The Howe Center for Writing Excellence and Howe Writing Across the Curriculum (HWAC) program are thrilled to welcome 9 new Miami faculty members as Faculty Writing Fellows Program alumni.

Three groups of faculty from the family science & social work, Spanish, and theatre departments used the Faculty Writing Fellows program to reexamine how writing can support the teaching of disciplinary threshold concepts within their programs. Teams examined how writing is currently integrated into coursework and how it can be used to further support learning outcomes.

To learn more about what is possible through the Faculty Writing Fellows program, we encourage you to read more about each team’s project below. You can also read more about past team projects on HWAC’s website.

Faculty interested in reexamining the way in which they teach writing on both the course level and departmental level can apply to join the Fall 2023 Faculty Fellows Program. More information on the Faculty Writing Fellows program can be found on the HWAC website.

Family Science & Social Work

Faculty Team: Kevin Bush, Amy Roberts, Sherrill Sellers

Identified the genres that Social Work students need to know and mapped out where these genres are being taught in the program with the intention of providing structure to continued review of FSW curriculum, gathering feedback from faculty who teach in these courses, and drafting a description of what writing looks like in social work and across the curriculum.

Spanish

Faculty Team: David Motta, Eugenia Blanco-Mazur, Morgan Smith

Developed an ePortfolio assignment called “The Spanish Files” to be piloted in the Spanish program curriculum (and assessed before bringing back to full department) with goals of: 1) Facilitating the transfer of writing skills between genres and discourse communities; 2) Provide students with a space to create, store, and reflect on their writing and growth in a language; 3) Create accessible/available documents to inform faculty of students’ writing history, prior language knowledge and progress; 4) Share a heuristic to be adapted and modified for anyone teaching a Spanish course.

Theatre

Faculty Team: Ann Elizabeth Armstrong, Marly Wooster, Matt Omasta

Examined the Theatre B.A. program to identify and integrate recursive reflection on threshold concepts in theatre throughout the curriculum to promote integration and transfer as part of a larger curricular revision, with the next step being a workshop to present to department faculty in the fall.