In Spring 2001, Bill Head and I facilitated two meetings attended by about 30 of our ESSP community partners. We asked them what skills or knowledge they most wished to see in our graduates. Every single one of the community partners identified "excellent writing skills" as crucially important for work with their organization! And they stressed abilities to write in a variety of genres to communicate to many different kinds of audiences... But in ESSP, we teach expository writing and scientific writing only. Our students with environmental and social concerns in their communities—and that characterizes nearly all our students—wish to reach a diversity of real-world audiences with a diversity of approaches... A minor in Creative Writing and Social Action will augment the critical and creative thinking and writing skills we prize in our undergraduates.
—David Takacs, Associate Professor, Earth Systems Science & Policy
The Service Learning Institute sees the minor in Creative Writing and Social Action as providing students from across campus the opportunity to develop their skills in creative expression in a way that deepens our partnerships with community organizations in response to pressing community concerns... Many of our strongest partnerships (and some of our best Senior Capstone Projects) have been generated through HCOM social-action-writing courses. We sincerely hope that many students are able to take advantage of this opportunity.
—Seth Pollack, Director, Service Learning Institute