Award-winning Ohio University faculty to offer special course in writing for change

St. Clairsville, Ohio - As a result of winning a prestigious award for teaching excellence, faculty member Jacqueline Yahn has developed an innovative new course, Reading and Writing for Change, available to students throughout the Ohio University system for spring semester.

Yahn, assistant professor and the Middle Childhood Education program coordinator at Ohio University Eastern, developed the special course offering for middle childhood education majors.  

“Writing for change is an act of social responsibility that reaches real-world audiences. When you write for change, you harness your expertise to create content that inspires a social change, fills a knowledge gap, or provides a similar type of outreach,” said Yahn. “Writing for change occurs across genres, like creative nonfiction or poetry, and is often multimodal, including podcasts, infographics, blogs, and electronic newsletters.”

Yahn is the 2022-23 recipient of the Ohio University Professor Award, an honor that recognizes teaching excellence. Faculty recipients of this prestigious award develop and teach a course of their choosing during the following year.

Yahn developed “Reading and Writing for Change” to enrich the undergraduate curriculum. Students will harness knowledge of their career field and/or key area of interest to develop a writing for change project. The course will include an introduction to writing for change, a survey of writing for change literature, exploration of writing for change across genres/career fields, and interactions with experienced professionals who engage in this type of work.

This course will be offered spring semester, online synchronous via Microsoft Teams. Middle Childhood Education degree seeking students from any Ohio University campus can enroll in this course. “Reading and Writing for Change” is an approved substitution for a Language Arts content area course.  

For more information about this course offering email Jacqueline Yahn at yahnj@ohio.edu.