The Undergraduate Professional Writing program gives form to the contradictory fact of life about writers in American society: They are both specialists and generalists. People who make their living (or some part of it) by writing today find themselves frequently crossing writing genres even as they are called upon to specialize in some specific genre. Business writers may find they are sometimes asked to do PR or may do it freelance; poets won't make a living writing poetry, but they might through teaching, or marketing, or journalism.

Courses within the Professional Writing major are mixed and matched so that they both contribute to the specific writing profession the student is aiming toward, and demonstrate the interrelation of one type of writing with another. This is particularly important in an era when the boundaries between writing genres are breaking down. To take just one example from journalism, news stories these days are much closer in presentation techniques to creative writing and advertising. It is easy enough to bemoan this fact, but we think it is more important to teach writers how to write creative nonfiction in an ethically and professionally sound way, understanding both the advantages of a creative approach in terms of reader interest, and the dangers of allowing the creative form to falsify and distort the reality they report. Similarly, poets may need to learn advertising.

The Professional Writing faculty (who are themselves professional writers) believe strongly that we want to train writers to take a professional attitude and to see themselves as professionals.

Courses in the Major are workshops of various kinds: some focus on student writing and hands-on learning with substantial writing projects; others train skills such as copyediting; others invite students to learn by imitating and finding inspiration from texts produced by accomplished writers in many genres.