The appointments come as part of a recent effort to expand academic opportunities for students interested in speech and rhetoric, according to Tom Cormen, the chair of Dartmouth's writing program and the current director of the Institute. Cormen was also a member of the committee organized by the College to hire a professor of speech. The search for a second professor of speech will continue into the next academic year, Cormen said.
When considering candidates for the post of speech professor, Cormen said the College's committee sought someone who could speak well, and Compton "gave a terrific talk" when Cormen heard him lecture. Compton was previously a coach and the chair of the School of Communication Arts at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, according to the press release. Donahue, a Fulbright scholar, is currently a professor at the University of Maine, where she has also served as the director of the Composition Program, according to the press release.
Compton will succeed former speech professor Jim Kuypers, who resigned from the position three years ago. Kuypers had served as the speech professor for 10 years and resigned after accusing faculty deans of not fully embracing the speech program. Speech was a full department at the College from 1920 until 1979.
The establishment of a Writing and Rhetoric Program was important, Cormen said, "first of all because students really want it, and also because it's an important form of communication."
In addition to re-introducing speech courses to Dartmouth's curriculum, the Writing and Rhetoric Program will expand the variety of writing courses offered by the writing department and may soon require all freshmen to take Writing 5, Cormen said. Exemptions for Writing 5 were first created due to resource limitations, Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth, not because the department believed some incoming students did not need to take the class.
A shortage of Writing 5 professors remains a problem, however, according to Cormen. Logistical obstacles such as the writing department's struggle to fit all incoming students' schedules into only a few professors' class times, he said, are impeding the elimination of the exemptions.
Currently, not enough professors are available to teach additional Writing 5 courses in fall 2008 and winter 2009 for students who would otherwise be exempt, he said. If the courses were pushed to the Spring term to increase the availability of professors, some students would have to take their First-Year Seminar as sophomores, Cormen added.
Another challenge the Institute will face is to "introduce writing in a way that integrates the arts and sciences," Cormen said. He mentioned several interdisciplinary courses already available for students, and added that the Class of 1962 has recently started an endowment to fund interdisciplinary writing courses. The institute hopes to expand on these offerings, he said.
