U of U and SLCC Honored with Prestigious National Award for Innovation in Rhetoric and Composition Education

This is the first time a community college has been included in this prestigious award.

The Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition is proud to announce that the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah (U of U) and the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) have been named recipients of the 2025 Janice M. Lauer Institutional Achievement Award in Rhetoric & Composition Doctoral Studies.

This distinguished award recognizes institutional initiatives that significantly advance doctoral education and student development in rhetoric and composition. The University of Utah and SLCC earned this honor for their groundbreaking Community College Professional Apprenticeship Program, a collaborative model that prepares graduate students for faculty careers at two-year colleges and other access-oriented institutions.

Laura Micciche, chair of the Consortium, stated: "The Community College Professional Apprenticeship Program has sustained a major institutional achievement for the discipline. The University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College have created a pedagogical model for training the next generation of faculty at two-year colleges and other access-oriented institutions."

Darin Jensen, the associate dean of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at SLCC.

A First-of-Its-Kind Partnership

This inter-institutional collaboration is a combination of elements that add up to the only program of its kind in the nation: an apprenticeship, a recurring MLA Summer Institute, and a degree emphasis option for graduate students. This is also the first time a community college has been included in this prestigious award.

Over the past several years, the U of U and SLCC have worked together to train future two-year college literacy and writing professionals through an apprenticeship model. Their efforts have also extended nationally through a Mellon-funded partnership with the Modern Language Association (MLA), offering summer pedagogy workshops for early-career English professionals and graduate students.

"We are hoping what we have created will be a model for other institutions," said Darin Jensen, the associate dean of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at SLCC, who has helped shepherd this process. He explained that about one third of English doctoral graduates end up teaching at community colleges, so this development is key to their success as teachers and to the student experience. "Not only do students get a professor who is an expert in the discipline, but who also understands the teaching and service needs that are required to be successful in a community college classroom. They get a well-rounded professor."

Christie Toth, associate professor of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah, sees the apprenticeship program as part of a long line of intellectual work dating back to the 1960s, when scholars began making concerted efforts to better prepare graduate students to teach in community colleges. The award is particularly meaningful to Toth, she says, because, "It's a powerful signal to us that the message has broken through to the doctoral education community in our discipline. Sometimes you have to build something for people to really understand that it matters. The teaching in community colleges really matters—the students there matter, and their communities matter, and so do the faculty who are doing the day in, day out work."

The Community College Professional Apprenticeship Program demonstrates how collaborative design can foster community, enhance the profession, and create pathways for the next generation of faculty. Its success underscores the value of institutional partnerships in addressing equity and access in higher education.

The Consortium will formally honor the U of U and SLCC with the award this upcoming spring in Cleveland, Ohio.