ROWAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF WRITING ARTS
  • Home
  • Programs
    • Creative Writing Minor
    • WA Major
    • Minors >
      • Publishing and Writing for the Public
      • New Media Minor
      • Technical & Professional Writing Minor
      • Writing Arts Minor
    • Certificates of Undergraduate Study >
      • CUGS in Creative Writing
      • CUGS in Publishing and Writing for the Public
      • CUGS in Technical and Professional Writing
      • CUGS in Writing Studies for Educators
      • CUGS in Professional Communication
      • CUGS in Writing for the Environment
    • 4+1 (B.A.+M.A.) Program
    • Degree in 3
    • Graduate Programs
  • Advising
  • WA Major
    • Writing Arts Journey
    • Required Courses >
      • General Education >
        • Science and Mathematics
        • Social and Behavioral Sciences
        • Literature, History, Humanities, and Language
      • Introduction to Writing Arts >
        • History & Materiality of Writing
        • Issues in Writing
        • Technologies & the Future of Writing
      • Methods Choice >
        • Communication Theory
        • How Writers Read
        • Tutoring Writing
      • Creative Choice >
        • Creative Writing I
        • Writing Children's Stories
      • The Writer's Mind
      • Writing, Research & Technology
      • Literacy Studies >
        • Situating Writing
        • Writing With Technologies
      • Senior Seminar: Methods of Analysis and Evaluation of Writing
      • Portfolio Seminar
      • Free Electives
    • Elements of Language >
      • American English Grammar
      • Editing for Publication
      • Introduction to Anthropological Linguistics
      • Linguistics
      • Rhetorics of Style
      • Semantics
    • Concentrations >
      • Creative Writing >
        • Creative Writing I
        • Creative Writing II
        • Film Scenario Writing
        • Fundamentals of Playwriting
        • Magazine Article Writing
        • Professions in Writing Arts
        • The Publishing Industry
        • Screenwriting I: Writing the Short
        • Screenwriting II: Writing the Feature
        • Tutoring Writing
        • Teaching the Writer's Workshop >
          • Publishing & Writing for the Public >
            • Applied Media Aesthetics: Sight, Sound and Story
            • Editing the Literary Journal
            • Environmental Writing & Rhetoric
            • Fiction to Film
            • Introduction to New Media
            • Media Law
            • Online Journalism I
            • Participatory Media
            • The Publishing Industry
            • Publication Layout & Design
            • Photojournalism
            • Professions in Writing Arts
            • Rhetorical Theory
            • Self Publishing
            • Writing for Popular Culture
            • Writing for the Workplace
            • Internship
            • Research Practicum
        • Writing Children's Stories
        • Writing Comedy
        • Writing Creative Nonfiction
        • Writing Fiction
        • Writing Genre Fiction
        • Writing Poetry
        • Writing the Young Adult Novel
        • Internship
        • Research Practicum
      • Technical & Professional Writing >
        • Developing Health and Scientific Literacy
        • Introduction to Technical Writing
        • Medical Writing and Rhetoric
        • Professions in Writing Arts
        • The Publishing Industry
        • Scientific Writing and Rhetoric
        • Tutoring Writing
        • Writing to Bear Witness
        • Writing for Nonprofits
        • Writing for the Workplace
        • Internship
        • Research Practicum
    • WA Learning Community >
      • Publishers
  • Internships
    • Internal Internships
    • External Internships
  • Careers
  • Faculty
    • Faculty Resources >
      • Best Practices in Online Learning
      • Syllabus Requirements
      • HyFlex/Remote Learning
      • Canvas Support >
        • Writing Comedy
      • Accessibility in Online Courses
      • Racial Equity Online
      • Supporting Developmental Writers Remotely
      • Building an Online Classroom Community
    • Acknowledgements
  • Blogs
    • Writer's Insider Blog >
      • Spring 2022 >
        • Writing Diverse Characters
      • Fall 2021
      • Spring 2021
      • Fall 2020
      • Spring 2020
      • Fall 2019
      • Spring 2019 >
        • An Interview with Devon James & Rachel Barton
        • Confession Travel Writer
        • Self-Publishing: A Change in Perspective
        • CCCA Career Fair: Having Your Future in Mind
        • Alumni Success: Entering the Working World
        • Behind the Scenes of Rowan's Hiring Process
        • Writing Comedy
      • Fall 2018 >
        • Singularity Press: Rowan's New Start Up
        • Writing Arts Club
        • How Can We Evaluate Creative Writing?
        • More Inclusive Events for Technical Writers
        • Guest Speaker Manuela Soares
        • Glassworks Reading
        • Spotlight: Taylor Henry, Recently Published Rowan Alum
      • Spring 2018 >
        • Publishing and Writing for the Public: A Reconstructed Concentration
        • What You Think You Know About Technical and Professional Writing is Wrong
        • The Toni Libro Medallion Award Winner: Myriah Stubee
        • An Interview with a Publisher
        • Excellence in Writing Arts Medallion Winner: Sara Skipp
        • The College of Communcation and Creative Arts 6th Annual Student Awards and Showcase Ceremony
        • Rowan Alum, Marissa Cohen, On Self Publishing and Advocacy
      • Fall 2017 >
        • Upcoming Classes in the Writing Arts Department
        • The Writer's Journey Blog by Earl Garcia
        • Rewriting The Department's Social Media Platforms
        • Rowan University Writing Arts Club Reinvents Mission
        • Glassworks Launches Issue Fifteen
        • For Futuristic Consideration: An Exploration of Careers in Writing
      • Spring 2017 >
        • Technical Communication: An Overview
        • A More Inclusive Future for Technical Writers
        • Easing the Tension: Breaking Down Technical and Professional Writing
        • Growing the Technical and Professional Writing Concentration
      • Fall 2016
      • Spring 2016
      • Winter 2015
      • Fall 2015 >
        • 2014 and Prior >
          • Archive
    • The Bulletin Board
    • RU Writing? Podcast
  • Creative Writing
    • CW Faculty Publications
    • CW Course Offerings
  • Writing Center
  • Alumni
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
  • Awards
    • 2022 Emerging Writers Scholarship
    • Denise Gess Literary Awards
    • Excellence in Writing Arts Medallion Award
    • AnToinette Libro Graduate Medallion Award
    • Past Awards >
      • 2008 Hollybush Writing Competition
      • Write Rowan, Right Now! Contest
  • Student Groups
    • Writing Arts Club
    • Avant Literary Magazine
    • The Whit Newspaper
    • Her Campus Rowan
    • Odyssey at Rowan
    • Singularity Press
  • Events
  • ECCCA
    • RU Deptartment of Writing Arts - Home
    • News & Announcements
    • Rowan University - Home
    • Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts at Rowan University - Home
    • Student Groups
  • About Us
    • Our Vision and Mission
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • Our Call to Action

Vision and Mission Statement

our vision and mission
Land acknowledgement
our call to action

Vision Statement

Embedded in the etymology of the verb “to write” is both our warning and our invitation. Related to the words “carve, scratch, or cut,” the act of writing holds tremendous power. It can wound, deconstruct, and destroy. It can also shape, reconstruct, mark, and create. 

Through our teaching, scholarship, service, and advocacy--rooted in a mutual regard of care for self and others--the Rowan Writing Arts Department practices bold, creative, responsible, and mindful mark-making. For that reason, our mantra is now
​
Writing Arts: Making marks that shape the world.

Mission Statement

Introduction: 
Integral to the work of higher education, the teaching of writing enacts the mission of the Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts and the mission of Rowan University. Faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Writing Arts participate in multiple programs, initiatives, research and creative collaborations across campus including the first-year writing program; an undergraduate major with concentrations in creative writing, technical and professional writing, and publishing and writing for the public; a graduate program; and a writing center. 

The Department of Writing Arts holds writing to be one of humanity’s primary means for understanding itself and the world, and therefore writing must be studied, practiced, and critiqued.  As a primary way of understanding and intervening in an imperfect world, writing empowers and problematizes, critiques and repairs, connects and disconnects, oppresses and liberates. In turn, we commit to navigating these extremes to both nurture personal growth and create a sustainable, equitable, just, and life-giving world. Through our teaching, scholarly and creative activity, service, and advocacy, the Writing Arts department harnesses writing's power through consciously engaging anti-racist, anti-ableist practices.  We create spaces for students to acknowledge multiple writing traditions and to connect with and bear witness to complex narratives and differing experiences. In such spaces, students discover for themselves the connective power of writing and the freedom to make their marks within and beyond these traditions.

By acknowledging the diverse desires, commitments, and lived experiences of our students, we enact pedagogical approaches that are inclusive, challenging, and meaningful for both students and faculty. Respecting the perspectives of all those affected by our practices, we are guided by an ethic of care that holds us accountable to our students, our colleagues, our research partners, and our communities.

Teaching:
​
Perhaps more than any other department, the Department of Writing Arts serves the most wide-ranging and diverse body of students represented by the university. We teach students from high school seniors (through LEAP Academy) to graduate students, from all majors and campuses. Our students include first-year college writers, creative writers, multimodal designers and communicators, technical and professional writers, STEM majors writing in health and science fields, literacy educators, future editors and publishers, and future scholars of writing studies. Our classrooms, then, serve as laboratories, where students use language to question, discover, examine, analyze, tinker, mediate, compose, adapt, and remix meaning to harness its power to respond to and help form our world. 

The Department of Writing Arts affirms the inherent value of student voices. We value each of our students as individuals who bring with them important and relevant knowledge, experience, and skilled literacy and literary practices. At the same time, we cultivate writers with a sense of responsibility--not only to themselves--but to others, and we encourage students to embrace their roles as empathetic agents who make notable contributions to their families, relationships, communities, and the world. We assist students in learning to listen for complexity, difference, and congruence, empowered to read contexts and appreciate the deep histories that led to particular language standards and to understand when to meet or when necessary to challenge those standards, and who can flexibly adapt to new writing situations when called or challenged to do so. We strive to help students flourish--to cultivate their own particular capacities--and we support them in intervening in the world in ways that are important and meaningful to them. This form of intervention is not only important in considering how or why we write, but it is also important in considering who we are writing for, and how it will expand our knowledge and purpose in writing. 

In order for students to have transformative, equitable, and responsible learning experiences, the department of Writing Arts is committed to teaching practices that: 

  • cultivate creativity and develop voice, as well as the willingness to take writerly risks with new writing styles
  • support students with different learning needs, abilities, and experiences
  • champion varied and diverse literacy and language practices
  • value writing beyond Standard American English, or White Mainstream English
  • actively oppose racism and other forms of oppression
  • acknowledge each student as a whole person whose well-being comes before academic performance
  • nurture both faculty and students to manage and maintain a work/life balance that leaves them supported and fulfilled 

Scholarly and Creative Activity:
As writers, from the creative to the scholarly, Writing Arts faculty produce work that opens up possibilities for more just, equitable, sustainable, and life-giving worlds. We are committed not only to advocating for and empowering our students, but also to advocating for and empowering the professional and public communities with whom we collaborate. We come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds--from creative writing, to rhetoric, to composition, to literature, to cultural studies. Through this diversity, our scholarship and creative activity contributes toward understanding and shaping the stories that enact our reality. 

As custodians and practitioners of language acts, some of us study how language works and how it can work to harm or oppress, and also how it can work to heal or resist oppression. Others craft new creative expressions, including narratives, lyricisms, and essays that bear witness to and make meaning from diverse human realities, and in turn, forge connections between writers and readers. Still, others study meaning-making beyond standard Englishes and alphabetic texts and promote democratic ways to circulate and perform meaning in accessible and innovative ways. Taken as a whole, our department’s scholarship and creative activity works to cultivate a more just, equitable, sustainable, and lifegiving world, one in which the humanity of every person is witnessed, affirmed, and honored. 

In order to produce creative and scholarly activity that cultivates a more just, equitable, and lifegiving world, we

  • craft innovative, imaginative, intelligent texts that educate, challenge, inspire, persuade, move and delight
  • celebrate collaboratively produced scholarship/creative work as equal in merit to "single-authored" work
  • champion scholarly and creative work that challenges traditional genres
  • offer opportunities for students and faculty to research, connect, and compose together
  • value open-access, freely accessible publishing mediums and venues
  • lead, participate in, and sustain professional and communal organizations

Service and Advocacy:
The Department of Writing Arts believes that service, community engagement, and advocacy are important avenues for social change within our department, college, institution, and beyond. As careful readers of texts and situations, we are trained to recognize how standard practices and policies operate to constrain possible actions and futures. Through this recognition, we seek to solve problems, address inequities, and imagine new futures by reframing policies, practices, and procedures. We advocate for vulnerable and marginalized voices to be recognized as stakeholders in community decision-making. Through our service and advocacy, we honor writing--not only as a practice and a process--but as a form of transformation.

In order to serve and advocate for our creative, intellectual, and neighborhood communities, we:

  • participate at all levels of university self-governance, at the department, college, and university levels
  • interrogate and revise existing policies to create more equity and inclusion for faculty and students 
  • prioritize equitable and transparent service assignments
  • invite service participation and leadership from all faculty members, regardless of status 
  • value community partnerships, whether with local schools, creative writing organizations, local nonprofits, or marginalized groups, and devote our expertise in learning and literacy to participate with and advise educational organizations beyond the university
  • lead and participate in our regional and national professional organizations as a team, rather than as individuals 
  • promote the work of local writers and provide publication and performance opportunities for all writers--from student writers to professionals
  • recruit and develop students through scholarship, academic, and creative opportunities that provide avenues for student self-expression
  • draw from our expertise to provide leadership in professional organizations at both the regional and national level 
  • cultivate relationships between the community and students to foster professional development
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  • Home
  • Programs
    • Creative Writing Minor
    • WA Major
    • Minors >
      • Publishing and Writing for the Public
      • New Media Minor
      • Technical & Professional Writing Minor
      • Writing Arts Minor
    • Certificates of Undergraduate Study >
      • CUGS in Creative Writing
      • CUGS in Publishing and Writing for the Public
      • CUGS in Technical and Professional Writing
      • CUGS in Writing Studies for Educators
      • CUGS in Professional Communication
      • CUGS in Writing for the Environment
    • 4+1 (B.A.+M.A.) Program
    • Degree in 3
    • Graduate Programs
  • Advising
  • WA Major
    • Writing Arts Journey
    • Required Courses >
      • General Education >
        • Science and Mathematics
        • Social and Behavioral Sciences
        • Literature, History, Humanities, and Language
      • Introduction to Writing Arts >
        • History & Materiality of Writing
        • Issues in Writing
        • Technologies & the Future of Writing
      • Methods Choice >
        • Communication Theory
        • How Writers Read
        • Tutoring Writing
      • Creative Choice >
        • Creative Writing I
        • Writing Children's Stories
      • The Writer's Mind
      • Writing, Research & Technology
      • Literacy Studies >
        • Situating Writing
        • Writing With Technologies
      • Senior Seminar: Methods of Analysis and Evaluation of Writing
      • Portfolio Seminar
      • Free Electives
    • Elements of Language >
      • American English Grammar
      • Editing for Publication
      • Introduction to Anthropological Linguistics
      • Linguistics
      • Rhetorics of Style
      • Semantics
    • Concentrations >
      • Creative Writing >
        • Creative Writing I
        • Creative Writing II
        • Film Scenario Writing
        • Fundamentals of Playwriting
        • Magazine Article Writing
        • Professions in Writing Arts
        • The Publishing Industry
        • Screenwriting I: Writing the Short
        • Screenwriting II: Writing the Feature
        • Tutoring Writing
        • Teaching the Writer's Workshop >
          • Publishing & Writing for the Public >
            • Applied Media Aesthetics: Sight, Sound and Story
            • Editing the Literary Journal
            • Environmental Writing & Rhetoric
            • Fiction to Film
            • Introduction to New Media
            • Media Law
            • Online Journalism I
            • Participatory Media
            • The Publishing Industry
            • Publication Layout & Design
            • Photojournalism
            • Professions in Writing Arts
            • Rhetorical Theory
            • Self Publishing
            • Writing for Popular Culture
            • Writing for the Workplace
            • Internship
            • Research Practicum
        • Writing Children's Stories
        • Writing Comedy
        • Writing Creative Nonfiction
        • Writing Fiction
        • Writing Genre Fiction
        • Writing Poetry
        • Writing the Young Adult Novel
        • Internship
        • Research Practicum
      • Technical & Professional Writing >
        • Developing Health and Scientific Literacy
        • Introduction to Technical Writing
        • Medical Writing and Rhetoric
        • Professions in Writing Arts
        • The Publishing Industry
        • Scientific Writing and Rhetoric
        • Tutoring Writing
        • Writing to Bear Witness
        • Writing for Nonprofits
        • Writing for the Workplace
        • Internship
        • Research Practicum
    • WA Learning Community >
      • Publishers
  • Internships
    • Internal Internships
    • External Internships
  • Careers
  • Faculty
    • Faculty Resources >
      • Best Practices in Online Learning
      • Syllabus Requirements
      • HyFlex/Remote Learning
      • Canvas Support >
        • Writing Comedy
      • Accessibility in Online Courses
      • Racial Equity Online
      • Supporting Developmental Writers Remotely
      • Building an Online Classroom Community
    • Acknowledgements
  • Blogs
    • Writer's Insider Blog >
      • Spring 2022 >
        • Writing Diverse Characters
      • Fall 2021
      • Spring 2021
      • Fall 2020
      • Spring 2020
      • Fall 2019
      • Spring 2019 >
        • An Interview with Devon James & Rachel Barton
        • Confession Travel Writer
        • Self-Publishing: A Change in Perspective
        • CCCA Career Fair: Having Your Future in Mind
        • Alumni Success: Entering the Working World
        • Behind the Scenes of Rowan's Hiring Process
        • Writing Comedy
      • Fall 2018 >
        • Singularity Press: Rowan's New Start Up
        • Writing Arts Club
        • How Can We Evaluate Creative Writing?
        • More Inclusive Events for Technical Writers
        • Guest Speaker Manuela Soares
        • Glassworks Reading
        • Spotlight: Taylor Henry, Recently Published Rowan Alum
      • Spring 2018 >
        • Publishing and Writing for the Public: A Reconstructed Concentration
        • What You Think You Know About Technical and Professional Writing is Wrong
        • The Toni Libro Medallion Award Winner: Myriah Stubee
        • An Interview with a Publisher
        • Excellence in Writing Arts Medallion Winner: Sara Skipp
        • The College of Communcation and Creative Arts 6th Annual Student Awards and Showcase Ceremony
        • Rowan Alum, Marissa Cohen, On Self Publishing and Advocacy
      • Fall 2017 >
        • Upcoming Classes in the Writing Arts Department
        • The Writer's Journey Blog by Earl Garcia
        • Rewriting The Department's Social Media Platforms
        • Rowan University Writing Arts Club Reinvents Mission
        • Glassworks Launches Issue Fifteen
        • For Futuristic Consideration: An Exploration of Careers in Writing
      • Spring 2017 >
        • Technical Communication: An Overview
        • A More Inclusive Future for Technical Writers
        • Easing the Tension: Breaking Down Technical and Professional Writing
        • Growing the Technical and Professional Writing Concentration
      • Fall 2016
      • Spring 2016
      • Winter 2015
      • Fall 2015 >
        • 2014 and Prior >
          • Archive
    • The Bulletin Board
    • RU Writing? Podcast
  • Creative Writing
    • CW Faculty Publications
    • CW Course Offerings
  • Writing Center
  • Alumni
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
  • Awards
    • 2022 Emerging Writers Scholarship
    • Denise Gess Literary Awards
    • Excellence in Writing Arts Medallion Award
    • AnToinette Libro Graduate Medallion Award
    • Past Awards >
      • 2008 Hollybush Writing Competition
      • Write Rowan, Right Now! Contest
  • Student Groups
    • Writing Arts Club
    • Avant Literary Magazine
    • The Whit Newspaper
    • Her Campus Rowan
    • Odyssey at Rowan
    • Singularity Press
  • Events
  • ECCCA
    • RU Deptartment of Writing Arts - Home
    • News & Announcements
    • Rowan University - Home
    • Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts at Rowan University - Home
    • Student Groups
  • About Us
    • Our Vision and Mission
    • Land Acknowledgement
    • Our Call to Action