Rhetoric, Composition and Teaching of English

About the Program

The Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE) program is housed in the University of Arizona's English Department as one of four graduate programs. We offer both a Ph.D. track and an M.A. track. The M.A. program is designed for students intending to teach in the public schools and community colleges. This is ordinarily a two-year course of study. Students who are working full-time as teachers in local schools may take longer, up to a Graduate College limit of six years.

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Graduate students in RCTE are often distinguished for their public engagement and action-oriented research, published scholarship, and innovative teaching. They have been selected as Carson Scholars, Crossroads Collaborative Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, and Scholars for the Dream. Our graduate students are often recognized for their teaching and have received a range of teaching and research awards including the 1885 Dissertation Fellowship Award, the Centennial Achievement Award, the Marshall Foundation Fellowship, and the Patrick Dissertation Award. RCTE dissertation projects are broadly engaged and interested in social change and justice.

RCTE MA and PhD students teach in our award-winning Writing Program, which provides varied opportunities to teach a range of first-year and upper-division courses, and gain additional professional experience within the program in areas such as human subjects-based research, textbook and curriculum development, assessment, transfer and placement, and writing center support. Graduate students receive small-group mentoring and support from experienced and committed teachers throughout their first year, with continued support throughout their time teaching in the program. We facilitate opportunities for research assistantships across the university as well.

RCTE retains a remarkable job placement rate with around 97% of our students who do national searches placed in tenure-track positions. Our graduates have been hired at universities around the country such as the University of Utah, Arizona State University, the University of South Carolina, the University of Hawaii, California State University, and the University of California, Irvine. Some of our graduates have accepted leadership positions in community colleges such as Oakland Community College and Bay Mills Tribal Community College, while others select employment in the not-for profit, private, or government sectors, including national research labs and think tanks.

RCTE is connected to over twenty schools, departments, research and outreach centers on our campus, and we are broadly involved in collaborations with diverse community and education groups. RCTE has established a multitude of opportunities for graduate students to work with other outstanding graduate programs on our campus, including American Indian Studies, Mexican American Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and the School of Information. Our students also have access to our department's programs in English Applied Linguistics, Literature, and Creative Writing, as well as to exciting opportunities in the Institute of the Environment and the Institute for LGBT Studies.

The University of Arizona is a premiere public research university that is fully engaged with the cultures and peoples of the Southwest even as it is always at work on issues of global and transnational import. RCTE in particular is proud to serve our land-grant mission to engage in action-oriented scholarship that recognizes the strengths and addresses the needs and potentials of the diverse communities that surround the University. In RCTE, we view rhetoric and composition as arts at work in the world that must be studied and practiced in the context of broader cultural and public interests.

Established in 1988, the program became known for its commitment to Western understandings of rhetorical history and theory, composition pedagogy, writing program administration, and community literacy. Recently, we have shifted our program strengths and commitments to social justice pedagogy and leadership, comparative technologies of writing, labor practices and administration for diverse environments, strategies for sustaining languages and literacies among diverse populations, community partnerships, and learning from the historical legacies of those silenced under Western global expansion.

For more information, please contact the English Department's Graduate Program Coordinator, Stephanie Mao ([email protected]).