What is Wildcat Writers?


​Wildcat Writers is an educational program founded upon the belief that all students should be offered meaningful writing projects, community-based learning opportunities, and equitable access to education. We bring together instructors from the University of Arizona and Southern Arizona high schools for community building, professional development, and project planning activities throughout the academic year. Participants gather each fall semester, form partnerships, and collaboratively develop educational plans to deliver in their partnered high school and university writing classrooms in the spring semester.

Partner teachers have the opportunity to customize their level and type of involvement to suit their availability, curricular requirements, project ideas, and teaching styles, all within a supportive community of teacher-scholars with shared values and goals. Past partnerships have organized everything from published journals of students' creative writing to podcasts, graphic novels, TEDx events, research on educational inequality, visits to the Biosphere, and more.

Program highlights include significant professional development opportunities, community-building events, mentors for each partnership, and support from a UA endowment to fund visits and refreshments for students at campus spaces, high schools, and community institutions. Our program earned the Peter Likins Inclusive Excellence Award in 2017 for our commitment to enhancing college access pathways for underrepresented students and enacting service learning projects.

We warmly invite you to become a part of our community!


​Check Out ​Some of Wildcat Writers' Recognition!
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Wildcat Writers Celebrates 20 Years

In spring 2023, we celebrated our 20th anniversary with a memorable showcase of past, present, and future Wildcat Writers! The University of Arizona's local newspaper covered the event. Check out the fantastic article linked above. ​​​


Book Publication:
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​Rewriting Partnerships:
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Community Perspectives on Community-Based Learning
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Rachael W. Shah is a former Wildcat Writers graduate assistant director, and is currently an assistant professor of English in the Composition and Rhetoric program at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her book, Rewriting Partnerships: Community Perspectives on Community-Based Learning​, is a testament to her commitment to learning from community perspectives and expertise. Some of the chapters focus directly on her experience leading Wildcat Writers and offer "concrete strategies for creating more community-responsive partnerships at the classroom level as well as at the level of program and research design. But most provocatively, the book challenges common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning, demonstrating that community partners have the potential to contribute significantly to community engagement scholarship and program decision-making."
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​-Published May 2020


Wildcat Writers Receives Peter Likins Inclusive Excellence Award
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"The Wildcat Writers program in the Department of English pairs high school students from Southern Arizona schools with UA college students. Together, the UA students and the high school students engage in activities and collaborate while exploring critical thinking and effective reasoning, and are thus given opportunities to learn about diverse perspectives both on campus and in regional communities. Most of the high school partnerships are with Sunnyside, where the majority of students are from underrepresented minority groups, and where 86 percent of students are eligible for free/reduced lunch. Wildcat Writers high school students not only hone their writing and rhetorical knowledge to improve their skills, but also are encouraged to see the UA as a viable option for their continued education. Over the course of its 12 years, the program has engaged thousands of high school and college students, as well as hundreds of teachers."​
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​-Published March 2017

​WRITE WITH US!
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If you're interested in joining our award-winning program, check out who we are. And if you're a student, high school teacher, or UArizona composition instructor, check out the amazing things we do, and please consider getting involved!