CCCC Chair's Address

The CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) Chair’s Address is a speech delivered at the conference’s opening general session that speaks to perceived concerns in the field. The CCCC, formed in 1949, has always had a Chair, the first being John C. Gerber, but the Chair Address is a tradition that begin in 1977 when Richard Lloyd-Jones “became the first Chair to deliver a formal address”^[1]. Many in the field of rhetoric and composition consider the CCCC Chair’s Address to be one of the most anticipated and significant texts of the year.

1 CCCC Chair Duties
2 Trends in CCCC Chairs' Addresses
3 Publication of CCCC Chair's Address
4 CCCC Chairs’ Addresses Chart
5 References

CCCC Chair Duties

Before becoming Chair, one must be elected Assistant Chair, a role s/he serves for a year before becoming Associate Chair for a year. After a year of being the Assistant Chair and a year of being the Associate Chair, one then becomes the official Chair, wherein s/he will deliver his/her Chair’s Address at the CCCC. After serving as Chair for a year, one becomes the Immediate Past Chair for a year.

Each of these four roles—Assistant Chair, Associate Chair, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair—has different duties and obligations. On its official website^[2], the CCCC lists the following duties for each role:

The Assistant Chair

In the temporary absence of the Chair and the Associate Chair, presides at all business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, or the Officers' Committee.
Represents CCCC on the NCTE Board of Directors.
Assists the Associate Chair and the Local Chair with managing the current CCCC Annual Convention.
Develops plans for the subsequent convention.

The Associate Chair

In the temporary absence of the Chair, presides at all business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, or the Officers' Committee.
Directs the program of the current CCCC Annual Convention in accord with Bylaws adopted to govern the convention and the Annual Business Meeting.
Represents CCCC on the NCTE Board of Directors and observes the five meetings of the NCTE Executive Committee during the year he/she serves as Associate Chair.
Attends, as an observer, with the CCCC Chair the five meetings of the NCTE Executive Committee that occur during the period one serves as Associate Chair, and replaces the outgoing Chair as voting member at the post-convention meeting of the NCTE Executive Committee.
Appoints the Resolutions Committee and the Braddock Award Committee.

The Chair

Assumes responsibility for the functioning of the organization.
Plans the agendas for and presides at the business meetings of CCCC, the Executive Committee, and the Officers' Committee.
Represents the organization in making public its policy decisions.
Appoints all special committees, with the exception of those committees stipulated in Bylaws III.B.5.
May authorize committees and define their functions.
Arranges any CCCC program sessions for the NCTE Annual Convention.
Arranges the CCCC program session for the MLA Annual Convention.
Serves as a voting member of the NCTE Board of Directors and the NCTE Executive Committee.
Prepares the Annual Report to NCTE.
Prepares a report to the membership of CCCC after the CCCC Annual Convention.

The Immediate Past Chair

Assumes the duties of the Chair, if the Chair is unable to serve.
Coordinates membership development.
Serves on the Nominating Committee.
Is a voting member of the NCTE Board of Directors.

Trends in CCCC Chairs' Addresses

There have been recurring trends within the 32 CCCC Chairs’ Addresses, and two scholars in particular have published work on these trends.

Ellen Barton, in her 1997 study “Evocative Gestures in CCCC Chairs’ Addresses^[3],” identifies “a tradition of what can be called ‘evocative gestures’—the articulation of broad concerns in the field”^[4]. In examining the first 20 CCCC Chairs’ Addresses, she looks for ways in which the Chairs talk with and/or at one another over topics they deem pertinent to the field and its ongoing attempts at “self-representation” and “professionalism”^[5]. Toward that end, Barton demonstrates four trends:

Teaching: Chairs make accordant gesture about the complexity and importance of teaching composition.
Service: Chairs make accordant gestures about the commitment on the part of composition teachers to help students become valuable and productive members of society.
Research Paradigms: Chairs make contentious gestures about what research model the field should promote, humanistic or empirical.
Disciplinarity vs. Interdisciplinarity: Chairs make contentious gestures about where the field should be housed within the academy, as its own discipline or as an intradisciplinary focus within English departments.

Duane Roen, in his book Views from the Center: The CCCC Chairs’ Addresses 1977-2005, acknowledges Barton’s trends and provides a few of his own:

Scholarly Teaching: Chairs emphasizing the importance of teaching that is grounded in and predicated on resources pertinent to the field.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Chairs emphasizing the importance of scholarly work that addresses pedagogical issues.

Other recent trends include^[6]:

Stake in Writing: Chairs focusing on the clout (or lack thereof) writing teachers have in writerly matters at the academic and legislative levels.
Literacy: Chairs looking outside the academy first in making others aware of the role literacy plays both in and outside the classroom and/or speaking to the literacy practices being implemented or that should be implemented in the composition classroom.
Diversity: Chairs discussing diversity in two corresponding ways: (1) we are not racially diverse as a field, and the diversity we do have in areas of institution, position, and sexual orientation does not mask and, in some cases, can actually exacerbate issues of equity, and (2) we need to put forth more effort in making the salient issues attached to diversity present in our pedagogies and curricula.

Publication of CCCC Chair's Address

A version of almost every Chair’s Address, whether altered slightly or not at all, has been reprinted in an issue of College Composition and Communication [1] (CCC). From 1987 to 1998, the Chair’s Address would appear in the February Issue of CCC; recently, however, the yearly Chair’s Address has been reprinted in the December issue of CCC.