I’m looking for your feedback in thinking about the direction of our program.

I sense a tension between what our students want (or think they want), what interests faculty, and the expectations of the emerging discipline of professional writing. I’m trying to figure out how these things should be addressed.

1. As I see it, a significant majority of our students cite their primary interest as creative writing. That’s fine and good. However, taking three or four creative writing courses is not a good way to prepare for most professional writing careers (e.g. technical writing, corporate communications, copywriting, journalism, etc.). This is only a problem inasmuch as students and faculty have the expectation that a PWR degree will prepare you for a job. It can, but not if you focus on creative writing, and this is as much a matter of attitude as course selection. Our program requires courses in writing for the web, technical writing, and revising and editing. We also require an internship. However, students who are interested in creative writing often do not approach these courses with the level of intensity that one would expect from someone expecting to try to enter the field of editing or technical communication.

This is not a criticism, per se. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be a technical writer or an editor.

2. This leads me to my second point: faculty interests. The history of our program is a little strange. Many of the courses we have were created by faculty who are not teaching in the program. That is, David, Vickie and I were hired on in the middle of the process (I was hired after the major had already been approved by the university). We’ve made significant changes. However, we have many courses that reflect the more traditional liberal arts interests of faculty. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy teaching creative writing and courses like Contemporary Poetics. But such courses are not what you would call the “core” of professional writing programs.

3. So what would a more conventional PWR curriculum look like?

Well, here is what our major looks like:

Here are the eight required courses:
1. Intro to PWR (entry-level course)
2. A creative writing course (entry-level course)
3. Rhetoric (theory/philosophy course)
4. Writing in Cyberspace (new media-professionalizing course)
5. Technical Writing (professionalizing course)
6. Revising and Editing (professionalizing course)
7. Internship (capstone/professionalzing course)
8. Senior Seminar (capstone/professionalzing course)

That looks ok to me for a PWR major.

But now look at all the other courses on the catalog:

“creative writing” courses:
Writing Fiction
Writing Poetry
Writing Creative Non-Fiction
(one of the three above fulfills the creative writing requirement)
Writing Children’s Literature
Writing Sports Literature
Experiments in Creative Writing (new media/creative writing)
Advanced Creative Writing (proposed)

professionalizing courses:
Business Writing
Writing in Cyberspace II (which we have never offered)
Grantwriting (which we have never offered)
Writing for Community Development (proposed)
Publishing (proposed)

theory courses:
Contemporary Poetics
Evolution of Writing

You can see what we are trying to build our number of professionalizing courses, but we’ve only offered one of the elective ones so far.

So here’s my question, and it’s purely hypothetical b/c I don’t think we’d make this kind of change, but anyway… Let’s say we had TWO writing majors: a creative writing major and a professional-technical writing major.

The CW major would require Intro, Rhetoric, Revising & Editing, Senior Sem., at least 12 credits from the CW courses listed above, and 9 credits of general PWR elective

The PTW major would require Intro, Rhetoric, Revising & Editing, Cyberspace, Technical Writing, Internship, Senior Sem, 6 Credits of “professionalizing courses,” and 6 credits of general PWR electives.

The differences are subtle but significant. The CW major could avoid cyberspace, technical writing, and the internship. Of course, these are also the courses that provide the most direct job training. The PTW major could avoid taking any creative writing courses.

Anyway, HERE is my question–to our PWR students: which of these hypothetical majors would you choose? Or would you prefer to stick with the current one?

If we offered a 400-level Advanced Technical Writing Course, would you take it? Would you be interested in Cyberspace II?