This fall semester, Howe Writing Across the Curriculum hosted a new certificate series titled “Supporting Graduate Learning through Writing.” The program, facilitated by Assistant Director of Writing Across the Curriculum Mandy Olejnik and Graduate Assistant Rena Perez, was created with the intention of helping faculty discover how best to support the development of their students as graduate writers.

This certificate series builds on previous HWAC efforts to support graduate faculty, including the year-long faculty learning community on building graduate support structures Olejnik led with former Associate Director Ann Updike during the 20-21 academic year. This kind of faculty support centered specifically on graduate writing is unique and highly unusual, with Miami leading the way toward supporting graduate writing systematically by partnering with faculty and programs. 

The certificate series consisted of five sessions split over the semester, where participants read about and studied graduate writing pedagogy, writing support structures, and change-making. They also created maps depicting the overall writing system of their graduate programs (however explicit or implicit said system was for students), revising and adding to these maps over the course of the series. Later sessions asked participants to research student, faculty, and colleague perspectives on graduate writing to determine how best to support graduate writers in their programs moving forward.

Some questions posed throughout the certificate program included:

• What are we preparing graduate students to do after graduation, in academia or otherwise?
• What does it mean to be an advisor? What is the advisor’s role in writing support?
• Why were the high-stakes genres of our programs created, and how might they be reconsidered based on our goals for student learning?
• Whose responsibility (or shared responsibility) is it to prepare graduate student writers?
• What does it mean to make meaningful change around teaching about and with writing? What (and who) is needed to make this change?

The workshop series culminated with a sharecase on November 1, 2023, during which faculty shared their plans for how they want to move forward with supporting graduate writers. Several departments were represented, including architecture, chemical, paper, and biomedical engineering, nursing, speech-language pathology, educational leadership, geology & environmental earth science, and music performance. In addition to faculty, several representatives and chairs from the departments and the Graduate School were in attendance.

As part of their work over the past several months, participants shared how they closely examined how writing is included (or not) in their courses and programs; how writing is used within their disciplines and beyond; their students’, colleagues’, and alumni’s perceptions of writing; how to revise existing writing structures like the genre of the dissertation; and further opportunities to more intentionally support students in their programs. HWAC is excited to continue working with these faculty and these graduate programs, as graduate education and graduate writing is a charge we take seriously.

Congratulations to all who participated! Any faculty who are interested in further programming or support around teaching or working with graduate student writers can contact Dr. Mandy Olejnik (olejnimr@miamioh.edu) for a consultation.