The 2022 Conference Newsletter is now live! Check it out and review the conference website before we convene in person and through Zoom 13-15 October.

The TYCA-SW Newsletter Editorial Team welcomes submissions for its future issues.  We welcome reflections, student perspectives, and any content that may interest our membership.

Interested authors should reach out to tyca.southwest@gmail.com.

Conference Theme: Bodies in Space: Fostering Connections in Theory and Practice

Dates: 13-15 October 2022

Locations: In Person at the Aloft Hotel, Oklahoma City, OK, and Virtual through Zoom

Registration Information:

• Register for the conference through the official EventBrite registration page. Click the hyperlinked text to get to the registration website.

• Check out the TYCA-SW 2022 Annual Conference website to plan out your conference. Click the hyperlinked text to get to the conference website.

If you have any questions leading up the conference, please contact the conference chairs at tycasw2022okc@gmail.com.

The Two-Year College English Association — Southwest, representing two-year college English teachers in six states (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana), supports academic freedom for all college instructors. We also stand against proposals to forbid the teaching of Critical Race Theory in institutions of higher education and any calls to deny or revoke tenure for those professors who engage with a decades-long discourse in their classes. 

While we stand in solidarity with faculty at four-year institutions where tenure is under fire, most faculty at two-year colleges lack this security. Nevertheless, we join with our university colleagues to assert that quality education everywhere is based on academic freedom. College instructors are field-experts and should never fear contract non-renewal or any other penalty for teaching the material they have deemed relevant to student learning. 

Any attempt by any government entity to dictate what college teachers do in their classrooms is unconscionable. Scholars should be free to teach, research, and ask critical questions regardless of political punditry.

Therefore, we stand in support of academic freedom and job security for all faculty and against ignorance and heavy-handed political intrusion into college classrooms.

Conference Co-Chairs Toni McMillen and Sarah Fish were pleased to coordinate the first-ever virtual TYCA-SW Conference, bringing us together, though we stayed physically apart. You can check out the sessions and conversations we had this year within our conference program.

The First-Ever Travel Awards Announced

The TYCA-SW Scholarship Committee is happy to announce the inaugural travel award recipients for the 2021 Virtual Conference. They have received this honor based on the merits of their proped presentations:

• Linda Kapocsi, Collin College
• Rosalinda Valenzuela, Collin College
• Jessica Goodman, Oklahoma City Community College

The First-Ever Assignment Innovation Track

Another first this year was our inclusion of an Assignment Innovation Track, a way to asynchronously share unique approaches to assignments and offer another way to present at the conference.

Check out the cool work shared below:

Brianne Sardoni, Social Media and Big News: Fact or Opinion? Low Stakes Assignments for Understanding Credible Sources

Kimberly George, Creating Change Portfolio End-of-Semester Project

The conference recognizes these contributions on the same level as a presentation.

The 2021 Conference Newsletter is now live! Check it out and be sure to register for the virtual conference at the Eventbrite page.

The TYCA-SW Newsletter Editorial Team welcomes submissions for its future issues.  Interested authors should contact either Sarah Fish or Toni McMillen (see newsletter for more details).

Conference Theme: “Accentuate the Positive”: Examining the Successes and Failures Navigated during COVID-19

Schedule: 10 AM-2 PM on 15 and 22 October 2021
Check out the specific sessions offered on each day by reviewing the Conference Schedule Overview.

Format: Virtual, including a Presentation Track and an Assignment Innovation Track

Cost: $45 Event Registration, including one-year membership to TYCA-SW

To Register for the 2021 Virtual Conference, click HERE (redirects to an Eventbrite web page).

Conference Theme: “Accentuate the Positive”: Examining the Successes and Failures Navigated during COVID-19

Dates: 15 and 22 October 2021

Format: Virtual, including a Presentation Track and an Assignment Innovation Track

Deadline for Proposal Submission: 15 June 2021

Conference Submission Portal: Click Here for the Google Form.

Background: At the 2019 TYCA-SW annual conference, keynote speaker Dr. Cristina Cedillo (University of Houston-Clear Lake) asked us to think about how our students’ embodied experiences were and could be part of the classroom.  She reminded us that our literacies and languages provide opportunities to redefine and reshape Englishes and thus engage our writing projects in and out of classrooms.  And she reminded us that the realities of food and housing insecurities, political spaces that erase and remove communities, and a host of other responsibilities are carried into our classrooms. 

And then by March 2020, COVID-19 drastically, fundamentally altered all of our learning and teaching situations.  2020 was a crash course in the very things Cedillo had asked us to consider—and for many of us, we could literally see into the lives of our students and they into ours as we met virtually, trying to create learning spaces that maintained our institutional requirements and navigated the many new responsibilities we faced. 

More than a year into this new teaching situation, the TYCA-SW Conference chairs would like our 2021 Annual Conference to be a space to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, how we innovated, how we failed, and ultimately what adjustments we’ve made to account for our students’ lives and our own outside the classroom.  What changes have you made that were successful?  What material have you read that has made you rethink teaching?  What have you learned about how to best balance your demands?  What can you share with our membership to help as we all keep moving forward. 

The Call for Proposals: Because the 2021 Annual Conference will be virtual, the chairs invite proposals for a Presentation Track or an Assignment Innovation Track, both treated with equal weight for the conference.  Accepted proposals for both tracks will receive additional information to prepare in advance of the conference. 

For the Presentation Track, those interested should propose more traditional conference-style presentations to be delivered virtually, with individual 15-minute presentations placed within a panel, or proposals for a group panel related to the conference theme.  Proposed presentation topics could include new (inter)disciplinary knowledge that has informed adjustments to your teaching, learning experiments you tried out in the classroom to meet specific student demands and the results, or approaches to course design to maximize student engagement in virtual learning situations.  This list is not exhaustive, so the chairs encourage interested members submit proposals for additional ideas they think align with the conference theme. Successful proposals will explain the exigence for the presentation, its value to conference attendees, and its connections to the conference theme. 

The Assignment Innovation Track asks for an original assignment innovation created over the last year to better address the educational context and outside lives of students paired with an explanation/rationale for the assignment.  Successful assignment innovation proposals briefly explain the assignment (what the assignment requires, context used, learning outcomes met) and offer a rationale for the assignment tied to institutional contexts and research about student learning or approaches to teaching.  Material for this track will be made available on the TYCA-SW website to share with all membership and the national organizations we’re connected with (NCTE, TYCA National, CCCC).