Portrait of a Volunteer

Renee Moreno

Renee Moreno is assistant professor in the Chicano/Chicana Studies department at California State University, Northridge, where she teaches freshman composition, including basic writing and courses for students seeking their teaching credentials, including language acquisition and equity and diversity courses. She is a 1993 recipient of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Scholars for the Dream Award and an NTCE Grant-in-Aid. She has served on the Rainbow Strand Planning Committee for the NCTE Annual Convention and on the College Section Steering Committee. She currently serves on the CCCC Executive Committee.

What is your volunteer involvement with NCTE?

I have been volunteering with NCTE for about seven years and have been a member of NCTE for 12 years. I began attending CCCC when Anne Ruggles Gere was my professor and serving as chair. She invited her students to the conference and invited me to introduce the plenary session of Latina scholar and writer Gloria Anzaldúa. I then began my service with the Rainbow Strand Annual Convention planners, which served to clarify for me the importance of involving people of color at all phases of convention planning and service to NCTE. During convention planning, I met many excellent colleagues whose service motivated me to keep coming back not only to convention planning but also to the Annual Conventions. From Rainbow Strand planning, I was elected to serve on the College Section Steering Committee, where I again participated in convention planning and helped to direct NCTE policy. My service there, again with many excellent colleagues, drew me into participating with the Summer Institute for Teaching Multicultural Literature, which I will co-chair with Professor Fred Thomas in the spring of 2006. The Committee also appointed me to several awards committees, including the Braddock and Ohmann awards. This work exposed me to the excellent and motivating work of talented scholars.

What keeps you motivated to volunteer?

Now that I am moving through the ranks of volunteer work, I am realizing that there is much potential to work under the auspices of NCTE to influence national education policy. Living in California, I am dismayed at the behemoth education has become; it is overwhelming to think that, as one individual, my voice is small. Yet in directing policy, NCTE does have influence at the national level, and I am realizing that volunteers have the potential to direct policy. I am also very lucky to have contact with many excellent scholars who are also involved with NCTE. I love to read their work, listen to their papers at conferences, and talk with them. They are like an extended family of committed people and like minds.

Can you describe a current volunteer role you have with the Council; what does it entail?

I reviewed proposals for the Annual Convention and was really excited to see such interesting voices from people at all educational levels.

I am also working with Professors Fred Thomas and Dickie Selfe and NCTE’s Paul Bodmer and Dale Allender to organize the 2006 Summer Institute for Teaching Multicultural Literature. The 2003 Institute is going to be hard to compete with because the speakers—such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Ishmael Reed, and Lucy Tapahanso—were excellent. Part of our work is convincing administrators at institutions to sponsor this research and to convince their faculty to participate in our efforts. The 2003 Institute gave the many participants very specific approaches to teaching the literatures of a multicultural America and grounded those approaches in theories that were accessible and interesting. Our work for the 2006 Institute is cut out for us! In addition, I am serving on the selection committee (along with Freddy Thomas and Jude Okpala) for the next editor of College English. We finished our interviews at this year’s CCCC Convention and talked with many wonderful, inspiring candidates who see the value of the journal and, as one interviewee put it, of “giving back to the profession.” Serving on this search committee is a privilege because I not only learned about the many issues facing our profession but also had the opportunity to talk in meaningful ways with many colleagues. I know that this unique opportunity is because of my service with NCTE.

I mentioned that I see many of my NCTE colleagues as an extended family of like minds. I am always inspired by their work and by their commitment in the face of what these days are overwhelming odds. Because I am still junior faculty, I look to their examples when I approach career decisions, when my energy wanes.

How has your affiliation with NCTE and volunteering improved your professional development and career?

My affiliation with NCTE has improved my professional development and career—but in ways that I am not always aware of. My university, unfortunately, does not always recognize national service as integral to the mission of the campus community, but I have often used NCTE materials and resources in the classroom. From articles gathered from the News section of the INBOX electronic newsletter to journals and position statements, NCTE is a valuable resource for us.  One of the things that I hear from the student teachers I work with is how isolated they are in their schools and in their classrooms, yet NCTE is one professional resource that they can connect with to make their classrooms feel less isolated.

What do you find most useful from among NCTE’s professional development offerings of books, journals, conventions, programs, services, etc.?

NCTE is a very dynamic organization. I find the journals useful, and I find myself reading and saving many of the online materials we receive. I also very much enjoy attending conferences, even though these events are exhausting. Seeing my colleagues, as I mentioned, gives me the energy I need to keep going back to the classroom.