2 Welcome (back) to PWR for 2025-26!
To all of our returning instructors, welcome back to campus for Autumn 2025!! We’re delighted to have such a talented group of instructors teaching with us this year. Our instructor pool includes ASEs who are taking on new course assignments or trying out newly revised assignments and activities for familiar courses as well as highly experienced PTLs who are bringing their wealth of teaching experience and expertise to courses across our curriculum.
And to our cohort of 34 new-to-PWR instructors who are joining us from all three of the department’s graduate programs, a hearty welcome! You’re joining a tremendous teaching community and we’re delighted to have you with us.
In this welcome letter, I’ll introduce you to the PWR team and highlight some new PWR developments and resources available in this Instructor Sourcebook.
First, in addition to our returning team members Jennie Baker, Nancy Bou Ayash, Abygail Gutierrez, Matthew Hitchman, Furkan Kir, Michelle Liu, Carrie Matthews, Sikose Mjali, Candice Rai, and Melissa Texidor, I’m delighted to welcome several folks new to the PWR administrative team:
- Brian Lee joined us in the spring as the PWR Program Coordinator
- Hunter Little is joining us as a Faculty Mentor providing 131 Orientation and Teaching Team Support
- Frank Macarthy will be Faculty Mentor for English 182, 281, and 282
- Alex Henry is starting a two-year role as a PWR Assistant Director
Second, I want to highlight a few new developments in PWR that may help as you put your syllabi together.
- We’ve created a single Program in Writing and Rhetoric Shared Policies and UW Campus Resources page on our website for you to link to and reduce some of your syllabus length, and we’ve created the following required syllabus clause for you all to include on your syllabi starting this fall. (See our chapter on Developing a PWR Syllabus for more)
Program in Writing and Rhetoric Policies and Department and University Resources
This class aligns with Program in Writing and Rhetoric Policies available here. This includes who to reach out to if you have questions or concerns about the course or your instructor, as well as a wide range of campus and university resources that can support you as a student in this course.
- As we all work toward increasing our compliance with the Digital Accessibility Guidelines, we’re working to compile useful and actionable resources that support you in ensuring your course materials are as accessible as possible. Check out our starting place(s) in Accessibility Expectations for Teaching at UW and in PWR.
- Last year we updated our participation policy language; this year we’ve curated a selection of late work policies to help as you develop your own. We’ve also built from our UW in the High Schools (dual-enrollment composition courses taught in high schools across Washington State) colleagues’ guidance for developing participation policies to share with you as you create your own participation framework. Those are both available in Developing Participation and Late Work Policies for Your Syllabus.
- As we all continue to navigate an educational environment saturated with GenAI tools, we’ve also put together some suggestions for approaching conversations with students about writing that may include GenAI text.
- The amazing team at the UW Libraries — Kathleen Collins, Elliott Stevens, and Kat Wyly — have updated their Libraries Support for the Program in Writing and Rhetoric resource with updated info about the Undergraduate Researcher Tutorial (which is no longer available as a set of Canvas modules) and a slew of other terrific library-supported materials for helping your students navigate the research and writing process. They also share information about in-class workshop options, one-on-one consultations, and multimodal composing resources
Finally, if you aren’t engaging in an orientation for a new-to-you class in PWR, the writing programs’ professional development initiative asks that you participate in up to two professional development opportunities for up to three hours over each quarter that you teach in PWR. Carrie Matthews (Associate Director of Writing Programs) has been organizing a terrific lineup of Teaching Cafes, and we have also listed some upcoming Center for Teaching and Learning offerings.
With all that, welcome back, again! I am so looking forward to seeing you all again back on campus!
Warmly,
Stephanie