Principles of Partnership

In December 2017, a group of Salt Lake Community College and University of Utah writing faculty, transfer students, and Writing Studies Scholars alumni met at SLCC’s Redwood campus to brainstorm a vision statement for our emerging interinstitutional disciplinary collaborations. The resulting document, Articulating SLCC-U Partnerships in Writing Studies [LINK], was finalized in June 2018. The heart of this document was the Principles for Partnership statement, which opens with the following declaration:

Over four years of iterative collaboration, program development, and community building, writing faculty and transfer students at SLCC and the U have arrived at seven core principles from which we agree our partnerships should proceed: (1) recognize inequities; (2) be colleagues; (3) value difference; (4) center students; (5) address material conditions; (6) educate for social justice; and (7) engage with communities.

The statement, which unpacks each of these principles, became an agent of change in our writing ecology. We describe those changes in Transfer in an Urban Writing Ecology, but we were unwilling to close the book by patly reiterating the principles. Rather, we wanted to “crack the statement back open and invite colleagues who have been involved in these partnerships—U and SLCC faculty, graduate students, and transfer students who’ve been on our research team—to extend and complicate the principles.” Eighteen colleagues took the opportunity to write “mini essays” responding to one or more of the principles from their own perspectives and experiences. Those mini-essays constitute Part III of the book, titled “Emergent Principles for Partnership.”

We did not want the book to be the final word on these principles, either.  Since the manuscript was submitted for publication in 2019, we have continued to invite collaborators in our transfer initiatives to keep contributing mini-essays that engage with these principles. Those contributors have included undergraduate transfer students, graduate students, faculty colleagues, and staff and community members who have been essential partners in our transfer initiatives. We have published these contributions here, and we will continue to add more mini-essays year to year, as our transfer writing ecology continues to emerge and our principles for partnership evolve with it.

1. Recognize Inequities

Our hierarchical postsecondary system—nationally and within USHE—accords higher status and devotes more per-pupil resources to selective admissions research universities than to open-admissions community colleges. Those differentials have implications for the relative professional status of faculty, for the material conditions and labor structures in which we teach and learn, for the backgrounds and identities of the students at our respective institutions, and, most troublingly, for those students’ access to educational, professional, and civic opportunities. Our inter-institutional partnerships must proceed from an open recognition of the power differentials and difficult histories these inequities have wrought and a commitment to establishing more equitable relations as educators and students. Ultimately, our work together is motivated by a shared commitment to challenging the social injustices reproduced by the hierarchical educational system in which we labor and learn.

2. Be Colleagues 

Forging more equitable relationships requires viewing and treating one another as colleagues. While faculty at both institutions have different ranks and roles, and a range of transdisciplinary interests, they are connected through the ever-evolving discipline of writing studies. As co-constructors of knowledge and pedagogy, transfer students are also colleagues. Together, we are working to strengthen writing relationships across and beyond our institutions. Through such local re-imagining, we seek to model and ultimately effect change in community college-university relations across the national writing studies community.

3. Value Difference

Faculty professional differences are partly a function of the distinctive institutional missions they have inherited…Our inter-institutional partnerships must proceed from open recognition of these differences in institutional mission and in our student demographics. We must value those differences, even as we seek to challenge the inequities that sometimes result. We must appreciate the wide-ranging pedagogical, professional, and disciplinary engagement demanded of writing faculty in our respective settings. Further, we must work together to honor differences among students and support their efforts to achieve their varied personal, professional, and community goals. We must strive to build writing faculties and programs at both institutions that reflect and respond to such diversity.

4. Center Students

Writing faculty at both SLCC and the U have legitimate investments in sustaining their distinctive professional, disciplinary, and institutional identities. Despite these investments, our inter-institutional partnerships must proceed from a shared recognition that the educational experiences and opportunities of students—particularly the often structurally disadvantaged students at SLCC—are more important than institutional, professional, or disciplinary “turf.” Students enroll at SLCC trusting that our institutions are working together to offer an accessible, affordable pathway to a bachelor’s degree, and we have a moral obligation to center their interests and well-being. Fulfilling this obligation requires involving students, both before and after transfer, in collaborative program development and decision-making. Such involvement requires intentionally creating spaces for their voices and listening with intent to their experiences and ideas, even—especially—when what they say challenges faculty and department self-perceptions.  

5. Address Material Conditions

Recognizing inequities, being colleagues, valuing difference, and centering students will require us to work within, across, and beyond our institutions to address the material conditions that inhibit students’ access to learning and constrain faculty teaching and professional engagement. This work includes finding resources within our departments and institutions and collaborating to attract additional resources to support students and faculty. It will also require us to engage politically—within USHE, with state and federal policymakers, and with regional and national professional organizations—to address the broader structures that subvert fair labor conditions for faculty and equitable access to the learning experiences we aim to provide for all interested students across our institutions.

6. Educate for Social Justice

Both community colleges and universities have long been under pressures to deliver instruction that prioritizes the interests of employers, and such instrumentalism is particularly prevalent at community colleges. The desire for fairly compensated and personally meaningful employment is often the primary goal motivating students to pursue postsecondary education, and two- and four-year institutions have a shared obligation to provide students with well-designed education for rewarding careers in a rapidly changing economy. However, as writing teachers and students, we also have a common commitment to literacy education that [equips] students to compose fulfillingly, read critically, and engage socially. In the face of neoliberal policy movements that would reduce postsecondary education to a narrow economic good, we must work together across institutions to defend our pedagogical commitments to writing education for personal growth, community responsibility, democratic participation, and social justice.

7. Engage with Communities

As faculty and students, we belong to a range of national and international communities, as well as multiple communities rooted in and around the Salt Lake Valley. These place-based relations connect us to one another, and how we tend to our relations with each other and our communities is always making and remaking the places where we live, labor, and learn. Our inter-institutional partnerships must proceed from a shared commitment to listening and responding to our communities as we develop initiatives, programs, and resources. We must continuously ask ourselves, “Who isn’t here?” And then we must act to address that absence, which will often require us to change. Such responsiveness demands humility and reflexivity, and, in some cases, a willingness to think outside the conventional values and reward structures of our institutions. It requires the community-based expertise of faculty at SLCC and the U, and, perhaps most importantly, the investments and insights of students at both institutions. Through these engagements, we can build a stronger and more diverse network of relationships that advance social justice for students, faculty, and our communities.