As a first-generation college graduate, I have a personal (and professional) interest in the intersection of academia and the "real world," and in interrogating the insular and definitionally exclusive spaces of higher education that can seem worlds away from most people's daily realities. I and my students invent and revise rhetoric that can be effective in realms beyond the humanities and beyond the university.
Recent shifts in educational systems and technological possibilities have made writing across (and beyond) the curriculum even more dynamic, exciting, and relevant: Institutions of higher education are diversifying, growing, and broadening their mission statements to accommodate changing populations, even as rising tuitions augur even more significant changes. In addition, the democratizing effects of the Internet and its accompanying social magic are forcing us to reinvent ideas about access, communication, learning, sharing, and memory within the university and the college.