Directing a Writing Program

• 1. Course design and faculty support, assisting faculty with developing writing assignments, instructional materials and teaching classes upon request. Throughout the year I work with faculty to improve student writing by helping them create clear assignment prompts, rubrics, and instructional resources for their courses that will improve writing and critical thinking.

  2. Assessment, identifying measures for evaluating student learning outcomes and gathering data, defining benchmarks for achieving learning outcomes, developing action plans for improving student learning, and writing an assessment report for institutional review and accreditation. Collaborating with the Assistant Dean for Assessment & Graduate Education and Executive Professor, I helped devise an assessment plan that complies with institutional accreditation standards (SACS-COC) while also using the more specific accreditation standards (NASPAA) for our PSAA program review. Steps for assessment included identifying learning outcomes, defining measures and achievement targets, gathering and assessing data, reporting findings, and formulating action plans to improve the program or the assessment process.

  3. High-impact experiences, reinforcing learning acquired through capstones, field trips, and internships through briefing and debriefing activities; and supporting the Medal of Excellence by directing students through the steps of creating an integrative learning ePortfolio, by tracking the progress of prospective award recipients, and by providing interim feedback to participants. Each year, anywhere from 12-20 students receive the Bush School Medal of Excellence, an award program that recognizes excellence in writing. My role regarding the Medal includes (1) delivering workshops on the value of an ePortfolio, audience analysis, virtual responsibility, and reflective writing; (2) conducting individual consultations on students’ written work; (3) tracking participation; (4) assessing each ePortfolio for writing quality; (5) overseeing the design and production of the medal itself, including engraving for award recipients; (6) and participating in the awards ceremony at the end of the year. In addition to the Medal, I helped create and implement a new plan for increasing accountability for learning acquired through high-impact experiences.

  4. Writing instruction, teaching students enrolled in a 0-credit course professional writing skills while working toward the Medal of Excellence and providing and overseeing consultations to students. This past academic year I taught the first zero-credit course at the Bush School: BUSH 602—Writing for the Medal of Excellence. The goal of the course is to help students learn basic writing skills (document development, organization and design, executive summary, high-impact writing style, etc.) while preparing the reflective essays required for the Medal of Excellence. Students in the course include both first- and second-year students in both INTA and PSAA departments. This course supports the written communication learning outcomes in both departments, which state that students will “write clearly, with well-organized presentation of material, in formats appropriate for professional contexts,” including memo writing and essay writing, and using design, BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), and peer review to prepare messages appropriate for their audiences. In addition to the course, I also lead writing workshops throughout the year. Workshop topics have included policy documents, literature reviews, collaborative writing, editing, documentation, plagiarism, and issues particularly helpful for our international students (idioms, transitions, sentence structure, usage, and punctuation), though my assistant leads these. I also instruct students through individual consultations with the goal being to instruct the student, not "fix" the paper. Thus, our consultations require applying a sound pedagogy for writing instruction. This academic year 2016-17, we advised 211 students.

  5. Student services, providing writing workshops for capstones, international student writing, and other writing issues; developing print and online resources, including the Bush School Writing website; recruiting prospective students during interview weekends (spring) and training new students during orientation (fall).

  6. Scowcroft Army Fellows, supporting the development of both their strategic research papers (fall) and their civilian research papers (spring) through a course designed to teach writing skills and through individual consultations. Each year I instruct our Scowcroft Institute Army Fellows through the process of formulating a research and writing plan to prepare both the strategic and the civilian research papers. Instruction includes holding weekly writing workshops (2 hours each), reviewing multiple drafts of each set of papers, and conducting individual consultations (approximately 24 over the course of the year). I have also created a “course” and corresponding website, which formalizes the research-writing plan. The research-writing plan scaffolds larger assignment into smaller, more manageable products that our Fellows can then review and revise as they work toward the larger, more comprehensive papers.

I am committed to improving graduate-level writing across the curricula of both departments by building upon our current efforts, by exploring new avenues that may more strategically address our unique challenges, and by developing as an instructional writing professional. The following sections of this report describe these efforts in more detail.

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