Mission Statement
Writing is essential to all academic and civic endeavors. Writing enables the scholarly exchange of ideas; it facilitates civic and professional participation; it inspires creativity and innovation; and it transforms students into leaders, activists, inventors, scientists, artists, teachers, and citizens of the world.
The mission of the CWRU Writing Program is to foster a thriving and inclusive culture of writing for our campus community, so that:
- our students develop sophisticated communicative strategies for their current and future academic, professional, and civic endeavors; and,
- our faculty colleagues and community members have access to the knowledge and pedagogical practices that will support their own and their students’ development as writers.
Who We Are
The Writing Program includes a community of faculty members from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. We hold doctorates in Humanities, Social Science, and STEM fields, and we have been trained in diverse research methods and scholarly approaches. We use our research backgrounds and our continuing pedagogical development activities to support CWRU’s educational mission through our writing-intensive course offerings, our co-curricular support for all writers, and our pedagogical leadership.
Focusing on Writers
The Writing Program supports the development of all writers in our campus community, including undergraduate and graduate students, as well as CWRU faculty, staff, and community members. Our work emphasizes the agency of every writer: we provide instruction and support that enables each writer to make informed decisions about how to communicate most effectively with diverse audiences, in multiple contexts, and for a variety of purposes.
We are committed to creating inclusive spaces in which students and faculty are challenged to encounter differences (of background, of experience, of perspective, and/or of intellectual commitments), to listen rhetorically, and to respond creatively, compassionately, and thoroughly. In our work, people are respected and complex topics and concepts are considered critically and responsibly.
We support undergraduate student writers through the the sequence of courses that undergraduates complete to satisfy the Written, Oral, and Multimodal Communication (WOMC) component of the Unified General Education Requirements (UGER), which ensures that students have multiple opportunities to compose texts that will contribute to their academic, civic, and personal growth.
This commitment is enacted through teaching and consulting in the following contexts:
Pedagogical Values
As a faculty we are committed to the pursuit of excellence in all of our instructional activities and to fostering an inclusive and thriving culture of writing on campus. To enact this commitment to pedagogy, we provide opportunities and resources for faculty who teach writing to develop and grow their knowledge, skills, and experiences in their areas of study and interest in accordance with best practices and the needs of our students.
Just as we offer our students multiple ways to demonstrate their achievement of our programmatic learning outcomes, we extend ourselves the same professional and creative courtesy as we demonstrate our commitment to our shared pedagogical values. The core values and the example strategies below are drawn from scholarship and research on the teaching of writing and from our own classroom experiences and expertise. As a program, these values guide our work in supporting the community of CWRU writers.
For example:
- Applying best practices for teaching writing
- Teaching writing as a complex set of rhetorical activities and processes
- Designing activities that promote opportunities for writers’ development
- Using inclusive methods of teaching, including ensuring accessibility
- Varying assignments to allow students to demonstrate their development in multiple ways
For example:
- Fostering students’ belief in their abilities and ownership of their learning
- Modeling inclusive language and behavior
- Promoting linguistic diversity and authorial agency
- Providing accessible mechanisms for classroom engagement
For example:
- Providing challenging and innovative content relevant to student outcomes
- Ensuring that course content reflects multiple perspectives
- Using content that promotes critical reflection
- Sequencing content to support student development
- Balancing content with attention to writing processes
For example:
- Articulating clear and connected criteria for evaluation
- Aligning assessment practices with assignments, instruction, and course outcomes
- Using a range of assessments to support learning for all students
- Providing timely feedback that allows writers to develop effective drafting and revising processes
- Crafting meaningful feedback that highlights ethical writer-reader relationships
- Acknowledging the range of factors that impact students’ performances
- Adjusting assessment practices when necessary
For example:
- Promoting a comfortable, respectful, and productive learning environment in office hours, WRC consultations, and workshops
- Collaborating with writers to set goals and address immediate concerns
- Listening actively to assess writers’ needs and promote critical questioning and thinking
- Providing practical advice for developing writing overall
For example:
- Adjusting teaching based on self-reflection and assessment of student learning
- Improving student achievement of learning goals through course development
- Exploring new pedagogies that meet the demands of evolving teaching and learning contexts
For example:
- Engaging with peers on teaching and student learning
- Sharing effective teaching practices
- Participating in faculty development opportunities
- Contributing to the positive teaching & learning environment on campus
CWRU Land Acknowledgement
In recognizing the land upon which we reside, we express our gratitude and appreciation to those who lived and worked here before us—those whose stewardship and resilient spirit makes our residence possible on this traditional homeland of the Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Wyandot Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and other Great Lakes tribes (Chippewa, Kickapoo, Wea, Piankishaw, and Kaskaskia). We also acknowledge the thousands of Native Americans who now call Northeast Ohio home.
Case Western Reserve University and the greater Cleveland area occupy land officially ceded by 1100 chiefs and warriors who signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
Please visit the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture website to learn more about the practice of land acknowledgements.