The Core Composition Sequence at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY

Professional Development

The Composition Program organizes faculty development sessions every semester based on the recommendations of the CRC.  

 
Our Spring 2016 sessions were devoted to issues around students’ integration of texts into their writing, through paraphrasing, summary, and direct quotation. Rick Armstrong, Lesley Broder, Esther Gabay, Matthew Gartner, Linda Holman, Rachel Ihara, Venia Jean, Frances Ruoff, and Sara Rutkowski were in attendance on one or both days. Participants discussed various challenges to the effective use of reading, looked at several mini-research projects on this topic by CRC members, and analyzed samples of academic writing to identify different ways that published academic writers reference and integrate texts. The handout for the session, entitled “Working with Texts…”, is below.
 
In Fall 2015, we held two sessions to consider the question of what counts as “adequate” work in English 12. The context for this is a department-wide discussion of changing to an A-C/ NC grading policy. Participants attending the sessions looked at sample English 12 capstone essays that had received a grade of “C-” and reviewed the SLOs and capstone rubrics in order to better understand what students need to be able to do with reading and writing in order to move on to English 24. Detailed notes are below.
 

During the 2014-2015 academic year, we held sessions on the English 12 capstone assignment (Fall 2014) and on strategies for promoting student reading (Spring 2015). We also held meetings to share and discuss approaches to teaching research in English 12 and 24. Detailed notes for all of these sessions are attached below.

 
Faculty development workshops are open to all instructors. Adjunct instructors are paid for attendance at the non-teaching rate.
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