The Program in Professional Writing is administered by a small team of teacher-scholars dedicated to supporting our colleagues. The program administrative staff is made up of two Co-Directors, an Associate Director, and an Assistant Director. Job duties for each of these positions can be found below:
Kay Emmert (she/her) is co-director of the PPW, a position she has occupied since spring 2020. She works on course scheduling and staffing, student requests, supervising program staff and departmental social media interns, and long-term development of the Program in Professional Writing. In addition to helping to revise long-standing course offerings, she creates writing courses specially designed to meet targeted needs of collaborative partners across campus. She has co-written researched articles about revising a professional writing program. In 2021, she collaborated with program faculty on a grant studying emotion in business writing, and co-presented on this research at the Writing and Well-Being Conference in 2022. As part of her on-going interests in the continuous improvement model for writing program administration, she presented on the role of non-tenure track faculty in curriculum development as part of the CWPA panel at the 2023 MLA Conference.
Dave Morris (he/him) is co-director of the PPW, a position he has occupied since spring 2020. He works on curriculum assessment, course development, program communication, and long-term program growth. He has helped create and revise five BTW courses, facilitated professional development events for instructors, and co-written researched articles about reviving a professional writing program. With the PPW administration team, he won a College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Impact Award in 2021. Dave has been the recipient of awards for excellence in teaching from the College of LAS in 2016, the English department in 2015, and the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program in 2011. He’s the author of Public Religions in the Future World: Postsecularism and Utopia (University of Georgia Press, 2021).
Kate Newton has been Associate Director of the Program in Professional Writing since 2021. Her responsibilities include running new instructor orientation, providing professional support to teachers in the program, and assisting with course redesign and other program initiatives. She is currently leading a grant team exploring innovative approaches to alternative assessment in the BTW classroom, funded by a Faculty Retreat Grant. In 2021, she collaborated with the BTW program on another grant studying emotion in business writing, and co-presented on this research at the Writing and Well-Being Conference in 2022. She has received teaching awards at the department, college, and university level.
As Assistant Director, Cassidy Short focuses on developing, expanding, and strengthening instructor resources, via both collaborative virtual databases and one-on-one communication. She also recruits, advocates for, and supports graduate instructors. Furthermore, Cassidy takes an active role in the renovation of current BTW courses. She researches current trends in technical communication, composition, and pedagogy to facilitate this curricular revision, and she applies her comprehensive understanding of BTW to the creation of the program’s Annual Report.