Michael Cripps speaks at Conference on College Composition and Communication

Michael J. Cripps, associate professor in the Department of English, delivered a reviewed paper at the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Indianapolis on March 21, 2014. Cripps's paper, "Opening Access for Basic Writers: Assessing a Writing Center-Freshman Composition Partnership," locates UNE's new mainstreaming initiative for developmental writers within the context of contemporary models for integrating basic writers into credit-bearing courses and shares preliminary assessment data on the effectiveness of the initiative.

UNE's mainstreaming initiative for developmental writers launched in fall 2013, following several years of analysis and planning.  The initiative enables approximately half of UNE's entering developmental writers to bypass a noncredit-bearing writing course and place directly into English Composition, the university's required freshman writing course. These students enroll in a one-credit Writing Lab support course taken concurrently with English Composition, which both streamlines their path to credit-bearing coursework in their first semester and helps them succeed in English Composition alongside freshman writers.

The initiative Cripps presented at the conference is partially funded by a three-year external grant. The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elizabeth Davis after Mr. Davis's retirement as chairman of Shaw's Supermarkets, Inc.