Aetna Chair of Writing

The Aetna Chair of Writing was established in 1986 with a $500,000 endowment from the Aetna Foundation and matching funds from the State Department of Higher Education. Dr. Lynn Z. Bloom was hired in 1988 as the first endowed chair at UConn's flagship campus (one of only six in the country at the time), with a general mandate to invent, develop, and oversee various activities related to writing at UConn, in the state of Connecticut, and nationwide. None of the activities identified below would be possible without enhancement by Aetna Endowment funds, which total $60-$100,000 per year. The presence and ongoing activities of the Aetna Chair of Writing signal to the state and the nation UConn's commitment to teaching writing and its investment in major research in composition studies.

University of Connecticut

• Establish, teach in, and direct research in graduate studies in composition and rhetoric. Provide information and resources for development of upper-level writing and writing intensive courses across the curriculum.
• Lead faculty development workshops on teaching writing in various academic disciplines.
• Work with academic departments/divisions to secure funding to improve teaching of writing. With Agriculture faculty and a two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we have conducted a series of teaching workshops and paper grading sessions for the Agriculture faculty, the UConn Teaching Institute, and at professional conferences. Establish, fund, and administer prizes for outstanding freshman essays and graduate critical and creative nonfiction writing.
• Publish 100-page booklets of prizewinning freshman essays, Essay CONNections, for statewide distribution: 2 vols (1990-94, 1995-98) to date.
• Reward good teaching of freshman composition by establishing and funding graduate teaching awards.
• Enhance the creative writing program's offerings in support of the Long River Review (student writings), bringing nationally known writers to campus for readings and workshops, and other activities-in-progress.
• Support Writing Center and Freshman English personnel professional development through funding presenters' and directors' travel to meetings, bringing speakers and consultants to campus.

State of Connecticut:

• Fund up to 25 Connecticut teachers annually to attend the Connecticut Writing Project Summer Institute (and Advanced Summer Institute, pending) on the Storrs campus. Over 300 teachers have attended to date; a ripple effect, since all teach colleagues what they've learned about teaching writing.
• Support teacher-research on writing in Connecticut schools.
• Assist Connecticut Writing Project in publishing Connecticut Student Writers, a magazine of student writings culled from over 3000 statewide submissions annually. Lecture and conduct workshops on teaching writing to Connecticut teachers.

United States:

• Research:

  Dr. Bloom's nationally known research in composition studies, the teaching of writing, and nonfiction is partly supported by Aetna funds, which also pay for the Aetna secretary. Includes Composition Studies as a Creative Art (Utah State University Press 1998), "Freshman Composition as a Middle Class Enterprise" (College English Oct. 1996), "The Essay Canon" (College English March 1999), Reviewed in Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 1999, "Advancing Composition," in Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum, ed. Linda K. Shamoon et. al. (Heinemann 2000); and "Once More to the Essay: The Essay Canon and Textbook Anthologies," symplokė (Spring 2001).

  Dr. Bloom's writing of creative nonfiction has achieved national recognition, as well, through presentations at meetings (often as plenary speaker) and publications in books and journals. As the invited faculty speaker at UConn's annual Celebration of Research and Creativity in October 2000, she spoke on "Writing and Cooking, Cooking and Writing: Savoring Creativity," an address published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Dec. 21, 2001). "Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction" will appear in College English Jan. 2003.

• Interdisciplinary Publication:

  In hardcopy and on a web site, Improving Student Writing in the Agricultural Sciences: A Field Guide for Instructors (2000), co-authored with Kim Freeman, Cameron Faustman, and Tom Hoagland, for nationwide distribution to Agricultural Sciences faculty. Aetna funding supplements USDA grant.

  The Aetna funded Writing Across the Disciplines web site.

• National professional leadership:

  While at UConn, Dr. Bloom has held various offices in the Modern Language Association, College Conference on Composition and Communication, and the Council of Writing Program Administrators (including president). Coupled with her research, this has given UConn national visibility in composition studies. She regularly reviews composition programs and English Departments at other colleges and universities.

  Dr. Bloom is a member of the Board of Directors, National Archives of Composition and Research and a member of the advisory board of the New England consortium of Land Grant University Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition.

• Conferences and Related Book Publication:

  With Aetna funding, UConn has co-sponsored two national invitational conferences (c. 450 participants in 1993; the 2001 conference, three weeks after 9-11, had 300 participants), held at Miami University of Ohio: "Composition in the 21st Century: Crisis and Change," 1993; 15 papers published as Composition in the 21st Century: Crisis and Change (Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), a widely-cited book co-edited by Dr. Bloom. "Composition in the New Millennium: Rereading the Past, Rewriting the Future," 2001, a comparable conference with book publication scheduled for 2003 with Southern Illinois University Press. Dr. Bloom is a plenary speaker and book co-editor. Opening of the Nathan Hale Inn will enable future conferences to be held on the UConn campus 2002.

Last updated February 7, 2003