Approaching the (Re)Design of Writing Majors: Contexts of Research, Forms of Inquiry, and Recommendations for Faculty

In this article, we discuss the three-year process of redesigning our wri ting major at Baylor University. In tracing our process, we discuss the decisions we made with regard to the redesign of our major and contextualize our decision-making process in relation to existing scholarship on the writing major. Additionally, we highlight the range of sources we examined in our efforts to understand how the various dimensions of each context might influence the redesign process. Finally, we distill key insights from our redesign process and provide practical guidance for writing scholars who plan to undertake similar redesign efforts. Through this essay, we aim to provide writing scholars with an approach for navigating—in thought and in practice—the complex processes of decision-making and research central to (re) designing a writing major. On the whole, we hope our article will be a useful tool for helping others in their major-building efforts and serve as one possible response to an exigent and perennial question in writing major (re) design: How is a writing major developed or redesigned?