Miami University is pleased to invite applications for the first Director of the Howe Center for Student Writing. This appointment includes a tenured position as professor or associate professor in the English Department.

The Howe Center for Student Writing is a major component of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence, an innovative and generously endowed administrative unit that combines programs and services for students, both undergraduate and graduate, with initiatives that help faculty and departments design additional and more effective writing assignments.

In a Director for the Center for Student Writing, we are seeking a leader who can help us re-imagine the scope and nature of a university’s support for students and be a member of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence’s overall leadership team. In particular, we wish to hire a colleague who will develop programs that encompass all the writing that Miami students do, including not only their course-based assignments but also their extracurricular, self-sponsored, and community-based writing. As part of this effort, the Director will establish new partnerships and collaborations with various university programs and student organizations as well as strengthen ones we already have with such groups as the Center for American and World Cultures, Office of Student Engagement and Service Learning, Students for Peace and Justice, and Women’s Center. We want our student programs to support all forms of writing, including both print and digital communications. The Director will provide vision and direction to our thriving student writing center, which is located in the center of the first floor of Miami’s main library. However, the Director will not be responsible for day-to-day supervision of the writing center. We will provide an administrative assistant to fulfill that responsibility so the Director can concentrate on the larger project of developing programs that encourage, support, and highlight all student writing. This position offers a unique opportunity for combining visionary development of campus-wide initiatives in support of student writing with a research program that contributes in important and lasting ways to the scholarship on writing in college.

The Director’s appointment will be for a renewable, five-year term in the Howe Center for Writing Excellence. During this term, the Director will devote most of his or her energies and creativity to the Center. The Director’s only teaching requirement will be to offer the course that prepares new student writing consultants for their duties. However, as a valued member of our composition and rhetoric faculty, the Director will be welcome to serve on master’s and doctoral committees and teach occasional courses in the English department, including graduate seminars on topics of his or her choosing and undergraduate courses in the technical and scientific communication major and the writing and rhetoric minor. At the end of five years, the Director may request renewal of his or her appointment to the Howe Center for Student Writing or elect to devote his or her talents to the English department.

Required Qualifications: Terminal degree; record of teaching, research, and service that merits appointment as a tenured associate or full professor in the English department at Miami; ability to interact with a wide range of constituencies and collaborators, including faculty, students, and staff. Desirable qualifications: knowledge and experience with student writing center theory and practice, writing in the disciplines, writing program administration, assessment, grant writing, and fundraising.

Application: To apply, send a letter, vita, names of four references, and a statement discussing your interest in the opportunities afforded by this position to Paul Anderson, Chair, Search Committee, Howe Center for Writing Excellence, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056. Screening of applications begins October 1, 2009 and continues until the position is filled. Miami is an EOE/AA employer with smoke-free campuses. The campus crime and safety report can be found at http://www.muohio.edu/righttoknow; hard copy upon request. Information about the Howe Center for Writing Excellence is available at http://www.muohio.edu/Howe.