The Literacy Link, Then and Now by Jim Geistman (former Literacy Link editor, 1993-2002)

Welcome to our Commemorative
Issue of Literacy Link

I guess it all began in S329.

That’s what we called Science West 329 back then. “S” Stood for “Science,” as in Science Building. Gary Thompson waggishly suggested the building was named after the fictional NPR character Dr. Science, not a Tri-City millionaire, as nearly all of the other buildings on campus are.

It was here that Sally Cannon turned over the reins of the Literacy Link to me one fateful autumn day in 1992. I remember Sally—ever the rhetorician—downplaying the difficulty of the job. All I had to do, she said, was to collect about five articles per semester from faculty members—preferably not English faculty—on how they used writing in the classroom.

No problem.

Piece of cake.

Yikes!

As with most major undertakings in my life, I began by making several mistakes in quick succession. The first was the email I sent to all department chairs, requesting that they urge their faculty members to submit articles to Literacy Link.

This, I was certain, would have me swimming—nay, drowning—in manuscripts in no time. Alas, as the deadline date neared, I was still high and dry.

In a panic, I turned to a tried and true method: begging and pleading.

I scurried to faculty members I knew in other departments.

“Could you write an article for Literacy Link?” I begged.

“For what?”

“Literacy Link.”

“What’s that?”

At this point, I made a mental note about the efficacy of sending email requests to chairs.
After offering an explanation—the one I was confident their chairs had given them—I was pleased that some showed interest, and they seemed pleased that I showed interest in how they used writing in their classes. I remember especially a piece by Enayat Mahajerin on his effective use of writing in an engineering class.

So began my sojourn as Literacy Link editor, one I was to come to enjoy each semester, not only for the educational value the articles provided the campus community, but for the connections it allowed me to make around campus. I looked forward to talking to faculty members outside of English and getting their insights into how writing worked for them. I discovered how much reading most had done on their own about the efficacy of using writing in their disciplines. And I came to see how much we all could learn from one another.

Of course, there were occasional glitches. In one winter semester, I was having difficulty getting contributors. Then, just when I thought I had conned—er, convinced—three writers to turn in lengthy pieces, two backed out at the last minute. I made the unilateral decision to cancel the Literacy Link for that semester. Now, this was years before the current presidential administration revealed the wonders of unilateral decision making, and my forward-thinking decision was met with mild displeasure by Dr. Yien.

Luckily, Diane Boehm, who had just come on board as Writing Center Director, knew of some writers with pieces ready to go, and the issue was salvaged. Diane has since become a mainstay in the Literacy Link, and I can’t count the times she offered leads to faculty members who were willing and able to submit interesting and informative pieces.

In those early days, getting the Link ready for printing involved sending to Tim Inman, who would labor over the various articles and somehow get them ready for the printer. Remember that this was before the user-friendly technology that we now enjoy, and importing documents into a graphics program often meant all sorts of surprises: strange spacing, new characters in interesting places, and, sometimes, gibberish. Tim always managed to handle each surprise and set up each issue in a clear and attractive manner. I was grateful then, and I still am.

I like to think that the Literacy Link issues I produced—and those Lynne Graft and I did together—offered sound advice and clear insight into the use of writing in the classroom. Certainly, the issues produced by Lynne and Helen Raica-Klotz have done so. The Link has grown along with the university’s writing program, serving to both disseminate what’s new in the study of writing as well as to archive past practices. I hope it will continue to do so.