Permits Not Needed for 5000, 7000, 8000

We have removed the registration requirement that 5000, 7000, and 8000 hours need a permit from the grad adviser. You can register yourself for these hours on your own, in other words — I’ll go through and audit everything in mid-December, but I’d prefer for you all to do it right the first time. So here’s the flowchart:

5000 – we use this course for professional development and to pad out a semester’s registration when you need a certain number of hours. For example, if you need 9 hours to keep your teaching assistantship, and you and I have agreed that you will take 6 hours of organized coursework in the spring, then you’ll need 3 hours of 5000 in order to adhere to the 9-hour rule. Everyone should sign up for section 027 (my section, CRN 32292)

7000 – this is Qualifying Exam preparation, and you may take as many hours of this as you need (i.e. 3, 6, or 9) — sign up for section 027, please, CRN 32667

8000 – Dissertation hours — sign up for this if you have already passed your qualifying exam, or expect to in January or February. The graduate school rules state that you must have at least 12 hours of 8000 before you can graduate. If you’re a teaching assistant, you’ll far exceed this number because of the 9-hour rule, but if you’re not a teaching assistant, you’ll sign up for 3 hours every semester. If it looks as if you’ll finish early, you can always sign up for 6 or 9 hours in the semester you graduate. Better to put such a large registration at the end, however; delays are common in dissertation-writing, as I’m sure you’ve heard. You must register for 3 hours of 8000 in the semester you graduate (Grad School rules). If you’re a local student, sign up for section 027 (CRN 32719). If you’re online and in-state, sign up for section D21 (CRN 32743). If you’re online and out-of-state, sign up for x21 (CRN 32744)

Please note that these x21 sections do NOT show up in lists of courses offered. You’ll need to enter the proper CRN directly. Don’t ask me why.

Extra Section of 5371 Online for Fall

Due to demand (5371 is required for both the MATC and the PhD), we’re expanding the capacity of Dr. Zdenek’s online version of 5371 by opening another section. Well, not actually opening, but “de-stacking,” since every online course is made up of sections D21 and D31, “stacked” together to make one course. In 5371’s case, we’ll continue to enroll you in 5371, D21 or D31, but you’re going to have 2 separate online discussion sections in order to accommodate the large section sizes.

Dr. Zdenek wants to have 2 discussions on Monday night, one earlier and one later — I don’t know how many of you may still be at work, but an earlier section (let’s say 5:00) is one possibility. We’re going to have to work this out between you, me, and Dr. Zdenek, but today’s news is that everyone who was on a waiting list will be registered.

Section D21 is for all students except online, non-texas-resident, doctoral students, who must take D31. Regardless of this billing section number, this number probably won’t have anything to do with when you meet in the MOO. It’s a little odd, but it’s one way of dealing with relatively late developments.

Paying, Registering, Browsers

With our old system, you would have seen a bill the minute you register. It appears that under our new system, a bill doesn’t generate until the semester is almost complete (summer 2 is almost done), so I anticipate bills posting very soon.

If you have not registered for a course for which you’ve been given a permit, please go ahead and register yourself — there’s no point in waiting.

Once bills generate, you’ll get some type of message to your TTU email account (so watch for that), and once the bills generate, you’ll see a bill by logging onto “my TECH”/”raider link”. You will be able to pay your bill online as well.

One other thing to note is that you may need to use Firefox as you internet browser instead of Internet Explorer, because for some reason, the new version of IE doesn’t work with our system, and you wouldn’t be able to pay your bill online.

May Workshop survey available

Online PhD students, please fill out a post-workshop survey that will be live through the end of July:

http://english.ttu.edu/Survey/TakeSurvey.asp?SurveyID=91H9m40K8781G

Fees vs. Tuition for non-resident online doctoral students

To whom it may concern,

Students in Texas Tech’s online doctoral program who are non-Texas residents are billed a particular way, and this way was dictated by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) when the program was approved in 2004. Instead of tuition, which the THECB wants to apply to in-state students and on-campus non-resident students, these online non-residents are billed a special instruction fee called Distance Ed Instruction Fee for more or less the amount of out-of-state tuition. At the same time, these students’ out-of-state tuition is waived so that the net effect is a fee bill that looks exactly the same as any other non-resident doctoral student attending classes on-campus without other fee or tuition waivers.

Regardless of what the fee bill itemized line says, this special instruction fee should be treated as tuition for these students. If you have any questions about this program or its fees and tuition, please don’t hesitate to write joyce.carter@ttu.edu or call 806.742.2500 #237.

Sincerely yours,
------------------------------------------------------
Joyce Locke Carter, Ph.D.
Director of Graduate Studies, TCR
Texas Tech University
Box 43091
Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
ph: (806) 742-2501 #247 fax: 806-742-0989
program information: www.english.ttu.edu/tcr

May Workshop 09 Presentations

This year, we’re experimenting with something we talked about last year: having different lengths and formats depending on where you were in the program. Thus, we have scheduled 30 minute slots for upperclassmen and 20 minute slots for newbies.

1. What’s the purpose of presentations? First, it’s nice to get to know everyone and their scholarly interests. Second, we all have a stake in helping each other hone the various extracurricular parts of this profession, and presenting your work in front of a critical body of peers is a big part of what we do, whether it’s at a conference, in a job-talk, or in a lecture. We hope to establish a culture of sharing our work and sharing our criticism with each other — we figure it’s better to hear all about your presentational weaknesses from friends than from foes.

2. Who is the audience? Well, obviously your primary audience is your classmates and your faculty. But bear in mind that we’re hoping to channel the rest of your academic discipline when we ask you questions, so it is probably best to picture this audience as a typical group you’d see at a national conference like the STC, the 4C’s, ATTW, CPTSC, IEEE, or any number of specialized national conferences. In other words, this presentation isn’t an occasion for you to chat or tell a story — it should be taken as the kind of talk that’s worth proposing, flying across the country to give, and (for audience) to highlight in our program as worth listening to.

3. Can you speak for the entire block? No.

Both formats should allow for plenty of time for questions and formative criticism from the audience. Long-format talks should run no longer than 12-15 minutes, leaving 5 minutes for questions and 5 minutes for feedback (and 5 minutes for a break). In other words, when we’re on a longer-format schedule, we’ll start each speaker on the 30-minute mark, promptly. I’ll cut you off if you go past 15 minutes. Short-format talks should aim for 5-6 minutes of content, 4-5 minutes of Q&A, and 4-5 minutes for critique (leaving 4 minutes for breaks between speakers). We’ll start each short-format speaker promptly on the 20-minute mark.

If you are paired with someone in a round-table type of format, then you can pool your slots, but still allowing for lots of time for questions and feedback.

4. What should I speak about? Upperclassmen should speak about their own research, either something that they’re working for quals, a recent seminar paper, or their dissertation. Newbies should, by the very nature of a tight format, focus on something pithy, either from their seminar papers or literature reviews, or from a problem they’ve discovered in doing a literature review, or in their own work situation (something that intersects with rhetoric and/or technical communication).

And newbies, you’re not getting sold short — the CPTSC conference, widely praised as energetic and useful, requires a 3-5 minute position talk (robustly enforced) to allow for lots of interaction and engagement.

Regardless of your topic, please bear in mind that the 5 minutes or the 12-15 minutes you have in front of your academic field should be spent explaining, problematizing, detailing ideas that people want to hear. It never hurts to ask, “so what?” and imagine your audience asking themselves the same question while you’re speaking.

You will have a podium and an auditorium and a big screen that can show a networked computer, or even Powerpoint (if you’re into that kind of thing). Please be mindful of our need (as fellow academics and as students/faculty in your program) to hear you and engage with you — don’t turn your back on us as you enjoy your own powerpoint presentation. Use this occasion to make eye contact, to share your hard work, and build value for yourself and your academic program.

Because of the program’s stringent time/attention requirements, you should do what you should always do before giving any presentation at any conference: practice.

Continual Enrollment for Online Doctoral Students

Based on a couple of situations that arose in the past year, the TCR faculty met on May 1, 2009, and crafted the following policy that provides for breaking your continual enrollment based on extraordinary circumstances such as illness or losing your job.

For those of you in the online PhD program, you know that when we write you with our acceptance letter, we make it very clear that you’re expected to do the following things: take 4 courses per year, come to every May Workshop until you graduate, and maintain continual enrollment. This language isn’t just our program’s internal policy; it’s also the way we redefined “doctoral residency” with our graduate school when we proposed the program. And this redefined residency is then the basis for calling you “full time students” at a level of 3 hours per semester instead of 6 hours. So the requirement is good for you in multiple ways.

The faculty had its own reasons for wanting you to make good progress in coursework, based on our history with other online students and our concern that without such a requirement, you might take 5 years to complete coursework, thus harming the quality of the degree. So it’s a good policy from our perspective.

We knew that our policies would need to be modified based on emerging realities. Thus we have agreed that if you need to break continual enrollment, you can request a hiatus of no more than 12 months by petitioning the TCR faculty in writing, explaining your extraordinary circumstances in detail. We envision that reasonable requests will involve serious illness or serious, unforeseen economic hardship (such as being laid off), but other rationales may be persuasive. If your petition is accepted, the faculty will readmit you at the end of the period requested; if you do not return to continual enrollment at that point, you will be dropped from the program and will have to reapply and compete with all the new potential students applying at that time. If your petition is rejected, you will need to maintain continual enrollment or be dropped from the program. You may receive only one such a hiatus, which may include only one May Workshop.

This policy is effective immediately.

May 09 PhD Annual Review Schedule

May 09 Review Schedule

CRN’s for Variable-Credit Courses, Fall 2009

Since you can’t tell what CRN’s you’ve received permits for, especially for variable credit courses like 5000, 7000, and 8000, here’s a list of CRN’s you can use. The list of organized courses (http://www.english.ttu.edu/tcr/Grad_Courses/GradFall2009.asp) contains CRN’s for those courses.

ENGL 5000 (professional development hours) – use section 027, CRN 14858 for 3 hours
ENGL 7000 (qualifying exam hours) for 3, 6, or 9 hours, use 027, CRN 22936
ENGL 8000 (dissertation)

• For local students, use section 027, CRN 22937 for 3, 6, or 9 hours
• For online students who are Texas Residents, section D21, CRN 21742 for 3, 6, or 9 hours
• For online students who are non-residents, section D31, CRN 21743 for 3, 6, or 9 hours

Summer 2009 CRN’s for 7000, 8000

Here are CRN’s for summer 1 and summer 2 sessions. Unless you’re trying to match up a GPTI appointment or the requirements of financial aid or fellowship), you’ll probably sign up for summer 1.

7000 027 (SI=29351, SII=29352)
8000 027 (SI=29353, SII=29354)