News Release
Council on the Arts funds faculty member’s writing project
March 30, 2009
“Good writing begins with good research,” says Penn State Harrisburg Instructor in Writing Jen Hirt.
A professional writer as well as a teacher, Hirt uses her continual research to improve her teaching and, as she says, “help me create better writers.”
Her most recently funded project comes from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in the form of a $5,000 fellowship in literature and creative nonfiction. A member of the School of Humanities faculty, Hirt will use the grant to complete an essay project which has direct personal connections – but with the paramount objective of improving her teaching skills and assisting her students.
The project involves a series of 12 essays focusing on her family’s greenhouse business, started by her great-grandfather in 1915 and passed through three more generations until its recent demise when the land was sold to developers. “The essays will document the breakup in my family and the destruction of the greenhouses by the land developers,” she points out. “The work will be about loss and generations in a family. That, I believe, has universal appeal.”
“Research is the basis of good writing, she explains. “Writers must be fully prepared before they write. Every time I take on a research project, I find it improves my teaching and benefits my students. This project will help me. As a teacher, I am constantly doing research at different levels to improve my skills as an instructor. The grant melds my professional writing with my teaching.”
She continues, “My research work enables me to better teach my students in composition classes on how to take ideas, research, and create a coherent work. And it enables me to bring learning challenges into the classroom such as how to frame a piece, prioritize research, and tell a story.”
The fact that she is an accomplished professional writer also assists her teaching efforts, she says. “I teach students that writing is a process and it is helpful that they see me as a professional outside the classroom teaching it in the classroom.”
And the fact that she is a Penn State faculty member played a key role in landing the grant, she contends. “Penn State is recognized internationally for its emphasis in scholarly research and the quality of the outcome. That faculty research transfers directly into the learning process by improving the skills of teachers who, in turn, produce better-educated and accomplished students.”
A graduate of the University of Idaho with an MFA in creative writing, Hirt has had essays published in a number of journals and magazines and her formal essays on nonfiction writers Hamlin Garland and Ring Lardner are in the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature.