College of the Atlantic seeking Director of Writing Program

College of the Atlantic (COA) is searching for a faculty member in writing and rhetoric to serve as the director of COA’s writing program. COA is a highly interdisciplinary college in Bar Harbor, Maine. We have roughly 350 students and 35 faculty. All students design their own major. The faculty is excited to add a colleague who will teach classes and help our writing program grow and evolve.

I am reaching out to the directors of unique programs such as yours to ask for help in recruiting for this position. I would be grateful if you could forward this to anyone you know who might be interested in this opportunity. I am part of the search committee, and I am happy to talk to anyone who might have questions about the position or COA more generally.

The job ad is pasted in below and can be found at https://www.coa.edu/human-resources/job-openings/. ________________________________

College of the Atlantic (COA) seeks a full-time, permanent faculty member in writing and rhetoric to direct COA’s writing program.

The Director of the writing program is a faculty member who teaches courses, oversees COA’s Writing Center, coordinates all writing classes, and is a resource for faculty across the curriculum.

The Writing Program at COA is in transition, and we seek a colleague who can lead, educate, and inspire the community to significantly reimagine and transform our approach to writing, rhetoric, and communication. While the details of this transformation are open, faculty have expressed a desire for a writing program that:

• Incorporates pluralistic, multi-modal approaches to writing that move beyond a monocultural notion of “Standard English” and includes an understanding of Global Englishes,
• Honors and values the wide range of students’ literacies,
• Inspires and encourages all students in their learning,
• Recognizes there are multiple forms of communication that are valuable to a student’s educational experience,
• Collaborates with faculty across the college,
• And is an integral part of our interdisciplinary, self-directed curriculum.

The successful candidate will teach three to four courses a year in writing, rhetoric, communication, and related areas. (The standard faculty teaching load is five courses over three ten-week terms.) Other faculty responsibilities include advising and mentoring students, directing senior projects, supervising independent studies, and contributing to college governance.

COA is an interdisciplinary college of approximately 350 students and 35 faculty. Each student designs their own major in Human Ecology and faculty are not organized into departments. The average class size is 13. Our educational approach integrates knowledge from all academic disciplines and seeks to understand and improve the relationships between humans and their built, natural, and social-cultural environments. Twenty-four percent of our students are international. Of our US students, roughly one in six are first-generation college students and about 40% are low-income (eligible for the federal Pell grant).

College of the Atlantic is committed to increasing diversity, fostering inclusion, and working towards equity and justice. We encourage applications from candidates who demonstrate how their teaching, service, and research would contribute to making the college more inclusive, equitable, and diverse. We are particularly interested in candidates’ experiences working with students, colleagues, and communities who identify with groups historically excluded, under-represented or marginalized in higher education.

Requirements
A PhD in Rhetoric and Composition, Writing Studies, or an allied field is required. The successful candidate will have: experience working in a college or university writing program or writing center; experience effectively teaching a diverse range of students, including multilingual learners; and collaborative leadership skills. We welcome applications from candidates who have taught and/or carried out scholarship in languages other than English.

How to Apply
Interested candidates are invited to submit an application consisting of:

• A cover letter,
• A CV with the names and contact information of three references,
• A statement of teaching philosophy and practice, including a discussion of your approach to and experience teaching diverse learners,
• A statement articulating your vision for an inclusive, accessible, effective writing program and how your supervisory and leadership experience, academic and otherwise, might help in achieving this vision.

Please submit applications as a single pdf to writing-search@coa.edu. Review of applications will begin on December 4, 2022 and will continue until the position is filled. We anticipate inviting finalists to campus for interviews in January or February of 2023. Questions about the search may be directed to the chair of the search committee, Dave Feldman, at dfeldman@coa.edu. The anticipated start date for this position is September 1, 2023.