Academic Program Review Report Department of English California State University, Sacramento Review Team Dr. Jackie Donath Department of Humanities & Religious Studies Dr. Sue Escobar Division of Criminal Justice Dr. Thomas Krabacher (Chair) Department of Geography External Consultants Dr. Kathryn Rummell Chair, Department of English California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo Dr. Sugie Goen-Salter Chair, Department of English San Francisco State University Spring 2016 INTRODUCTION Faculty Senate Meeting September 22, 2016 Attachment: FS 16/17-32
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Academic Program Review Report
Department of English
California State University, Sacramento
Review Team
Dr. Jackie Donath
Department of Humanities & Religious Studies
Dr. Sue Escobar Division of Criminal Justice
Dr. Thomas Krabacher (Chair) Department of Geography
External Consultants
Dr. Kathryn Rummell Chair, Department of English
California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo
Dr. Sugie Goen-Salter Chair, Department of English
San Francisco State University
Spring 2016
INTRODUCTION
Faculty Senate Meeting September 22, 2016
Attachment: FS 16/17-32
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The Department of English program review took place during 2014 according to the following
schedule:
Fall 2012: Self-study proposal submitted
November 2013: completed Self-study submitted
Spring & Fall 2014: review team conducted program review and external consultant
visit
Additional interviews took place in spring and summer, 2015.
The review was carried out as part of the 2012-2013 review cycle of Program Review Pilot
Project Study. The Pilot Project offered programs the choice of three different review formats
from which to choose. The Department chose Option C, “Focused Inquiry,” in which the
program review is organized around the following three components:
A general overview of the program, including degrees offered, curriculum, students,
faculty, staff, and facilities, etc.
A review of the program’s assessment process.
A Focused Inquiry that examines “issues of particular interest/concern to the department
itself, in the context of what is currently important to the college and university.”
For its Focused Inquiry the English Department elected to examine three topics: (1) the
effectiveness of the program’s student internship and experiential learning opportunities, (2) an
evaluation of alternative organizational models employed by English Departments elsewhere that
might be applicable here, and (3) future hiring strategies. All of this was laid out very clearly in
the Department’s self-study.
Commendation 1: The English Department for its preparation of a very detailed and thoughtful Self-
Study, proved to be an invaluable resource to the review team over the course of the program review.
This report is organized around the three components of Option C. The review team is cognizant
of the fact that the review takes place following a period of budgetary turmoil for the CSU in
which the university and departments were in a state of fiscal retrenchment. Although restoration
of the CSU budget is underway, funding levels (particularly state general fund support) still
remain below what they were a decade ago. The recommendations in this report have been made
with this in mind.
Individuals Consulted:
The review team met with a large number of individuals during the review process, all of whom
were unfailingly helpful. We thank them for their time and cooperation:
Dr. David Toise, Chair, Department of English
Dr. Brad Buchanan, Immediate Past Chair, Department of English
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Dean Edward S. Inch, College of Arts & Letters
Associate Dean Kimo Ah Yun, College of Arts & Letters
Interim Associate Dean Nicholas Burnett, College of Arts & Letters
Dr. Kathryn Rummell (External Consultant), Chair of the Department of English, California State
Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo
Dr. Sugie Goen-Salter (External Consultant), Chair of the Department of English, San Francisco
State University
Full-Time Faculty, Department of English: Separate meetings with members of the following
faculty groups:
All department faculty
Literature Committee faculty
Writing Program faculty
TESOL faculty
Tenure/Tenure Track junior faculty
Part-Time Faculty (lecturers), Department of English (Writing Program)
Department of English office staff
Dr. Amy Liu, Director, Office of Academic Program Assessment (OAPA)
Undergraduate students in ENG 20
Undergraduate majors representing all concentrations
Graduate students representing all concentrations
Documents Consulted:
The following documents were consulted during the review process:
Commendations to the Department: 1. The English Department for its preparation of a very detailed and thoughtful Self-Study,
proved to be an invaluable resource to the review team over the course of the program review.
2. The English Program is commended for the role it plays as an early and key point of contact
for first-time students and the University when they arrive at Sacramento State.
3. The English Program is commended for its successful merger with the Learning Skills program
and the subsequent development of an effective two-semester “stretch” curriculum to serve as an alternative to the traditional remedial pre-baccalaureate composition classes.
4. The English Program is commended for offering a broad-based curriculum, both within and
outside the major, at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
5. The English Department and – most especially – its Writing Program and faculty are
commended for providing the courses (and offering the WPJ) necessary for undergraduate
students to satisfy the University’s graduation writing requirements.
6. The English Department is commended for preserving the diverse suite of undergraduate and
graduate programs in the major during the recent era of budget shortfalls, even though
considerable retrenchment and increased faculty workloads were required to do so.
7. The English Program is commended for achieving graduation rates for first-time freshmen and
undergraduate transfer students that consistently equal or exceed those of both the College of
Arts & Letter and the University as a whole.
8. The English Program is commended for its effective, student-friendly advising structure and
for the clarity of its major advising worksheets.
9. The English Program faculty are commended for the knowledge, expertise, enthusiasm, and
passion for both their teaching and their students.
10. The English Program faculty are commended for their willingness to take on the increased
workload and make the other adjustments necessary in order to maintain its programs and
meet the Department’s FTES targets in the face of heavy attrition in the number of
tenured/tenure-track faculty.
11. The English Department staff, despite their reduction in numbers in recent years, are
commended for the strong morale and hard work in providing the needed support to the
English programs, the faculty, and their students.
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12. The English Department is to be commended for the efforts it has made in implementing a
clear sustainable assessment plan.
13. The English Program is commended for carrying out a detailed and thoughtful Focused
Inquiry as part of their Self-Study. It is among the best that the members of the review team
have ever seen.
Commendations to the College of Arts & Sciences and/or Academic Affairs:
14. The Dean of Arts & Letters is to be commended for (1) providing a separate budget line for
the Composition program and (2) investigating the possibility of establishing a free-standing
Composition program as a way of resolving the internal conflict within the English program.
15. The Dean of Arts & Letters and the Office of Academic Affairs are commended for their
efforts in trying to resolve the internal conflicts within the English Program, and particularly
for authorizing five new tenure-line faculty hires in the past three years.
16. The English Department faculty, both lecturer and tenure-line, are commended for bringing
the Department back from a point of crisis at the time of the review and creating what is now a
stable and forward looking atmosphere in the English Program.
17. Department Chair David Toise is to be commended for his leadership in helping the English
Department weather the internal divisiveness that had plagued it in recent years.
Recommendations to the Department:
1. The Department work with the College Dean to develop a department budget that would allow
for some strategic roll-back of class size, including a reduction of the number of mega-format
(120 cap) sections without raising class size in other areas of the curriculum.
2. The Department is urged to review the wait times involved for students using the Writing
Center and, if it finds they are a barrier to students using the center, look to develop strategies
for reducing them.
3. The department is urged to examine the curricula for ENGL 5 (formerly ENGL 1A) and
ENGL 20 to determine whether there is a disconnect between the content of ENGL 5 and the expectations placed on students enrolling in ENGL 20.
4. The Department should review its committee structure in order to reduce the increased
amount of time faculty have been obligated to devote to committee work in recent years due to faculty attrition.
5. The Department should clarify the faculty scholarship expectations necessary for tenure and
promotion and ensure that these expectations are clearly communicated to junior faculty.
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6. The Department should seek funding from the College or elsewhere in order to equip part-time faculty/lecturer offices with sufficient computers to meet the needs of the faculty sharing those offices.
7. The English Department should work with OAPA to further strengthen its assessment plan by
(1) developing a rubric for evaluating how undergraduate programs are meeting their learning goals and (2) identifying a process by which the assessment results would be incorporated into program planning.
8. The English Department should work with OAPA to complete work on the development of an
assessment plan for evaluation of the English Department’s graduate level offerings.
9. Any further expansion of internships and experiential learning should only be undertaken after
it has been evaluated as part of a broader discussion of faculty workload.
10. The Department and Dean should work together to develop a long-term Department hiring
plan for tenure-track faculty in order to alleviate workload demands on current tenure-line
faculty and fill gaps in the English Program curriculum. One goal of the hiring plan should
be to achieve the minimum 60% tenure density identified by the Dean as necessary for
program stability (See p. 18).
Recommendations to the College of Arts & Letters:
10. The Department and Dean should work together to develop a long-term Department hiring
plan for tenure-track faculty in order to alleviate workload demands on current tenure-line
faculty and fill gaps in the English Program curriculum. One goal of the hiring plan should
be to achieve the minimum 60% tenure density identified by the Dean as necessary from
program stability (See p. 18).
Recommendation to the Faculty Senate:
Based on this program review, the Self-study report prepared by the Department of English and
the external consultant’s report, the Review Team recommends that all of the Department’s
degree programs be approved for six years or until the next scheduled program review
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I. English Program Overview
The English Department is one of the eleven academic units that make up the College of Arts &
Letters. At the time of the review the Department offered the following programs:
At the undergraduate level:
BA degree in English
BA degree in English w. Pre-Credential Preparation
Minor in English
Minor in Creative Writing
Minor in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)
TESOL Certificate A
At the post-baccalaureate level:
MA degree in English
MA degree in TESOL
Certificate in Teaching Composition
TESOL Certificate B
In addition to the above, the Department houses the University’s writing program and is
responsible for overseeing the University’s graduation writing requirements. As the review’s
external consultants noted:
“Unlike most other departments on campus, English is a point of contact for first-time entering students,
since all are required to take writing courses during their first year of enrollment.” They went on to point
out that “Retention statistics nationwide have long confirmed that the vast majority of students who drop
out of higher education do so in their first year. As such, the English Department provides a pivotal source
of support for CSUS students during this crucial first year . . .”
Commendation 2: The English Program is commended for the role it plays as an early and key point of
contact for first-time students and the University when they arrive at Sacramento State.
In the interval since the previous program review in 2007 the English Department was merged
with the former Learning Skills program. The merger proved to be a fairly complex process that
involved granting retreat rights to two tenured full professors from Learning Skills, Dr. Robby
Ching and Dr. Sue McKee, as well as integrating Learning Skills lecturers into the English
Department’s part-time hiring pools. Additionally, by the time of the review the Department had
begun offering a “stretch” curriculum (a two-semester sequence comprised of ENGL 10/10M and
ENGL 11/11M) as an alternative to the remedial pre-baccalaureate composition classes offered
by Learning Skills. A three-year longitudinal survey showed that the stretch curriculum offered a
noticeable improvement over the more conventional remedial course sequences: students both
pass the stretch course at higher rates than those taking the standard remedial course sequence
and equal or exceed them in meeting their GE writing requirements as well.
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Commendation 3: The English Program is commended for its successful merger with the Learning Skills
program and the subsequent development of an effective two-semester “stretch” curriculum to serve as an
alternative to the traditional remedial pre-baccalaureate composition classes.
A second – and more crucial – set of changes to affect the English Department since its previous
review has come about as a result of the severe budget reductions experienced by the CSU, and
Sacramento State in particular, during that period. This led to fiscal retrenchment on the part of
all campus programs and the English Department has been no exception. The most serious result
of this was to exacerbate the decline already underway in the number of tenure/tenure-track
faculty in the Department while, at the same time, increasing the workload of those who
remained. This, in turn, has intensified the divisions and divisiveness among Department faculty
that had been growing for a number of years. Both of these factors – the decline in tenure-line
faculty and the internal strife among faculty – underlie much of what follows in this report.
A. Program Response to Previous Program Review Recommendations
The English Department responded to 13 recommendations made by the previous 2006-07
program review. The majority of these (11) dealt with program assessment; as a result, the
Department’s response to these will be addressed in the section of this report dealing with
assessment, below. The other two recommendations to which the Department responded were:
The Department should update the job descriptions of each current staff member.
The Department should consult with the Office of Human Resources and the University
UARTP Committee as part of an effort to reduce the draconian elements of its current
part-time personnel policies and practices.
In both cases the Department took the recommendations seriously. The position descriptions of
its staff members have been updated, and it now has in place a revised, streamlined set of policies
and procedures for the evaluation of its part-time personnel.
B. Undergraduate Programs
The English Department offers a baccalaureate degree (BA) in English along two different tracks,
an English minor with a choice of three different concentrations, and a TESOL certificate for
undergraduates. (See Appendix I.)
The English BA degree is a 45-unit major that offers the student an overview of British and
American literary traditions, an introduction to literary theory, genres, basic language and
linguistics, composition, and literary analysis. The major is relatively loosely structured,
allowing the student to select 27 of the required units as electives. Since the previous review, the
Program did away with the Area Concentration requirement for the major. This was done in part
to increase student flexibility in the major and reduce the time to degree, but it was also
necessitated by the Department’s inability to offer an increasing number of courses on a regular
basis as a consequence of the ongoing loss of tenure/tenure-track faculty.
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The English BA with Pre-Credential Preparation is a 51-unit major and has more specific and
rigid requirements than the regular English BA. It is a pre-credential program and is intended for
students planning to seek a secondary school level teaching credential in English. Currently the
program is coordinated by Dr. Susan Fanetti. She advises all the students, reviews graduation
applications, and completes reports that are required by the CA state organizations that oversee
teacher credentialing and preparation. The coordinator position currently carries no assigned time.
The English minor (21 units) and Creative Writing minor (18 units) are relatively flexible, each
allowing students to identify 12 elective units to complete the program requirements.
The TESOL minor (18 units), however, is highly structured, and provides undergraduate students
with an introduction to the theory and practice of teaching English to non-native speakers. The
TESOL Certificate A is a 15-unit supplemental program of study that provides advanced training
in language instruction and is designed primarily for individuals who want to teach English
abroad. Although not a teaching credential, it is nonetheless recognized as evidence that the
student has advanced training in the subject.
Enrollment by undergraduate program is shown below. (Data for minors and certificates were
unavailable.) For the period since the previous program review enrollments (i.e., number of
majors) remained constant, with approximately one in eight majors in the College of Arts &
Letters having been in the English program.
Table 1. Enrollment by Undergraduate Program 2008-2012
Program 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
English BA 465 494 470 470 421
English (Pre-Credential) 0 0 0 4 38
Total 465 494 470 474 459
% College Total 12.1 12.4 13.1 13.0 `12.6
Source: Fall 2013 Department of English Fact Book
The Department’s undergraduate 4-, 5-, and 6-year graduation rates for first-time freshmen and
the 2-, 3, and 4-yr graduation rates for undergraduate transfers equaled or exceeded those of the
College for the cohorts for which data was available. In general, however, the Departments rates
for these groups fell below the corresponding rates for the University, a pattern that was true for
the College as well.
C. Graduate Programs
MA Degree in English: Graduate students may pursue a 30-unit MA degree in English in one of
three different concentrations: Literature, Composition, or Creative Writing. All concentrations
allow students considerable choice of electives. The literature concentration may be completed
by either thesis or exam (depending on GPA), the Composition concentration requires a thesis,
while the concentration in Creative Writing is by exam.
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The Teaching Composition Certificate is 15-18 unit supplemental program of study that provides
advanced training in composition teaching. It is not a degree program or teaching credential per
se, but represents formal recognition of completion of an organized, integrated, specialized
program of study and is intended to prepare graduate students who wish to teach English
composition at the college level.
The TESOL Master of Arts (MA) is a 33-unit program designed for students who intend to teach
English to non-native speakers in community colleges, adult education programs, or abroad. In
addition to the TESOL MA program the Department partners with the Peace Corps to offer the
Master’s International Program option, which allows students to earn credit toward a Master’s
Degree in TESOL in conjunction with their Peace Corps volunteer service.
The TESOL Certificate B is an 18-unit graduate level equivalent to the undergraduate TESOL
Certificate A described above. Again, it is not a teaching credential but it does provide advanced
training in language instruction and is recognized as evidence of such.
The TESOL offerings, like other programs in the Department, have been affected by several years
of budget cuts (see below). Enrollment for both graduate and undergraduate TESOL programs at
the time of the review was approximately 25 MA students and 40 seeking a certificate, with
approximately seven minors per semester.
The following table shows enrollment trends in the Departments graduate degree programs since
the previous program review.
Table 2. Enrollment by MA Program 2008-2012
Program* 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
English 102 91 70 55 49
English (Composition) 23 33 28 20 11
English (Creative Writing) 27 28 29 28 20
TESOL 43 38 32 22 31
Total 195 190 159` 125 111
% College Total 36.9 37.7 34.8 35.4 35.4
Source: Fall 2013 Department of English Fact Book
Trends show the graduate enrollments decreasing over this period among all degree types. A
comparison with the College data, however, suggests that this is likely a reflection of general
trends in the College of Arts & Letters and not necessarily the result of program-specific factors.
Commendation 4: The English Program is commended for offering a broad-based curriculum, both
within and outside the major, at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
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D. Service Offerings The university requires that all undergraduates satisfactorily complete, with a grade of “C-“ or
better, two-semesters of college-level English Composition courses, ENGL 5 and ENGL 20 (or
their equivalent) in order to graduate. In addition, students must satisfy the Graduation Writing
Assessment Requirement (GWAR) in order to graduate, the first part of which requires taking
either ENGL 109M or 109W, or by challenging the course by way of the Writing Placement for
Juniors (WPJ) examination.
Table 3. FTES and WTU by program/track 2010-1013
Source: Fall 2013 Department of English Fact Book
Note: Percentages don’t total to 100% due to rounding.
The English Department, specifically the composition faculty, is responsible for providing the
course offerings that enable students to meet these requirements, a responsibility that utilizes a
large majority of the Department’s instructional resources. As Table 3 illustrates, in the three
years leading up to the program review, 81.2% of the Department’s WTU went toward offering
the courses in composition, which provided 69.6% of the Department’s generated FTES.
E. Impact of Budget Cuts
All programs offered by the English Department have been affected by the budget cuts of the past
decade. The attrition in the tenured faculty ranks due to the inability to replace those who have
retired or otherwise separated, has made it difficult for the Department to offer as rich a schedule
of classes as it has in the past. An increasing number of classes are offered with less frequency
than they had in previous years and in other cases curricular areas go uncovered with faculty no
longer available to teach them. While the Department has been diligent in ensuring that a
sufficiently rich mix of course offerings is available each semester to allow students, with careful
planning, to meet their degree requirements, the student’s flexibility in scheduling and the range
of course options to choose from have been reduced. Class sizes have increased and the use of
‘mega’ sections (those with enrollments of 120 or greater) for lower-division survey courses has
increased, while lower enrolled classes, particularly specialized upper-division offerings, are now
subject to greater risk of cancellation. The higher enrollment caps on classes, particularly the
mega-format sections, are of concern not only because of increased faculty workload but because
it means that, to accommodate the larger size, compromises have to be made in the way classes
are offered, reducing the quality of the class experience for the student.
Program FTES FTES % WTU WTU %
Composition 4335.9 69.6 3091 81.2
BA: Literature 983.6 15.7 330 8.7
BA: Pre-Credential 222.6 3.6 84 2.2
Creative Writing 138.4 2.2 78 2.1
TESO L 551.4 8.8 219 5.7
Total 6231.9 3802
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The case of the TESOL program is illustrative of this. Since the onset of major budget cuts
beginning in 2008 the English Department has managed to preserve the TESOL programs, but at
the expense of significant retrenchment. At the graduate level the Department has retained the
certificate but has reduced the number of graduate program prerequisites. Class sizes have
increased while the frequency of class offerings has been reduced, with many courses only being
offered every third semester. The number of full-time faculty in the program (nominally 4, but
realistically 3 ½) are now not quite sufficient to cover classes and the program has now begun to
use lecturers.
Commendation 5: The English Department and – most especially – its Writing Program
and faculty are commended for providing the courses (and offering the WPJ) necessary for undergraduate
students to satisfy the University’s graduation writing requirements.
Commendation 6: The English Department is commended for managing to preserve its diverse suite of
undergraduate and graduate programs in the major during the recent era of budget shortfalls, despite the
fact that considerable retrenchment and increased faculty workloads were required to do so.
Recommendation 1: The Department work with the College Dean to develop a department budget that
would allow for some strategic roll-back of class size, including a reduction of the number of mega-format
(120 cap) sections without raising class size in other areas of the curriculum.
F. Students
Table 4 shows the general profile of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in programs
offered by the English Department for the five years leading up to the program review. Table 2
(above) provides a breakdown of enrollment by specific program.