Welcome! The primary mission of the SUNY Cortland Composition Program is to engage students in developing transferable writing knowledge, skills, and processes that they will further refine as they participate in college, the workplace, and the community.
The central focus of the Composition Program is academic writing, which involves reading academic prose and writing analyses, arguments, and inquiries in a variety of genres. In addition, you will learn about writing and how writing works. The work you do in the composition sequence will lead you to new, critical understandings of what happens when you write and how to achieve what you want with your writing.
These goals of the Composition Program are guided through the adoption of the Writing Program Administration (WPA) Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition 3.0, as well as the SUNY General Education Requirement 10 (GE 10) student learning outcomes. The two required composition courses fulfill the writing portion of General Education 10: Basic Communication.
The first course in the sequence, CPN 100: Writing Studies I, introduces students to the practices of analysis and argument as well as other rhetorical strategies and theories writers use as they compose.
The second course in the sequence, CPN 101: Writing Studies II, guides students as they refine their writing skills and stresses theme-based critical inquiry and research into complex topics and issues of public importance.
The Composition Program also offers courses that target specific student interests and needs:
Access samples of student writing from the Composition Program’s anchor assignments on SUNY Cortland’s Digital Commons website.