The 1960s: a time of protests and civil rights marches, sit-ins and speak-outs, free-love rallies and anti-establishment Yip-ins. Yet going largely unnoticed was another powerful revolution: the explosive growth of the two-year college. In The Profession of English in the Two-Year College, those on the front lines of this movement record how they successfully taught a new kind of student in a re-imagined postsecondary institution.

Those students lived at home, worked to make ends meet, and were the first in their families to attend college. They were Vietnam veterans, adults years distant from high school, fulltime workers, and struggling immigrants. To teach them, faculty invented new curricula, novel instructional methods, and innovative teaching materials - and in doing so also invented a blueprint for successful two-year college English teaching.

The Profession of English in the Two-Year College features essays by major figures including Mark Reynolds, Elizabeth Nist, Marilyn Smith Layton, and William Costanzo, concluding with a selective bibliography by Howard Tinberg. Featuring essays about curricular innovation, ESL, the value of professional conferences, and the crucial role that two-year colleges have played in technological innovation, this volume shines a bright light on an institution that has become a mainstay of American higher education.