HAYLEY LERCH
News Assistant
Creative writing majors will continue to write screenplays while also honing their reporting skills, but they will no longer call the Communication Division their home.
Last Monday, the Communication Division began directing all creative writing students to the Humanities Division.
For many students, the creative writing major offers a special blend of humanities and communication courses.
“It’s always been its own unique thing,” Dr. Robert Chandler, Communication chair, said of the interdisciplinary creative writing major.
Most requirements will not change, but some of the creative writing classes will have new course titles. Students will continue to take a combination of creative writing, journalism and English courses as part of their curriculum.
The change comes alongside the retirement of longtime creative writing supervisor Dr. Michael Collings. The Humanities and Teacher Education Division will appoint a new faculty advisor for the next school year and will make decisions regarding program teachers.
Dr. Maire Mullins, chair of the Humanities and Teacher Education Division, said most of the creative writing teachers will remain the same.
Now, like other programs across the country, the creative writing program is more closely linked with the other university writing programs because it is housed by the Humanities Division.
There will be logistical changes with changing divisions.
“It is the idea of trying to get a strategic alignment with other writing programs,” Chandler said. “We want to better serve the students.”
Mullins echoes Chandler’s notion that students will not see much of a difference, except for the addition of a second section of the introductory creative writing class.
This new section is being added next year because Mullins recently noticed the increasing demand for the class.
Mullins said she sees the major as “respectable in the terms of the number of students enrolled” and she would like to see it expand.
“It’s a good program. It emphasizes professional writing. When you come out of Pepperdine you can be sure to get a job,” Mullins said.
The creative writing program at Pepperdine is different than creative writing programs at most secular universities because it also has a Christian emphasis. Mullins said she would like for Pepperdine students to be a larger part of the national community of literary pioneers.
“We’d like to be part of that larger conversation across the country that produces writers, and poets and novelists, but we hope to add the Christian dimension,” Mullins said.
Pepperdine creative writing majors will continue to have the opportunity to contribute to the expanding professional writing market despite recent division changes.
01-26-2006