Welcome to the world of First-Year Composition at Oklahoma State University! We are thrilled to work with you throughout the time you spend in our English 1113, 1213, 1313, and 1413 classrooms. Here at OSU, our composition courses and instructors support students as they explore not only the how of writing, but the why of writing—our rhetorically centered curricula ensure that our students examine the civic entanglements that exist between writers, writing processes, audiences, the creation of a text, and the text itself.
At OSU, our first-year composition courses utilize a common curriculum that is assembled through a collaboration of our Director of Composition, our Associate Director of Composition, current and emerging pedagogical scholarship, composition instructors, and, in the classroom space, you! 
This collaboration also extends beyond our department. We believe that compositional and rhetorical competence and flexibility, or the facility to communicate in a variety of situations and contexts, are inherently collaborative acts themselves. We also believe that these acts often take place outside of the classroom space. Through the application of multi-modal composition practices, compassionate assessment practices, and cross-disciplinary discourse, our courses bridge the gap between the academy and the civic dimension of rhetorical tradition and engage students in an examination of the rhetorical communities in which they live and work.
As an incoming FYC student, you might be thinking—huh? I thought first-year composition was all about writing! You’re not wrong here; in our composition courses, you will have the opportunity to develop and enact writing skills that are grounded in the understanding that writing is a multi-stage process of meaning-making. You will brainstorm, evaluate and analyze texts, and write research projects of your own! You will also have the opportunity to engage with multimodal texts and text creation in your classroom. In FYC courses, you will engage with written and non-written texts, exploring how these texts work, how they are composed, and how they engage with one another, with you, and with your audience. Think podcasts! Video essays! Albums! Communication does not end at writing, it begins, making the multimodal ways in which you might engage with FYC coursework endless!
We also believe that to become rhetorically competent citizens, we must explore communication outside of the FYC classroom. We do not only examine rhetorical theory and practices as they relate to the composition of texts within an institutional setting; our courses also offer the opportunity for you to apply and enact what you have learned to your own life. This opens the door to interdisciplinary composition, which further equips you with the skills necessary to navigating complex text analysis, evaluation, and creation in your own field of study, and further, in your own future personal experiences.
While our courses do follow a common curriculum, our composition practices at OSU emphasize the personal. This means that you, the student, are in an incredibly important position in our classrooms. What are your experiences with writing, reading, and communicating? What do you like to read, write, watch, listen to? What are your passions, and how do they influence your personal and academic path? No matter the answers, we are here to work alongside of you as you work to cultivate your own relationship with writing, creating, and communicating.