About : PWI

Penn State's Public Writing Initiative, part of the Center for Excellence in Writing's Public Scholarship division and 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.

Now, in our current incarnation, we have added a less-resource-intensive, but equally vital, option for teachers of Technical, Business, Humanities, and Social Sciences writing courses (the 202s, as we call them) - the Guest Speaker series.

With these two programs operating simultaneously, it is our hope to bring as many English 202 students as possible into contact with community organizers who use writing on a daily basis - even in the most unlikely of fields. The goal: to highlight the importance of writing across the curriculum, in all fields, disciplines, and ultimately, in all careers. See What's Going On Now!

Commissioned Assignments

These projects are intensive, semester-long collaborations in which students in English 202 work with commissioners to produce the commissioned documents.These documents can range from usability reports to brochures and advertisements, entire websites, and most anything in between. For example, during our Spring 2004 semester, one class produced a number of brochures on agricultural pests for the Penn State Agricultural Extension. If you are interested in taking on or commissioning one of these projects yourself, visit either our For Instructors page or the Commissioners page for more information. Thanks!

And We're Growing!

Recently, our projects have grown in scope to include multiple classes over multiple semesters. Of particular interest here 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. If you're interested in the details, please Read More...

Guest Speaker Series

For those instructors who would prefer a shorter, but equally intersting, involvement with PWI, we also offer single-day guest speakers who come from a variety of industries. These professionals have generously offered their time and experience to an ever-growing number of 202 classes over the years. Please visit our For Instructors and Guest Speaker pages for more information - and feel free to Contact Us if you think this program would suit your needs!