Tenure and Promotion

The notion of tenure and promotion has been a concern of mine as of late. I’m not sure if it’s because my brother (a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Iowa) recently secured a tenure-track position at Cal-State Sacramento, or because I feel that steady pull of the years slowly slinking by to when I will need to worry about “selling myself” to some school (a thought that, for some reason, makes me feel incredibly dirty), but I’m jittery as hell. It definitely seems that those with Ph.D.’s in Rhetoric and Composition who specialize in some form of technology (whether it is computer mediated instruction, writing and technology curriculum development, multimodal composition, etc.) are in fact labeled as a “hot commodities” (at least that’s the perception I get from glancing at sites like Higheredjobs.com). If this is the case, then I fear that I will not do well in my search for a college teaching gig. Aside from this class and the ENG 605 I took my first semester of coursework, my experience with technology and teaching is rather limited (a veritable hodge-podge of hits and misses, trials and errors, and mostly informal training). My plans for a dissertation, apparently the factor by which most candidates are labeled, will most likely not have technology as its primary focus. I also have no publications in the field of Rhetoric and Composition as of yet. Eeep…and I’m on the market in a short two to three years. But, as Krause mentions in his article, each institution has different expectations for hiring, tenure, and promotion. My goal is NOT to be at a Research I (or even a Research II) university, so perhaps the experiences I have gained (though not necessarily my focus) will provide me with some sort of an edge. Time will tell I suppose…