A Statement of Continuity and Commitment from the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition 

On July 24, 2026, the Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English voted to de-charter the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), creating profound uncertainty about the organizational infrastructure that has supported rhetoric, composition, and writing studies for generations. NCTE has since announced that the 2027 CCCC Annual Convention will take place as scheduled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 14–17, 2027. We welcome the opportunity for the field to gather there, even as important questions about the longer-term organizational infrastructure of the field remain unresolved. The Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition (CDPRC) stands in solidarity with CCCC’s leaders, members, affiliated groups, and the many teachers, scholars, students, and programs whose intellectual and professional lives have been sustained through CCCC.

We recognize the grief, anger, and uncertainty this decision has produced. We are also grateful for the labor of the generations who built CCCC as an intellectual and professional home for the field, providing a vital space for exchanging research, developing pedagogical and professional principles, supporting emerging scholars, advocating for writing teachers and programs, and building relationships across institutions, regions, and generations.

The history of the CDPRC is inseparable from that legacy. It began in 1993, when scholars who had been meeting at CCCC under the coordination of Janice M. Lauer, brought together representatives from 56 doctoral programs. At the Consortium’s first formal meeting at the CCCC convention (Nashville), participants defined CDPRC as a research-oriented coalition dedicated to exchanging knowledge, strengthening doctoral programs, supporting graduate students, and securing greater recognition for rhetoric and composition as an academic field.

For more than three decades, the CDPRC has helped make doctoral education in rhetoric and composition and writing studies more visible, connected, and sustainable. Its work has included national surveys and program profiles; workshops and research sessions; regional and cross-program networks; resources used to establish and review doctoral programs; advocacy that secured a formal “Rhetoric and Composition” category in Dissertation Abstracts International; and the Janice M. Lauer Institutional Achievement Award, which recognizes innovation and leadership in doctoral education. Its sponsored programs have addressed graduate pedagogy, mentoring, labor, professional preparation, international graduate-student experiences, the academic job market, and careers within and beyond the tenure track at a range of institution types. That work does not end with the de-chartering of CCCC.

CDPRC remains active. Our purpose has never been reducible to a particular organizational designation, annual meeting, or conference venue. We remain a coalition of doctoral programs and a hub for support, dialogue, research, and information about doctoral education in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies. At a moment when the field’s larger organizational future is uncertain, that mission has become more necessary, not less.

We will provide reliable communication. CDPRC will work to distinguish confirmed developments from emerging initiatives, proposals, and unresolved questions. We will share information relevant to doctoral programs and graduate students while acknowledging what is not yet known.

We will support graduate students and graduate programs. We will help programs communicate with current and prospective students, recent graduates, and alumni. We will work to preserve professional relationships, presentation and publication opportunities, mentoring networks, and other forms of support that individual doctoral programs cannot always provide on their own.

We will advocate for meaningful graduate-student participation. Graduate students must be included not only as a constituency affected by change, but also as partners in the conceptualization, deliberation, and governance of whatever disciplinary organizations and infrastructures emerge. Decisions about the future of the field should be transparent, inclusive, and participatory.

We will continue our programming and community-building work. CDPRC will continue convening its members, sponsoring conversations about doctoral education, and carrying forward its planned programming in forms that do not depend upon a single conference or organizational home. We will remain in dialogue with emerging initiatives and related professional groups while gathering the information and community input necessary to make responsible future decisions.

In preparation for our fall meeting, CDPRC will invite doctoral program representatives, graduate students, recent graduates, and others invested in doctoral education to respond to a central question:

What do doctoral programs and graduate students most need CDPRC to preserve, provide, or advocate for during this transition?

Their responses will guide our immediate priorities and help determine how CDPRC can best contribute to the broader reconstruction of the field’s disciplinary infrastructure.

CDPRC was created because doctoral education in rhetoric and composition needed deliberate, shared, and durable forms of support. That need has not disappeared. It has become more urgent.

Whatever institutional forms writing studies takes next, CDPRC will work to ensure that doctoral programs and graduate students remain connected, informed, supported, and heard.

The Consortium continues.

Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition
September 2026