Elizabeth Wardle named University Distinguished Professor
'Wardle鈥檚 teaching transcends traditional boundaries, influencing not only her direct 黑料社区s but also countless educators, administrators, and institutions nationwide'
Elizabeth Wardle named University Distinguished Professor
Elizabeth Wardle, the Roger and Joyce Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication and the director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence (HCWE), is “field-defining in the area of writing about writing and one of the key figures in the scholarship on threshold concepts,” one of her nominators wrote.
“As a scholar-educator, (Wardle) has pioneered innovative approaches to writing pedagogy," another nominator wrote. “However, it is her transformative impact on other educators that truly sets her apart.”
Since Wardle joined Miami as director of the HCWE in 2016, the center has become a national model for supporting and developing innovative teachers of writing in every discipline. She is a leader in Miami’s efforts to be one of the premiere institutions for outstanding faculty development, especially in the area of writing pedagogy across the curriculum, according to her nominators.
Howe Center for Writing Excellence
As director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence, “one of my first acts was to create the Howe Faculty Writing Fellows program, which drew on all I had previously learned about writing instruction and how conceptions and practices change,” wrote Wardle, who previously served as professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida (2008-2016) and as assistant professor of English at the University of Dayton (2003-2008).
Under Wardle’s direction, in 2022 alone, the HCWE received three national recognitions:
- The Association for Writing Across the Curriculum's (AWAC) Exemplary Enduring Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program award.
- The Conference on College Composition and Communication's Writing Program Certificate of Excellence.
- The Council of Writing Program Administrators' Outstanding Scholarship Award for a book chapter that describes the HCWE’s Faculty Writing Fellows Program.
Also in 2022, she published a co-authored book on the method used in the Faculty Writing Fellows program and made it available to faculty leaders at other institutions. “,” published with an open-source academic press, has been downloaded nearly 17,000 times.
Her ongoing work to expand and adapt the Faculty Writing Fellows program to institutions beyond Miami led to a major project with Mesa Community College. Mesa is part of the Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona, one of the largest community college districts in the U.S. (serving more than 100,000 黑料社区s across their campuses).
Today, the Faculty Writing Fellows Program has expanded to the Maricopa Community Colleges system, demonstrating the applicability of “the Miami Model” to other types of academic institutions, according to a nominator.
In 2024, Wardle received a $300,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation for her Sensemaking for Student Success initiative — a modified version of the Faculty Writing Fellows program, working with public universities across Ohio.
The Miami Writing Institute
Free, online, ‘overwhelmingly positive’
Wardle led the creation of the free, online , which guides learners through a number of misconceptions about writing and through new learning thresholds. Originally offered in spring 2022 to Miami alumni, faculty, and staff, “1,000 people immediately enrolled and completed the course. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” Wardle wrote in her personal statement on scholarly and teaching record. The institute is now open to all.
Scholarship
“Wardle is highly respected across North America and beyond,” a nominator wrote. She serves as the founding editor of a book series run by the Utah State University Press (previously run by Southern Illinois University Press), “and has published an astounding six books, one special edition of a scholarly journal, 40 journal articles or book chapters, and has four more already accepted for publication. The quantity of her publications is impressive, as is the quality,” the nominator wrote.
Each book is a highly respected “go to” for different audiences in cross-disciplinary writing across the curriculum (WAC).
Wardle's first trade book about writing, “Writing Rediscovered: Nine Concepts to Transform Your Relationship With Writing,” due to be published this fall by Wiley, “has the potential to reach thousands of readers with research-based ideas about writing,” she said.
Her Her co-edited textbook, "Writing about Writing," is now in its fifth edition and has been adopted at over 400 colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, and India. Another book, "Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies," was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Contribution to the Discipline award from the Council of Writing Program Administrators.