Ben,

I've been in your position in a tangential way a number of times.  As a
linguist in an English department with a strong writing/comp/rhet
program, I would attend the research and teaching presentations of
candidates as well as the open faculty reception and occasionally
accompany the candidate and another faculty member or two for a meal.
At the reception or over a meal I would bring up the topic of grammar
and explore the candidates views.  What I would be looking for is
whether he or she was able to think about grammar in terms of options
for constructing meaning rather than in terms of formal correctness.
Very few candidates I've talked to have been able to.  I would provide
my response to the committee on their survey forms, but not being a
search committee member I had little more input than that.  I would
suggest though that you might use a faculty member such as a linguist to
explore these questions with the candidate in a less formal setting.
The fact that it's not a comp/rhet faculty member or a search committee
member nor is it a formal setting reduces the stress on the candidate
and does not so strongly suggest that the committee has an agenda the
candidate may not be aware of.

Herb

We are going to hire a compositionist for the 2008-2009 academic
year and will conduct interviews of finalists within the next
few weeks.

I am on the search committee and want to be sure that the candidate
I recommend places a high value on the importance of grammar and
punctuation in the writing process.

The WPA Outcomes statement for first-year composition puts a
knowledge of such conventions rather low on the list:

http://members.cox.net/ipeckham/outcomes.htm

Any suggestions for questions for the interviews?

       Ben Varner

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