Linda Adler-Kassner, Professor of Writing Studies and Director of the Writing Program, has been honored with a Distinguished Teaching Award.

Her teaching has a long reach, as she teaches the Writing 501, a course for graduate students who go on to teach Writing 2, the introductory writing class for hundreds of UCSB undergraduates, as well as in their home departments.

In addition, in her role as a faculty assessment liaison focusing on general education, Adler-Kassner works with faculty members across campus as they consider questions associated with the teaching and use of writing in their own classes.

Adler-Kassner also teaches several courses in the Writing Program, including the first class in the sequence for Writing for Civic Engagement, one of the program’s Writing Minor offerings.

“Teaching and research are inseparable in my discipline of writing studies,” according Adler-Kassner. “Work in the classroom feeds the questions that my colleagues and I ask as researchers; our research, similarly, feeds our teaching.”

She continued: “My role as director of the UCSB Writing Program is also inherently pedagogical. My teaching can thus be understood as a sort of telescoping, research-based activity that spans across my work as a faculty member, a department chair, and an assessment and pedagogy consultant.”

Adler-Kassner has written several books about writing research, including the upcoming Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, which she co-edited with Elizabeth Wardle.