The API that RobotC created returns an integrated angular rate as a positional angle. How do we get the raw angular rate? There are times when the positional angle is convenient but there are other times when the angular rate is needed.

I haven't worked with the raw sensor values first hand, but if you want the raw data from the sensor, you could configure it as a potentiometer or light sensor in the Motors and Sensors setup, instead of a Gyro.

Yes. But if we do that then we loose the ability to get the nice calibrated absolute angle.

Is it not possible to manually and dynamically configure the sensor port during your program?

You could manually switch between it set as a potentiometer and gyro, but that could prove to be problematic. The gyro needs ~1.1 seconds to properly calibrate, so I'm not sure that you could rapidly switch back and forth.