The Writing Initiative

The Writing Initiative

Director's Message

The Writing Initiative at Binghamton University is home to a variety of courses and resources that foster the academic and civic literacies essential for success in the university and beyond. We help prepare students to articulate complex positions across a variety of genres and contexts. Designed by specialists and informed by current research, our courses and services promote writing as a way of learning about and engaging in the most important issues of our time.

We offer undergraduates a range of first-year and upper-division writing courses, which can lead to a Writing Studies Minor. We publish outstanding student essays in Binghamton Writes: A Journal of First-Year Writing. We provide writing tutoring for all Binghamton University community members, from first-year students, to graduate students and faculty. And we offer Campus-Wide Writing Support and Faculty Outreach to help bolster Binghamton University’s commitment to the central role of writing to disciplinary learning. 

We support our writing teachers by requiring all PhD candidates who teach in our program to take a course in rhetoric and writing studies and participate in an intensive mentoring program through our Composition Mentoring Groups. We also offer all of our faculty, including adjuncts and graduate students, the opportunity to attend conferences and professional development workshops in rhetoric and writing studies, to ensure our program stays current in the best practices of the teaching of writing. Our faculty include active researchers and writers that present at conferences, publish in a variety of genres, and host events.

Since its inception, the Writing Initiative has been committed to incorporating best practices in composition instruction in our efforts to support better writing and better writers in academic, personal, and civic contexts. In 2011, that commitment was recognized when the Writing Initiative was awarded the Conference on College Composition and Communication's prestigious Certificate of Writing Program Excellence. Since then, the Writing Initiative has continued to grow, offering more classes and services that help Binghamton University’s students continue their life-long journeys as writers.

---Dr. Sean Fenty, Director