U. names writing program director

In a move to solidify the leadership for the new Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, the University has appointed Valerie Ross as the future director of Penn's Critical Writing Program.

Ross, now the director of summer sessions in the College of General Studies of the School of Arts and Sciences, will join Gregory Djanikian -- currently director of the Creative Writing Program -- as one of three leaders for the center. The University is currently searching for a new director of the Kelly Writers House to succeed Kerry Sherin Wright, a hire which would fully establish the center's trio of leaders.

The center -- which is slated to open July 1 -- will unite the Writing Program, the Creative Writing Program and the Kelly Writers House.

Though maintaining their separate functions, the umbrella center will combine the three in a building located at 3808 Walnut Street and will be headed by Kelly Family Professor of English Al Filreis.

According to Filreis, Ross' recent appointment is a positive development for the center and the Critical Writing Program.

"Valerie Ross is the perfect choice to this complex and vital program," he explained, adding that "she has a strong academic and administrative background in writing and the teaching of writing, and she is among the two or three most talented administrators I know at Penn."

"And that's saying something," he noted.

Filreis described the responsibility of the head of the Critical Writing Program as one which affects nearly all of the University's undergraduate population.

He explained that the program "organizes all of the seminars that Penn undergraduates take to fulfill the writing requirement," including the training of "all the instructors who teach these seminars."

Additionally, this branch of the trio "hosts and staffs" the center and the Writing Advisors program -- a setting in which students can receive help on writing projects.

Since becoming director of CGS summer sessions in 1999, Ross has been responsible for the planning and development of curricula, as well as budgetary matters and student advising.

Ross also applied these management tasks to summer abroad programs.

According to Filreis, "under her leadership, students find taking summer courses more convenient, and enrollments are up 20 percent."

Ross explained that her long list of experiences at Penn -- and elsewhere -- will certainly aid her in her program leadership at the center.

"My wide range of experiences at Penn -- directing summer sessions... teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and living in Harrison College House -- has afforded me an extraordinary opportunity to get to know Penn, its students, faculty and staff," Ross explained.

She noted that her past experiences as a journalist, editor, business consultant and founder of a jazz educational organization, have all given her an "informed understanding of the power and pleasure of writing."

In her new position, Ross hopes to "strengthen and intensify [Penn's] writing program."

She also expressed her desire that the center "might become a kind of hub for [the University's] community of critical writers," specifically those "who are writing research papers, articles, reports, polemics, case studies, arts and popular culture criticisms... as well as editors and others diversely involved in such communities."

In addition to Ross's aspirations for the Critical Writing Program, Djanikian expressed his own visions of how the critical and creative programs will harmonize in the new center.

He explained his hope to "get students... intensely interested in writing of all forms -- to make writing a significant and enjoyable part of their lives, something that they will rely on long after they've left the University, something that will deepen their sense of pleasure of being in the world."

In his own post, the fellow director is responsible for "helping to bring fiction and nonfiction writers and poets to Penn for readings and classroom visits" in addition to student advising and the "nurturing" of the connection between the Kelly Writers House and his program.

In the center, he will be "forging a new [relationship] between creative writing and critical writing, and making sure that all University students have opportunities to take [writing] courses."

Djanikian noted that "we hope that those students who have taken writing seminars in the Critical Writing Program will want to extend their apprenticeship to language by taking creative writing courses and, hopefully, by becoming active members of the writing community at Penn."

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