Transfer in an Urban Writing Ecology: Reimagining Community College-University Relations in Composition Studies

This book represents a deep and nuanced treatment of a student population that makes up an increasingly robust segment of higher education. As costs rise and dual credit and concurrent enrollment programs ramp up, understanding how those students navigate the cultural and bureaucratic transition between areas of the system gives valuable insight to readers.- Holly Hassel, North Dakota State UniversityThis book combines historical and mixed-methods research, writing with student and faculty colleagues, and personal reflection to urge, document, and enact more transfer-conducive writing ecologies. Examining the last century of community college-university relations in composition studies, it asserts that two-year college faculty and students have long been important but marginalized participants in disciplinary and professional spaces. That marginalization perpetuates class- and race-based inequities in educational outcomes. Countering such inequities requires reimagining disciplinary relations, both nationally and locally.Transfer in an Urban Writing Ecology presents findings from research into transfer student writing experiences at the University of Utah and narrates the first five years of program development with Salt Lake Community College faculty and students, discussing the emergent, and sometimes unexpected, effects of these collaborations. The book offers the authors' experiences as an extended, imperfect case study of how reimagining local disciplinary relations can use writing and rhetoric studies to challenge pervasive academic hierarchies, counter structural inequities, and expand educational opportunities for students. Additionally, this book:addresses the relative absence of two-year colleges and their faculty and students in disciplinaryhistoriography and studies of writing knowledge transfer;articulates disciplinary responsibilities for contributing to what critical higher educationresearchers call transfer receptive culture;offers precedent for faculty at two- and four-year institutions looking to foster more transferconducivewriting ecologies; andpresents a range of student- and faculty-authored perspectives on principles for partnership thathave emerged from inter-institutional collaborations in the Salt Lake Valley.