Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing

About

When businesses or nonprofits are hiring, mastery of writing skills is a top priority—but those skills are woefully lacking in the current applicant pool. To meet the need for highly skilled writers and editors, the Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing allows students to focus on technical or business writing, gaining a foundation in critical reading, thinking, and editing skills.

Setting this degree apart from other professional writing programs, the BA in Professional Writing includes serious study of creative writing, where students develop imaginative approaches to writing and thinking that simply aren’t taught in other programs. Understanding principles of story structure, narrative arc, character development and the like will make you a better storyteller, whether you’re writing grants, scripting films, working in marketing, or doing journalism.

Students in the BA in Professional Writing program have the opportunity to study with outstanding members of Spalding’s School of Business faculty, School of Liberal Studies faculty, and Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing faculty. The BA in Professional Writing prepares its graduates for careers in business, marketing, communications, advertising, library science, ghostwriting, speechwriting, grant-writing, proposal development, teaching, journalism, publishing, writing for television, and writing for the web, to name a few.

For each track, students complete both an internship and a practicum. Students are invited to attend the nationally recognized Spalding MFA program’s business-of-writing sessions, featuring literary agents, editors, and publishers. For students interested in pursuing graduate degrees in marketing or business, this program allows them to take graduate level courses (up to 9 credit hours) while completing their undergraduate degree.

Employers are in need of excellent writing and editing skills, and Spalding’s Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing is designed specifically to develop those abilities. Additionally, the curriculum helps students build soft skills — such as collaboration, organization, presentation, and communication skills — which are highly valued in the workplace.

Program Coursework

Spalding’s BA in Professional Writing program is 120 credit hours and offers two different tracks which focus on business or technical writing. Students in both tracks explore writing, editing, communication, digital media, and digital content creation.

Both the Business and Technical Writing tracks of the BA in Professional Writing require 52 credit hours of University Studies courses:

• Introduction to College (1 credit hour)
• Communication (12 credit hours)
• Humanities (15 credit hours)
• Natural Sciences (9 credit hours)
• Religious Studies (6 credit hours)
• Social Sciences (9 credit hours)

Students also take the core curriculum of the major and its specific tracks:

• Creative Writing (18 credit hours)
• Professional Writing (9 credit hours)
• Business and Marketing (12 credit hours)
• Art (6 credit hours)

All students who graduate from the Business Track automatically earn an Entrepreneurship minor.

Students in the Business Track who are early admitted to Master of Business Administration or Master of Science in Management will take 9 credit hours of 600-level business courses that serve as both electives for the BA program and courses for the graduate programs in business.

• Creative Writing (18 credit hours)
• Practicum (3 credit hours)
• Professional Writing (18 credit hours)
• Communication (12 credit hours)

Meet the Director

Charles Maynard is the author of seven books in the Far Away Land Role-Playing Game
series (under the pseudonym Dirk Stanley) and several card games. His most recent book is Far Away Land: Adventures in the Materiosphere (2021). His first novel, The Way Things End, was published in 2019. He is working on a middle-grade fantasy series as well as a new novel about consciousness and Appalachia. He is obsessed with emergent group storytelling. He is the BFA Director of Creative Writing at Spalding. He holds an MFA from Spalding University.

Financial Aid Options

Spalding University has a robust offering of financial aid including scholarships, grants, loans, and other types of aid. Check out our Financial Aid page for more information.