Teaching

Entering graduate students without prior teaching experience begin to hone their instructional skills in the context of the Writing Resource Center and alongside the weekly Pedagogy Seminar Series. Graduate students serve as writing consultants for members of the university community, especially undergraduate students currently in the writing programs at Case. A student with at least a year’s experience as a writing consultant serves as the Writing Resource Center's assistant director.

Students in their second semester of university-level instructional experience typically work as Writing Liaisons to University Seminars in the SAGES program, in which they offer up to 6 hours per week of writing workshops and writing evaluation to individual undergraduate courses, and serve concurrently as WRC consultants. In their third semester of teaching, most graduate students can expect to work collaboratively with a faculty member in a four-credit, writing intensive First Seminar in the SAGES general education program.

Advanced graduate students teach in a range of writing-intensive courses, including the following:

English 148: Introduction to Composition
English 150: Expository Writing
English 200: Literature in English
English 202: Advanced Expository Writing
English 217B: Writing for the Health Professions
English 257A: Reading Fiction: The Novel
English 398: Professional Communication for Engineers
SAGES University Seminar (contingent upon the approval of the SAGES office)

Mentoring

Graduate teaching assistants are mentored by a faculty member each time they assume a new teaching responsibility. These mentors change from semester to semester, so as to expose students to the widest possible range of pedagogical styles and practices. The Director of Composition oversees all graduate teaching assistants working as Writing Liaisons in University Seminars and the Director of the Writing Resource Center supervises all graduate TAs serving as writing consultants in the WRC. The Director of Composition, the Director of the Writing Resource Center, and other writing faculty support graduate teaching with a weekly Pedagogy Seminar Series offered every fall, a series of workshops and “brown-bag lunches,” and group and individual conferences. The University Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (UCITE) provides resources for instruction across the campus and offers a required program for all graduate TAs preparing to teach University Seminars.

Research Advising

Each graduate student in the Department has at least one advisor responsible for overseeing research and writing. MA students are assigned an advisor upon entering the Department, and may select an advisor in their second year of study. PhD students select an advisor in the course of study and are also advised by the Director of Graduate Study. The Department strongly encourages students to establish unofficial mentoring relations with a number of faculty, both at CWRU and at other institutions.

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