Professional Writing Concentration

As a student, you will take courses in which you study, practice, and reflect on rhetoric and writing in ways that foster critical thinking about not only your own use of language but also the way language informs and impacts our understanding of and participation in personal, professional, and civic arenas.

You’ll take courses staffed by instructors with scholarly experience and expertise in teaching and who are enthusiastic and passionate about professional writing.

Read profiles of our faculty:

• Dr. Michael Donnelly
• Dr. Kat Greene
• Dr. Charlotte Kupsh
• Dr. Jackie Grutsch McKinney
• Dr. Allison Hitt
• Dr. Rory Lee
• Dr. Laura Romano

You’ll take courses with caps ranging from 18-25 students, which allows you to receive more sustained attention, collaborate frequently with classmates, and form more effective relationships with your teachers and peers.

You’ll take courses that explore rhetoric and writing historically, starting with Ancient Greece and moving into the 21st Century, in order to see how and why the study, practice, and teaching of rhetoric and writing are important and have changed and evolved over time.

You’ll take courses that ask you both to analyze and to utilize new writing technologies. In doing so, you’ll not only create digital and multimodal texts for diverse audiences but also develop and hone 21st century literacies. You’ll also study and use older writing technologies in an effort to understand how writing technologies emerge, evolve, and intersect with one another as well as how writing technologies influence who can write, how, and to whom.

You’ll take courses that ask you to use writing technologies, both old and new, to create diverse texts for diverse audiences. To that end, you’ll practice writing in different genres and appealing to different audiences, which will allow you to adapt to and navigate successfully various communicative situations.