Contact: Michael Monescalchi, Associate Director for Undergraduate Studies, Writing Program
The Writing Program Institute (WPI) is a branch of the English Department's Writing Program that not only connects writing and English teachers in high schools across New Jersey with one another, but also connects these parties with the curricular and pedagogical work of our Writing Program.
The WPI has three branches:
1. We provide customized professional development to school districts throughout the academic year by request.
2. We offer a dual enrollment program where students can earn college credits by successfully completing College Writing (355:101) in their own high schools.
3. We host an annual Summer College for Teachers, where high school and community college faculty discuss recent pedagogical developments in composition.
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Professional Development
The Rutgers Writing Program Institute offers a wide variety of professional-development options aimed at bridging the gap between high-school and college writing. Given our own commitments to constant revision, we boast a large faculty with specializations across the many fields that intersect within Writing Studies (with instructor expertise in Classical Rhetoric, Literature, Composition and Rhetoric, Education Studies, Multilingual Learning, Business and Technical Writing, Graduate Writing, Professional Editing, Peer Tutoring, and Standardized-Test Writing).
We offer professional-development workshops tailored to individual districts’ needs. While these workshops are rooted in the principles of our flagship course “College Writing” (previously “Expository Writing”), we are committed to meeting the needs of students at all stages of their educational process and the needs of districts with all variety of curricular needs. As a result, these workshops can take any number of forms, ranging from short consultations with faculty to full-day PD sessions.
Some of our most popular sessions throughout the last several years have been on the subjects of Constructing College Arguments, Peer Tutoring and Mentorship, Working with Non-Fiction Texts, and Bridging the Gap Between Classical Humanities and the New Writing Studies. In more recent times, we have worked to keep up with the new demands of Artificial Intelligence and the vast changes within the state standards for ELA instruction.
Dual Enrollment
The Rutgers Writing Program Institute offers students the unique opportunity to take the Writing Program’s flagship course “College Writing” in their own high schools. In consultation with district administrators, the Writing Program Institute offers a comprehensive training and mentorship program for instructors in local school districts in Rutgers pedagogy. The course is then offered at a pace that suits the district’s needs and gives interested students the opportunity to purchase college credits for the course when it is complete. These credits will of course fulfill the writing requirement for students who decide to come to Rutgers, though the credits can also be used at other institutions with similar requirements throughout the country
Summer College for Teachers
The Summer College for Teachers is an annual three-day workshop, given both in-person and online, offered to ELA teachers and administrators throughout the state. In these intensive sessions, the Director of the Writing Program Institute and a series of distinguished guest speakers present contemporary research into Writing Studies and collaborate on ways that research can be integrated with the work of the K-12 classroom. In the process, the Summer College not only establishes meaningful, reciprocal relationships between Rutgers and local districts but also establishes those relationships among the districts themselves, bringing together the passion, expertise, and talent of instructors throughout the state.