline-specific "W" (WIC), which we offer to our majors in the 4th year. Dept. recognizes its current

role in offering WAC courses to a large number of students, and would like to participate in university-level discussions

about the future of the "W" initiative

b. Dept. notes that it has a first-year course that does teach "transferable" writingsuccessfully (ENGL 199W, "University

Writing"). This is a resource-intensive course the Dept. would be happyto offer more sections of,should other unitsor

the University choose to expand offerings.

c. Dept has alreadysubmitted a statement regarding EAL issues to the VP Academic, and does not considerthe

suggestions made here to be its concern

1.1.2 Graduate:

• Co-operative education option -

a. Dept. willconsider how co-op might be incorporated into its MAprogram

• Capstone symposium for MAprogram -

a. Dept. reaffirmsthe value of the MA symposium as the capstone event of the program, and notes the success of its

similar event for the MATE cohort program

b. Dept. will develop strategies for maximizing student and faculty attendance despite the difficulties of a trimester system

- e.g. advertising date(s) from start of academic year

1.2

Resource

implications (if

any):

• Honours program - none

•

Co-operative educationoption - none for a, b, c. Item d, offering ENGL 371 and/or equivalent theory-and-practice courses

regularly, is currently impossible because a recent retirement (with another likely in a couple of years) has depleted our Writing

and Rhetoricfaculty to a bare minimum.The Dept. asks the university to prioritizethe hiringof a Lecturer with expertise in

professional writing, seeing this as an opportunityto enhance our ability to respond to the university priorities of offering

experiential and community-integrated

learning. (This position would also servethe needs of ENGL 199W, mentioned above.)

•

Website additions will be supported by Chair'sSecretary/Webmaster; other modes of publicityby Advisor and Undergraduate

Secretary

1.3

Expected completion date/s:

•

Honours program - consultation with students has alreadytaken place; structuraland administrative changes can be made inthe

next year; we aim to grow the program to 20 students/year in 4 years

•

Co-operative education option - can be completed in 1 year, with the exception of additional ENGL 371(or equivalent) offerings;

these will be dependent on the provision of instructional monies, preferably in the form of a continuing Lecturer position

2. RESEARCH

2.1 Action/s (what is going to be done):

•

Researchdevelopment - Dept. will maintain and increase its already high level of research accomplishment by:

a. maintaining a strong culture of equal expectations and opportunity, and fosteringorganic growth of researchteams (a

relatively new paradigm in our discipline) through already existing area groups (eg. First Nations Studies, Contemporary

Literature and Poetics, Post-Colonial/Diaspora Studies, Print Culture Studies)

b. Dept. requests consideration for a

CRC position

c. Dept. has obtained 5 VPR undergraduate research grants in the past year and will continueto encouragefaculty to

pursue these; Dept. also encourages the VP Research to offer more of these grants

d. Dept. will actively encourage facultyto seek funding sources that support graduate research training

e. Dept. Chair will actively encouragefaculty who are approaching or have recentlyobtained tenure to apply for external

grants and

will provide reasonablesupport for this (eg. mentoringbysenior researchers, use of seed moneyto develop

grant proposals)

Dept. Chair will invite BeverleyNeufeld, FASS Research Liaison Officer, to speak to a dept. meeting on the new SSHRC

granting structure

g. Dept. Chair will encourage faculty members to take advantage of opportunities such as the FASS Shadboit fellowships,

which offer opportunities for course release to work on a research project

h. Dept. requests that the university offer enhanced internal support for research development - e.g. teaching release

opportunities for recipients of major fellowships and grants

2.2

Resource

implications ((if any):

•

University: funding of a CRC search and position

•

Some use of internal Dept. funds to facilitate development of individual and team-based research initiatives

• VP Research to continue/enhance funding of undergraduate student research

2.3 Expected completion date/s:

• b and f- in the next year; other items - ongoing

3.1

~--

- ..

Action/sfwhat is going to be done) :

• Graduate Program Secretary-

a. Dept. will work with the Dean's office towards increase of the 85% secretary position to 100% to address a problem of

constant, significant, unpaid overtime work

• Relations with World Literature -

a. While Dept. is open to continuing and developing its collaborations with World Literature, it feels the recommendation for

an amalgamation of the 2 depts. (made without consultation with World Literature or perusal of any documentation related

to World Literature) is inappropriate, and arises out of a misunderstanding of the very different disciplinary cultures of the 2

depts.

3.2

Resource implications(if any):

• Grad. Program Secretary- costs of this 15% increase should be considerably lower than the cost of the CUPE 4.0 position that the

Department eliminated in 2009 by combining the previous General Office Receptionist {CUPE 4.0) and Undergraduate Program

Secretary

(CUPE 6.0) positions into one CUPE 6.0 position of Undergraduate Secretary/Receptionist

3.3

Expected completion date/s:

• Grad. Program Secretary- we will work with the Dean's office to enable a transition to full-time as soon as possible

4. WORKING ENVIRONMENT

4.1 Action/s(what is going to be done) :

• Career development/retention planning

a. Recommendation is directed to Dean and senior administration

In addition, Dept. Chair will continue to make career development of faculty members a high priority, particularly those

entering mid-career, in recognition

of our outstanding faculty cohort

4.2

Resource implications(if any):

•

Resources to be made available by the administration as needed

4.3

Expected completion date/s:

•

Ongoing

ALUMNI DEVELOPMENT

5.1 Action/s:

5.2

•

5.3

•

• Alumni

development-

Dept.

will

plan to offer two alumni

centred

events per academic

year

b. Dept.

will

designate a member of its Action

Committee

serve

Alumni Coordinator

for

these events (in consultation with

the Chair

and our

Dept.

Endowment Advisor)

Dept.

will establish

committee of

English Dept. alumni to

advise

and

assist with alumni relations

Dept.

will use the resources and

advice

available through

Alumni Relations and

FASS Advancement

staff

to develop best

practices

for alumni relations

Dept. requests that the university

enhance

support for record-keeping,

advising,

and assisting

with alumni communications

and event planning

Resource implications(if any):

Approx

$5000/year

for

event

plans;

Dept. will

use internal

activity

funds

supplemented

grants available from Alumni Relations

and/or FASS for pilot projects

University

support

for record-keeping,

website

work,

and a possible e-newsletter by Chair's

Secretary/Webmaster of Dept

Expected

completion date/s:

Already

in progress;

expected

full implementation in 2

years

The above action

plan has been considered by the Unit under

review and

has been discussed and agreed to by the Dean.

Unit

Lea"igned)

Name

f.2C

fAX.c.

fl.~!xY.-.

(.~

Date

Section 2-

P-_~an's comm~nts

and endorseme

IJt of the Action Plan:

1met

with

Betty Schellenberg

Chair of the Department of English, on 17 April

discuss

the external

review

prepared by

Professors Bennett

(University

Calgary)

Graves (University

Alberta) and Schaub (University of

Wisconsin-Madison)

have given close consideration to the external review and to the detailed response from the Department of English. The

external reviewers

have produced a thoughtful document

capturing

many of

the

strengths found in the Department and some of

the

challenges it faces

fully concur

with

their p

thy statement that

the Department is

very good'

in every area and I welcome

the substant

thoughtful

and

persuasive response to

the

review found above

I am in full agreement with the actions proposed by the

Department. Specifically

we will work closely

with the Department

find the necessary funding for converting

the graduate secretary's

position

from 85

100%

John Cra

Dean

Faculty of

Arts

and

Social Sciences

:-.:~1·.·

~~-·".1-f~.:

..................

Date

ffitffA1?

j,c,z_

.......................{)...........................................................