About the Department

Mission

The Department of Writing and Rhetoric promotes sustained writing opportunities across the university by providing a strong writing foundation in first-year writing; coordination and support of writing across the curriculum and in the community; and four upper-division and graduate-level degree and certificate programs. All of these efforts are grounded in the robust tradition of scholarship, dating back to the emergence of rhetorical study in the 5th century B.C.E. and including more recent research in writing studies.

One part of our mission is to serve UCF students, faculty, and community partners in fostering transferrable disciplinary and professional writing expertise. Students will build on the rhetorical dexterity developed in the First-Year Writing program through sustained writing and research in their discipline-specific courses. We support these opportunities through the Writing Across the Curriculum program and the University Writing Center.

A second, related part of our mission is to offer undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs for the focused study of and further practice with writing, rhetoric, and literacy. Students in our programs study the field's scholarship in order to communicate more effectively, persuasively, and ethically across a range of civic, professional, and educational contexts. Students graduating from our programs are prepared to work as writers or writing specialists in a variety of careers, including publishing and editing, education, the legal profession, the health professions, advertising/marketing/public relations, and government and the non-profit sector.

Faculty and curricular strengths include rhetoric and civic engagement, community and cultural literacies, professional communication, writing and digital media, rhetorics of science and medicine, transnational rhetoric and literacy, alternative rhetorics, and writing program administration.

Department Goals

The Department of Writing and Rhetoric has begun working toward the following goals. For more information about our achievements, ongoing initiatives, and future initiatives around each goal, please contact the department chair.

1. The First-Year Writing program serves as an innovative and effective entry point to writing in the university.
2. We offer innovative writing courses and tutoring support for transfer students.
3. The Writing Across the Curriculum program consults with faculty in a variety of colleges to help their departments and programs create writing-related outcomes and revise curricula and assessment plans around those outcomes.
4. We offer students from all majors additional preparation for academic, professional, and civic writing through the Minor in Writing and Rhetoric and undergraduate Certificate in Public and Professional Writing. We also offer specialized upper-division writing courses that complement the writing intensive courses in other disciplines.
5. We educate writing professionals and educators for Florida's knowledge-based economy through the M.A. in Rhetoric and Composition and the Graduate Certificate in Professional Writing. We will also prepare students to be writing specialists through the planned B.A. (major) in Writing and Rhetoric.
6. The University Writing Center provides writing support for undergraduate and graduate students in all disciplines.