An Ethic of Service in Composition and Rhetoric

Research, teaching, and service—the traditional tripartite division of academic work. The kind of institution and the nature of institutional priorities have some bearing on the arrangement of the first two parts, but service always comes last. From our shared perspective as faculty members and administrators in writing studies, though, the nature of service is both more meaningful and more complicated than this seemingly straightforward arrangement would suggest. For us, service is simultaneously an integral part of the teaching and research that we do (which, we should note, are also virtually inseparable) and a problematic label that is often attached to many of the courses that we teach, especially at the first-year level...more.