NSU's Quality Enhancement Plan April 2017

20 | NSU QEP Current Campus Writing Activities Existing Cocurriculum The university offers a few cocurricular programs that provide writing assistance to students. Each is operated by a different college, and their collective efforts do not provide assistance to all students at all levels in all colleges. The proposed QEP will unify and expand the programs listed below into one organizational structure (see Appendix B) that will support writing throughout the university and will be facilitated by experts in the fields of composition and rhetoric and writing centers. The unified program will provide writing assistance to all NSU students, undergraduate and graduate, at all campuses and online. Writing Assistance: Tutoring • College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Writing Center The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Writing Center provides writing assistance to students enrolled in first-year composition courses and College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences graduate programs. The college’s Writing Center does not provide assistance to students enrolled in upper-level undergraduate courses in the college or to students outside the college, though anecdotal evidence indicates that many students in these areas have asked for assistance. The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Writing Center, led by the Department of Writing and Communication, supports first-year composition via a Writing Fellows Program that focuses solely on first-year composition. The program is in its fifth year and students and faculty members have reported a high level of satisfaction with the program (Dvorak, Bruce, and Lutkewitte, 2012). During the 2015–2016 academic year, the college offered 95 sections of COMP (57 fall, 36 winter) to approximately 800 students. Fellows were embedded in all of these classes. The fellows visited more than 300 class sessions and conducted more than 2,400 individual sessions with COMP students outside of class. At the graduate level, the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Writing Center employs a professional writing coach who is assigned to work with graduate students. During 2015–2016, the writing coach offered more than 150 sessions to only 38 students in the college, which enrolls more than 1,200 students (fall 2016). • Health Professions Division Effective Writing Center for the College of Health Care Sciences The College of Health Care Sciences, part of NSU’s Health Professions Division, offers the Effective Writing Center for the College of Health Care Sciences only to students enrolled in that college. As of August 2016, the College of Health Care Sciences enrolled 2,881 students, out of the Health Professions Division’s 7,734 students. For the past few years, faculty members and students from other colleges in the Health Professions Division (Dental Medicine, Medical Sciences, Nursing, Optometry, Osteopathic Medicine, and Pharmacy) have attempted to use the College of Health Care Sciences Effective Writing Center, but opportunities have been limited. Three writing coaches offer mostly online appointments, and conduct approximately 700 sessions per year.