UMass Writing Program

In 2022, the UMass Amherst Writing Program celebrated its 40th anniversary, marking four decades of teaching student writers to examine the intersections of writing, language, and power and learn the rhetorical flexibility needed for their academic, professional, public, and personal lives. The Writing Program remains a vital component of UMass Amherst’s general education program, offering two courses—College Writing and Writing, Identity, and Power—to nearly every first-year student on campus (~5,000) taught by 111 graduate student and lecturer instructors, predominantly from the English department. The Junior Year Writing Program served the 5,472 student writers with junior status across 55 academic departments, and the UMass Amherst Writing Center continues to support the writing success of hundreds of UMass students across all majors and disciplines.

The Writing Program continues to innovate its programs while stabilizing its operations disrupted by the ongoing pandemic. Writing Center Director Dr. Anna Rita Napoleone led the UMass Writing Center through expanding its summer and winter session offerings specifically geared to supporting graduate students working toward completion of high stakes writing projects. All year, the Writing Center maintained a 90–95% utilization rate, far higher than field-wide norms of 50–60%. Co-led by Associate Directors Drs. Deborah McCutchen and Haivan Hoang, the Junior Year Writing Program expanded its support of JYW instructors through targeted professional development pods formed with the goal of growing a campus teaching community, such as the STEM JYW Instructor Working Group, which includes 7–10 faculty from across the College of Natural Sciences

Under the leadership of Faculty Director Dr. Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, the Writing Program expanded its commitment to access and inclusivity in its curriculum and programming. In spring 2022, Lorimer Leonard and Associate Director Dr. Elkie Burnside consulted with two external scholars of writing assessment to guide staff through revising the program’s unique vision, mission, values, and course outcomes. Dr. Burnside used these revised course outcomes to initiate the program’s first year of curricular assessment, designing a digital portfolio process to collect samples of student writing for rubric-based assessment. The program’s Spring Symposium, co-planned with graduate student instructor Stacie Klinowski, deepened professional development around justice-oriented writing, featuring two teacher/student dialogues around single student projects. The program awarded four Social Justice Fellowships, populating a new program web page to circulate fellows’ projects on Writing Bias as a Justice Issue, Student-Designed Writing Assignments Interrogating Media in Writing and If X then Y: A UMass Resource Guide for Writers and Writing Teachers Writing Program faculty also earned an impressive set of fellowships, grants, and awards last year in accessible curriculum design, flexible/hybrid learning models, and DEI integration. Drs. Elkie Burnside and Aaron Tillman were promoted to senior lecturer and also joined UMass’ first cohort of FLEXLearning Fellows, designing and piloting two FLEX versions of Englwrit 112 to be offered to UMass undergraduates in spring 2023. The Writing Program’s Teaching for Inclusiveness, Diversity, and Equity (TIDE) ambassador Dr. Shakuntala Ray co-facilitated a 90-minute interactive session called Moving the Focus: From Inclusive to Anti-Racist Pedagogy in April 2022 with TIDE ambassadors from Public Health, Civic Engagement and Service-Learning (CESL), Anthropology, and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Dr. Anne Bello participated in a spring 2022 SoTL Sprint led by the CTL, and also was awarded a competitive Professional Improvement Fellowship, granting her a semester leave to pursue a research-based inquiry on linguistic diversity in the Writing, Identity, and Power curriculum.

Finally, the Writing Program bid a grateful goodbye to its long-time director of teacher training, Peggy Woods, while it welcomed a new director, Tara Pauliny, to the same position. We look forward to seeing in the coming year how our ongoing challenges and opportunities further shape our central mission of supporting UMass students’ writing education.

—Dr. Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Faculty Director and Dr. Anne Bello, Administrative Director, UMass Amherst Writing Program