From Student to Scholar: A Look Inside the Master of Arts in Writing Program

photo of Cameron Parker

For Cameron Parker ’22, Coastal’s undergraduate English program was intellectually rewarding. But when she joined the Master of Arts in Writing (MAW) program, she was met with new, rejuvenating challenges to overcome and spaces to explore. We had the chance to talk to Parker about the opportunities, the classroom environment, and the flexibility of the MAW program.

The MAW is a 33-credit-hour program that offers courses in creative writing, composition and rhetoric, editing and publishing, editing and publishing, professional writing, literature, and linguistics. Students in this program get to experience hands-on graduate-level training in the craft of writing through teaching assistantships that allow students to teach first-year writing classes, assist faculty with teaching and research, tutor students in the writing center, and more importantly, create long-lasting connections with fellow MAW students and professors.

“It’s very group-oriented,” said Parker. “You rely on each person in your cohort for something different.”

 Many MAW students participate in a teaching assistantship that allows them to teach English 101/102 courses, first in partnership with a professor and, in the second year, on their own. In Fall 2022, her first semester in the program, Parker taught an English 102 course with Dr. Howes, a CCU associate professor in Composition and Rhetoric. While being in the position of a teacher can be off-putting at first, Parker comments on how invigorating it can be. “I was able to meet regularly with students, which was very new and interesting,” said Parker. This semester, Parker is teaching one section of English 102 on her own.

“It’s just really cool—it makes it feel more like a job in a good way!” Parker said

After graduation, Parker plans to go into a Ph.D. program in Composition and Rhetoric and continue her research on Hawaiian culture and rhetorical sovereignty.

Parker notes that aside from a teaching assistantship, the MAW program offers many other professional possibilities for students, including working with the Waccamaw online journal, taking on short-term publishing and editing jobs, participating in research conferences, applying for funding opportunities and committees, and so much more.

“A huge part of the MAW is that it becomes all about your personal experience,” said Parker.

 Parker said that while the undergraduate experience is independent, limited, and oriented toward learning your craft, the graduate experience is more collaborative, professional, and oriented toward critical thinking about your concentration.

“All the grad school tropes [saying] that you feel very mature and you feel very respected by your teachers are so true,” said Parker. “It really feels like the teachers approach everybody in the class as scholars—it feels much more collaborative.”

Even though some students may feel intimidated by this classroom dynamic, Parker assures that taking that leap of faith is worth it.

“It makes you approach your concentration with a whole new appreciation,” said Parker.

Parker encourages all students looking into joining the MAW program after they graduate to go for it.

“The best way to put [the MAW program] would be, ‘Experience in what scholarship outside of class really looks like,’” said Parker. “It feels like the MAW is kind of saying, ‘You will get to a point where people want to know what you have to say about the field’…and I think that’s worth it.”

Krystin Santos, NEW Engl lecturer

woman in flowered dress

Q: What is your area of specialty?

A: My area of specialty is first-year composition.

Q: What was the title of your master’s thesis or dissertation?

A: My MFA thesis is titled Auto Fem. It’s a collection of essays on being an active female participant in male-dominated spaces.

Q: What is your current scholarly project? OR What is your most recent publication/conference presentation?

A: My most recent conference presentations surround my experience teaching first-year composition. The presentations range from lessons, formal assignments, and homework using popular culture and social media to speaking about how to establish authority in the classroom as a younger (female) instructor.

Q: What and where was your previous position?

A: My previous position was Lecturer of English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Q: What is your favorite assignment to assign?

A: My favorite assignment is argumentative essays. I love seeing students not only form strong opinions and beliefs, but share with me how they approach the world.

Q: What was the last book you read?

A: I just finished David Sedaris’ most recent collection of essays, Happy Go Lucky.

Q: What do you enjoy most about CCU so far?

A: I love the community feeling that Coastal has in general, but especially in this department. I feel like Coastal is a nice blend of my teaching experience thus far: it’s a smaller campus with tight-knit students and faculty but also has the larger “sports’ school” feel. Coastal to me is home, and who doesn’t love being home?

A Battle of the Superheroes

Donna Corriher, lecturer in the Department of English, incorporated some fun into her English 102 course when she made the shift from in-classroom to the online atmosphere. In this piece, she explains how the study of argument and rhetoric became a classroom debate about the relative merits of two iconic superheroes.

Every semester, in English 102, I have my students debate which superhero, Batman or Superman, has most impacted American society. Although it may not appear to be the best, most collegial topic to debate, it becomes so because I require students to find only peer-reviewed articles in support of their character, using Kimbel Libary’s databases. You would be surprised at the amount of scholarly research that has been published about those characters.

During a “typical” semester, I allow students to draw the name of the superhero they will “represent.” I allow them to work in groups as they find articles, using their laptops in the classroom. Five students are assigned to be the jurors and judges, and they are required to research both superheroes.

Since we had to shift our classes online, I tweaked the debate. I assigned students to teams (groups) within Moodle, and provided each team with a private forum. I then assigned each team a superhero, AND two databases in Kimbel. Each student on each team had to discover one article and post the MLA citation for and an excerpt from that article into a team forum. Then, the team was required to read each other’s articles and “reply” to each other in the forum or communicate with each other via email to determine one great article to submit to a “Courtroom Forum” as that team’s “evidence.” I, the judge, selected the six, in my opinion, best, most credible articles and posted them into another Moodle tool, “Choice.” I listed the pertinent info about the articles and required all students to vote/choose which article they felt to be the best article, considering Ethos, Logos, and Pathos; i.e., the most convincing article. Students voted anonymously. The winner was determined to be Batman.

I used the time restrictions on Moodle for all tools, forums and choice.

To announce the winner, I created a PowerPoint that included cartoons and music, acknowledgements of team members and articles, and, eventually, named the winner.

See the Powerpoint Here: Batman VS Superman Spring 2020 (1)

This assignment allows students to actively engage with the core skills of Critical Reading, Writing, and Information Literacy. Students practice using the basic rhetorical tools of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos as they determine the best article in support of their superhero. Students read articles written for a specific audience, scholars, and do so in a way that not only engages them, but also surprises them and evokes curiosity. They learn how to locate credible source materials using sophisticated databases, thus laying eyes on the extent of databases, disciplines, and fields of study. They must critically read the articles, analyzing the material as they seek out the very best quote that they can find to submit in support of a particular superhero.

Students learn the value and importance of group work as they communicate within the forums. The forums are timed, so students must practice self-discipline and timeliness in order to successfully submit an article to the Courtroom forum.

Student grades were based upon whether or not they individually submitted to the initial Team forum, and provided all of the required information in a timely manner—a correctly formatted MLA citation (reinforcing the necessity of providing source information), and an excerpt from the article (reinforcing the need to correctly format in-text citations).

The only aspect of the assignment that I will change is to weight the assignment more heavily. The debate was a low-stakes assignment, and I graded student submissions within the Participation category in my gradebook, a category that did not seriously impact grades, and thus, some students did not participate at all. I also attribute some lack of participation due to my offering extensions on most assignments for the semester, due to our unusual circumstances, and some students put it off until it was too late.

Fifty-three of sixty students participated. I had hoped for 100% participation, but was pleasantly surprised that two students who had basically disengaged from the course suddenly reappeared and submitted articles. One of the students who had selected a winning article sent me an email within minutes after I announced the results, asking me to vote for his article. Students were waiting, enjoying a little competition.

It’s amazing what a little comic relief will do for you.

Donna Corriher, Teaching Associate

dcorriher@coastal.edu

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