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ROWAN UNIVERSITY WRITING ARTS CLUB CONSTRUCTS COLLABORATION AND SUCCESS
by Amanda Spadel Thinking about joining a club on campus that relates to your major? Do you know about the Rowan University Writing Arts Club? RUWAC is a relatively new student organization that is petitioning to become chartered by the Student Government Association in March of 2018. The club’s official mission statement is “Rowan University Writing Arts Club serves as a gathering place for writers of all kinds. We celebrate and practice the craft of writing by promoting student work on our website and by collaborating with other organizations. We are involved in some fun things this semester! This semester, the club is focusing on bringing writers from all disciplines into the same space to generate diverse ideas and collaborate on club projects. So far, the club hosted multiple writing workshops addressing things like character creation, dialogue writing, and setting descriptions. During the month of November, RUWAC is writing a collection of short stories in celebration of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month.
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The club’s graduate mentor, Emily Strauser, explains the club’s current project: “We’re currently working on a collaborative zine of short stories. Each of these short stories is connected, meaning that they all coexist in the same fictional universe. Specifically, our stories all take place in a world where mythical creatures and humans have to learn to coexist. We’ll be exploring different themes and creating unique, realistic characters in a world of our own creation.”
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All of the club meetings in November will be dedicated to brainstorming, writing, and talking about each member’s story, and then, the club members will collaboratively turn their stories into a zine for the RUWAC website. Club president Morgan Douglas says, “We will spend the first couple of weeks of December working on the final touches--editing, layout, and possible photoshopping. We plan on turning our collection of stories into a zine, as well as publishing it on our website.”
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Julie Darpino, secretary of RUWAC, talks about how the project will affect the club dynamics. “This project will create a new discourse experience for our members to learn to communicate ideas and broaden their ability to conceptualize writing text within a larger project. Each individual's ideas will not be lost in the process, but honed and encouraged to contribute to the final piece. The collaborative environment of the Rowan University Writing Arts Club will bring our members together.”
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Club treasurer Rachel Saltzman also notes how this project will help to better establish RUWAC as a student organization on campus: “A lot of students are probably intimidated by joining clubs because they’re not sure how it will end up, if it’s even worth it. But perhaps once they see some really awesome creative work being generated by their peers, they’ll want to join in.”
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The club is also known for holding it’s P5 event every semester. P5 (Portfolio Pajama Pizza Pity Party) is held during the last club meeting each semester, and club members get together to work on their final portfolios, get feedback from their peers, and eat pizza provided by the club. P5 will be held on December 19th this semester!
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Morgan Douglas says: “As the club’s standing president, it fulfills me to observe our committed academics as they strive to understand the principles of writing by practicing not only the things that they are learning in the classrooms, but by exemplifying their gained knowledge and experiences through brainstorming, undergraduate publications, and undertaking the responsibility of mentoring each other in the process.”
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Rowan University Writing Arts Club meets every Tuesday at 4:00pm until 5:30pm in Robinson Hall, room 105 this Fall semester. All majors are encouraged to come!
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