Since Cathy Day, chair of the College's creative writing program, joined the English department faculty, she has hoped to offer students a more comprehensive creative writing program. This goal has now been realized, and the new creative writing minor goes into effect next fall.
In the past student writers have only had a single Creative Writing course, a requirement for English majors offered by the English department.
"We wanted to, rather than make everyone take one class, offer writers the opportunity to go through an entire program," Day said.
The minor was approved by the English department and the Culture and Society Curriculum Committee last month. While final approval from the Provost is still pending, Susan Albertine, dean of the school of Culture and Society, has given the go-ahead for students to begin registering for new courses in the minor, according to Day.
Courses being offered in the fall include the 206 Creative Writing, which will be taught by Day and Frank Hannold, English professor.
Catie Rosemurgy, professor of English, will teach the 304 Poetry Workshop.
In addition to these, two new classes will be offered: a 288 Contemporary Literature class taught by Day, and Rosemurgy's 301 Writing Communities class.
"One hallmark of any good writing program is visiting writers," Day said. "In Catie's class, students will help pick the writers who come to the College. It will give them great art administration skills."
However, some confusion has been created surrounding these classes, as the classes on The Electronic Student Server (TESS) have differing prefixes.
"Records and Registration wanted new prefixes for English courses, because we were running out of prefixes," Day said. "We came up with Writing (WRI), which is what some of the 206 Creative Writing courses are listed under."
In addition to two sections of Creative Writing, Writing Communities and Poetry Workshop will be listed under the WRI prefix.
Since Creative Writing is a requirement for English students, and generally difficult for non-English majors to get in to, one section, 206-02, is being set aside exclusively for people interested in the minor. Admission into this section is by permission of the instructor only.
"We want to make sure everyone knows about this program," Day said. "We want to find interested students wherever we can. This minor might be perfect for someone, but as a biology major, they wouldn't necessarily know about it."
