User:Cbazerman/sandbox/writingProgram

Writing Programs
Writing Programs organize and administer the writing courses (sometimes called composition) at colleges and universities, initially in the United States, but now in many other countries. These programs can vary in scale from one or two required first-year courses to a full range of lower- and upper-division courses, incorporating majors or minors. While writing programs initiated within English Departments within the United States, a number of them have become independent. Some as well have developed into separate departments offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees. At times Writing Centers fall under their purview, but sometimes they are separate.

Writing Programs are typically concerned with student testing and placement, course scheduling, budgeting, course curricula, students with specialized needs (such as basic writers and second-language writers), pedagogy and teaching development, training of teaching assistants, developing advanced courses, program assessment, and program improvement.

in the United States
While Rhetoric had been central to higher education in the United States through the nineteenth century, the focus was on spoken oratory. Only in the late nineteenth century did instruction in writing become required, with a crucial moment being the creation of a writijng examination and a writing course at Harvard University. Soon, however, writing courses, requirements, and programs proliferated at American universities, though most instructors and administrators in such programs did not have specialized professionalization in writing, but rather were trained in literary studies. Fred Newton Scott, directing the writing program at the University of Michigan as Chair of the Department of Rhetoric during the early decades of the twentieth century, was one of the few exceptions, contributing fresh and informed approaches to the teaching of college writing. Only after World War II did teachers and programs begin to professionalize and the field of composition studies emerge as a field of research, theory, and evidenced practice to support the work of writing programs.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
The Conference on College Composition and Communication was established in 1949 within the National Council of Teachers of Englis h (NCTE), which itself was founded in 1911. The NCTE is devoted to the improvement of the Teaching of English as all educational levels, and publishes 11 journals, 3 of which are specifically focused on higher education: College English, College Composition and Communication, and Teaching of English in Two-year Colleges.

Council of Writing Program Administrators
The Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), founded in 1978, is a national association of college and university faculty with professional responsibilities for or interests in the administration of writing programs, including first year writing, writing across the curriculum, writing centers, independent writing programs, and so on. The organization publishes a journal, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and hosts an annual summer workshop and conference. Two major statements issues by the CWPA are the Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition (initially approved in 2000, and most recently revised in 2014) and the Framework for Success in PostSecondary Writing (approved in 2011 in conjunction with the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Writing Project). The influece of the Outcomes Statement on programs writing programs in the U.S. and elsewhere has been documented in the volume The WPA Statement--A Decade Later.

Following are the presidents of CWPA, with their years in office:


 * Harvey Wiener, 1979-1985
 * Winifred Horner, 1985-1986
 * Linda Peterson, 1987-1988
 * Lynn Z. Bloom, 1989-1990
 * Ben McClelland, 1991-1992
 * Barbara Cambridge, 1993-1994
 * Charles Schuster, 1995-1996
 * Theresa Enos, 1997-1998
 * Douglas Hesse, 1999-2000
 * Kathleen Blake Yancey, 2001-2002
 * Chris Anson, 2003-2004
 * Shirley K Rose, 2005-2006
 * Joseph Janangelo, 2007-2008
 * Linda Adler-Kassner, 2009-2010
 * Duane Roen, 2011-2012
 * Rita Malenczyk, 2013-2014
 * Susan Miller-Cochran, 2015-2016
 * Dominic DelliCarpini, 2017-2018
 * Mark Blaauw-Hara, 2019-2020
 * Susan Thomas, 2021-2022
 * Lilian Mina, 2023-2024

Other journals supporting writing programs.
Assessing Writing

Composition Forum

The Journal of Basic Writing

Written Communication

Well known and exemplary writing programs
Theodore Baird at Amherst.....

etc.

Independent writing programs and departments
Apart from the short lived Department of Rhetoric at the University of Michigan, which was disbanded with the retirement of Fred Newton Scott, writing programs had tended to be housed within Departments of English, typically led and taught by faculty and graduate students trained in literature. Only in 19xx at xxxx did some programs gain independent status or even status as full departments. FILL OUT SOME HISTORY.

Some of the more prominent independent writing programs currently are: