Rhetoric as Professional Development and Vice Versa

Richard A. Cherwitz and Sharan L. Daniel
JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory
(Winter, 2003)

Criticism from inside and outside the academy suggests that in a number of ways doctoral education has failed to keep pace with the changing demands of society. Much of this criticism centers on overproduction of PhDs for overly specific jobs--namely, the relatively rare, tenure-track faculty positions at research institutions.1 In English studies this dual problem is acute for PhDs in literature, half of whom can expect to find tenure-track jobs, with only a third of such jobs located at PhD-granting institutions (MLA Committee; Stygall).2 While responses to these issues in graduate education generally tend to emphasize fixing what is perceived to be wrong with the doctoral instruction-and-employment system through various top-down strategies and auxiliary, extra-disciplinary programs, we suggest building on what is right with the system through a rhetorical, grass-roots approach. Our response to exigencies facing graduate students now and in their future careers is to offer a rhetorical education that works with and enhances students' discipline-specific training, which we see as the chief strength of the current doctoral system. This rhetorical education further enables graduates to adapt and apply their expertise to an infinite array of contingencies. What we suggest, in effect, is a rhetorical writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) program for graduate students.3

This approach is reflected in the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) program at the University of Texas at Austin, initiated and directed by Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Richard A. Cherwitz. While Cherwitz is a rhetorician, he did not set out to implement a graduate-level cross-disciplinary rhetoric program. Instead, working over the last half-decade to create the still-evolving program, he and colleagues have discovered that IE is in fact such a curriculum.4 As confirmed by the program that constitutes our response to exigencies of graduate education, rhetoric may be construed as the art of using the countless, flexible processes of inquiry and discourse by which people address communal concerns. Creators of the program have arrived inductively at connected arguments familiar to rhetoricians: The arts of inquiry and discourse that we teach are central to the undertakings of academics and professionals; they are central as well to public life outside the academy; and indeed, they are central to any social endeavors in which people interact to address issues of common concern. We submit that IE lends new support to these familiar claims for rhetoric, providing perhaps the strongest type of case for rhetoric's value to the shared enterprises of academic and non-academic life--a case that arises from felt needs rather than the motivation of an academic discipline to enlarge its presence on campus. Our experience also supports the extension of rhetorically oriented WAC programs to graduate-level education, a domain that has been largely overlooked in these programs.

This essay is divided into three parts. First, we examine the inception and evolution of Intellectual Entrepreneurship, delineating the challenges and motivations that gave birth to it as well as the outcomes of the program's implementation. Second, we discuss the inductive and unintended process by which this program helped us to rediscover rhetoric and its vital role in human inquiry and public action. In the conclusion we speculate about the implications of IE for rhetoric's ability to embody the ideal of a discipline of academic-public engagement.

Motivations, Challenges, and Outcomes

One way to understand the development of the IE program is to consider a question that has occupied our thinking for at least the last five years: What will it take to be a successful and resilient academic professional in the twenty-first century? That is, what skills and knowledge will PhDs need in order to effectively discharge their many responsibilities and to adapt to the multiple and varied audiences they will confront? Compared to thirty years ago, for instance, what unique challenges confront the newly-minted PhD? In the 1960's and 1970's, the formula for success seemed relatively simple: meet minimal standards of teaching effectiveness but, above all else, publish, publish, publish. Today, the challenges are more complex and the audiences more varied--and frequently in competition. A brief discussion of these challenges, following a description of the program, uncovers the motives anchoring development of IE.

The IE program, run directly out of the graduate school rather than an academic department, offers courses, workshops, internships, and certificate programs open to all graduate students at the university. Beginning in 1996-1997, a pilot project consisted of three cross-disciplinary classes offered exclusively in the summer. The IE program has evolved into a curriculum of four workshops, seventeen for-credit graduate courses (see appendix), eight interdisciplinary doctoral and master's portfolio programs delivered throughout the entire academic year, a campus-wide consulting service, and a Synergy Group initiative that links graduate students with community members to address issues extending outside the campus. With a budget approaching $400,000, a full-time faculty and staff, and a faculty advisory board, IE--which is a partnership between the Graduate School and the Provost's Office--already has enrolled more than 2,500 students in nearly 90 different graduate disciplines. The program responds to at least five distinct challenges facing graduate education.

First, academic professionals must be able to "teach" in the broadest sense of that term, having the skills and versatility to address large lecture classes, small seminars and virtual classrooms, and being capable of adapting to the challenges of a variety of institutions with unique missions and distinctive student populations. In addition, the changing demographics of the student body at institutions of higher learning means that faculty must possess the pedagogical insights to teach classes composed of more ethnically and racially diverse students--students whose varied life experiences create a dynamic learning environment requiring adaptable approaches. And effective learning and instruction today require a keen understanding of and willingness to utilize the latest developments in technology for the delivery of knowledge.

Second, scholars must be able to conduct and publish the results of original research not just in narrowly focused, peer reviewed journals whose audiences are the so called "experts." Now faculty in many disciplines are required to publish scholarly books and monographs, which speak to a larger interdisciplinary academic audience, a community extending beyond the handful of experts in one's immediate area of study. To publish in these outlets requires authors to market their work. They must convince publishing houses that their books will be purchased by enough people and libraries to defray publication costs. In short, authors must begin to think and write in less specialized ways while, at the same time, meeting the technical standards set by the handful of "experts" who are best able to adjudicate issues of academic quality.

Third, academic professionals must be able to secure funding from external sources and granting agencies to support research. The time has long since passed when faculty, particularly at state schools (now referred to as "state assisted" rather than "state supported" institutions), can rely solely on local money to support their salary, research and graduate student stipends. Grants, therefore, have become the lifeblood of modern universities; this is the case not just in the sciences, but in the humanities and social sciences as well. Deans and department chairs routinely declare: "I want to hire faculty who will bring in their own money, scholars who can support their own research and that of their students." Fortunately or unfortunately, granting agencies are entities whose sole purpose may not be to promote pure research; they are driven as much by political agendas and the desire to meet the external needs of various constituents. To be funded, scholars must understand how research relates to the politics and rhetoric of the times, and how they must adapt their own projects and proposals to these more pedestrian concerns.

Fourth, twenty-first-century scholars must be able to explain knowledge to a host of non- academic constituents: legislators, media, alumni, donors, potential students and their parents and people who have become increasingly cynical about what goes on within the walls of colleges and universities--people who control, at least fiscally, the future of higher education. More than ever before, doctoral recipients must be prepared to engage in public intellectual activity on behalf of the academy. They must be willing to provide the Time version of their research and able to demonstrate forcefully and eloquently the value of research to society at-large.

Finally, academic professionals must be able to apply knowledge to personal and public policy, especially given the rapidly changing nature of knowledge in the information age. For example, consider two of the most important areas of research in the twenty-first century: health and technology. Ordinary citizens, businesses and those in the public sector are clamoring for interdisciplinary and integrated knowledge that is useful, practical and will help promote responsible policies in these areas. Expertise is of paramount importance, but not just in the sense of "esoteric" knowledge. To be effective, scholars must possess "exoteric" knowledge, thus necessarily introducing a consultative dimension to the concept of expertise.

All of these and other challenges confronting PhDs in the twenty-first century underscore the necessity for academic professionals to combine disciplinary knowledge with the wherewithal to adapt to multiple audiences. While many of us may have acquired an ability to meet these challenges the hard way, by trial and error, very few of us emerged from graduate school prepared to deal with them and, sadly, very few of our students are prepared to meet these challenges.

In short, although we at UT-Austin may not have been able explicitly to articulate it at the time the IE program was developed in 1996-1997, in retrospect the motivation for our initiative seems obvious: Graduate institutions are producing smart, discipline-sophisticated scholars who are rhetorically challenged, often unable to utilize their expertise to its fullest capacity. The development of IE, then, grew out of a recognition that academic professionals of the new century must be more than scholars. They must be citizen-scholars, equipped with the rhetorical resources to adapt to a variety of audiences and appreciating that the once perhaps clear lines between teaching/research, academic/non-academic, and content/form are fuzzy at best.

When Intellectual Entrepreneurship was first conceived, its stated objective was to maximize the value of graduate education for students and society at large, enabling students to decide for themselves how best to contribute their expertise and in what particular venues. By supplementing and enriching knowledge obtained in fields of study, the IE program aims to educate productive scholars and teachers as well as professionally astute citizens qualified to meet the needs of society. Comparing our efforts to those undertaken in national programs such as Preparing Future Faculty, the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's Responsive PhD, we submit that the IE program is a more student-centered effort in two ways. First, we aim to help students define their own value rather than re-defining the PhD for them. Second, the rhetorical approach we offer does not simply reinscribe disciplinary values but provides students with a means of critically understanding and applying the specialized knowledge and practices they are learning. In short we see IE as incorporating the best of the Carnegie and Wilson efforts especially.

Five themes epitomize the philosophy and mission of UT-Austin's IE program. As with the motivations underpinning the program, these themes, abundantly clear in retrospect, probably could not have been articulated five years ago.

First, graduate professional development is not remedial education nor entirely additive; like research methodologies and cognate areas of study, professional development provides skills and knowledge that are a vital and related (not separate) part of and therefore necessary to discharge one's professional duties, viz., teaching, research and service. What we have learned in the past five years is that professional development not only yields versatility, but it actually strengthens, contra what some may think, one's ability to do those things traditionally associated with scholarship: for example, framing research questions and developing a coherent program of research, procuring grant money, writing articles and books, critically appraising the epistemic status of academic claims, interpreting and integrating the results of research.

Second, professional development is not vocational education; it is not primarily nor exclusively about employment or "alternative careers," a term we consciously avoid. Professional development programs, we contend, would be needed even if academic jobs were more plentiful. The IE program is, in a sense, a corrective to the value-laden, hierarchical thinking that goes with the traditional language of academic institutions. The program shuns the term, "alternative careers," for example, as language that prejudices the case by implying something that "one settles for" (rather than a valuable outlet for expertise) and something that is anti-intellectual. Graduate professional development, as operationalized by UT's program, is concerned with helping each student to be an effective and resilient academic professional, no matter the chosen arena.

Third, our experience with the program makes evident that professional development goes beyond and is not limited to specific academic disciplines; it involves a cross-disciplinary understanding of how we come to know (epistemology) and an awareness of the limited nature of individual perspectives. Professional development is a practical way into what used to be accomplished by requiring students in all fields of study to enroll in a "philosophy of" course. One of the unintended but critically important consequences of the IE program is that students are able to compare disciplinary perspectives, becoming aware of the frequently unstated assumptions brought by academic fields of study to their scholarly investigations. Student narratives poignantly document that, when you bring scholars from different fields together to discuss topics such as ethics, writing, communication, technology, consulting, etc., an amazing thing happens. Students develop a greater philosophical sense of their own disciplines, they begin to see how the knowledge generated by different disciplines can be integrated to produce knowledge that is greater than the sum of the parts, and they acquire intellectual tolerance and humility that are so necessary for universities to build community and flourish.

Fourth, graduate professional development offers one potentially effective way to increase diversity in higher education. We discovered, for example, that 20 percent of students enrolled in IE classes are underrepresented minorities (African American and Hispanic), while these same groups comprise only 9 percent of UT-Austin's graduate student population. Minority graduate students report that IE courses demystify graduate education and the academic professional world, helping bright first-generation students learn the unspoken and taken for granted rules of the game. Most of these students believe that they are smart enough and have the intellectual resources to succeed--something confirmed by the faculty, who voted to admit them. Nevertheless, many minority students worry that not fully understanding the norms and operating procedures of the academic culture might negatively impact their likelihood of earning a graduate degree and being productive scholars. Hence, professional development may be an important mechanism for improving their odds for completing a degree, increasing their chances for professional and academic achievement. If increasing diversity in academic and professional worlds is a goal, then professional development seems preferable to the Darwinian model of graduate education under which many of us were trained--a model that does little to guarantee that we get the maximum possible from the greatest number of young intellectuals.

Finally, and perhaps most significant, professional development underscores the rhetorical nature of the academic enterprise. Whether teaching, doing research, procuring grant money, being a public intellectual or consulting, one must understand--as Aristotle did thousands of years ago--the importance of discerning the available means of persuasion in any given case. Professional development is about learning to adapt to audiences, learning first-hand the art of rhetoric as an academic discourse of one's discipline and the public discourse that enables one to engage with audiences beyond that discipline.

Rediscovering Rhetoric

In suggesting the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program is basically a rhetorical curriculum, we need to specify what kind of rhetorical tradition it represents. Again, we are making an argument about after-the-fact discovery, not original intent. Thus, in contemplating the program that emerged from the process just described, we have come to see the IE curriculum as concerned with rhetorics of inquiry, broadly conceived as integrated arts of academic inquiry and knowledge-construction and arts of public discourse. The program enables students to examine and use the rhetorics that define disciplines as well as others that cross disciplinary boundaries and extend beyond the academy. In teaching rhetorics of inquiry, our curriculum is comparable to rhetorical WAC programs (McLeod 3).

The term, "rhetoric of inquiry," harks back to the 1984 conference on "The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences" at the University of Iowa, in which scholars from various humanities and social sciences convened to discuss ways in which rhetoric shapes or constitutes academic knowledge and practice. The impetus for the conference (though certainly not a prerequisite to theories of rhetorical inquiry) was, in a sense, post-modernism; a widespread disintegration of belief in objectivist traditions led scholars in many fields to turn to rhetorical traditions to seek insight into their own methodologies. The conference provided encouragement for rhetoricians and non-rhetoricians alike to continue exploring rhetoric's roles in academic work, or what some conferees called the rhetoric of inquiry. This term, then, has come to signify a rhetorical understanding of academic discourse, and it is largely a twentieth-century innovation.

As Michael Leff pointed out during the Rhetoric of Human Sciences conference, this "rhetorical turn" in human sciences represented a new direction in rhetorical scholarship as well, since rhetoric had traditionally been concerned not with academic discourse but with political or social discourse more broadly construed (Lyne 67). Parallel rhetoric-of-science movements developed from the 1970s simultaneously in English and communication disciplines, influenced by seminal critiques of scientific objectivity, especially that of Thomas S. Kuhn (Mailloux 10-14).5 In rhetoric and composition, related research into composing processes produced rich insights into how people learn and use rhetorical practices that characterize disciplinary scholarship (e.g., Bazerman, Shaping; Blakeslee; Johns; Myers). Some of this scholarship has influenced the teaching of writing to undergraduates via WAC (see, e.g., Bazerman and Russell, Herrington and Moran, McLeod and Soven). However, research on academic writing practices at graduate and professorial levels has had little impact on graduate writing instruction (Rose and McClafferty 27). As Mike Rose and Karen A. McClafferty note, there are exceptions; the writing course they describe in "A Call for the Teaching of Writing in Graduate Education" is one, as is the work of Howard S. Becker, which informs his writing textbook for social scientists at and beyond the graduate level (qtd. in Rose and McClafferty 32n1). Like Rose and McClafferty, we would like to see more concentrated efforts at helping graduate students become literate in the discourses of the professional and academic communities they are entering.

At the same time, we would like to see graduate-level rhetoric programs go beyond an academic literacy of decoding and encoding technical discourse to provide a critical, rhetorical perspective that enables students to move confidently between public and academic arenas. In this aim, we combine two strands of thought about rhetorics of inquiry that some scholars treat separately. For example, at the Rhetoric of Human Sciences conference, Lyne, a rhetorician, took the view that rhetorics of inquiry are the specialized discourses of academic disciplines (Lyne 67). Charles Anderson, a political scientist, saw rhetorics of inquiry as also involving the dialectic that occurs between the academy and society at large (Lyne 73)--the view we take with IE. We see our position as compatible with those of Bazerman ("From Cultural Criticism") and Thomas P. Miller, who argue for pedagogy that examines the rhetoric of professional discourses with the end of enabling students to participate critically in the various communities they will enter as educated citizens.

We invoke this role with Cicero's term, "citizen-scholar," as we claim the aim of professional development is "to create not only scholars but citizen-scholars." In this respect we have arrived at an understanding similar to that of other rhetoricians who teach professional and technical writing. Miller urges teachers of technical and business writing to take a civic-humanist approach aimed at developing phron_sis, or practical wisdom, rather than focusing on presumably neutral technical skills (59). If we teach technical discourse without attending to rhetorical issues of how knowledge is constructed and deployed within and across communities, "our students lose an important opportunity to discover the relationships between their professional aspirations and our shared traditions and public problems" (Miller 70). Bazerman maintains that critical study of disciplinary discourse, by rhetorical scholars or those in other disciplines, promotes academic-public interaction that benefits both the scholars themselves and wider society. Because "the academy is one of the great levers for social change," Bazerman argues that public disengagement on the part of scholars is dangerous ("From Cultural Criticism" 62). By providing students with a rhetorical understanding of their disciplinary knowledge and the means to participate as active members of academic and public communities, "we can help the disciplines do the best work they were created for" (Bazerman, "From Cultural Criticism" 64).

This motivation is reflected in our IE courses on teaching methods, consulting, ethics, and entrepreneurship; and it is at the heart of our teaching, professional, and public internships, as well as our grant-writing workshops. The concept of the citizen-scholar not only recognizes the importance of academic knowledge to publics outside the academy, but vice versa: Citizen-scholars are aware of their scholarly dependence on an understanding of public experiences, needs, desires, values, and knowledge. This dependence is keenly felt in the classroom, where undergraduate students primarily represent various publics outside those of our academic disciplines. They are academic novices, and quite often they are non-majors in our subjects, people who do not seek to be groomed as devotees to our disciplines but who are, nevertheless, eager to know how they might make use of the knowledge they expect to acquire from our courses. Rhetorically they are somewhere between an academic and popular audience, and probably closer to the latter. In these respects, they resemble those members of publics to whom we appeal regularly for grant monies or simply for routine operating funds, whether we work in private or public institutions. Rhetorical insight into the nature of these publics, our positions within them, and our relationships to them is essential to our work as scholars. In some cases, our survival--the survival of our academic institutions--depends on such insight.

At the same time, the rhetorics of inquiry used among academics, within and across disciplines, literally constitute the knowledge that is our chief contribution to public life. This aspect of rhetorical understanding is no less essential to academic work than the ideal of the citizen-scholar, and it, too, pervades our professional development curriculum. It is particularly apparent in our courses on ethics, academic culture, and academic and professional communication; it is also apparent in the workshops on dissertation-writing, the academic job-market, and grant-writing, and in the academic internships. In these aspects of the program, we deal with rhetorics of inquiry in the sense that Lyne construed them, and as research in academic writing has explored them (e.g., Bazerman, Shaping; Myers). The rhetoric of biology, for instance, which Greg Myers examines, is the set of conventions, including research methodologies, that governs the construction of meaning among biologists. It tells biologists what counts as evidence in making certain claims, how those claims must be ordered--in short, what is meaningful within the discipline. While there are discipline-specific rhetorics, there are also rhetorics that reach across disciplines (Langer 70-71). Scholars within social sciences share some assumptions, values, and methodologies, as do those in humanities, for example. And, as the Rhetoric of Human Sciences conference illustrated, humanists and social scientists may share rhetorics as well. As Langer notes, studies of disciplinary communication have borne out this point (70-71). Academic rhetorics--those used within and across disciplines--are the stuff of academic life, and thus, as in WAC courses, are the artifacts studied and produced in IE classes; they are the practices, products, and governing principles we use to advance our collective knowledge, and about which students in IE seek to know.

It is impossible to say that either the classical notion of the citizen-scholar or the twentieth-century concept of rhetorical inquiry within disciplines takes precedence over the other. To determine a priority would be to engage in a chicken-and-egg debate over what comes first: academic or public life. Like Bazerman and Miller, we see academic and public arenas as mutually informing, mutually dependent, co-existent, inseparable. The IE program, as we see it, centers on rhetorics of inquiry that encompass both intra- and extra-mural aspects of scholarship simultaneously. Put simply, graduate professional development, like the discipline of rhetoric itself, is the bridge between academic and public arenas.

Another dichotomy that the professional development program does not allow us to embrace is the placement of rhetorics-of-inquiry studies either within rhetoric or outside it. Lyne addressed this question in the aftermath of the Rhetoric of Human Sciences conference. He favored housing such study within speech-communication departments, "where the rhetorical tradition has been nourished" (Lyne 72). The alternative would be to have scholars in different disciplines, like those who participated in the conference, continue the study of rhetorics of inquiry, an alternative which he feared would serve to "perpetuate a self-confirming rhetoric" in each field rather than to promote cross-disciplinary understanding.

In our professional development program we have found the perspectives of rhetoricians and non-rhetoricians both within and outside the academy to be essential in studying rhetorics of inquiry. In this way we again support the WAC approach, which embraces the teaching of academic writing through a combination of discipline-specific and non-discipline-specific courses and expertise (Langer, Peterson, Thaiss). Students in the academic and professional writing course, for example, learn as much from each other as they do from the communication scholar who leads the course. The professor may be the expert in rhetoric, but the students are, or they become, the experts in their own discipline-specific writing practices, as they gather, examine, and report on articles from the journals in which they wish to publish. In our consulting course, too, the professor is a communication scholar, but the students learn just as much from each other and the people whom they would seek as clients. And in internships with professors at other colleges and professionals in non-profit organizations or government, students learn from a variety of experts, academic and non-academic.

Finally, the IE program itself is not housed within an academic department. This point is important if the program is to remain dedicated to the overall enhancement of graduate education rather than to the parochial interests of any one discipline--even that of rhetoric, by which it is so pervasively informed. For as much as we are dedicated to rhetoric, we recognize that within and across disciplines rhetoric has value both as techn_, or an infinitely flexible art, and as epist_m_, or part of a distinct body of knowledge. Here we acknowledge the twentieth-century understanding of "rhetoric as epistemic," as a way of knowing, to which we have already alluded. It is precisely this dual value that lends substance to rhetoric, and by extension to the IE program. That is, this dual value prevents rhetoric and the IE program from being mistaken as "all style, no content," or methods of persuasion and expression rather than a fuller understanding of how truths are created and shared among people who need to know or make decisions. The dual value of techn_ and epist_m_-- art and science--also guards against the old accusation that rhetoric and rhetorical curricula like IE are exercises in relativism. We recognize that techn_ is situated; however, just because situations and the fitting technai may not be universalized does not mean they cannot be studied and applied in other situations. The substance of rhetoric and of IE is a substance not of abstraction but of rich experience. The substance of rhetoric resides in the "doing," or in composition terms, in the process rather than the product. Hence, when students in IE classes focus on the experiences and discourses of their disciplines (techn_), they are in essence learning to enact their disciplines (epist_m_).

To this claim we add the following speculation: The inductive and non-disciplinary manner in which the IE program rediscovered rhetoric and its value as an academic and public art might provide more powerful evidence about the significance of rhetorics of inquiry than the innumerable disciplinary pronouncements by professional rhetoricians in the last few decades. Disciplines, as Bazerman observes, if left to their own insular devices, can become "self-protecting domains of vested interest and social power" ("From Cultural Criticism" 64), whereas the cross-disciplinary experiences of IE students represent a conscious effort at transcending such exclusionary, isolationist practices. By enabling our students to discover the rhetorics of their disciplines and to discover those of other communities with whom they seek to interact, the IE courses provide a rhetorical education that has often been lauded from ancient times to the present--one based in interdisciplinary, academic-public engagement.

Conclusion: Rhetorical Engagement

We shall conclude by suggesting that Intellectual Entrepreneurship represents a rhetoric-of-inquiry curriculum, or a kind of rhetorical WAC program, that embodies an ideal of the "engaged discipline." The program is designed to help graduate students examine, in ways they would not encounter within their own disciplinary studies, the rhetorics that scholars use in teaching, research, and consulting inside and outside the academy. In this cross-disciplinary program, students learn to engage their students, their academic colleagues, and other professionals--communities and individuals who will be vital to their work, whatever careers they choose.

We wish to suggest that this kind of rhetorical curriculum, which crosses disciplinary boundaries and melds the public and academic issues central to a scholar's life, is the "next step" for rhetoric's re-invention in the academy. Over the course of the twentieth century, scholars have revived classical notions of rhetoric, adapted them to contemporary use, and reinstalled them first in undergraduate and then in graduate speech and English curricula. Rhetoricians have long struggled for acceptance of their subject as a legitimate field of study, and they have largely won that acceptance, partly by adopting and then critiquing the discourses of science (Mailloux). Yet, the struggle continues on many fronts. One of those fronts is the age-old perception of a dichotomy between substance and style, or science and art, which we have discussed. The IE program, as we have implemented it, has consistently refused to recognize such a dichotomy. The real power of this program, we submit, is that it has grown out of felt needs within the academy--and, more importantly, it has grown in response to the needs of the graduate students it serves. The program thus represents less a top-down effort to re-install rhetoric as the central subject of a citizen-scholar's education or to re-invent the doctoral system, than an effort to place within the reach of graduate students an understanding of rhetoric as a tool by which they can invent, and continually re-invent, their own education. In this way, IE represents a rhetorical curriculum that works with, not against, the current disciplinary system to deploy the academy's most powerful knowledge for the benefit of the wider publics to whom we owe our very existence.

Notes


1. For a succinct review of studies on this issue, see Nyquist and Wulff. One source of concern is the National Doctoral Program Survey of 32,000 graduate students conducted by the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS), which shows that students feel unprepared for teaching responsibilities and for jobs outside the academy (see National Doctoral, Smallwood, Magner). Major efforts to rethink and re-shape the PhD emerging from recent criticism include the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, Preparing Future Faculty (PFF), Re-envisioning the PhD, and the Responsibe PhD. The Carnegie Initiative, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, aims to develop graduates who are "stewards of the disciplines." The PFF program, a joint effort of the Council of Graduate Schools and Association of American Colleges and Universities, supported by the National Science Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and private funds, likewise emphasizes scholars' future roles in academic settings. The University of Washington's Re-envisioning the PhD, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, proposes to find an "overall concept or design" for addressing current issues in doctoral education and to serve as a "clearinghouse for innovative practices." The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's Responsive PhD program focuses on public-academic interaction, with an emphasis on "interdisciplinarity" and "scholarly citizenship," ideas that underpin the approach we present here, in describing the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program (IE) at the University of Texas at Austin. Indeed, as a participant in PFF and the Responsive PhD, UT-Austin has contributed to and drawn upon all of these initiatives, which are themselves considerably interrelated. As we argue below, we see our program as combining the best of these initiatives to provide a more student-centered approach.


2. The situation in rhetoric and composition appears much better for job-seekers (Brown, Jackson, and Enos 241; Stygall). However, as Gail Stygall points out, while available data indicate underproduction of PhDs in rhetoric and composition, the data are flawed due to undercounting and a general "invisibility" of the concentration (382-84), factors that reflect the field's continued struggle for recognition as a discipline. She further cautions that rhetoric and composition, like other many other fields (including those in literature), faces the erosion of tenure-line positions under the "corporatization of universities" (387-88).


3. Susan H. McLeod describes a continuum of WAC approaches, ranging from the expressive or cognitive, in which "writing to learn" is the focus, to the transactional or rhetorical, in which "learning to write" as a member of an academic discourse community is the goal ("WAC: An Introduction" 2-3). The IE program falls at the transactional-rhetorical end and is further oriented toward academic-public interaction. Charles Bazerman presents a public-minded rationale for WAC curricula, discussed below, that is similar to our aims ("From Cultural Criticism" 62-64).


4. We, the co-authors of this essay, wish to acknowledge a larger "we" that includes colleagues past and present who helped author the IE program. They include Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies Teresa A. Sullivan, faculty members Lynda Cleveland, Thomas J. Darwin, Wanda Griffith, David Hildebrand, Leslie Jarmon, Ghislaine Kozuh, Susan Murphy, JoyLynn Reed, Jeff Stringer, and Marilla Svinicki; staff members Gwendolyn Barton, Moises Salinas, and Rebecca Syrpis; graduate assistants Courtney Dillard, Laura Grund, Stefanie Sanford, Julie Sievers, Cynthia Duquette Smith, and Kim Upham; and more than 2,500 graduate students who have participated in the program's offerings and provided invaluable feedback.


5. See, for example, Bazerman, Shaping; Bizzell; Gross; Gross and Keith; Harris; Simons.

Appendix

The following course descriptions are excerpted from the Graduate School Catalog, 2001-2003, chapter 4.

Graduate School: GRS
180E, 280E, 380E. Conference Course in Graduate Studies.
Independent study of pedagogical, communication, and administrative issues in graduate education. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

388S. Practicum in Oral Academic Communication.
Restricted to international students. Practice for nonnative speakers of English in the linguistic, discourse, and strategic skills required for oral communication in their disciplines. Three lecture hours and one discussion hour a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

388W. Practicum in Written Academic Communication.
Restricted to international students. Designed to help nonnative speakers of English develop the linguistic accuracy and facility with rhetorical conventions required to produce acceptable texts in their disciplines. Three lecture hours and one discussion hour a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

389S. The Culture of Academic Communication.
Restricted to international students. Designed for students whose native language is not English but have advanced proficiency. Allows students to develop the types of oral communication skills and explore the conventions commonly practiced in their fields in the United States. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

389T. Culture and Communication for University Teaching.
Restricted to international students. Exploration of the linguistic, cultural, and pedagogical aspects of teaching at the university level. Emphasis on language use, the practice of common teaching tasks, and teaching styles and academic culture in the United States. Required for international teaching assistants and assistant instructors with student contact. Prerequisite: Graduate standing, current or expected appointment as a teaching assistant or assistant instructor with student contact, and consent of instructor.

389W. The Culture of Academic Writing.
Restricted to international students. Designed to allow advanced nonnative speakers of English to explore and practice the writing conventions of American academics and professionals in diverse disciplines. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

390C. Academic and Professional Consulting.
Study of how to organize and apply academic knowledge and research in the public and private sectors. Focus on the opportunities for and principles of effective consulting. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390F. Professional Internship.
Independent work in a professional environment. Students are supervised by a professional mentor as well as a faculty member. The equivalent of three lecture hours a week for one semester. Offered on the credit/no credit basis only. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of the student's graduate adviser and the Office of Graduate Studies.

390G. Entrepreneurship.
How the efforts of individuals, organizations, and broader business environments become and contribute to successful entrepreneurial activities. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

190J, 290J, 390J. Topics in Professional Development.
Study of special topics such as conflict resolution, media and public affairs, and administration and management issues in academic and professional settings. One, two, or three lecture hours a week for one semester. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390M. Academic and Professional Uses of Technology.
The integration of technology into the classroom and other academic and nonacademic contexts. Focus on instructional and presentational uses of technology. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390N. Preparing Future Faculty Internship.
Priority is given to students in their final two years of graduate study. Individual work with faculty members in the Texas PFF consortium, designed to prepare students for academic careers at diverse types of educational institutions. Offered on the credit/no credit basis only. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of the student's graduate adviser and the Office of Graduate Studies.

390P. Multicultural Issues in Academic and Professional Instruction.
Study of how attitudes and prejudices based on race and ethnicity influence teaching. Focus on how the awareness of these influences can be used for instructional purposes from college classrooms to corporate settings. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390R. Academic and Professional Ethics.
How ethical systems and specific decisions in both academic and professional situations influence theoretical, strategic, operational, and relational outcomes. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390S. Academic and Professional Communication.
Theory and practice of speaking in academic settings. Emphasis is on the application of principles of effective speaking to discipline-specific examples. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

390T. Advanced College Teaching Methods.
Designed for doctoral students, but master's-degree students who plan to be college teachers may also enroll. Exploration of issues in higher education; research on new strategies for teaching and learning at the college level. This course provides training beyond the basic teaching skills covered in each graduate field's supervised teaching course. May include discovery learning techniques. Prerequisite: Graduate standing, teaching experience, and consent of instructor.

390W. Academic and Professional Writing.
Theory and practice of writing in academic settings. Emphasis is on the application of writing theory and effective writing principles to discipline-specific examples. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

Works Cited

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National Doctoral Program Survey. Washington, DC: National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, 2001. http://survey.nagps.org/. (21 Dec. 2001).

Nyquist, Jody, and Donald H. Wulff. "Recommendations from National Studies on Doctoral Education." Re-envisioning the PhD Project. U of Washington, Pew Charitable Trusts. 2001. http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/project_resources/national_recommend.html. (20 Dec. 2001).

Peterson, Linda H. Writing Across the Curriculum and/in the Freshman English Program. McLeod and Soven 43-50.

"Preparing Future Faculty." Preparing Future Faculty National Office. 9 Nov. 2001. (31 Dec. 2001).

"Re-envisioning the PhD Project." U of Washington, Pew Charitable Trusts. 2001. http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/about/project_background.html. (31 Dec. 2001).

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Rose, Mike, and Karen A. McClafferty. "A Call for the Teaching of Writing in Graduate Education." Educational Researcher 30 (March 2001): 27-33.

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Stygall, Gail. "At the Century's End: The Job Market in Rhetoric and Composition." Rhetoric Review 18.2 (2000): 375-89.

Thaiss, Christopher. WAC and General Education Courses. McLeod and Soven 63-77.

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