When Kirsten Benson, the interim director of composition at UT, got the brief e-mail announcing that UT’s Writing Program had won the Certificate of Excellence from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, she sat in denial for almost a full minute. Then, she seized a copy of the e-mail and sprinted to the office of Stan Garner, the head of the English Department.
“We didn’t have any idea when we would hear back, and when I got the e-mail, I was instantly overwhelmed,” Benson said.
Since its creation in 2004, the CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence has been given to only 37 schools. UT was one of seven schools to receive the award this year. The award will be presented to the UT program at the CCCC annual convention in St. Louis, Mo. on March 23.
“(The award) recognizes that the University of Tennessee’s first-year writing program and writing center are up there with the top programs,” Garner said.
Garner is tremendously proud that the university has won this award and wholeheartedly believes that it deserves this recognition.
For Benson, announcement of the award also brought back memories of the video about the writing program that accompanied the application for the award.
“When we first wrote out the script, it sounded like an academic article; it was so boring,” Benson said.
After reading over it they decided that they needed help. They took the problem to Tom Owens of the creative communications program, and he gave the idea to get students’ opinions into the video.
“That’s where it really broke open for us,” Benson said. “That was really what this whole process was about.”
Benson was the main person in charge of completing the application for the award and was incredibly relieved when she was able to turn in the 30-page application.
The UT Writing Program won this award because of its exceptional first-year writing programs and its writing center.
“First-year writing is a gateway to success at all of the levels,” Garner said. “It is something that we have been working on for a long time and trying to make it as effective as we can.”
The Department of English has made significant changes to the first-year writing program. One of the biggest changes was having focuses and special topics in the English 102 classes.
“We are trying to give them a specialized focus so that there is a particular area of investigation that students can choose,” Benson said.
This specialized focus in the English 102 classes gives students a chance to research a topic that could help them later in their majors and helps the teachers connect with students who have the same interests.
The writing center also stands out among other universities, according to the CCCC. The English department has been working on the writing center to create a place that gives students useful feedback on their writing.
“There is always more to do,” Benson said. “Writing is a hard thing to teach, and the only way to make it better is to have constant application (of ideas).”
