Composing Arguments of Scholarly Worth: A Case Study of the Portfolio Letter

Abstract

This essay examines four disciplinary challenges that faculty from broad, diverse disciplines such as rhetoric and composition encounter during tenure, promotion, and reappointment (TP&R) and highlights the arguments and rhetorical strategies that can be utilized to demonstrate scholarly worth and significance.

Notes

1. ¹I am appreciative for the insightful feedback I received from Theresa Enos, RR reviewers Steven Mailloux and Duane Roen, Michael-John DePalma, Leslie Hahner, Beth Allison Barr, Theresa Kennedy, and Shane Alexander. I am also grateful to my colleagues Mike DePalma, Coretta Pittman, Lisa Shaver, and Danielle Williams for their encouragement and support. Finally, I am thankful to my husband Shane, my three children Elizabeth, Peyton, and Levi, and my parents Ted and Carol Poe for their inspiration, love, and support.

2. ²Composition studies is not alone in facing this challenging reality. Other fields including political science, psychology, philosophy, education, communication, journalism, and some STEM fields also have to negotiate competing paradigms.

3. ³Although these disciplinary challenges are not the only ones faculty face, I focus on these because they are broadly applicable and generalizable.

4. ⁴External review letters are also a common item in tenure files, but they are typically kept private from the candidate and not submitted in the candidate’s portfolio.

5. ⁵Enos does include excerpts from two “personal statements” in her book, but they are very short passages and not intended as models for portfolio letters. Empirical research that examines the genre features and function of letters within TP&R decisions is therefore still needed.

6. ⁶In my annual tenure reviews, I had attempted to establish the worth of my scholarship by explaining the nature of the field verbally in the meeting and in the annual tenure letter I submitted. However, after reading the dean’s annual review letters, I discovered that the tenured faculty still were not convinced. I thus decided to expand my rhetorical strategies when I wrote the final portfolio letter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kara Poe Alexander

Kara Poe Alexander is an associate professor of English and coordinator of Professional Writing and Rhetoric at Baylor University. Her research explores literacy, identity, and writing pedagogy within composition and digital writing settings. Her work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, Composition Forum, Computers and Composition, Computers and Composition Online, Journal of Business and Technical Writing, Kairos, Technical Communication Quarterly, and several edited collections.