Department of English Language and Literature

University of Toledo Composition Program's Mission Statement

The University of Toledo's Composition Program offers courses designed to foster students' ability to write, read, and think critically and actively. This is our statement of values and beliefs.

Statement on Global Environment

We encourage students to see how writing takes place in complex, shifting, multiple contexts informed by a wide array of global customs, beliefs, practices, and politics.  Critical literacy, a major aim of our program, enables students to recognize and write within and about these contexts.  Through exposure to a variety of published and student-generated texts, students encounter multiple perspectives to gain insight into the cultural diversity of the university and the community.

Statement on Classroom Environment

We believe that composition should encourage students to take part in academic and public discourses as writers and thinkers. This practice enables students to connect personal experience to disciplinary and public discussions. Further, we believe that both writing and teaching present opportunities for continual reflection and refinement, and our classrooms help realize those opportunities.

Statement on Technological and Multiple Literacies

We recognize that literacy practices have changed dramatically with the advancement of technologies. We therefore must acquaint students with the benefits and nuances of these technologies in order to equip them with the critical tools to work in the networked spaces where writing is increasingly accomplished and circulated.

Media age literacy demands the ability to interpret and produce visual and written texts. Recognizing dramatic shifts in our literacy practices, our program teaches students to interpret visual texts, including pictures, charts, and graphs, as well as texts composed of words; to understand how text and image interact to produce meaning; and to produce texts that incorporate both words and images.

Statement on Research

We respect the crucial task of teaching students to acquire sophisticated and effective research habits.  We must promote students’ access to multiple, credible information sources in order to challenge the notion that knowledge is definitive fact. Teaching research skills is intended to enrich students’ understanding of knowledge as an integration of reading and writing situated in a context of historical, cultural, and social perspectives.

Last Updated: 6/27/22