Writing

New England College’s Writing programs are at the core of the first-year experience. Students are required to take two writing courses: Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences I and II. The courses promote critical and analytical thinking through a process-oriented curriculum based on a hierarchy of learning. Students taking a Writing course learn techniques for discovery and synthesis applicable to course materials across disciplines. Writing courses serve as the ongoing hands-on opportunity for students to develop as writers and thinkers through workshop and revision, peer review and presentation.

NEC students studying writing in the liberal arts who have successfully completed the two-semester writing course sequence are prepared to effectively synthesize information, draw conclusions, evaluate a wide variety of written and visual texts, and formulate convincing arguments based on academic research.

What is Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences I?

We approach this course as a community of writers engaged in an attempt to discover what we know and what we have yet to learn.  Students read from a variety of sources as a way to discover writing strategies for their own writing and as a way to experience a world larger than their own experiences.  (Read More…)

What is Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences II?

In Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences II, students are asked to present their research findings through multiple genres selected from four different rhetorical modes: narrative and descriptive writing; expository writing; argumentative and persuasive writing; and visual commentary.  We believe the core value of writing a multigenre research paper is that it provides the opportunity for our students to develop as critical thinkers, creative problem solvers, and compelling writers, qualities that will serve our students well in their academic, professional, and personal lives.  (Read more…)

Who would teach my classes?

The Writing department has six full-time faculty members.  They are all practicing, publishing writers who can speak about writing from professional experience and not just from a theoretical stance.

•    Susan Nagelsen, M.Ed.—Professor of Special   

     Education

•    Martha Andrews Donovan, MA—Professor of Writing

•    Maura MacNeil, MFA—Professor of Writing

•    Mark Watman, MFA—Associate Professor of Writing

•    Bryan Partridge, MA., PhD—Associate Professor

     of Writing

•    Andrew Morgan MFA—Assistant Professor of Writing

The Writing Department also offers ten Writing Workshops and five “Conversations with Writers” over the course of the academic year.  The Conversations allow Writing faculty members to read from their work and discuss various aspects of the writing process with students.  Workshops include:

•    When is Description Necessary: How to Show Rather

     than Tell

•    Audience and Tone

•    Revising

•    Finding Your Voice

•    Free-writing as an Act of Discovery

•    Transitions in Multi-genre Writing

•    Incorporating Images into Multi-genre Writing

•    Organizational Strategies in Multi-genre Writing

•    Where to Begin with Multi-genre Research

The Inkslinger is an annual publication of the New England College Writing Department. The essays in this edition have been selected by Writing Department Members to best represent the excellence and diversity found within the first year writing program at New England College.

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