2 Welcome (back) to PWR for 2024-25!
To all of our returning instructors, welcome back to campus for Autumn 2024!! We’re really happy to have you teaching with us, from ASEs who are taking on new course assignments or trying out updated assignments and activities for familiar courses to PTLs who are bringing their wealth of teaching experience and expertise to courses across our curriculum.
And to our cohort of 30 new-to-PWR instructors who are joining us from all three of the department’s graduate programs, WELCOME!!. It’s going to be a wild ride this quarter, but we hope to have some fun as we build our teaching community together.
I’d like to share several new developments in PWR, all of which you will be able to read more about in the pages of this Sourcebook.
First, In addition to our returning admin team members Taiko Aoki-Marcial, Jennie Baker, Matthew Hitchman, Furkan Kir, Michelle Liu, Carrie Matthews, Sikose Mjali, Anselma Prihandita, and Candice Rai, I’m delighted to welcome several new folks to the PWR administrative team:
- Nancy Bou Ayash is taking on a three-year term of a brand-new faculty mentor position as Faculty Coordinator of English 115 Studio Courses, along with three years of provost-level funding to offer additional sections of this course to better support multilingual students who are also taking a PWR 100-level composition course, or another C or W course across campus.
- Siddharth Bhogra, Cadaxa Chapman-Ball, and Melissa Texidor are joining us as PWR Assistant Directors.
- Abygail Gutierrez is joining us as a UWHS Liaison.
The first new update for this fall is some DRAFT syllabus language for the portfolio and the participation grades (scroll down to see the specific policies). These revisions came out of the conversations about participation within PWR and also hearing about work being done by UWHS Liaison Jennie Baker in presenting on developing equity-oriented participation policies in UWHS at the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Spokane, WA and as part of UWHS professional development. They were also informed by a review of PWR syllabi from the last three years and conversations across campus in 2023-24 about the UW’s status as a non-attendance-taking institution.
Our second update is a pilot of syllabus language for AI policy, which we’ve put in a new chapter focused on encouraging instructors’ (and students’) AI literacy, thanks to the work of Carrie Matthews, Siddharth Bhogra, Jonathan Isaac, Calvin Pollak, and Colette Moore, with feedback from Candice Rai, Michelle Liu and Megan Callow. We encourage all instructors to include some language about AI on your syllabus, and we anticipate having cross-writing programs conversations over the academic year about AI/LLM use as we all learn ways of navigating what is an ever-shifting terrain of AI/LLM literacy. We are especially eager to hear your feedback, thoughts, and experiences with this policy language over the year, and will be hosting at least one forum for those conversations this fall.
Our third update is an updated Sourcebook chapter from our friends in the UW Libraries, Jack Wolfram, John Holmes, Elliott Stevens, and Kathleen Collins, featuring resources and pedagogical materials you can use to support you and your students’ work in the libraries. Check it out!
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. We have a terrific lineup of Teaching Cafes organized by Carrie Matthews and which will be hosted on Wednesdays from 10:30-noon (usually) in PDL A-11 with beverages and light snacks provided.
With all that, welcome back, again! I am so looking forward to seeing you all again back on campus!
Warmly,
Stephanie