Anne Aronson Past Interviews

VOICES ON: Adult Students and Writing Majors in an Independent Writing Program Anne Aronson is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Writing Department with Craig Hansen. She has been with Metropolitan State in St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years. Aronson earned her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where she wrote about adult women returning to college and their struggles with writing. What are some of the features of the writing program at Metropolitan State? We have a separate writing department which offers composition courses as well as undergraduate majors in writing and technical communication courses. The writing major is unusual in that it's not attached in any way to an English major. It's also interdisciplinary; students can take courses in media studies, communication, information studies, theater, English, and other fields. Students majoring in writing generally choose to focus on creative or professional writing. We also offer an M.S. degree in technical communication. Metro State serves mainly adult students — their average age is 34 — who transfer in with some previous college credit. Many are changing careers or fulfilling a dream. We have nurses who want to become poets and electricians who want to become technical writers. Our program is fortunate to be able to hire writers from the rich technical, professional, and creative writing communities of the Twin Cities to teach many of our classes. What sorts of changes do you see happening in the future of the field? As a co-chair of an independent writing program, I'm convinced that there will be more programs breaking off from English departments in the future and setting up separate administrative units. There's an active special interest group in CCCC working on supporting and promoting independent writing programs right now. I think we'll be seeing more undergraduate majors in writing and rhetoric, and more exciting experiments in interdisciplinary curricula. I also see a strong trend toward integrating visual communication into the composition curriculum. Our department offers the course "Written and Visual Communication" as an alternative to the traditional first-year composition course. Generally, I think multimedia and Web technologies will break down barriers between written and other forms of communication. We might even see the academic essay, a perennially verbal form, start to integrate more visual messages. What are some of the challenges you face as co-chair of writing? Our greatest challenge is dependence on the whims of legislative funding. Our budget is almost exclusively tied to year-to-year decisions by legislators who often know little about higher education, particularly higher education for working adults. Our department also operates with few full-time faculty. We are often struggling to cover our administrative and governance responsibilities. Another interesting challenge is linking students with career opportunities. While this is fairly straightforward for technical communication majors, it is more difficult for students majoring in writing. We are working on providing more career information for our students and helping them to prepare effective portfolios. What can a textbook publisher do to meet your needs? I'd like to see more textbooks geared toward adult learners. Too many composition books assume that students are teenagers, or that they are involved more with campus life than with work and family life. My best experience with a publisher was when we had a book rep who really understood our program. She would call us occasionally just to tell us about a book that might work well with our adult, community-oriented student population, or with our emphasis on visual communication.

Bedford/St. Martin's | Composition | Catalog | Order a Book | Contact Us