Welcome, 202 Instructor!

Glad to have you here! The Public Writing Initiative offers composition instructors two different and unique opportunities to involve their students with local community organizers - our single-day Guest Speaker program, and our semester-long (or multi-semester, if you're feeling particularly ambitious) Commissioned Assignment program. If you've recieved an email about these programs, you probably already know a little bit about what we do - but if you haven't, you're in the right place! Keep reading for more information about the whos and hows of these different offerings.

Hosting A Guest Speaker

This option for your 202 class is a fairly non-intensive, single-day (excluding an excellent lunch - on the department!) opportunity for you to meet someone from the local community whose career paths should interest your students, and then to have day of reprieve while this community member visits your class in order to provide students with tangible examples of writing in "real life."

We have had physics professors, ArtsFest organizers, technical writers, Raytheon engineers, non-profit leaders, and many more speak about the kinds of writing they do on a daily basis. There's no better way to cement the importance of writing in your students' minds! If you think you're interested, by all means Contact Us and we'll work as best we can to set you up with a speaker, either for your current semester or for future semesters.

Commissioned Assignments

This option for your 202 class is a much more involved, but extraordinarily rewarding opportunity for you and your students to be involved in creating a usable, tangible document for a local organization. We have coordinated everything from single-semester website usability reports to Three Semester Pilot Projects that involved over 100 students. While this does require an initial reworking of your 202 syllabus, it has the advantage of having assignments practically built-in, and the inestimable benefit of real-world application for your students' work.

Again, if you think that you would be interested in taking on a Commissioned Assignment for a future semester of 202, please Contact Us as soon as possible so we can begin to arrange the (slightly more complicated) details of getting you on your way to producing something of which your students can be truly proud!