The Writing Program
Learning to Write and Writing to Learn
Writing is an invitation to change the world. Learn about interesting topics, investigate your personal and communal literacy practices, build collaboration skills and expand your writing toolkit for ethical and effective writing, both in and beyond the classroom.
Our Philosophy
The Writing Program, which received a Certificate of Excellence from the National Conference on College Composition and Communication, is dedicated to serving learners who have chosen A&M-Commerce for a transformative education. We believe every student has important ideas to share and rich expertise on which to draw, and our goal is to help you pursue unique individual and collective learning through writing.
As a program, we aim to accomplish two main goals:
- First, we provide instruction in written and oral communication, which is a required component of the university's Core Curriculum. Our courses focus on developing ideas and expressing them clearly, considering the effect of the message, fostering understanding and building skills to communicate persuasively. Specifically, we promote the Texas state Core Objectives of critical thinking, communication, teamwork and personal responsibility.
- Second, we introduce writers to the interconnectedness of communication and the social impact of writing for academic and public audiences using a range of approaches, technologies and modalities.
Our guiding philosophy comes from the celebrated writing scholar Dr. Linda Adler-Kassner who insists writing is never just writing: “It's a way of navigating contexts, negotiating identities, developing knowledge, demonstrating participation.”. No matter if you are writing an essay, composing a podcast, creating an infographic or collaborating with peers, writing is never just writing, it's an invitation.
Our invitation to every student: Be curious, experiment with your writing, consider the importance of different types of languages and cultures, and expand your writer's toolkit.
Our Courses
Often students want to know why they must take writing courses and what they'll learn. We get that. Sometimes the reasons for enrolling in a course are not clear, but in The Writing Program, we want to be as transparent as possible about why these courses are required for all students and what you can hope to learn along the way.
The Writing Program offers three main courses in first-year writing: English 100, English 1301 and English 1302. In a typical semester, we teach anywhere from 55-70 sections of writing across our campuses, dual credit partnerships and modalities. Most of our offerings are scheduled face-to-face on the Commerce campus. We keep our class sizes small in line with national professional standards: English 100 typically enrolls 12 students per section, English 1301 and 1302 typically enroll 18 students per section.
The Learning showcase
A core aspect of A&M-Commerce's mission is to advance knowledge and pursue impactful research. We believe that undergraduate research is essential to achieving this value.
At the end of every semester, The Writing Program, the College of Innovation and Design and the Office of Student Transition and Support sponsor The Learning Showcase. This interdisciplinary event spotlights the robust, thought-provoking and well-rounded research conducted by undergraduate students.
All students in ENG 1302 participate in The Learning Showcase as a portion of their final research assignment in the course.
Students create short, attention-grabbing presentations based on their original literacy ethnographic studies that invite attendees to consider the various ways communities use writing and communication to define themselves and interact with the world.
Meet the Instructors
Gavin P. Johnson, Ph.D.
Rachel Harsin
Marzieh Keshavarz
Haomei Meng
Mo Reeves, Ph.D.
Mark Haslett
Sana Nabil Rayyashi
Yu Lei, Ph.D.
Featured News
A&M-Commerce Awards First Annual Innovations in Writing Pedagogy GAT Award
Four A&M-Commerce doctoral students received the Innovations in Writing Pedagogy GAT Award from the Department of Literature and Languages. The recipients are Dr. Rachel McShane, Dr. Brian McShane, Gouda Taha and Reza Panahi. The award was established this year to honor the hard work of graduate assistant teachers (or GATs) who instruct many of the […]
A&M-Commerce Faculty Secure $100k College Readiness Grant
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has selected A&M-Commerce to receive a $100,000 College Readiness and Success Models grant. Dr. Pamela Webster, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, and Dr. Gavin Johnson, assistant professor and director of writing in the Department of Literature and Languages will serve as co-principal investigators. The grant is earmarked […]
A&M-Commerce Writing Program Receives Certificate of Excellence
A&M-Commerce’s Writing Program received a Certificate of Excellence from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. The award will be presented in March at the Conference’s annual convention, held in Pittsburgh. “The Certificate of Excellence is one of the highest honors for a writing program and is a prestigious award given each year at the […]
Faculty and Staff Resources
Current writing instructors can access a collection of resources via our shared D2L. If you do not have access, please contact the Director of Writing at [email protected].
Contact Us
- Writing Program
- [email protected]