Active Students (as of Fall 2023)*
Undergrad majors: 92
Undergrad minors: 61
Undergrad certificates: 27
Graduate students: 23
Graduate certificates: 19
2023-24 Student Credit Hours: 26,509
*All active students with declared CAH programs are included in the enrollment counts.
During the 2023-24 academic year, the Department of Writing and Rhetoric’s undergraduate program achieved several significant milestones.
We developed a new undergraduate certificate program titled The Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Human Impacts Certificate. This innovative program explores the intersections of human experiences with AI and big data technologies. By drawing from interdisciplinary expertise across the College of Arts and Humanities, the certificate equips students with critical and creative approaches to understanding the ethics, uses, histories and broad implications of these transformative and emerging technologies. In our ongoing commitment to provide enriched educational opportunities, we introduced honors sections for two existing courses: Graphic Medicine and Disability Studies in Rhetoric. These honors sections are designed to meet the diverse intellectual needs of our students and offer an in-depth exploration of these subjects. We introduced a new course on rhetoric and pop culture that focused on the work of Taylor Swift, reflecting our commitment to offering contemporary and relevant coursework that resonates with students’ interests. Learn more about the students’ experiences on UCF’s Knightly News (minute 6:08) and read more about UCF Swifties’ responses to the release of “Tortured Poets Department.”
To be at the forefront of professionalizing faculty who are teaching writing with and about artificial intelligence, our undergraduate program partnered with the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program to offer workshops in teaching with AI. This initiative was designed to equip educators with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively teach AI-related topics, ensuring that our curriculum remains relevant and forward-looking. In the month of March, Department Chair Sherry Rankins-Robertson represented UCF at both a Board of Governors meeting and a Department of Education meeting to discuss the evolving uses of AI in education with particular attention to writing, critical thinking and an expansion of digital literacy to include AI literacy. Claire Lauer, professor of technical communication from Arizona State University, facilitated a roundtable discussion with Shane Wood, director of First-Year Composition, titled “Digital and Data Literacies and AI” to further discuss the implications of AI, writing and visual representation of data. Learn more about the Department’s AI efforts discussed in the WAC spotlight.
Beyond these academic developments, DWR undergraduate students successfully restarted the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), with the support of faculty advisor Stephanie K. Wheeler. This project fosters student engagement, empowering students to advocate for causes about which they feel strongly. BA undergraduate student Brit Gibson started a campus yoga club called emPOWER with faculty advisor Sherry Rankins-Robertson to promote student wellbeing and mindfulness. The faculty-student pair offered a mindful writing, mindful movement course through the Florida Prison Education Program (FPEP) in the Spring 2024 term. Lecturer Heather Vazquez continues to support the coordination of FPEP and teach writing in prisons. Our students’ hard work and dedication were recognized through prestigious awards. DWR students were awarded the Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for Summer 2024, as well as scholarships during Academic Exploration Week, highlighting their exceptional academic achievements.
The Department hosted students from Celebration High School on campus, in collaboration with the University Writing Center (UWC). The event included activities in the Theory Lab and an International Baccalaureate (IB) research and writing event, providing high school students with a valuable opportunity to engage with advanced research and writing practices.
In partnership with the University Writing Center, DWR faculty members hosted an eclipse experience as part of UCF’s “Not So Total Eclipse Event” in April. Students could participate in viewing the eclipse and reflectively writing about their visual phenomenon. Hear students’ narratives on the DWR Podcast called, “(Not So) Total Eclipse of the Arts.”
The 2024 Knights Write Showcase (KWS) featured keynote speaker Sheila Carter-Tod, executive director of University Writing Program and professor of English at the University of Denver, who shared her ideas about linguistic representation in her talk “AI, Reflection: A Hero’s Journey.” This year’s event featured first-year student posters on their research and a variety of student panels. A workshop on AI was hosted by WAC. The highlight of the event each year is the student awards ceremony.
As Nick Gardiakos and Meeghan Faulconer write in their podcast introduction about KWS, it was developed to “highlight and share the research and writing occurring in the first-year writing program, and has since become a multi-day event that encompasses work in composition courses, writing across the curriculum, our three departmental publications Stylus, Convergence and Imprint, and also the University Writing Center, undergraduate, and graduate student work.” Listen to the DWR Podcast about 2024 KWS.
This year the department sponsored nine graduate students to present at two national conferences in 23-24, including the premier composition conference, Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the conference for the Popular Culture Association. To professionalize our graduate students, the graduate program brought three scholars from the discipline to speak with graduate students on the topics of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Teaching Humanities at HBCUs, and Language Diversity and AI. Students who held assistantships in our graduate program had opportunities to develop leadership skills in the University Writing Center, improve their teaching through classroom instruction experience in the First-Year Composition program, and learn about research in the field by supporting CCC, a top journal in the field, under Visiting Assistant Professor Kara Taczak.
DWR faculty continued their important work in partnership with the Big Cypress Reservation of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, strengthening ties with the community and expanding collaborative efforts. This year DWR collaborated with the Department of History to expand the research team, enhancing the depth and breadth of the ongoing research. In November, community partners from the Seminole Tribe visited UCF, further solidifying this vital relationship. This work is supported by an $82,370 grant from the Patz Family Foundation, which funds faculty to continue their archival research with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, preserving and exploring the rich history and culture.
This year Senior Instructor Deborah Weaver led writing workshops that cumulated in a public reading at UCF Celebrates the Arts. Ten LIFE at UCF writers shared their works. One writer had a piece selected to be displayed at the Orlando International Airport’s exhibition Words & Wonders: Flight Edition. Her work was one of twelve writers selected out of more than 150 submissions. We are thrilled for this partnership and celebrate the public works of these writers.
Our department was delighted to welcome Associate Professor Shane Wood as the new Director of Composition. With a distinguished background in pedagogy and a passion for fostering innovative teaching practices, Shane brings fresh perspectives to our award-winning first-year composition program. His research interests include multimodality, digital rhetoric, writing assessment, composition theory and praxis, and rhetorical genre studies. His book, Teachers Talking Writing: Perspectives on Places, Pedagogies, and Programs, was published in 2023. In 2019, he created Pedagogue, an award-winning podcast in writing studies. Each episode is a conversation with a writing teacher about their pedagogies, practices, institutional contexts and students. Wood’s commitment to student success and his visionary leadership promise to inspire both faculty and students as we continue to advance our mission in the composition program. We are excited to have him at the helm and look forward to the transformative impact he will undoubtedly make in his new role.
In the forthcoming year, DWR will be preparing to partner with Georgia State University and Morgan State University on a $7.6 million Department of Education funded Chatbot Grant to launch in the Department of Writing and the University Writing Center in the Fall 2025. As we close out this year’s DWR Spotlight, we toss our hats in the air to celebrate our many graduates and their accomplishments.
