UTEP Visit

The first major trip of this semester was a visit to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I knew the name "El Paso" since when I was in elementary school because "El Paso" and "Houston" were the names of two lines of shoes produced by a Japanese shoe company. I didn't know much else about El Paso before--but I learned a lot about it during this trip.

El Paso is located in the far western tip of Texas, bordering Mexico and New Mexico. Across the river is Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city with shops and restaurants. It's also fairly close to Las Cruces, New Mexico. El Paso has a strong economic ties to Juarez, and many of the UTEP students cross the border every day to attend classes. UTEP boasts itself to be the only major research institution where a majority of the students are latino/latina.

UTEP has a relatively new Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Composition. It is well-staffed with 11 faculty members, including Evelyn Posey, the Department Chair, and Maggy Smith, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies. The program has a strong focus on intercultural rhetoric. The program brochure even says: "We don't just study intercultural rhetoric--we live it." It also has undergraduate and graduate certificates in bilingual professional writing. Naturally, there seemed to be a strong interest in language issues not only in the program but also across the university, including Dean Howard Daudistel, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting.

UTEP faculty include some of my favorite people. Kate Mangelsdorf, who has been active in the L2 writing community at CCCC, was the one who invited me and coordinated the visit. Isabel Baca is also active at CCCC. Helen Foster and Carlos Salinas are my rhet/comp friends from Purdue--in fact, we started together, took most of the courses together, and finished at about the same time. In addition, I was thrilled to find out that Maryse Jayasuriya (my officemate from 410 Heavilon Hall) and her husband Brian Yothers (also from Purdue) were teaching at UTEP. We got to spend some time together.

During my visit, I sat in on Kate's graduate seminar on language and culture in the writing classroom, and enjoyed the lively discussion on critical thinking and critical pedagogy. I also had a meeting with 18 graduate students (including two from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces) who asked me intriguing questions about my work, about writing for publication, and other issues. They were all bright and enthusiastic--I enjoyed meeting all of them!

My talk in the afternoon on language differences in the composition classroom was well attended. I hope people in the audience enjoyed the talk and the discussion afterwards as much as I did. At the end of the session, Isabel gave me a nice gift basket she had made just for me (thank you, Isabel!).

I also enjoyed the conversations over Mexican food with some of the students and other colleagues, including Elaine Fredericksen and Tony Stafford. It was especially great because of my inclination for Mexican food. (In fact, I made fajitas for dinner tonight.)

Thank y'all for your hospitality. I had a great time in El Paso!

¡Muchas gracias a todos!