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History

The University of Minnesota’s Department of Writing Studies, in the College of Liberal Arts, opened in July 2007 as part of the University of Minnesota’s plan to become one of the top three public research universities in the world. A merger of existing faculty, staff, and programs in the Department of Rhetoric, Post Secondary Teaching and Learning, the Center for Writing, and English composition, we are an academic department equally rich in teaching and research talent, with 15 tenured/tenure track faculty, over 20 full time instructors, and degrees from the bachelor's to the doctorate.

Below are short histories of the programs that were combined to create the Department of Writing Studies.

The Department of Rhetoric was established in 1908 to provide writing and speaking courses specifically designed for students in the College of Agriculture. In 1971 programs in scientific and technical communication were established. Since that time, the program has expanded and has become one of the leading centers for technical communication in the United States. The Department of Writing Studies will be home to the faculty and degree programs previously housed in the Department of Rhetoric: B.S. in scientific and technical communication; M.S. and certificate in scientific and technical communication; M.A./Ph.D. in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication.

Freshman Composition was taught through the English department for as long as anyone can recall. In the 1980s the department received a major grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to study the emerging use of word processing in writing and teaching. Composition staff also offered graduate courses and seminars on composition theory, research methods, and specialized topics. Going back to the 1930s, the English department had a background in teaching writing in the disciplines which led in the 1980s and 1990s to the department offering a suite of required, upper-division composition courses that served all of the departments on the Minneapolis campus.

The General College was established in 1932 in order to put into practice what were at the time cutting edge ideas about the role of education in nurturing and building a democratic society. In recent years, The General College Writing Program became a nationally recognized leader in studying the writing and literacy processes of the full range of students admitted to the University. General College faculty enjoyed a national reputation for their research into the connections between writing instruction and the public purposes and outcomes of education.

The Center for Writing brings together three previously separate writing centers on the Twin Cities campus, each of which has a rich history: the General College Writing Center (opened in 1972), the Online Writing Center (created in 1997), the Center for Writing (formed in 2003 through the merger of the Student Writing Center, which dated back to the early 1970s, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Writing, founded in 1987). The Center for Writing supports the University's mission to improve writing across the curriculum in a comprehensive way: working directly with student writers, supporting instructors integrating writing into their courses (both at the University and through preK-college outreach), and sponsoring research into the theories and practices of writing, rhetoric and literacy. In 2006, the Center proposed and received funding for the new Writing-Enriched Curriculum Project, which will transform the existing writing-intensive requirement into a curricular approach that ensures all undergraduate degrees are writing enriched.