• Improving student writing
• Increasing the use of writing to learn
• Improving university and school collaboration
• Increasing the professional power of teachers as staff developers and classroom researchers.

The Summer Institute provides a collegial writing forum where teachers polish writing skills, explore new technology, and share expertise across grade levels and subject areas. Twenty experienced teachers will come together during this four-week session to share successful writing strategies used in their own classrooms, work on developing their own writing, learn techniques for using technology to suppport writing, hear from guest writers and consultants, and explore current research on writing and the teaching of writing.

During the following year, participants will return to campus to review and extend the summer work and organize staff development activities for colleagues at their school sites. Nine Willamette University graduate quarter credits can be earned by Fellows who complete the Summer Institute and the required follow-up research or staff development projects. Other opportunities for advanced study will be available.

Fees and tuition for the Summer Institute will be $1,350. Tuition stipends of $1,000 will be offered to twenty Fellows. The Summer Institute is funded by Willamette University and the National Writing Project, with support from local schools and participant fees.

You are encouraged to apply early and share information about the Institute with your colleagues; you may even wish to apply as a team with one or two others from your school. Applications should be post marked by April 8, 2005. Finalist interviews will begin on April 11, with acceptance decisions by April 25th. An important pre-Institute orientation will be held for Fellows on May 6, 2005, 4-8 pm.

Online application

IN THEIR OWN WORDS--some comments from OWP alumni--excerpted from anonymous final evaluations:

• "OWP offers an opportunity to work collaboratively and share the best writing strategies with colleagues."

• "A wonderful way to develop the habits of a writer."

• "So many more ideas! I actually feel like going back to teach tomorrow. Craziness in July! I am excited and confident about teaching writing."

• "I’m inspired to use writing in my science teaching to help my students verbalize abstract concepts."

• "The Summer Institute has fostered in me a greater recognition of how all the grade levels, kindergarten through college, are connected and reflect each other."

• "I appreciate the opportunity to explore the research and writings in the field ... With theory comes the power and justification to try always more things in teaching ..."

• "I never knew writing would be so spirited and enlightening."

• "The freedom to write and think and reflect and write again is a wonderful gift."

The Oregon Writing Project was established in 1977 as one of the first sites outside California to be affiliated with the more than 167-site National Writing Project, headquartered at University of California, Berkeley. The Oregon network now includes four other sites around Oregon working to improve students’ writing skills and literacy by increasing teachers’ writing skills and instructional expertise:

• Oregon Writing Project at Eastern Oregon University
• Oregon Writing Project at Lewis and Clark College
• Oregon Writing Project at Southern Oregon University
• Oregon Writing Project at University of Oregon