Center for Research in Writing and Literacy

Upstate Writing Project has the greatest impact on the greatest number of teachers through its professional development programs. It is the National Writing Project's policy to offer workshops in series, not as single sessions. Professional development programs are designed to meet the needs of teachers and schools. A distinguishing characteristic of our program is teachers teaching teachers.

We offer the following professional development options:

Contact Tobi Pirolla, Co-Director at tipiroll@g.clemson.edu for more information or to schedule professional development for your school.

Additional Research

Effective Teacher Professional Development

Impact of the National Writing Project's College-Ready Writers Program on Teachers and Students

Research Brief: SRI Finds Positive Effects of the College, Career, and Community Writer’s Program on Student Achievement

Center for Research in Writing and Literacy has completed a three-year million dollar grant designed to increase rural South Carolina students’ writing achievements and college and career readiness. UWP worked with six school districts – Florence 2, Greenwood 51, Union, Anderson 3, Bamberg 2 and Orangeburg 4 – as part of the National Writing Project College Ready Writers Program (CRWP), funded by the US Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation grant program. UWP was the only writing project in the Southeast selected to participate.

Through the College Ready Writers Program, UWP has offered institutes, classroom demonstrations, and a study of effective practices in academic writing instruction with a particular focus on writing and reading arguments. The grant focused on ELA classrooms in grades 7-10 in Florence 2, Greenwood 51 and Union districts, with intensive professional development and coaching in the schools. Anderson 3, Bamberg 2 and Orangeburg 4 districts served as control districts for the first two years of the study so that researchers could evaluate the effectiveness of the professional development efforts. The three control districts received professional development from UWP during the 2015-2016 school year.

Ultimately, CRWP had a positive, statistically significant effect on the four attributes of student argument writing – content, structure, stance, and conventions—measured by the National Writing Project’s Analytic Writing Continuum for Source-Based Argument. In particular, CRWP students demonstrated greater proficiency in the quality of reasoning and use of evidence in their writing.

In 2018, Upstate Writing Project launched Scale Up, an extension of the College Ready Writers Program into additional districts across South Carolina. The grant extended to teachers in grades 5-10, providing teachers in the target districts with professional development in the teaching of college and career-ready writing.

A New Reading/Writing Resource for Teaching Argument Writing

Raise your students’ academic writing results with proven effective teaching strategies. The UWP College Ready Writers Program at Clemson University developed 32 research based argument reading and writing strategies to be used in your middle and high school ELA and Content classroom. Each strategy was proven effective to improve student academic writing during field testing in SC classrooms by trained Teacher Consultants. The resulting strategy lesson plans are ready for you to use in your classroom.

Contact Tobi Pirolla at tpirolla@g.clemson.edu to order copies of Argument Reading and Writing Strategies for Middle and High School or to schedule professional development for your school or district.

Sixteen independent studies demonstrate that the students of teachers who receive professional development from a National Writing Project site improve writing abilities in every measured attribute of writing (2008 & 2010, National Writing Project). 

Research has shown that the Upstate Writing Project's work with the College Ready Writers Program positively impacted both teachers' instructional practice and student writing. Students of teachers who participated in the professional development revealed improved writing scores in the areas of content, structure, stance and conventions compared to control groups. Read more.

Center for Research in Writing and Literacy at Clemson University
225 S. Pleasantburg Drive, Suite D6
Greenville, SC 29607
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Dr. Emily Howell: Director
Dr. Emily Howell is an Assistant Professor in Literacy at Clemson University. Emily has taught English and writing at the secondary and collegiate level and currently teaches pre-service teachers and graduate students in education. She directs the local site Upstate Writing Project of the National Writing Project. Her research interests include multiliteracies, adolescent literacy, writing instruction, multilingual learners, and digital tools. Emily approaches research through partnerships with teachers using methodologies such as design-based research. Her research has been published in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, The Reading Teacher, and Professional Development in Education. Emily is currently the Principal Investigator on two large U.S. Department of Education grants developing school district capacity to support multilingual learners.

Tobi Pirolla: Co-Director
Tobi Pirolla is the Professional Learning Coordinator for the Center for Research in Writing and Literacy. She participated in the 2010 Summer Institute, after being a part of science and social studies content writing professional development provided through the Upstate Writing Project. Her work with UWP includes being a Teacher Consultant for the CRWP grant from 2013-2015, currently working with the C3WP grant for high need, rural school districts, as well as coordinating with local school districts to provide professional development, and is a mentor for our virtual writing camps. Tobi taught 6th grade Science and ELA and was an Instructional Coach at Sevier Middle School in Greenville County. Contact: tpiroll@clemson.edu

Dr. Rebecca A. Kaminski: Retired Director
Dr. Kaminski founded the Center for Research in Writing and Literacy, an affiliate of the National Writing Project (NWP), in 2001. The Center for Research in Writing and Literacy offers an annual summer institute that has trained 300+ Teacher Consultants for SC schools. In 2016, she established the Clemson Center of Research for Writing and Literacy (CRWL). Dr. Kaminski’s recent work has been driven by her commitment to improve the teaching of academic writing and college readiness in South Carolina’s highest need school districts. In 2013-2016, she received a grant for UWP partnered with 6 rural school districts across the state. The College Career Ready Writing Program (CRWP) provided effective professional development that changed teacher practices and improved the argument writing of students in grades 6-12. Dr. Kaminski has just received a new 5-year grant College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) that will extend the UWP work into 4 additional rural school districts along the I-95 corridor. Her goal is to assure more teachers have the ability to teach college and career-ready writing with a specific emphasis on writing arguments based on nonfiction texts; an important skill every young adult needs. Rebecca is on the Literacy faculty in the College of Education and teaches undergrad and graduate courses relating to writing and literacy. Dr. Kaminski’s research focuses on improving students’ writing in grades K-12. Dr. Kaminski has published several articles on her work in major journals including the Research in the Teaching of English, Professional Development in Education, The Journal of Literacy and Technology and Journal of Research in Rural Education.