Ball State - Rhetoric and Composition

Program Home: PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Ball State
Ball State’s MA and PhD in Rhetoric and Composition allow students to gain a broad understanding of rhetoric and writing studies: histories, pedagogies, research strategies, technologies, and administration. In coursework, students are encouraged to investigate the influences of digital and multimodal writing along with more traditional attention to rhetorical history, research methodologies, and composition pedagogies. Additionally, graduate coursework in Writing Program and Writing Center Administration prepares students for future administrative work.

We have deliberately structured our graduate programs to maintain a small circle of highly motivated students. This enables a close collegial relationship between students and faculty already established in their areas of professional expertise. It also affords numerous opportunities for students to explore the many and varied sites of rhetoric and composition, including Ball State’s award-winning Writing Program, its innovative Writing Center, and the Indiana Writing Project. Assistantships include teaching and administrative work in these programs. Ball State graduate students regularly present at national conferences, publish in leading journals like Kairos and Computers and Composition, and receive internal and external grants.

Graduates from our master’s and doctoral programs have gone on to a variety of careers. We have an excellent placement rate for doctoral students seeking tenure-track positions; our master’s students have been successful in a range of doctoral programs. Graduates have also gone on to careers in digital marketing and university administration.

Our faculty expertise includes Writing Center Administration, Writing Technologies, Writing Program Administration, Public Discourse, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Rhetorical History and Theory.

Faculty Areas of Specialization:

 * Donnelly, Michael - political rhetoric, writing program administration, contemporary rhetoric
 * Grouling, Jennifer - Writing in the Disciplines/Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Program Administration, Writing Assessment, Games and Narrative
 * Lee, Rory - digital humanities, multimodal composition pedagogy
 * McKinney, Jackie Grutsch - Composition and rhetoric, research methods, Writing Centers
 * Ranieri, Paul - First-year writing, honors humanities, classical rhetoric, cognitive development and composition pedagogy