COLUMBIA — After about two years of searching, MU has found a director for its nationally recognized writing program.
On June 1, Jeff Rice will begin a three-year appointment as the new Campus Writing Program Director.
Rice will replace Aaron Krawitz, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who has served as interim director since 2006. In 2006, there were concerns about whether the program would continue when its two directors, Martha Townsend and Martha Patton, stepped down simultaneously.
However, the MU Faculty Council supported continuing the program and Krawitz was appointed as interim director.
The program, which began in 1984, oversees writing-intensive courses and strives to use writing as a comprehension tool. Previously, Rice was the director of writing at the University of Detroit Mercy from 2002 to 2004 and a member of the English department at Wayne State University from 2004 to 2007.
Since August 2007, he has been an assistant professor in MU’s English department, serving as the director of composition. As director of composition, he was responsible for coordinating instruction in freshman English at MU.
According to his MU biography, Rice is the author of “The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media,” “Writing About Cool: Hypertext and Cultural Studies in the Computer Classroom” and the co-editor of soon-to-be-released “New Media/New Methods: The Turn from Literacy to Electracy.”