Adult Students and Writing Majors in an Independent Writing Program Anne Aronson is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Writing Department with Craig Hansen. She has been with Metropolitan State in St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years. Aronson earned her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where she wrote about adult women returning to college and their struggles with writing. We have a separate writing department which offers composition courses as well as undergraduate majors in writing and technical communication courses. The writing major is unusual in that it's not attached in any way to an English major.
Students majoring in writing generally choose to focus on creative or professional writing.
We also offer an M.S. degree in technical communication. Many are changing careers or fulfilling a dream. We have nurses who want to become poets and electricians who want to become technical writers. Our program is fortunate to be able to hire writers from the rich technical, professional, and creative writing communities of the Twin Cities to teach many of our classes. As a co-chair of an independent writing program, I'm convinced that there will be more programs breaking off from English departments in the future and setting up separate administrative units.