I moved into room 320 of Nordenberg Hall in August 2019. My mom, brother, and I stayed at a nearby hotel with all of my things packed up in the trunk of our car. In just a few hours, my whole life was squished into my half of a room. I had no idea what to expect attending Pitt, as I graduated high school in a class small enough to know every person by their faces and by first and last name. My floor at Nordenberg consisted of 40 or so musical-minded people who began rocking out with acoustic and double-necked electric guitars within the first few minutes of everyone meeting each other in the Music Living Learning Community (LLC).
Classes started, and I found even more friends. My roommate, who is still my roommate and my best friend to this day, came home one day all excited. Margaux told me about how there was this major at Pitt and how it was growing and that I should check it out. The major that she was talking about was Public and Professional Writing, and she'd heard about it in her first-year Composition class that day. I pulled out my laptop and clicked on Pitt’s English department website. Sure enough, the course list looked really exciting. I knew that I wanted to go into writing, but not journalism or creative writing. As I read through the PPW list, I realized that my writing skills could be used to go down multiple career paths related to professional writing.
The Public and Professional Writing (PPW) major is composed of 33 credits. The major includes optional course clusters designed for specific areas of interest, including Writing for Science and Engineering, Advertising and PR Writing, Black Rhetoric and Public Writing, Writing for Law and Government, Writing for Nonprofits, Teaching and Composition Studies, Writing for Business, Public Engagement, Composing Digital Media and 
Using Design, Technical Writing, Publishing, Disability Studies, and Preparing for Law or Graduate School. Through the PPW major, students can pursue a wide range of careers upon graduation. In addition, the major—and even the 18-credit PPW certificate—can benefit those who are going into the health or medical field, education, design, or graduate/professional studies. The course clusters within the PPW major are built to hone in on specific writing disciplines and cater to specific skills and student audiences. All PPW majors must take core required courses as well as complete a Bridge Seminar and a PPW Internship or an undergraduate teaching assistantship that involves teaching or tutoring peers in writing.
Teaching Assistant Professor Dana Nowlin-Russell is the newest Director of the Public and Professional Writing Program at Pitt. She has taught the core PPW courses, as well as Grant Writing, Grant Writing for Nonprofits, Grant Writing for Research, and Writing and Anxiety.
What drives people to study PPW is passion and experience. Writing is a tool used to create social change, shape policy, advocate for others, and inform. As the director of the PPW Program, Nowlin-Russell enjoys seeing the different paths that students are taking in PPW. Whether students are majoring in PPW, double or triple majoring with it, or are earning the certificate, she said it has been exciting for her to lead students into exploring different types of writing and seeing them realize how influential writing is both inside and outside of academia.
The numerous possibilities of career paths and study tracks are what keep the PPW course clusters alive. Fields are always changing, especially when alumni reach out and give their insight on what’s new and needed in the professional writing world. Additionally, Nowlin-Russell was one of the first students to be enrolled in the PPW certificate in the early 2000s!
The thing that I admire most about the PPW major is how versatile it is. “Public and Professional Writing” encompasses many disciplines: healthcare, research, law, public relations, technical writing, publishing, and more. When I first considered PPW as a major, I looked at the course clusters and found that technical writing interested me. I got into contact with a professor at Pitt who shared a lot of tips about technical writing and which classes to take at Pitt, including Usability Testing in Technical Writing, which would count towards my Public and Professional Writing major requirements. So I enrolled in the class and gained new skills in user experience, user design, technical writing, and a tiny bit of coding—including using GitHub.
Another class that I discovered through PPW is Integrating Writing and Design, where I learned about and utilized elements within the Adobe Creative Suite—accessible to all students through Pitt—to create magazine spreads, recipe cards, album covers, social media story pages, and career documents. With many hours spent practicing Adobe InDesign, the class expanded my skillset—not to mention giving polish and professionalism to my resumé and cover letter content and design just in time for my post-graduation job search.
The PPW major has contributed to several items on my resumé, enabling me to garner real-world credentials and helping me advance into the professional world. The T5F associate editor position has been one of my favorites here at Pitt. My PPW major, along with my nonfiction Writing minor, has given me experience interviewing faculty and students in Pitt’s English department and writing stories on the department's new programs, teaching award winners, and faculty interests. I also had a great time grant writing this summer at GMS Funding Solutions in Carlisle, Pa., where I found that my PPW studies at Pitt had also prepared me for writing press releases and memos; this internship gave me the chance to apply different writing styles in a professional setting. My relevant courses that supplement my professional/industry experience are highlighted at the bottom of my resumé. These classes are a good way to showcase my breadth of knowledge, especially as a job applicant who just graduated from Pitt. But thanks to the PPW major and after three and a half years of attending the University of Pittsburgh, I feel prepared for a great professional career in technical writing, grant writing, or a combination of both. I plan to reside and work in the Pittsburgh area.
—Olivia Wyland
Olivia Wyland, who served this past year as associate editor for The Fifth Floor as well as being a regular contributor since 2020, graduated this past December with a major in Public and Professional Writing and minors in History and Writing (nonfiction).