Director of the Center for Writing Studies: Gail E. Hawisher
Correspondence and Admission Information: Center for Writing Studies, 201 English Building, 608 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801; (217) 333-3251; E-mail: tbertram@uiuc.edu
URL: www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/index.html
The Center for Writing Studies facilitates research and promotes graduate study in the areas of rhetoric, written composition, language, and literacy. The center offers graduate students pursuing master's or doctoral degrees in participating departments a program leading to a specialization in writing studies.
Students are invited to apply through participating departments and programs, including the Department of English, the Department of Speech Communication, the Division of English as an International Language, and the College of Education. Admission to the program is granted by the student's home department, and the student must meet the requirements of that department (e.g., English, Speech Communication, Division of English as an International Language, Curriculum and Instruction). Students are customarily admitted in the fall, and Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores are required.
Faculty and students in the center focus their interests around three principal areas: the historical, the theoretical, and the empirical study of writing. Specific faculty interests include research in computers and composition studies, methods of rhetorical and functional language analysis, cognitive processes in message production, the development of language and literacy theory and policy, and problems in technical and scientific writing. Graduate students affiliated with the center may also explore the aesthetic, social, and cultural dimensions of language and relate theories of writing to theoretical work in criticism and linguistics, as well as to anthropology, psychology, reading, and education.
Graduate training in scholarship and research is accompanied by an equally thorough preparation for teaching. Students who affiliate with the center are eligible for teaching or research assistantships as soon as they begin their programs and are assisted through a week-long orientation and advising program. They also participate in professional seminars in the teaching of composition, business and technical writing, the tutoring of writing, and other courses related to writing across the curriculum and composition studies. Graduate students may work as tutors in the Writers' Workshop, as writing consultants, as teacher trainers and supervisors in the Writing Across the Curriculum program, and as research assistants to the faculty of the center. The center is also home to Computers & Composition, a journal for teachers of writing, and sponsor of an international electronic discussion group on writing across the curriculum.