[Cwgrad-announcements] Important--for MFA students!!

Sat Apr 7 12:35:32 PDT 2007

Dear all,
In case you didn't see it before, this is the petition I mentioned
(forwarded from Prof. Maurya Simon).  It has to do with our
possibilities of teaching comp in the future, so i highly recommend
that we all sign it!
best,
Gaby

Recognizing Creative Writing as an Academic Discipline in California
Community Colleges
 By Robert Vasquez

 The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has
before it a petition to add creative writing to the state-wide
Disciplines List.  The ASCCC will vote on this petition this April at
their Spring 2007 Plenary session.  This action is 65 years overdue.

             According to D. W. Fenza, executive director of the
Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) which is officially
sponsoring the petition, graduate degrees in creative writing have
existed since 1942 when Paul Engle started the Iowa Writers' Workshop;
soon, other institutions developed similar programs:  "In 1946, Elliot
Coleman founded the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.  In
1947, Stanford University and the University of Denver both launched
graduate creative writing programs.  In 1948, Baxter Hathaway founded
the creative writing program at Cornell University" (Fenza).

             By 1984, over 150 graduate creative writing programs
flourished in the United States; currently, over 300 programs offer
graduate degrees and over 100 offer undergraduate degrees in creative
writing (Fenza).  The Writer's Chronicle routinely reports that more
than 20,000 individuals have earned M.A., M.F.A., or Ph.D. degrees in
creative writing in the last twenty years.  Obviously, creative
writing as a distinct discipline has been a reality at hundreds of
educational institutions for many decades.  More importantly,
California Community Colleges (CCC) should officially recognize this
fact too, for they have done so with other disciplines in the past.

             Before English as a Second Language (ESL) and journalism
were added to the CCC Disciplines List, courses in those disciplines
could be taught by any community college professor with a graduate
degree in English.  Fortunately for students and faculty, the ASCCC
corrected this flaw by recognizing both ESL and journalism as
disciplines in their own right; hence, ESL and journalism instructors
must possess as a minimum requirement graduate degrees in their
respective disciplines.

             In contrast, English as a discipline in the CCC system
currently includes literature, composition, and readingand creative
writing since it's not officially recognized via the Disciplines List.
 As a result, almost any California community college professor with a
graduate degree in English literature or composition can teach
creative writing courses even though he or she might not possess any
substantial training in creative writing.  How can this current
situation benefit students?

             One could argue, "Aren't ESL, journalism, composition,
and creative writing courses the same?  After all, don't these
students compose?"  However, the student compositions in these unique
disciplines have different purposes and outcomes:  ESL students learn
English reading and writing skills as non-native speakers and writers
of English; journalism students aim to inform the public by reporting
on various facts and events considered newsworthy; English composition
students write expository essays controlled by thesis statements
and/or research material and utilize non-fiction prose; creative
writing students produce poetry, fiction, and/or drama.  In essence,
each discipline requires instructors specifically trained to help
students achieve those different purposes and outcomes.

             Others could posit, "Shouldn't all English degree holders
know enough about literature to teach poetry and fiction writing
courses?  Don't English majors learn everything related to literature,
including creative writing?"  By analogy, degree holders in diverse
disciplines should ask themselves a similar question:  "Shouldn't all
nursing degree holders know enough about x-ray technology to teach
such courses?  Don't nursing majors learn everything related to health
care, including radiology?"  Hopefully, the absurdity of the latter
question will help one understand the flaw in the former question.
Students who wish to become radiology technicians must study with
experts in radiology who are licensed and recognized by the state,
just as prospective nursing students must study with nurses even
though radiology technicians and nurses often work on the same
patients.  The same can be said analogously about English department
faculty members:  We work with the same students, but we often have
different tasks and goals.

             And for many decades potential English graduate students
have had to make conscious decisions:  "Should I choose the
literature, composition, or creative writing option in graduate
school?"  If some complain, "The university I attended didn't have a
creative writing program," such individuals must have lived rather
academically sheltered lives:  For some reason they didn't peruse the
various college catalogues in reference libraries; they didn't ask
creative writing professors about graduate creative writing programs;
they didn't seek assistance from guidance counselors regarding
creative writing options at the graduate levelin short, they didn't
care enough about creative writing to do some simple research.

             In California, many CSU and UC campuses offerand some
have been doing so for decadesgraduate degrees in creative writing:
CSU Chico, CSU Fresno, CSU Long Beach, CSU Los Angeles, CSU
Northridge, CSU Sacramento, San Diego SU, San Francisco SU, San Jose
SU, Sonoma SU, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego.
Of course, several private colleges do likewise, including Antioch
University (LA), california College of the Arts, the California
Institute of the Arts, Loyola-Marymount University, Mills College, New
College of California, Otis College of Art and Design, St. Mary's
College, the University of San Francisco, and the University of
Southern California.

             Still, others might say, "I took a few creative writing
classes in college; I even published a couple of poems in my college's
undergraduate magazine.  I have what it takes to teach creative
writing."  Again, change the discipline to another:  "I took a few
painting classes in college; I even had a couple of paintings in my
college's student art gallery.  I have what it takes to teach painting
courses."  Nevertheless, if one takes the time to study the various
graduate degree requirements in any practitioner-based discipline, one
should immediately notice that taking "a few classes" doesn't give one
the kind or level of expertise that others achieve when they finally
earn such graduate degrees.  And publishing "a few poems," often in
questionable venues, doesn't make one an accomplished writer.  With
the advent of the internet combined with vanity presses, people have
no problem finding outlets for their works regardless of their skill
levels; such non-juried outlets often depend financially on the
uninformed and the untrained.

             If this petition is successful, California's community
college students would have a state-wide assurance that their English
professors would possess as a minimum requirement graduate degrees
(M.A., M.F.A., or Ph.D.) in creative writing if they teach such
specialized workshops.  Of course, these creative writing professors
will continue to teach other courses in composition and literature in
their respective English departments like their counterparts in the
CSU and UC systems.

             And no community college, large or small, would be forced
to hire any full-time creative writing instructors:  Such degree
holders already meet the state's minimum qualifications to be hired as
English instructors provided they also hold B.A. degrees in English.
Hence, probably every community college in the state already employs
full- and/or part-time English faculty members who currently possess
graduate degrees in creative writing (they will be "grandfathered"
into the new discipline).  Given the large number of graduate degree
holders in creative writing, community colleges won't have any
problems staffing their creative writing sections with current or
future faculty members.

             Please support this effort to add creative writing to the
state-wide Disciplines List for California Community Colleges by
emailing the Academic Senate before April 19, 2007, via the following
email address:  asccc at ix.netcom.com.  And please contact your local
community college's representatives to the Academic Senate and urge
them to vote for this petition.  Tuition-paying community college
students minimally deserve appropriately degreed creative writing
professors and nothing less.

Works Cited

 Fenza, D. W.  "Creative Writing & Its Discontents."  The Writer's
Chronicle.  March/April 2000.  26 October 2006.
             http://elink.awpwriter.org/m/awpChron/articles/dfenza01.lasso.

 About the author:  Robert Vasquez was born and raised in California's
Central Valley.  The son of working-class parents, he worked in
various low-paying occupations from his high school years until he
went to graduate school at age 30.  He earned a B.A. in English from
CSU Fresno and an M.F.A. in English from UC Irvine, and he was a
Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University.
His poetry has received various awards, including three Academy of
American Poets prizes, three National Society of Arts & Letters
awards, a National Writers Union award, andfor his book At the
Rainbow (University of New Mexico Press)the San Francisco
Foundation's James D. Phelan Award.  His poetry has been published in
various journals, including The Los Angeles Times' Book Review, The
Missouri Review, The New England Review, The Notre Dame Review,
Parnassas: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares, and The Village Voice, and
in numerous anthologies, including After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the
Nineties, The Atomic Bomb: A Reader, Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to
the Nuclear Age, California the Beautiful, The Geography of Home,
Highway 99, How Much Earth, Piecework: 19 Fresno Poets, Proud Harvest,
Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California, and Writing
Home: Award-Winning Literature from the New West.  He has a chapbook,
Braille for the Heart (Momotombito Press), scheduled for publication
in 2007.  In 2004/05 he was the inaugural judge for the Andres Montoya
Poetry Prize, a first-book competition sponsored by the University of
Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies and the University of Notre
Dame Press.  In the 1990s he was the King/Chavez/Parks Visiting
University Professor in the graduate creative writing program at
Western Michigan University, and he has taught creative writing at
three University of California campuses, including a stint in 2000 as
a Visiting Associate Professor in the graduate creative writing
program at UC Davis.  He currently teaches at College of the Sequoias
in Visalia, CA.

 A copy of his essay can be found at http://californiapoet.blogspot.com.

Maurya Simon

Professor
Department of Creative Writing
University of California Riverside
900 University Avenue
Riverside, CA 92521-0318

TEL. (951) 827-2006 (office)

FAX: (951) 827-3619
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