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Writing & Linguistics Department

Click Here for the University Mission Statement

DEPARTMENT MISSION STATEMENT

SUPPORTING THE UNIVERSITY'S MISSION
Writing and Linguistics supports Georgia Southern University's mission of producing graduates "who are knowledgeable, clear-thinking, articulate, and effective in problem-solving." Toward that end, our faculty aspires to excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. As scholars, poets, essayists, fiction writers, business writers and former journalists, we practice what we teach and routinely revitalize our pedagogies with the enrichment that we have gained from our creativity, research, and scholarship. Because we are part of a "teaching first" university, all of us teach first-year composition as well as courses in our areas of specialization. Ninety-five percent or more of our first-year classes are taught by full-time professors. Writing is a context-specific activity shaped by the writer's place, time, subject, audience, and purpose, and that writing leads to enhanced ways of knowing and being in the world. Because we know that excellent writing skills, language awareness, and technology are vitally important in our radically changing culture, we are committed to providing a writing, linguistics, and technology program that will prepare students for the changing conditions of education and professional work in the 21st century.

MOVING FORWARD. . . To accomplish these goals, we

• Limit class size to 22 students in ENGL 1101, ENGL 1102, and Technical and Business Writing, and 18 students in creative writing, in ESL and in Honors.
• Develop a sense of writing community in which students and teachers come to know each other as individuals.
• Accommodate a wide variety of learning and teaching styles by providing diverse, theoretically sound, and flexible pedagogical approaches, using group projects, discussions, lectures, peer-reviews, computer listserv dialogues, e-mail conversations, computer-based classroom activities, and daily writing/responding.
• Join our students in asking provocative questions and exploring valid answers, attending to nuances in rhetorical strategy and language.
• Encourage student writers to participate in the wider community outside of the classroom through class assignments, conference attendance, publication, service learning projects, involvement in global communication efforts, or competition in such contests as our department's Roy Powell Writing Award.
• Encourage students to participate in the campus community by submitting their writing to the George Anne, the campus newspaper; to the Miscellany, the campus arts journal; and to the Reflector, the campus news and features magazine.
• Provide the necessary technological tools, including multimedia computer classrooms with full Internet access, for all ENGL 1101, ENGL 1102, Technical and Business Writing, and ESL classes.
• Staff the University Writing Center for 40 hours per week with faculty and graduate students who provide one-on-one writing assistance to students in courses and departments across the entire curriculum.

MOVING OUTWARD. . . To accomplish these goals, we

• Offer Distance Learning classes for students outside the Statesboro area.
• Provide a comprehensive ESL program for second-language learners.
• Support the University Writing Center's computer classroom, which provides facilities for students to scan graphics, design Web pages, create their own CD-ROM's, and work with some of the most powerful graphics and desktop publishing software currently available.
• Are a satellite site for the National Writing Project.
• Support educators throughout Georgia by hosting the Student Success in First-Year Composition Conference.
• Offer numerous cultural events, including readings by visiting poets and authors.
• Are members of the Georgia Poetry Circuit, the Modern Language Association, the Associated Writing Programs, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

All of the above contribute to our mission of using our wide range of teaching experience and scholarship to facilitate our students' development as thinkers and writers.