While the creative writing faculty at BSU are all accomplished writers, they take their teaching duties very seriously. They often dedicate a great deal of meditation to their pedagogy, and write on it as well. In her essay “The Story Problem: 10 Thoughts on Academia’s Novel Crisis” at The Millions.com, Professor Cathy Day discusses how fiction writing is taught at the university level—the short story versus the novel. Here is an excerpt of the essay:

“Typically, workshops prescribe. Here’s what’s not working. Here’s what I had a problem with. Somebody…has to step up and change the default setting, to frame the conversation so that big things can be brought to the table and discussed meaningfully.

But how to you do that?”

You can read the whole essay here.

You could say Professor Day has been trying to change the “default setting” of her fiction writing classes here at Ball State. During Fall 2010, her class participated in National Novel Writing Month. You can read the Ball State Daily News article here.