Pearce Center Programs
A Letter from Our Director
Dear Clemson Faculty, Students and Staff!
We are delighted to inform you about the current programs Pearce Center has to offer, as well as preview some upcoming projects we are excited to get underway.
Current
• Grad WAC Fellows program provides graduate teaching assistants an opportunity to hone their writing skills while learning how to teach and assess writing in their own undergraduate classrooms and labs.
• Client-Based program, which gives business and technical advanced writing students opportunities to work with local businesses, schools and community groups to develop communication projects of all types, such as website design, social media campaigns and classroom books.
• Pearce Intern program, comprising talented students working as interns on university and community publishing, editing and writing projects and as Writing Fellows working in Clemson’s Writing Center.
• VID program, the Visual Information Design program is our newest internship program. Begun in January 2020, VID interns focus on helping student and faculty clients negotiate the intersections between the visual and narrative elements of their presentation projects, including posters and conference talks.
• PEP program, Professional Editing at Pearce provides modestly priced micro-revision editorial services for graduate students, faculty and community members. PEP editors focus their attention on preparing documents, including dissertations, journal articles and grant proposals, ready for publication or submission.
• Faculty Fellows, Five Fellows selected for stipend-supported research in professional communication.
• Professional Practicum, Six Advanced Graduate WAC fellows to be a new CU writing resource.
Upcoming:
• Writing Workshops, Two annual Writing In the Disciplines workshops for CU faculty.
• Writing Conference, With the Writing Lab, conference focusing on undergraduate research.
• IWAC 2023, With the national organizations of IWAC/AWAC, host international conference for more than 300 participants.
• Writing-to-Engage Conference (2024), Establish an annual summer writing conference focused on engaged learning; focused on increasing expertise, expanding social awareness and enlarging intercultural opportunity through writing practice (digital, visual, multimodal and creative).
Please read more about our programs here and plan to visit the Studio soon.
Cameron Bushnell, Director of the Pearce Center
Programs at a Glance:
Student Programs
The Visual Information Design internship offers an opportunity for undergraduates to learn design skills and put them to use in helping university clients with visual projects such as posters or PowerPoint presentations.
Pearce Interns work in the Class of 1941 Studio for Student Communication using cutting-edge communication technologies to produce a range of communication deliverables for campus and community non-profit clients.
Professional Editing at Pearce offers a paid one-on-one editing service to community and university clients. PEP accepts an array of written works including journal articles and dissertations. Discounts are available for campus clients.
The Graduate WAC Fellows class consists of 19 students, with representatives from almost every college on campus. These TAs learn how to incorporate writing into their classrooms while developing their own writing skills.
Faculty Programs
Professional Editing at Pearce offers a paid one-on-one editing service to community and university clients. PEP accepts an array of written works including journal articles and dissertations. Discounts are available for campus clients.
Fashioned after existing CU programs, the Pearce Faculty Fellows program seeks to meet the needs of faculty in departments from across campus who are interested in learning strategies for teaching writing in undergraduate and graduate disciplinary classrooms.
The Client-Based Program, created by the late Dr. Summer Smith Taylor, matches Clemson classes with local clients who need communication deliverables. Students learn real-world communication skills in a classroom setting.
Pearce Center’s WAC Faculty are committed to teaching WAC and WID principles to others in an effort to emphasize the importance of writing in classrooms across all disciplines. They primarily work toward this goals through co-teaching the Grad WAC Fellows class.
Initiatives and Sponsorships
WAC and CxC are defined as proficiency in writing/communicating through instruction and practice in a variety of courses and fields. Pearce Center prioritizes WAC principles in all of its programs and will be hosting the upcoming IWAC conference in 2023.
The Pearce Center regularly sponsors visiting speakers and series that expose Clemson students and faculty to nationally and internationally recognized figures. Many of these events are hosted in the Class of 1941 Studio for Student Communication.