First Year Writing Program (FYW)

First, you should check the Transferring Credit page to see if the course should automatically transfer as an equivalent KU course. If the course is on the list and should have transferred, you need to contact the Admissions Office at (785) 864-3911 or transfercredit@ku.edu. If the course is not on the list or is on the list as not transferring, and you think the course is the equivalent of a KU course, you should follow the Transfer Credit Review and Appeals Process.

Students admitted to the Honors Program can enroll in ENGL 105, unless they meet additional criteria that would place them in English 205: AP score of 4 or 5, or IB score of 5 or above. Please contact Honors or Director or Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies for further information.

English 105

The following scores will qualify you for completion of the first three hours of the written communication outcome. Students who receive these scores can enroll in English 105.

• ACT English Scores 31-36
• SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Scores 650 or above
• AP Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition Score of 3 or above
• International Baccalaureate (IB) HL Score of 4

*Additionally, students with eligible AP or IB scores will earn credit for ENGL 101.

English 102

The following scores will qualify you for completion of the first three hours of the written communication outcome. Students who receive these scores should enroll in ENGL 102. 

• ACT English Scores 27-30
• SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Scores 630-649
• AP Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition Score of 3 or above
• International Baccalaureate (IB) HL Score of 4

*Additionally, students with eligible AP or IB scores will earn credit for ENGL 101.

English 101

The following scores require that completion of the 6-hour written communication learning outcome. Students who have received these scores should enroll in English 101.

• ACT English Scores 0-26
• SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Scores 0-629
• AP Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition Score of 2 or below
• International Baccalaureate (IB) HL score of 3 or below

If the requirement you want the course to fulfill is a written communication requirement (the equivalent of ENGL 101 or 102), you should contact Dr. Lancaster, sonyal@ku.edu, the Director of First Year Writing. If you want the course to fulfill a humanities requirement or to be the equivalent of a 200-level-or-above English course, you should contact Dr. Mary Klayder, mklayder@ku.edu, Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of English.

As a general rule, students perform best in classes they attend regularly. This guideline is especially relevant for first-year writing courses because of the writing workshops, discussions, and activities done in class to prepare students to successfully write their projects.

Please see your instructor’s syllabus for a detailed Absence Policy.

First, it is extremely important that you discuss this problem with your teacher as soon as possible: either stop by during your teacher’s office hours or, if those times are not convenient for you, make an appointment with your teacher to see them at another time. During that meeting, explain your problem or concern to the teacher and ask them for feedback on the situation. Frequently, students and teachers find that they can resolve problems in this way.

If you’ve already met with your teacher and the two of you have not managed to generate a workable solution to the situation, you may make an appointment with Dr. Lancaster (sonyal@ku.edu), the Director of First Year Writing, or Dr. Reiff (mjreiff@ku.edu), the Director of Composition, to further discuss the situation. At that meeting, you will present your understanding of the situation and describe what steps you’ve taken to resolve it (such as meeting with the teacher). They will talk with you about what next steps might be taken.

According to University Policy, the only grounds for appeal of a grade is “improper application of the grading procedure announced for the course by the instructor” (U.S.R.R. 2.3.5). Grade appeals can only be made after the course grade has been assigned, based on the grounds articulated above.

Students who feel that a teacher has not assigned a course grade fairly should appeal to Dr. Sonya Lancaster (sonyal@ku.edu), the Director of First Year Writing, or Dr Mary Jo Reiff (mjreiff@ku.edu), the Director of Composition, who will mediate the case.

The student must try to resolve semester grade conflicts with the instructor first. If the student and the teacher cannot resolve the conflict, the student may appeal to one of the Directors with the following materials:

1. All written work for the semester along with the original assignments.
2. A statement in writing describing in what way the instructor deviated from announced or published standards.

When you have compiled your materials, please email them to one of the Directors above at her address.

If a student decides to go forward with the appeal after talking to the Director, the Chair of the English Department will appoint a three-person committee to hear it. If the Department hearing sustains the student’s appeal, the three-person committee will review the student’s work, consult with the instructor, and assign a course grade. The instructor and the student will be informed of their right to appeal to the Judicial Board.

If the hearing sustains the instructor’s original grade, the student may then appeal to the Judicial Board. If the Judicial Board sustains the student’s appeal, the three-person committee will, in accordance with University Senate Rules and Regulations 2.4.5.3, assign the course grade for the student.

Graduate Teaching Assistants in English teach twelve credit hours (four sections) per academic year. GTAs usually teach English 101 and 102, first year composition courses. After their first two years of teaching, GTAs may have the opportunity to teach more advanced classes.

During their first year of teaching in the Department, all new GTAs are required to attend a pre-semester orientation and to take “English 801: Study and Teaching of Writing” (2 credit hours in Fall; 1 hour credit in Spring).

The Department sets the maximum size of classes that new teachers instruct in their first semester at 20. In their first semester, new teachers will work from a common syllabus and will have the opportunity to discuss writing assignments and best practices in English 801, as well as receiving guidance and feedback from the Teaching Mentor, an experienced teacher in the program.

Staff Development Sessions

These sessions provide teachers with a forum for discussing assessment and standards with colleagues. These meetings may discuss grading criteria and examine graded papers, or they may focus on issues of assessment and improving course materials to achieve better student learning outcomes. Staff development seminars each year, as well as training in the first year of teaching at KU, help teachers understand the grading expectations in the FYW program.

Professional Development Opportunities

Visiting Scholars

The FYW Program proudly hosts annual Visiting Scholars to deliver workshops and talks as a professional development opportunity for our instructors and the university at large. Some of our recent visiting scholars include:

Jodi Shipka, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

• “Re-Imagining the Possibilities of Material Objects and Multimodal Composing”

Khirsten Scott and Louis Maraj, University of Pittsburgh and University of British Columbia

• “Engaging Antiracist and Abolitionist Pedagogy”

Anis Bawarshi, University of Washington

• “Genre, Transfer, and Academic Writing”
• “In Between Genres: Uptake, Memory, and Rhetorics of Israel-Palestine”

Anne Curzan, University of Michigan

• “Navigating ‘Error’: Usage Questions in the Writing Classroom”
• “Going Grammando: A Linguist’s Look at Language Peeves”

Asao Inoue, University of Washington-Tacoma

• “A Conversation on Race and Writing Assessment”

Andrea Lunsford, Standford University

• Author of FYW common textbook, Everyone’s An Author

Beverly Moss, The Ohio State University

• “Community-Based Research and Black Literate Lives in the Composition Classroom”

Teaching Community Meetings

Led by Assistant Director of FYW, Sarah Ngoh, these informal meetings offer spaces, especially for new GTAs, to discuss practical issues of assignment design, to address any classroom issues, and to work on brainstorming and sharing ideas for class activities.

2C’s (Composition and Conversation) Discussion Group:

This is a discussion group that meets several times during the year to discuss composition and the teaching of writing.

In addition to innovative training and development, FYW Graduate Instructors may also take advantage of opportunities like summer teaching positions, FYW projects, and scholarly travel funds.

Summer Teaching Positions

Part-time teachers applying for summer teaching positions will be appointed according to a numerical system based on a ten-point scale based on factors like whether the applicant has previous taught in the summer, if the applicant is a first-year teacher, if the applicant has made reasonable progress towards the degree, and if the applicant has passed comprehensive exams. Most English classes in the summer are taught online. GTAs are usually eligible to teach in the summer once during their degree. A second opportunity sometimes becomes available if a teacher is needed for an advanced class in the GTAs discipline.

FYW Projects

The FYW Projects provide teachers with funding to develop innovative teaching materials relevant to courses taught in the FYW curriculum that will be shared with other teachers in the program. These Projects can help the program stay current with scholarly knowledge about teaching writing, with best practices, and with changing trends and technologies of writing.

Proposals for Projects that would contribute substantially to the FSE program are solicited in the spring from current GTAs and Lecturers and those Projects selected and funded are typically completed during the summer, with the results shared on the FYW Canvas site and in other relevant forums.

Some recent FYW Project Descriptions:

English 101:

Rachel Andreini created a full semester English 101 course inspired by tabletop roleplaying mechanics to frame student learning with the metaphor of being “meaning detectives.” The course emphasizes the role of metaphor and the transferability of rhetorical skills and knowledge to help students make connections both inside and outside the classroom. Materials include an assignment sequence, an annotated syllabus with a corresponding storyboard, and additional readings.

Abby Breyer has created a full semester schedule for English 101 with an emphasis on social justice. The course uses social justice as a recurring framework to establish a meaningful connection between the writing classroom and the world outside it. Materials include a major assignment sequence which includes a linguistic autobiography, a rhetorical analysis, a social justice campaign, and a revision. It also includes daily activities with links to additional outside sources.

Tiffany Fritz created a unit based on the 2023-24 KU Common Book, Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler). The unit corresponds to the unit on rhetorical analysis and frames questions that ask students to consider the rhetorical situation of the text, to analyze rhetorical strategies, and to roleplay characters in the book or respond from the positionality of one of the characters. Materials include a daily schedule, multiple activities, and writing assignments.

English 102:

Sarah Kugler created a full 102 course centered on food, grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogy. Personal food stories, cultures, and experiences serve as sources of authority and jumping off points for class activities and projects, emphasizing that students enter the classroom with lots of existing knowledge on the food theme. It reframes common 102 projects of the inquiry essay, genre analysis, and genre production/synthesis.

Lydia Noland created resources to scaffold and support the English 102 sequence of assignments, with a focus on encouraging students to be present in their writing. An emphasis was placed on designing activities that scaffold each assignment and that that strengthen students’ abilities write “braided” essays that combine academic analysis and personal experience/narrative. An innovative final project (a group ethnography focused on the classroom community) is included, along with an overview of assignments, writing prompts, and multiple activities and suggested readings.

Zach Smith created a full 102 course that employs community-engaged research methods and rhetorics of place and space to help students explore Lawrence. Combining identity- and socially-driven components of the academic track, this iteration of 102 asks students to create: a zine or collage, a braided essay, a collaborative digital archive, and a community-targeted event. Through field observations, archival research, database inquiry, and ethnographic study, course participants are challenged to move beyond seeing themselves as “student,” but also as “citizen,” “community member,” and “researcher.”

Scholarly Travel Funds

There are three opportunities for graduate students to receive travel funding for conferences or other scholarly work:

 

English Department Graduate Student Travel Fund Award

The English Department Graduate Student Travel Fund Award provides funding for scholarships of up to $500 to support the scholarly development of graduate students in the English Department. To apply for travel funding for conferences, research trips, or other professional development opportunities, please fill out this survey.

Travel Awards – Students Association of Graduates in English

Each year, SAGE is able to offer limited travel funds to its members to help cover registration and travel to scholarly conferences. The amount of funds varies from year to year Exhaustion of resources and SAGE involvement are the primary criteria. Find more information about SAGE here.

The First Year Writing program has a lending library of major titles dealing with composition teaching and research. We would like to especially thank alumna Pat McQueeney for donating her collection to these holdings.

You may check out material from the FYW Library for a two-week period; see the FYW Administrative Intern for more information.

After teaching FYW classes for a full year, instructors can propose a “topics-based” version of 101 or 102 that incorporates a topic of their choice into the current goals and objectives of the course. Proposals are submitted and accepted in the spring and fall to be taught in the following semester.

Some recent 101 Topics-Based Courses:

Alex Smith created “Composition in Dystopia” which used Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as a jumping off point to discuss how to productively read, critique, and write a multitude of texts. The major assignments featured a creative nonfiction piece, a rhetorical analysis, a multimodal public awareness campaign, and a rhetorical self-analysis.

Jens Evers created a class called “Sports Edition: Composition, Rhetoric and the Sports World” which considered the ways communicators within and around sports use rhetoric as an example for composition students to explore rhetorical strategies and the rhetorical situation. The major assignments involved a range of analyses of sports media, sports advocacy, and a sports literacy narrative. 

Laura Northup created “ENGL 101: Growing Multimodal Composition Skills through Gaming - Stardew Valley”. This 101 course took a video-gamified approach to teaching composition by using the 8-bit farming simulator Stardew Valley as the class's central text. Students played through Stardew Valley both in and outside of class, working through each in-game day and its activities through a specific composition lens. This allowed the game to act as a shared context for engaging with writing concepts that were then transferred to real-world contexts through other in-class activities, reflections, and major assignments themed around Stardew Valley.

Some recent 102 Topics-Based Courses:

Jasmine Holthaus created “Critical AI Literacy” which incorporates discussions of ethical and responsible use of AI tools. Students in the class increase their understanding and awareness of what AI tools like  ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Khanmigo, and Latimer can and cannot do, especially in regard to writing and research. 

Alex Smith created “Critical Reading and Creative Nonfiction Writing” which introduced students to reading and research writing through the lens of creative composition. The major assignments included a personal narrative, a creative nonfiction piece about a community event, a collaborative and multimodal storytelling project, and an oral storytelling presentation.