Composition

Antoinette (Toni) Glover, Ph.D., Program Director

The Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence Writing Center services are free and available to all undergraduate and graduate students registered for classes at the University of Scranton.

Opportunities for Part-time Composition Faculty

Composition Program Mission Statement

 The University of Scranton is a comprehensive, co-educational institution that is by tradition, choice and heartfelt commitment, a Catholic and Jesuit university. The University is therefore dedicated to freedom of inquiry, the pursuit of wisdom, integrity and truth, and the personal growth and development of all who share in its life and ministry.

Mission Statement of the University of Scranton

The Composition Program at the University of Scranton, in complete agreement with the University’s mission statement, proposes to carry out the responsibilities bestowed on it, committed to the University’s realistic expectation that we will engage our students in the “freedom of inquiry, the pursuit of wisdom, integrity and truth, and personal growth and development.” To accomplish these goals, and in accordance with the program’s Goals and Objectives statement, we submit for consideration the following mission statement.

Our mission is to introduce students to the importance of writing in the work of the university and to develop their critical reading, thinking and writing skills so that they can successfully participate in that work. Writing is intellectual work, and the demands of writing within the university community include the need to:

• synthesize and analyze multiple points of view
• articulate and support one's own position regarding various issues
• adjust writing to multiple audiences, purposes, and conventions

Students in our courses are expected to engage the ideas encountered in academic and serious public discourse, to develop complex ideas and arguments through serious consideration of different perspectives, and to connect their life experiences with ideas and information they encounter in classes. Our goal is for them to explore what others have written about issues and to use their readings to expand their notion of what counts as an appropriate position.

We encourage students to explore the multiplicity of any topic and to realize that multiple stories or interpretations are told about any one occurrence, idea, or issue. All these stories compete for authority (i.e. the ability to tell the "truth" of an event or issue), working against each other and having different investments. These stories have real effects on the world and our perceptions of ourselves.

Our work is grounded in the belief that writing is not only a way of knowing, it is also a way of acting on others in the public sphere. As teachers, we help our students discover the complex nature of the ideas and issues they write about and consider how these ideas and issues affect and grow out of their own cultures. By reading and writing about texts that illustrate a multiplicity of perspectives on issues, students will begin to use writing to broaden their ability to communicate effectively about issues of social relevance. We strive to:

• teach students to become conscientious and responsible writers, both in college and beyond
• provide students with access to and involvement with the discourses of the university community
• encourage the development and preservation of students' critical relations to those discourses
• help students develop questioning abilities that move them beyond the passive acceptance of new materials to thinkers who can hold those materials up to genuinely informed scrutiny

To that end, our courses encourage students to see that writing is a way of thinking and that in the very act of writing about a particular subject for a particular audience, the writer will construct new knowledge; to understand that writing is something they can learn to do; and to illustrate the ways in which writing and reading are interrelated by teaching students to read not only to cull information from texts, but also to observe writers at work and, in the process, to discover a range of strategies available to them.

Because our courses stand as students' initiation into the discourses of the academic community, we believe certain classroom practices are crucial. Our classes need to encourage active participation, and they need to expose students to the processes of critical thinking, reading, and writing as well as to the thoughtful and informed critique of these activities.

We believe context is also central. Students need to see that culture in general, and texts in particular, are constructed and shaped by people and by various voices in competition and conversation. This active shaping is central to the way we understand writing and its place in the world. We consider writing to be an epistemic activity that serves to develop, focus, and refine thinking as well as allow students to communicate effectively. To do so, students need to understand the ways they use language to construct their own arguments. Each one of us has a voice, in the community, in the world. It is our job to help students at The University of Scranton find their individual voices, and use them with confidence.