Writing Programs Worldwide - Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places, 2012a

University of California, Davis (US)
space. That tutorial services for graduate students across disciplines are far more
recent at UC Davis than those for undergraduates reflects the (1) long-time
acceptance by US tertiary education of responsibility for literacy development
by undergraduates (e.g., Russell, 2002), (2) the scope and expense of undergraduate
operations, and (3) only gradual realization by US graduate schools
that lack of such assistance has kept retention and degree completion rates at
disappointing levels.
TOWARD FULFILLING FURTHER AMBITIONS: THE PHD
“DESIGNATED EMPHASIS” AND THE WRITING MINOR
Over the past three decades, close to one hundred US universities have developed
PhD specialties in composition/rhetoric. Most of these programs are
attached to English departments, given the historical placement of required
English composition courses in these departments, as noted earlier. Some of the
existing PhD specialties are free-standing programs that draw students from a
number of disciplines. An annual issue of the journal Rhetoric Review provides
descriptions of the various programs and their locations within institutions.
At UC Davis, the PhD “designated emphasis in Writing, Rhetoric, and
Composition Studies” (WRaCS) was conceived in 2006, approved by the
Graduate Council in 2008, and first offered to students that same year, with
five to eight new students per year. Current students’ research focuses in such
areas as WAC/WID program design, writing placement theory and practice in
higher education, adolescent literacy development, L2 writing methodology,
and cultural rhetorics. Administered by the UWP, the designated emphasis has
more than thirty affiliated faculty, from the faculties of Education, Linguistics,
English, Cultural Studies, Techno-cultural and Film Studies, Performance
Studies, and Spanish, as well as the UWP (http://wracs.ucdavis.edu).
Establishing an independent UWP also allowed the development of an undergraduate
minor in writing, which began in 2009 (http://writing.ucdavis.
edu/programs-and-services/uwp_writing_minor). Within the first year, more
than 50 students graduated with the credential and 100 more declared their
intentions to complete the minor. By the end of 2011, more than 150 students
had completed the Minor. Like all minors at UC Davis, this minor allows students
to concentrate study (20 units or five courses) outside their major; writing
minors earn a credential that shows their concentrated work in writing. While
the most common majors represented among our minoring students are Communication
and English, many minors come from Political Science, International
Relations, Psychology, Sociology, and various sciences.
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