Professor of English
Office: Jane E. Leonard Hall, room 506 U
Email: ddriscol@iup.edu
Education
- PhD - Purdue University - English: Rhetoric and Composition Program, 2009.
- MA - SUNY Stony Brook - Linguistics, 2005.
- BA - California University of Pennsylvania - English, 2003.
Academic Interests
Transfer of learning, scholarly writing and writing for publication, research methods (mixed, qualitative, quantitative, longitudinal, multi-institutional), writing center research and administration, learning theories, composition pedagogy, assessment, writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, STEM writing, medical writing, grant writing, scholarship of teaching and learning.
Profile
Dana Driscoll serves as the founding director of IUP’s Center for Scholarly Communication and teaches in the Composition and Applied Linguistics Doctoral Program and in our undergraduate Writing Studies track. In her role as director for the Center for Scholarly Communication, Driscoll developed and coordinates a range of advanced writing supports for dissertation and thesis writing, writing for publication, and other forms of scholarly communication. This support includes workshops, boot camps, retreats, writing groups, and a scholarly editing and writing manuscript service.
Prior to her role in the Center for Scholarly Communication, Driscoll served as the director of the Jones White Writing Center, where she expanded the programming to include multiple kinds of graduate writing support, asynchronous tutoring, and a business writing credential. Her work in these areas also has included international collaborations with universities in the Czech Republic, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Oman.
Driscoll is passionate about fostering student learning and in helping students build connections in their learning to real-world contexts. Driscoll has won multiple teaching awards including the 2023 Mentoring Award at IUP, 2019 Teaching Award for her work on ENGL 835: Research Design and the Craft of Writing at IUP. At her previous position as an associate professor at Oakland University, Driscoll won two teaching awards: the 2014 Excellence in Teaching award, given to one tenure-line faculty member a year, and a 2014 College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Engagement Award. She focuses on creating dynamic, engaging classrooms that use a variety of collaborative, reflective, and kinesthetic learning techniques employing principles of universal design.
Driscoll’s research focuses on the development of writing expertise over time, the application and development of learning theory to the teaching of writing, and developing research-supported best practices for writing instruction. She has offered multiple international keynotes and workshops and has published widely in these areas. Her co-authored article with Omar Yacoub, “Threshold Genres: A 10-Year Exploration of a Medical Writer’s Development and Social Apprenticeship Through the Patient SOAP Note,” won the 2022 Association for Writing Across the Curriculum and WAC Clearinghouse Best WAC Article or Chapter Focused on Research Award. Her co-authored 2012 article with Sherry Wynn-Perdue, "Theory, lore, and more: An analysis of RAD research in the Writing Center Journal, 1980-2009," won the International Writing Center Association's Outstanding Article award. At IUP, she has been recognized for her outstanding research and received the 2023 IUP Dean’s Award for Research and the 2020 University Senate Award for Research.
Driscoll has long served both her field and university in a variety of roles. She recently completed a three-year term as a co-editor of Writing Spaces, an open-source textbook series for first-year composition courses. She has also served a three-year term as a member of the CCCC Executive Committee; prior to this, she served a three-year term as the CCCC Connected Community editor. She is a founding editorial board member of the Writing Research, Pedagogy, and Policy series with Southern Illinois University Press and served as a founding editorial board of the Peer Review, an IWCA journal dedicated to sponsoring new authors. At IUP, she currently serves as a member of the Institutional Review Board and as a codirector of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning through IUP’s Center for Teaching Excellence.
Course Specialties
Composition and Applied Linguistics Doctoral Program
Driscoll primarily teaches in the graduate programs in Composition and Applied Linguistics. The courses she teaches are:
ENGL 830: Teaching Writing
ENGL 835: Research Design and the Craft of Writing*
ENGL 867: Research on Writing Centers and Writing Program Administration
ENGL 820: Quantitative Research
ENGL 880: Writing for Publication*
*New courses developed by Prof. Driscoll for the CAL doctoral program.
Undergraduate Programs
ENGL 100: Basic Writing
ENGL 220: Advanced Composition
Curriculum Vita: View Dana Driscoll's Vita (PDF)