Within the PWR, diversity is a core value. Diversity and Civic Engagement/Service are well taught, learned, maintained, and continually improved by faculty, administrators, students and the program as a whole. The Program’s Diversity and Student Services Committee plans events to teach and celebrate diversity, such as speakers, workshops and films. We also encourage all faculty to develop courses with diversity foci and incorporate diversity within all of our course offerings. The PWR offers lower-division courses with diverse reading themes from language and gender to multi-cultural rhetorics, and poverty. Additionally, PWR upper-division course topics encompass a wide range of diversity topics: queer rhetorics, women writers, rhetoric of faith, spirituality, immigration, cross-cultural writing and film, feminism and motherhood, race, class, gender and more. As part of the PWR writing awards, we award 3 prizes for the best writing about diversity/inclusion topics in any genre at any PWR course level. Past year prize winners are below.
Note: Awards submission periods run from February of the previous year to March of the awarding year.
Diversity Award
Traditional or multi-modal essays written for any PWR class in any genre that pertains to diversity. Submissions may address diversity in the broadest sense, including such topics as social class, gender, sexuality, age, race, ability, mental health, ethnicity, or cultural difference.
New Multilingual Writing Award
We welcome submissions that address diversity in its broadest sense, including such topics as: social class, gender, sexuality, age, race, ability, ethnicity or cultural differences. The award is offered for outstanding traditional or multimodal essays in any genre on topics pertaining to diversity. The multilingual prize is awarded to students writing on a diversity-related topic using or incorporating multiple varieties of English, including students writing English as a Second Language. ESL students are especially encouraged to submit.