College Section Steering Committee

The College Section Steering Committee is responsible for the governance of NCTE’s College Section.

Committee Elections
The terms for Brian Huot Chair and Jude Okpala Assistant Chair expire in November 2007. This spring College Section elections were conducted, and Jude Okpala was elected Chair and Heather Bruce was elected Assistant Chair. Their terms will expire in November 2009. 

Ohmann Award
The 2006-2007 Richard Ohmann Award Committee is Heather Bruce (Chair), Beatrice Mendez-Newman and Linda Ferreira-Buckley, with the chair to appoint two additional members about whom the committee gave suggestions. Noted that NCTE does not support the award winner’s travel expenses to NCTE convention to receive the award, but the committee felt the winner should still be asked to speak for 10 minutes at the College Celebration provided he or she is able to attend the event. College Section Handbook should be updated to show the new process in the award presentation indicated above.

MLA Session
Linda Ferreira-Buckley agreed to coordinate the NCTE Session at MLA and updated the Committee in March at its CCCC Meeting.

College Celebration
Keith Gilyard has agreed to be the College Celebration Speaker

College/CCCC Luncheon Speaker
Ishmael Beah has agreed to speak at the College Luncheon
 
Program Review
College /Section reports a strong program for the November NCTE Conference in Nashville – thanks to  Eric Bateman for all his help with the program.

Standardizing CCCC Meeting
The College Section committee continues to meet the Sunday after the CCCC. The Committee met in New York all morning. This practice of scheduling a College Section Meeting the Sunday after CCCC continues to serve the best interests of the College Section and will remain in place until the committee decides not to meet at CCCC or to meet at another time.

Political Climate of Higher Education, News from Washington, DC
(Paul Bodmer)
Paul Bodmer’s spoke about the Spellings’ Commission Report being a way for the Department of Education to being a dialogue with higher education about important issues and possible reforms. He acknowledged that the Commission had really composed a critique of higher education and that this critical stance had produced counter critiques not unlike that which appeared in College English in May, 2007. The committee spoke of various ways to respond to the Commission’s report and the ways in which the Committee might help lead college-level educators during this difficult political period. These means included the possibility of having college-level journals within and out of NCTE publish short opinion-type articles on issues importance to higher education and contacting local officials about concerns related to higher education.

Brian Huot, Chair