Dr. Anne Geller Awarded Grant to Study Meaningful
Writing Experiences
Anne Geller, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English and
Director of Writing Across the
Curriculum, has been awarded a $10,000 grant to strengthen
student writing by identifying the kinds of composition projects
undergraduates find most “meaningful.”
The grant will fund an 18-month, cross-institutional research
study entitled “Seniors Reflect on Their Meaningful Writing
Experiences.” Awarded by the Conference on College
Composition (CCCC), a division of the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE), the Research Initiative Grant will be announced
at the 2011 CCCC Convention on April 7 in Atlanta.
The other two participating institutions are the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the University of Oklahoma.
Reflecting St. John’s ongoing focus on enhancing student writing
skills and increasing student-faculty engagement, the grant allows
trained undergraduates to interview fellow students and faculty
members. “This process will result in generating honest and rich
student feedback while giving our students valuable experience in
collaborative and qualitative research,” said Dr.
Geller. “It will also make it possible for us to document
the rich variety of writing projects across our curriculum.”
The study will seek to determine when and under which conditions
these meaningful experiences occur — inside or outside majors;
during the first year or last year of college, etc. Making the
analysis cross-institutional will enable the researchers to assess
the relationship between different educational environments and
concepts of meaningfulness.
Dr. Geller anticipates the study’s findings
will have a considerable impact on future writing programs at St.
John’s as well as contributing to a growing understanding of the
role of writing in undergraduate education.