Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, English

This project studies graduate writing support and graduate faculty development, considering the role writing across the curriculum (WAC) programming plays in enabling faculty as change agents to make long-term, structural change in systems of graduate writing. Scholarship on graduate writing support typically treats graduate students as the subjects and receivers of support, but in this dissertation, I pose faculty members as (also) subjects of graduate writing support. Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), learning theory, and theories of institutional change, this project employs mixed methods of participant-observer case studies, a national survey, and secondary research on histories of graduate writing and its support to examine how graduate writing mediates graduate education, how faculty have historically supported graduate writers, how faculty are prepared to teach and mentor graduate-level writing, and how faculty can create changes to systems of graduate writing. Chapter 1 situates high-stakes writing like comprehensive exams and dissertations as mediating graduate education, overviewing how they are outdated and were designed in response to external stressors around gatekeeping. Chapter 2 highlights how the kinds of writing support we've developed in graduate programs and across writing support programs largely focus on ushering students through these outdated systems and not on critically re-examining and changing structures. Chapter 3 interrogates faculty expertise and preparation for mentoring graduate writing, highlighting how faculty are not always trained or fully-equipped to provide such structured and scaffolded support. Chapter 4 turns to faculty case examples to illustrate the contradictions inherent in the activity of graduate writing support and how WAC programming can help faculty navigate the messiness of these contradictions in order to make local and sustainable changes. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses implications of my r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Chair); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Jay Smart (Committee Member); Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (Committee Member); Elizabeth Hutton (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, English

In this project, I set out to understand the impact that writing-related faculty development programs can have on institutional cultures of writing, teaching, and learning. Scholarship in writing across the curriculum (WAC) has historically illustrated pedagogical and curricular changes that support student writers in higher education. Cultural change is necessary to do this work because institutional cultures are often influenced by persistent misconceptions of writing as a general, transferable skill that can be taught in one course and applied in another. In the 1960s and 1970s, the birth of WAC as both an institutional practice and as a disciplinary movement offered opportunities for individuals to share these ideas with higher education faculty from diverse fields. While many WAC leaders want to change institutional cultures of writing, little research illustrates how this transformation can occur or what role writing-related faculty development might play. Drawing on scholarship in writing studies, higher education change, and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this dissertation begins to address this gap. I argue for using a local|disciplinary methodology to understand what writing-related faculty development programs do and what changes result as faculty adopt principles and conceptions from these programs. Through my multi-institutional study, I found that changing faculty conceptions of writing is a key goal of writing-related faculty development work, but this goal is not always made explicit in program practices. Research at three case institutions illustrates how institutional history and location can influence program goals, practices, and leadership. In Chapter 1, I overview the cultural-historical prevalence of misconceptions of writing. In Chapter 2, I outline the local|disciplinary methodology that informs this research. Chapter 3 provides results from a national study that illustrates writing-related faculty development programs aim t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Hutton (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Thomas Poetter (Committee Member); John Tassoni (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation research, Trauma-Informed Pedagogy: Practices and Insights from the College Writing Classrooms, looks into the issue of trauma or traumatic stress in students through a pedagogical lens, investigating how college writing teachers perceive and apply trauma-informed pedagogy in their teaching as they teach during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uses informed grounded theory to frame the research issue and qualitative method to collect data. The study then employs abductive analysis method to examine approximately 600 minutes of video-recording data collected from 10 semi-structured individual interviews with writing teachers who work across teaching contexts in the United States. Findings from this study help address a number of misconceptions related to the use of trauma-informed pedagogy in the writing classroom and explain various ways in which writing instructors can navigate the boundaries between compassion and professionalism. The study furthermore discusses issues of trauma disclosure, discussion facilitation, writing topics and content warning, and writing assessment and suggests concrete ideas for implementing various pedagogical practices that could help develop a safer and more inclusive space for learning. Lastly, the study introduces the design of a writing course that seeks to achieve a two-fold learning outcome: (a) develop academic writing competence and (b) through learning to write, discuss and support student well-being.

Committee: Chad Iwertz-Duffy Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Vibha Bhalla Ph.D. (Committee Member); Daniel Pavuk Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Community College Education; Composition; Curriculum Development; Education Philosophy; English As A Second Language; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, English

In this project, I set out to investigate how Writing Program Administrators (WPA) can draw on theories, research findings, and best practices of transfer from both composition and second language writing studies in order to develop curricula and pedagogical practices to support multilingual writers in First-Year Composition (FYC). Research from the two separate fields of writing studies around genre and transfer shows that facilitating genre knowledge, genre awareness, genre uptake, discourse community enculturation, and generative dispositions can encourage learners to transfer what they know to new contexts. A transfer-encouraging curriculum needs to recognize and teach the social and learner-based aspects of writing and learning. This is even more important when working with first-year multilingual writers who were enculturated in different cultures other than American culture and have achieved high proficiency in languages other than English before they are enrolled in FYC courses. Drawing on scholarship in rhetorical genre studies, English for specific purposes, and systemic functional linguistics genre studies, this dissertation uses a methodology on genre transferability to understand what FYC programs across the US do (and can do) to support multilingual writers and what theories are guiding programs' curriculum development, pedagogical practices, and professional development activities. I argue that if our goal is to help novice multilingual students effectively respond to the cultural, discoursal, and linguistic challenges they face, then WPAs across institution types must work to develop FYC initiatives that draw on transfer scholarship from both composition studies and second language writing studies. In Chapter 1, I propose a conceptual framework that draws on both fields of writing transfer studies and discuss pedagogical implications for curriculum development and writing instruction for teaching first-year multilingual writers. In Chapter 2, I ou (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Chair); Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (Advisor); Tony Cimasko (Advisor); Elizabeth Hutton (Advisor); Thomas Poetter (Advisor) Subjects: Composition; Education; English As A Second Language; Linguistics; Multicultural Education; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation reviews major WAC scholarship from the four-year university/college level and extrapolates salient WAC protocols that impact sustainability. It constructs a series of eight heuristics based on Michelle Cox, Jeffrey Galin, and Dan Melzer's “Building Sustainable WAC Programs.” Deploying these heuristics within a systems theory matrix, it conducts a forensic analysis of data from two, two-year college WAC programs, one dormant and one active, and ultimately isolates WAC protocols that either enhance or reduce sustainability. The foreword presents a brief history of the two-year college movement. Chapter one thoroughly discusses the lack of scholarship at two-year institutions, reviews the history, theory and praxis of WAC at four-year colleges, develops a list of WAC protocols from the history, theory, and praxis, and presents an overview of this project. Chapter two discusses the types of data collection methods, the data types, their relevance to this project, collection procedures, and constructs eight data analysis heuristics from the protocols listed in chapter one and the sustainability scholarship developed by Cox et. al. Chapters three and four separately discuss the history and development of both campuses, presents the findings from both sites and briefly analyzes them within the context of their specific exigencies. Chapter five thoroughly analyzes the data from both sites at the local level and the field level and hypothesizes on the presence and absence of sustainability protocols developed in chapters one and two. The findings take note of three salient aspects of the protocols which the analysis heuristics revealed as most relevant to sustainability within these two programs: consensus on the concept of good writing, the degree of autonomy teaching faculty exercised over their respective programs, and the level of participation among faculty outside of the liberal arts/general education departments. The implications thus (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kerri Knippen Ph.D. (Other); Neil Baird Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sue Carter-Wood Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Community College Education; Community Colleges; Composition; Education Philosophy; Sustainability