My PhD exam prose

Below are the opening several sentences from one of my written exams undertaken in my PhD program at the University of Oklahoma back in 2011. These ideas slowly made their way into my dissertation and then into my book. I don’t think any of these sentences made their way all the way from my exam to diss to book. But the ideas, the idea of grounded current rhetorical studies on college sports on ancient western rhetorics, stayed with me and still stay with me. Enjoy me fumbling around and thinking through writing. I still am.

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Recent scholarship on the sophists has devoted itself in two main directions: exploring an individual sophist or highlighting connections between current issues and sophistic thought.  For the former, Bruce McComiskey and Scott Consigny studied Gorgias; Edward Schiappa wrote on Protagoras; Takis Poulakos focused on Isocrates.  For the latter, scholars have worked in a connective spirit, looking to (re)see and (re)contextualize these ancient figures.  The connections to electronic communication (Kathleen E. Welch), feminism (Susan C. Jarratt), postmodernism (Victor Vitanza) and liberal arts (Janet Atwill), illuminate for us the relevancy of continued discussion of sophistic rhetorics. 

While this body of scholarship underscores the depth of sophistic thought, I argue additional work needs to attend to how athletics shaped and propelled sophistic pedagogy. The highly athletic culture in which the first generation of sophists arose provides exigency for further (re)examination of Protagoras and Gorgias.  And this athletic culture is most notably seen at institutes of higher education where powerful Division I athletic programs can quickly overshadow academics.  As a composition teacher as well as an athletic academics program coordinator, I have daily encounters with student-athletes.  Despite student-athletes recently posting the highest cumulative GPA in the history of University of Oklahoma athletics (a 3.01), a recent graduation report filed by the NCAA shows OU’s graduation rate for student-athletes is hovering around 54%.  I find myself wondering how, in a culture which highly values athletics and competition, student-athletes, produced by and consumed in this culture, can graduate at such a low rate.  While the student-athletes at OU are excelling at a high rate athletically, they, for the most part, are struggling academically.  Academics and athletics are all but divorced.  But my point here is not to offer a panacea for student-athlete graduation rates.  I tentatively believe hope can be found in implementing competitive rhetoric student-athlete pedagogy. However, more exploration of this rhetoric and its connection to the culture milieu needs to occur first. Here I concerned with exploring how Protagoras’s and Gorgias’s competitive rhetoric situated them a as bridge between athletics and academics. 

Students as Partners graphic

For the past year, I’ve learned from Students as Partners praxis. SaP is an approach used internationally within teaching and learning scholarship that is an outgrowth of the undergraduate research movement. As Mercer-Mapstone et al. (2017) write in a literature review of SaP scholarship for The International Journal of Students as Partners, by grounding SaP labor in a “values-based ethos” students and faculty shift to “co-teachers, co-inquirers, curriculum co-creators, and co-learners across all facets of the educational enterprise” (p. 2). Moreover, Werder et al. (2012) identified SaP as a threshold concept in educational development as it constitutes a “transformational, irreversible, and discursive” (p. 34) experience for students and faculty alike. Such an approach has gained traction in countries like Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the U.K.

At the University of North Georgia, I’ve worked with student-partners on assessing a redesigned general education writing course and worked with student-partners to design a signature experience within an English capstone course.

One student-partner I worked and learned with is pursuing a graphic design minor. Kellie Keeling has been instrumental in helping create visuals that capture our work. Below is an image she created. The quote in the poster originally appeared in English. The quote comes from the wonderful book Pedagogical Partnerships by Cook-Sather, Bahti, and Ntem and published by Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning‘s open access book series. Another student-partner on our team, Zoe Phalen, translated the quote into Spanish in hopes of reaching a broader audience.

As we continue learning and laboring together, we are committed to finding additional visual ways to engage our audiences.

AAC&U and the workplace

Contextual note: I wrote this intending to send it to my Department through my capacity as co-director of FYC. But I went a different route. The audience throughout is my colleagues in the English Department.

In her opening remarks in the AAC&U publication Liberal Education, AAC&U president Lyn Pasquerella points to unsettling survey data released by Gallup in December 2019. Only 51% of U.S. adults consider a college education to be very important; younger adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were more than likely than those from other groups to question the value of a college degree. Pasquerella takes these data points to argue that “a majority of young adults now consider getting a job to be the primary purpose of earning a college degree” (3), and, as the AAC&U president, takes this opportunity to endorse high-impact practices but also, more importantly, takes this opportunity to talk to us—college educators—about the need to “adopt an equity-minded approach by being intentional about connecting curricula to careers, paying attention to reducing costs for students, and positioning graduates for success in work, citizenship, and life by promoting student agency” (3).

Much of what Pasquerella argues for in her President’s Message seems to be directed to the upper administrators at my university and for my university system, and certainly the argument of attending college for the sole purpose of landing a job irks many faculty members who advocate strongly for the power and beauty of learning for its own sake. But I call attention to her words in May 2020, during a global pandemic and uncertainty all around, because, no matter when we gather again in a face-to-face learning and teaching environment, we will  gather in a much different landscape of higher education: high unemployment numbers outside of higher education, potentially slashed budgets within higher education; the argument for college as a pathway to a career even more pressing.

Georgia is an AAC&U LEAP state, and within UNG, with the support of our provost, vice provost, and many faculty and staff, many of us have attending workshops or joined semester-long cohorts to bring high-impact practices into our classrooms. This Fall, CTLL will form new HIP cohorts composed of faculty and staff and the important work we are undertaking with Gateways to Completion dovetail with these high-impact practices, particularly ePortfolios, which according to a recent Hart Research Associates survey, 78% of business executives found more useful than a college transcript for evaluating a potential employee’s potential.

Questions and concerns remain; and high-impact practices are not the panacea for the distressing survey data reported by Gallup. But with their committed focus to student equity and access and with their committed focus to preparing students for “success in work, citizenship, and life,” I wonder—on this late May day with the flower blooming and the birds singing—how the work already underway at the System level and at UNG  may prepare us for the new landscape we will traverse whenever we walk alongside our students again on our campuses.

We only see a small percentage of UNG students as majors; but the English faculty work with almost all UNG students during the all-important first year of college. We are thankful to work with colleagues who, no matter what initiative in in vogue at the time, no matter if we are teaching face-to-face or rapidly pushed online, no matter a global pandemic or not, are committed to supporting student learning and creating educational pathways for all our students to succeed.

 

Birds & Moving On

In 2009, Amy and I received a birdhouse with the Auburn University logo decorating the roof. We moved this house to Oklahoma and to Georgia. A decorative item that never housed birds.

During the global pandemic, two blue birds moved into the house. Through our kitchen window, we watched mom and dad bring sticks and grass and string and pine straw into the nest. Later, they came with insects and grubs. The sounds of the babies calling for more, more, more. Sometimes our family would eat dinner on the back porch near the house, see mom and dad watching us from a nearby tree, and the whole Rifenburg family, before finishing their dinner, would head inside to give mom and dad space to be mom and dad.

During the global pandemic, the neighborhood tomcat broke into the birdhouse.

I woke first, opening the kitchen blinds, and saw the destruction. The babies in pieces all over our deck. With tears, I buried them before the family awoke. Amy awoke and noticed before I could tell her; I sincerely believe her mom intuition told her something was array as she generally doesn’t notice the coming-and-going of wildlife outside our window. I was in the garage getting in my morning exercise. She opened the garage door to see me, tears on display. We are waiting to tell the kids. I buried the little ones next to our newly established picnic table in our backyard.

We all move on in these challenging times.

Walking to the mailbox last night, I saw a babyblue colored shape, the size of a peanut M&M. I bent down, knowing already what it was. A robin egg. The shell partially cracked open. I could see the still baby inside. The crack exposed the face of the baby—the yellow beak, the yet-unopened eyes, the watery feathered head.

I reached out to pick it up. My wife’s voice in my head telling me about germs. So I hesitated. But followed through, picking it up, feeling it almost come apart in my hand, laying it in the grass and off the hard sidewalk trampled by feet and bikes and dogs and scooters.

I made my way to our mailbox, grabbed the electric bill, and headed home.

We all move on in these challenging times.

 

My letter to my students

Hi, all,

We haven’t gathered together since March 3. I remember that. I can’t remember why we didn’t gather on March 5. But I know my wife had the flu on March 10, so I was home with the kids. Then I went out of town for work. I was sitting in a hotel room in South Carolina, watching the NBA, when suddenly, the game was cancelled and the reporters and announcers were all confused. And then a few hours later, we learned that one of the players who was going to play in that game, just tested positive. Then, another few hours later, the NBA suspended its season. I watched from my bed at a Hampton Inn. I watched confused and nervous. I woke early, got in my car, and came home. That was Friday. The university shut down for two weeks that day. And we know where we are now.

Geez: I don’t know where we are. But I know we are good. Because we got our writing. I might be naïve or aloof or just plain dumb, but I believe so strongly in the power of writing. We make sense of what we see/fee/hear/are through our written words. Moving our hand across the page, our fingers across the keyboard, we learn what we think, we learn what we feel, we get it out because if it stays inside, oh, we don’t want that. We are in a new and crazy place and we find some sense of stability and possibility by letting our words run free on the page for others to read (like this email) or for no one else to read (like the journaling I do in the morning, outside, with my blue pen and in my cheap spiral notebook).

And you are the generation who will keep these records—who are young enough to be around in 2 generations and tell others what it was like. To tell your grandkids, who may not really care: to tell your grandkids who might care just a bit like we do when our great-grandmother tells us stories of picking blackberries as a kid in south Georgia. We listen but not really. Because it is so far in the past.

Write down what you feel. What you see. What you wonder and worry about. Keep that writing. Your voice is needed. And, really, you need to hear your own voice at times to keep the sanity. I know I do.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting outside in my driveway with my kids. I was drinking a Tropalica; it was around 5pm. The sun was out. I was listening to Wilco on my Bluetooth speaker. And I decided to write on the street with my kids’ chalk. I picked up the yellow piece and sketched LOVE into the black pavement. Cars came and went. People still going to work and still coming home. My five-year-old daughter asked me how I did that. I found the question odd. How did I write with chalk? I thought to myself. I told her: “Darcy, you know how chalk works.” She didn’t respond and how I wonder if she was asking a different how question. Maybe she was not asking about the literal process of chalking but the exigence. What led to it. Kids are sharp like that.

We went inside for dinner. Came back out. LOVE had faded into the black. Just smears. But I like to think pieces of the yellow chalk attached themselves to the passing tires. Stayed on the tires as the cars pulled into driveways and floating into the homes. I like to think that way about love—as some little seen chalk dust moving us along, keeping our heads up, and hearts warm.

Know that I am here. Sitting at my laptop most days. I can send food, send books, send more time for assignments, send encouragement as we move through this world.

Be well. Smile.
-Michael

 

Intro to Students as Partners

I’ve started a new project with Faith Green, an undergraduate student at the University of North Georgia. We are aiming to offer revisions to English 4880: the senior capstone course for the writing & publication concentration.

To do this work, we have some reading to do: we are starting with Students as Partners literature. This literature, really, this work, helps higher education reimagine the student / faculty hierarchy, helps us reimagine what is possible when students and faculty truly collaborate on a project for the advanced of engagement and learning.

Below is Faith’s read of Kelly E. Matthews’ piece Five Propositions for Genuine Students as Partners Practices. Matthews’ full piece is found via the open access journal International Journal for Students as Partners.

Faith writes,

This essay outlines five propositions wherein readers can learn how to best approach Students as Partners (SaP) relationships and programs. SaP is a metaphor that, “imagines and makes way for respectful, mutually beneficial learning partnerships where students where students and staff work together on all aspects of educational endeavors,” (Matthews 1). The five propositions for reaching SaP partnerships are to: foster inclusive partnerships, nurture power-sharing relationships through dialogue and reflection, accept partnership as a process with uncertain outcomes, engage in ethical partnerships, and enact partnership for transformation. I think that one of the most important aspects of this essay was in the “fostering inclusive partnerships” proposition. The importance of ensuring that students from every social class, country, background, religion, etc can work together on teaching and learning and therefore create a safe environment where every person’s work and opinion are equally as important as the next.

The wonders of coding

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down and code some non-numerical data with two undergraduate researchers. In preparation, we read sections of Johnny Saldana’s Coding Manual and Cheryl Geisler’s and Jason Swarts’ and  open-access book Coding Streams of Language. 

We opted for In Vivo coding, which involved arriving at categories based on the participants’ own language.

Below, Sam Velasquez, reflects on his experience with coding non-numerical data.

When Dr. Rifenburg told me we would be coding I was a bit confused because the only “coding” I was familiar with is what I learned about in computer science class. Once he explained the exercise, I was excited to begin the process of dissecting and categorizing the interviews I had transcribed. The goal was to take quotes and label them according to recurring themes found throughout what was said by the interviewee. Being able to color code different quotes from the interviews helped make meaning of out of the responses I had obtained. Even though responses were different, they fit into themes that are shared across all interviews and will help further our study.

Reflecting on interviews

Last semester, Samantha Velasquez, an undergraduate student at UNG, conducted a series of in-person interviews for a research project we are jointly conducting. Drawing from Students as Partners movement, we–a faculty member and student–are collaborating on assessing a university-system mandated gen ed writing redesign. Below is Sam reflecting on her interviews with students in these redesigned gen ed writing classes.

Preparing to interview first year students in English 1101 proved to be different from the experience I have had interviewing people for the many journalism assignments I have completed. The initial nervousness of talking to someone you don’t know was not there but knowing that the information obtained will be used in a research study left me feeling a different sense of discomfort.

The questions were meant to elicit responses about meaningful writing the students have completed, but what is the takeaway when a student does not feel confident about anything they have ever written? What I have learned so far is that this type of feedback can be just as valuable as the feedback from students describing their most meaningful piece of writing.

 

Pondering & Slowing

I like this line early in the Gospel of Luke, the one about Mary pondering things. In rapid narrative, we read of a census, Joseph and Mary heading back home for the census, Mary giving birth to a boy, an angel telling shepherds to check out the baby, and then the line: “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” I’m struck by two things in this one line: the vague “all these things” and the act of pondering—as if “all these things” is what led to the pondering. If so, an uncommon reaction to the chaos of life and one I wish I did better.

I write at 8:56 pm on December 24^th, a magical time for kids who celebrate Christmas for in a few brief hours the presents come. My wife is moving through the kitchen making hot tea; my mom is behind me wrapping presents. My kids are upstairs tucked in bed, visions of sugar plums and all that. I’m at my laptop with a glass of red wine, wine that should have been tossed out this morning because it is three days old at this point, but, at this point, after days of shopping and wrapping and cooking, well, wine is wine.  These are some of my immediate “all these things.”

Zoom out and my “all these things” weigh a little more heavily on my shoulders than presents and cooking the coming chaos of Christmas. The “all these things” concern my family of 5 and the wounds we receive as we move through this world.

My wife and I wondering how to adapt to my parents’ sudden divorce after 45 years. How do we talk to the kids about it? What does our extended family look like now that my dad has quite his marriage? Do the kids still hang with grandpa? Sure! When?

My 10-year-old son finding his place when he is not interested in the common masculine kid narratives, the football, the basketball, the wrestling, the mud and bikes and trucks. More interested in signing Christmas carols to himself and choreographing dance moves instead of watching YouTube clips of Luka Dončić and scrolling the internet for the new Jordans.

My daughter, in kindergarten, dealing with a bully and coming home in tears.

My three-year-old. He’s good. But needs to figure out potty training.

These are my “all the things,” the ones whirling around my world that take up my headspace throughout the day.

And I immediately want to act on all them. Solve the problems. Yell at my parents, especially my dad, for blowing up a marriage when they are so close to the finish line of life; yell at the athletic football player kids at my son’s school that exclude him because he is not out there on the field working toward head trauma later in life; yell at the parents of the bully.

I’m not good at pondering. At seeing “all these things” and spending time in reflection / meditation / pray – just pondering.

I just finished reading Seeber and Berg’s book The Slow Professor. As the title suggests, the authors argue against the frantic pace of higher ed and make a call for, well, more pondering. They wonder how wonderful it would be if a professor would write “read a lot of books” on their required annual review.

But higher ed, and life, comes with the check-list mentality. We are machines rapidly churning out production.

I want to ponder like Mary. Higher ed borrows from the Bible with the idea of sabbaticals. The idea of a professor retreating into thought for an extended period of time. Like Jesus who fled into the wilderness for 40 days; Paul who disappeared into Arabia; and even Jesus, again, who, when questioned by the authorities, bent down and drew in the sand just to reflect on what to do next. (Tom Deans’ has a wonderful CCC article on Jesus writing in the sand).

I need to ponder more. To slow down, to treasure all these things, and to think—not act.

But, I gotta act now. These presents got to get under the tree somehow.

Santa needs my help.

 

Undergraduate Led Student Interviews

In a world where people are often reduced to numbers or consumers of a product, sitting down with students, asking them about their personal experience with writing and English 1101, and looking deeper into the words they use to describe that experience is refreshing.** I had never really conducted interviews before, but after reading The Meaningful Writing Project by Eodice, Geller, and Lerner, I had a general idea of how student-led interviews worked. Most of the questions Dr. Rifenburg and I came up with were open-ended enough that the students gave thoughtful responses to them, and several of the students were even excited to give their input and opinions. The concept of the interviews being led by undergraduates, like myself, seemed to work well. During the interviews the students were relaxed, and off the record we chatted about school and life.

Being that this was my first time interviewing people in this setting, there are some things I wish I could have done differently. After listening to the recordings of the interviews I realized that at times I sounded stiff and forced when I transitioned to a different question. In the future I would like to work on that and make the interview more like a natural conversation rather than an interview. I also noticed when transcribing the interviews that there were answers to questions that practically begged for a follow-up question that I didn’t ask. These things are frustrating, but I’m still learning. 

Overall I really enjoyed just being a part of this process. I think listening to students’ thoughts on their education is valuable, and I am excited to learn more about the data we find in the words of the students’ interviews.

**post by University of North Georgia undergraduate researcher and writing & publication major Emily Pridgen