This article reports on one university's experiment in resurrecting and reanimating the composition lecture, a one-hundred-plus student section dubbed "MonsterComp," including the process, outcomes, and lessons learned. Although this restructuring of the first-year composition course was partially motivated by administrative pressures,…

Using a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) model of education, an English composition instructor designed an honors section of first-year composition to evaluate current best practices in the field of teaching writing to STEM undergraduates. The students, all first-year engineering majors, conducted guided research on best…

Published scholarship in writing assessment has expressed a growing consensus around the value of locally-controlled assessment practices, as well as the relationship between writing assessment and social justice. At the same time, this scholarship has little representation of student perspective. This project responds to these disciplinary…

The University of Michigan-Dearborn Writing Program and Writing Center serve an increasingly large number of recent immigrants, international students, and students who as children immigrated to the United States. The Writing Program and Writing Center have for a decade developed curriculum and support services geared specifically toward meeting…

This program profile demonstrates how the first-year writing program at Oakland University has engaged contingent faculty in research, assessment, and program development over the years, employing evidence-based practices to improve individual classroom instruction and to redesign the entire first-year curriculum. The authors describe their…

Teaching reading in terms of its connections to writing can motivate students to read and increase the likelihood that they find success in both activities. It can lead students to value reading as an integral aspect of learning to write. It can help students develop their understanding of writerly strategies and techniques. Drawing on qualitative…

In the following dissertation, I develop heuristics for collaboratively and sustainably contributing to community infrastructures through writing. Based on the findings of an observational study on how students enrolled in my first year composition and service-learning class created new media writing projects with community partners and were able…

According to the Michigan State University (MSU) course catalog, Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRA) 125--Writing: The Ethnic and Racial Experience is a themed-based Tier I (first-year) writing course that focuses on "drafting, revising, and editing compositions derived from readings on the experience of American ethnic and racial…

This writing program profile examines the work of Dr. Linda Adler-Kassner and the ways in which she has redefined writing and the place of first-year writing at her university. The profile highlights Adler-Kassner's development of an "open systems" curriculum and her use of assessment for program visibility and continuous program…

In this critical program profile, the authors provide an analysis of the historical, political, theoretical, and practical circumstances that influenced the development of Oakland University's undergraduate major in writing and rhetoric. Through an analysis of the developmental process and the major itself, this article explores many separate, yet…

Reviews briefly the literature associated with the Conference on College Composition and Communication's "Students' Right to Their Own Language" statement. Explores the status of standard English at community colleges in Michigan, as expressed in first-year composition course objectives and descriptions. Considers the history of the…