Yes, a technorhetorician can get tenure

Members of the Computers and Writing community are aware that it is all too common to find themselves or colleagues in tenure trouble. Interestingly, technorhetoricians are not the first identifiable group often in tenure jeopardy. Indeed, it has been commonplace among rhetoric and composition faculty to expect those who assume discipline-related administrative positions (e.g., Director of First-Year Writing, Writing Center Director, Writing Across the Curriculum Director) to become vulnerable at tenure time. Based on my eleven years of administrative experience and more years as senior faculty who works with mentoring junior colleagues, both in my own department and at other institutions, I will look closely at the problem of gaining tenure in English departments when one is not a literary specialist. Then, using Ernest Boyer's (1990) new definitions of scholarship as a springboard, I will suggest several possible approaches to establishing a successful tenure case.