February 2007: An Anniversary (cont.)

We prepare our students for teaching positions as well. I hadn’t realized when we began how many positions would be open to them. Not professorships in major universities, at least not yet, but our students occupy adjunct positions in colleges all over this country.

And perhaps most important of all, we give our students a community of other writers they can relate to and rely on for the rest of their lives. What a gift in a career that is otherwise so completely solitary!

For ten years we have been growing, learning. Our faculty keeps shifting. Some, like me, stay because they love teaching, because they love the community we have come to be. Some move out as they commit to demanding contracts, then move back in when their time opens up again. Others simply move on and new faculty come in. But we share, every single one, a solid place as professionals in this field and a deep concern for the students we teach.
Other programs are springing up around the country now, some in direct imitation of ours, others in patterns of their own. And I am proud to see them, proud to be part of the flagship program that paved the way for them.

Mostly, though, I am proud of our students, of all ten years' worth of our students. Many have not only moved on to publish and to teach but to become movers and shakers in our field.