Strategic Vision

UC Merced’s Strategic Vision (2009) emphasizes the principles of a student-centered research university, founded on a long history of University of California educational aspirations. Influential to this vision is the Boyer Commission’s Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities (1998), whichrecommends making research-based learning standard, removing barriers to interdisciplinary education, linking communication skills and coursework, focusing on freshman year as foundational, and educating graduate students as apprentice teachers.  Shown below, these five recommendations shape our program’s strategic vision.

• With research-based learning as a guiding standard, the MWP will intensify field-specific course offerings and interdisciplinary connections to develop a Writing Major and a Masters in Fine Arts Program (a terminal degree offered in collaboration with English Literature and World Cultures).
• With linking communication skills and coursework as a campus priority, the MWP will continue to coordinate significant aspects of general education -- as part of institutional and accreditation expectations to define the meaning of the undergraduate degree and attend to competencies.
• To augment interdisciplinary scholarship, the MWP will build cross-disciplinary connections,  i) by developing integrative general education programming,  and ii) through implementing writing-in-the-disciplines curricula for institutional priority areas such as the Blum Center, Sierra Nevada Institute, and Community Engaged Scholarship program.
• With writing competence as foundational to success in our university’s degree programs and overall administration, the MWP will strengthen institutional partnerships to develop a Writing and Reading Center that provides professional, supplemental writing instruction for undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars, among other constituents.
• In preparing graduate students as future faculty, the MWP will support institutional growth at the graduate level, in particular by offering pedagogical training and teaching opportunities to graduate students. We are piloting and will continue to grow graduate-level writing courses across the disciplines (currently cross-listed in Chemistry, Physics, Applied Math, and QSB).

MWP Intellectual Drivers and Research Questions         

The Merritt Writing Program (MWP) is distinctively focused on teaching within the guiding context of a research university that is student-centered. Our unit includes three Senate lecturers and 65 Unit 18 lecturers, supported by only two staff members. Our program is large and represents what should be conceptualized as essentially four programs: general education, freshman composition, writing in specific disciplines, and a writing minor/major (with a proposal for the major in process). To sustain this breadth of professional responsibility, the degree backgrounds of MWP faculty are intentionally diverse, with MFA and Ph.D. degrees in creative writing, linguistics, anthropology, business, speech, rhetoric and composition, literature, foreign languages, and history to name a few.

Our attention to the scholarship of teaching and learning is evidenced in rigorous teaching portfolios for academic review, campus and UC system-wide presentations, membership on national committees, and multimedia scholarship. Our professional focus is primarily on teaching, with associated applied research and traditional publications. We publish in research areas that include creative writing, general education, instructional technology, pedagogy, rhetoric / composition, assessment, English-language learning, and writing program administration. We have been awarded several competitive Department of Education grants as well, including Title V and FIPSE grants, which funded about 20 graduate research appointments, several writing-support initiatives, and UCM’s summer bridge program that also features complementary curricular support in writing and math, with co-curricular support in learning communities and peer mentoring.

Research questions that animate our field and could strengthen our institutional mission include: When we ask students to write, what are we measuring? What are some ways to factor digital technology into a legacy of print-based teaching and learning? How does cultural expression factor into scholarly discourse and academic success? At this moment in our campus history, we see potential in connecting the undergraduate with the graduate educational experiences, especially as the strengths in undergraduate education at our campus could inform future faculty initiatives. With our campus demographics and institutional research initiatives, these composition and pedagogy research foci could distinguish our campus in undergraduate education and associated scholarship. 

The MWP is an interdisciplinary unit in theory, practice and function, with a writing minor program specific to our field[1]. Writing programs often have an institutional identity, in part because our field serves entry-level and general education requirements. The Merritt Writing Program is no exception with about 90% of our curriculum meeting general education or institutional requirements, and with the other 10% specific to specialized, elective courses in rhetoric and composition. To develop our disciplinary field further at UCM, we seek to grow a major in writing, writing and reading center, and masters in fine arts and rhetoric. Our initiatives in undergraduate and graduate education are aligned in such a way to provide opportunity to specialize in writing at various levels.

To achieve these objectives and support our campus’ next enrollment phase, the Merritt Writing Program needs two resources: (a) three LPSOE Senate lines and (b) two entry-level staff positions:

(a)    Our needed Senate lines are consistent with our 2011 Program Review resource recommendation and World Cultures FTE requests from AY 2013 (in total 3 lines for LPSOE appointments). These Senate lines have been formally endorsed internally and externally by our bylaw unit as critical to both sustaining the MWP and pursuing important institutional initiatives. Our existing and future responsibilities require self-governance and disciplinary insight from composition fields.

(b)   Further, we have requested baseline staff support with two entry-level staff positions. Our staffing and operational budget has not changed since 2005, despite growth from 12 to 65 lecturers and new associated personnel and budgetary responsibilities. This staffing need has been a priority budget request since 2007; this gap in staffing needs to be addressed.

Space would be five offices for these new appointments. The proposed Writing and Reading Center could be located in a multipurpose space, ideally in partnership with other units. For example, to support research writing and information literacy outcomes, we have proposed (AY2013 budget) cross-training instructional assistants with our colleagues in the Kolligian Library. The following sections summarize our existing needs and recommended initiatives to clarify these established resource needs.

A Major in Writing

With a focus on research-based learning, it is critical for us (and our campus) to develop a major undergraduate program in writing. The MWP would best serve our institution with opportunities to grow as a discipline, beyond being a support unit to other disciplines. An undergraduate major provides us with the infrastructure to provide undergraduates with specialization in a significant field, while strengthening and aligning our curriculum within our own discipline. This emphasis is consistent with national trends, as there are 68 writing major programs nationally (circa 2011) that have developed in the past two decades with clear distinctions from literature programs, emphasizing language study, rhetorical analysis, media studies, and creative/professional writing. Aspirational peers for writing major programs include the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and Syracuse University. With this national growth of undergraduate programs, UC Merced could be distinctive as the first Hispanic Serving Institution to offer an undergraduate program in writing. We are also the first writing program established at a research university that is designed entirely on evidence of research in our field, complemented by the broader interdisciplinary scholarship of teaching and learning. In the MWP’s 2011 periodic review, the external review team specifically noted our “highly sophisticated matrix, blending theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical innovation” that establishes a “potentially transformative national model for educating a highly diverse undergraduate population.”   We aspire to do just that.  

Unique in its curriculum nationally, the Writing Minor is currently the fourth most popular minor degree institution-wide, demonstrating an interest and need to develop this field from an enrollment standpoint. As a natural extension of this minor, the Writing Major will prepare students to be flexible as they develop abilities to research, synthesize and innovate. Emphasizing writing as a process and interdisciplinary inquiry, writing major courses will offer challenging curricula in sequences of study in creative writing, professional writing, and style study. Although specialization is part of the major, students will pursue more than one sequence, granting flexibility in process and content and maximizing employment potential or seeking a graduate degree.

Courses of study start with survey courses covering genres of writing, proceed through a foundational, process-based course (Intersections) for all writing majors, and then branch into specialized routes through thematic and genre-based seminars. Electives that round out the major include classes in writing theory, writing pedagogy, grammar and style, traditional Writing in the Disciplines courses (such as Writing for Engineering and Writing for Psychology), written discourse, and journal editing.  The major will also give students opportunities for internships in tutoring and media (electronic and print) production. Students will finish their course of study with a senior-year capstone project produced over two semesters and guided by writing faculty.

Our current LPSOE request in Composition and Rhetoric is designed to support the growth of our minor program, major program initiative, and proposed MFA project.

Writing and Reading Center

In close collaboration with UC Merced’s Office of Undergraduate Education, the Kolligian Library, Student Affairs, and with undergraduate as well as graduate program units, the Writing and Reading Center (WRC) will become a central location for professional tutors, graduate-teaching assistants, and MWP faculty to share and implement best practices for the teaching of academic writing with ancillary support for critical reading. 

Professional tutors with English language training who have earned at least a baccalaureate will staff the WRC. We will hire, train, and place Professional Tutors (PTs) in courses where they will provide supplemental writing and reading instruction that establishes or extends a writing-intensive course curriculum. Their training will occur as an on-site apprenticeship under the supervision of an experienced writing teacher. As a related function, we anticipate providing supplemental instruction to undergraduates as part of our curriculum that is keyed to specific lower-division and upper-division required writing courses. Consistent with that proposal but for broader objectives, the WRC will complement existing peer tutoring services offered by the Bright Center. However, unlike that peer tutoring service, the support offered by WRC professional tutors will be embedded in the curriculum of a course – an efficiency that significantly improves student outcomes. We submitted a similar funding request for a Writing and Reading Center (AY2013) to hire professional editors and consultants for upper-division undergraduates who are completing a senior thesis and graduate students who are preparing a thesis. The Writing and Reading Center will have a primary role in serving graduate students, in particular international students whose first language is not English. Special focus will be given to supporting grant proposals and research reports to address the needs of new faculty, international graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. With approximately 30% of graduate students being international, these language support needs are critical and ubiquitous.     

Our request for a Second Languages LPSOE would serve as the WRC Coordinator to supervise PT staff and prepare annual reports documenting WRC services, costs, and specific outcomes[2]. The latter would include evidence of student performance as a result of professional tutoring; evidence of increased use of writing in discipline-area courses, with comparative data showing any gains in student academic achievement; and evidence of undergraduate research supported by the WRC. 

Graduate Degree (MFA) and Graduate Writing/Pedagogy Support  

Not only are we in the position to offer a writing major and launch a writing center, we are engaging in preliminary planning to develop a graduate program to support advanced composition specialization.  To that end, we anticipate collaborating with the English Literature program, Arts program and the Sierra Nevada Institute to establish our Masters of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing and Rhetoric (CW&R).[3] The dual emphasis of this CW&R degree will allow students, through a complementary set of required courses, to obtain an advanced degree in creative writing while also acquiring expertise in the theory and practice of language pedagogy. The latter training will significantly enhance career opportunities for those completing the MFA in CW&R. These opportunities include publication roles as editors, journalists, freelance or technical writers; careers in international business, government and foreign relations, public-health industries, and multicultural media.  CW&R recipients will also be well prepared for further study in law school or in doctoral programs that emphasize language study (e.g., English, foreign languages, or linguistics). Of particular significance for the degree we are proposing, prospective teachers of writing will receive strong training that prepares them for academic positions as teachers of writing.

Further, the MWP will continue to play a significant role in supporting graduate education across disciplines. To support graduate students effectively, we must collaborate with other disciplines to share our expertise, support writing-intensive curriculum, and mentor graduate students (both as scholars, with writing, and as instructors, with future faculty aspirations). We have recently piloted a World Cultures pedagogy course, which will be required in the new Interdisciplinary Humanities graduate program. Also, we have partnered with Chemistry, Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Quantitative Systems Biology to offer our campus’ first academic writing course for incoming graduate students beginning this spring (270 series). Although this course will be taught by faculty (in the MWP) with a degree in composition studies, we collaborate closely with the sciences to develop innovative curricula that support graduate-level writing. Our intention to build an undergraduate major program and a graduate MFA works in tandem with graduate education support, in that we could provide bridge or co-enrollment courses with our upper-division undergraduate offerings. For example, WRI 105: Grammar and Style could be co-enrolled by both undergraduates and graduate students or offered separately as a graduate course (WRI 205, etc.). We are not just expert teachers for undergraduates; we have a commitment to educating future faculty. Our current LPSOE request focused on digital media and rhetoric is designed to support the MFA initiative as well as interdisciplinary graduate pedagogy support.          

Sustaining Existing Responsibilities and Initiatives

Consistent with freshman year being foundational, we are committed to institutionally required courses and general education.  Currently, we provide 3/8 of first-year curriculum and play a significant role in undergraduate persistence and retention through frequent feedback on writing, research opportunities, and faculty contact. Our pedagogy and curriculum design provide students with integrative learning opportunities, which was highlighted in our program review report (2011). Integrative learning is a sophisticated and central undergraduate skill, in that students are able to make connections between curricular and co-curricular activities, synthesizing and transferring skills throughout courses. Our pedagogy is carefully designed for such transfer, so that students are academically successful in writing, general education, co-curricular activities, and their majors. Since transfer is such a difficult skill to foster, and writing instruction is feedback-based and very labor-intensive, a commitment to seminar style coursework at the freshman level is a critical institutional investment. Further, our curriculum is distinctively interdisciplinary, in that we teach both traditional research writing as well as quantitative literacy. Our emphasis on integrative learning is consistent with national calls from our discipline and general education associations, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Reinvention Center, and the College Communication and Composition.

Similarly, many of our collaborations come from our program playing a key role in supporting general education, which constitutes one-third of an undergraduate’s academic course plan. A director from the MWP has been involved on all GE committees (ad hoc, standing, and program review) since the beginning of undergraduate enrollment in 2005. Our associate director fully supervises, assesses and staffs Core 1, a required integrative general education course. We face an ongoing challenge, however. Accreditation reports and GE committee recommendations have noted that our responsibility for general education is too localized in the MWP and not sustainable. We agree, and in various contexts we have advocated for involving graduate students in teaching Core 1 as a foundational experience for future faculty training in an increasingly interdisciplinary academic world. Further, Core 1 engages undergraduates (and graduate students as potential instructors) with institutional learning outcomes. Core 1 is writing-intensive and cross-disciplinary; the only course in higher education to integrate disciplinary knowledge, encourage students and faculty to make connections across fields, and to actively promote qualitative as well as quantitative reasoning. Following the trajectory of more established UC campuses, all other UC writing programs offer pedagogy courses and educate graduate students as future faculty to teach in writing-intensive and general education courses. UCM has an opportunity with Core 1, required first-year courses such as WRI 1 and WRI 10, and upper-division MWP writing-in-the-disciplines courses in psychology and biological fields to educate instructors. Further, we could play a central role in strengthening writing curriculum and evaluation in courses outside of our department through ongoing partnerships with Senate faculty. These efforts would strengthen writing competencies in degree programs, consistent with communication being a shared institutional mission.

As related but separate request related to institutional needs, then, we would recommend and endorse the proposed LPSOE for General Education to provide Senate leadership to manage and sustain GE programming (see General Education Strategic Vision). We are not suggesting that this Senate line be housed in the MWP; rather that a broader discussion about a home for multidisciplinary undergraduate education appointments be part of institutional planning.

The attached MWP impact metrics spreadsheet is specific to our proposed initiatives and campus growth; please note that these metrics were also bundled with our bylaw’s strategic planning (Humanities and World Cultures).