The Public Writing Initiative

Penn State's Public Writing Initiative, formerly the Leonhard Center Technical Writing Initiative, has a twelve-year history of producing professional-quality documents for local organizations through its “commissioned assignment” program. Students in English 202, with the assistance of peer tutors from the Undergraduate Writing Center called Writing Fellows, work with commissioners to produce the commissioned documents. For example, during the Spring 2004 semester, one class produced a number of brochures on agricultural pests for the Penn State Agricultural Extension.

Of particular interest is a pilot project that uses a commissioned assignment from the Public Issues Forums (PIF) of Centre County Steering Committee. It is a CEW public scholarship project endorsed by the Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy and relies on the support of Jeremy Cohen, Associate Vice President and Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education. In the PIF assignments, students prepare issue books to guide non-partisan deliberation of local civic issues among community members.

Special thanks to Antonio Ceraso, the 2005-2006 Director of the Leonhard Center Technical Writing Initiative, for writing the proposals that secured new sponsorship by the Center for Excellence in Writing and for effecting a smooth transition from the LCTWI to the Public Writing Initiative with its focus on civic engagement through public scholarship.