First-Year Writing Program

Our curriculum is based in the understanding that students will benefit from inquiry-driven, rhetorically focused writing and undergraduate research instruction that builds their skills as learners. We aim to help first-year students in becoming adept communicators across their university careers and beyond.

Our focus is on welcoming and affirming the knowledge and experiences of students from a wide array of linguistic, cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, ability and faith identities into a classroom where learning is shared, recursive, and generative.

We do this by composing with our students across modes, genres, and rhetorical landscapes and by focusing on building rich peer-to-peer relationships in the classroom. Students can expect to develop critical reading, composing, thinking, and listening skills while engaging texts from a wide range of perspectives and positionalities.

Students can also expect to compose in a range of genres for diverse audiences from personal, to scholarly and public ones. This work demands diverse information gathering practices, thinking about organization, analysis and synthesis and attention to rhetorical situations. Our program aligns with Methodist University’s General Education goals of “addressing cultural diversity, ethical reasoning, global interdependence, and environmental issues.”