Rate My Professor Danielle Wetzel

Danielle Zawodny Wetzel is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Writing & Communication Program in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University (2005), an M.A. in English from Kent State University, and a B.A. in Literature from Grove City College. Wetzel joined CMU in 2006 as director of the First-Year Writing Program, where she led transformative changes over 13 years. In her current role, she oversees foundational writing and communication courses, ensuring alignment with the university’s Core Competencies initiatives in writing and communication. She teaches Theory and Design of Writing Instruction, a core course for English Ph.D. students teaching first-year writing, as well as various first-year writing courses, including half-semester “minis” to support students’ transition to college writing.

Wetzel’s academic interests focus on teacher training, curriculum design, and assessment for first-year writing, with emphasis on enabling linguistically diverse students to make data-informed, mindful, and culturally aware writing decisions. She explores motivation and assessment of rhetorical reasoning underlying those decisions. Currently, she collaborates with the DocuScope team—Dave Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki, Necia Werner, and David Brown—to adapt research-based tools into learner-centered pedagogical resources. Her professional service includes serving as Chair of the College Board’s AP Language & Composition Test Development Committee and Chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section for TESOL. Wetzel received the Barbara Lazarus Award for Graduate Student and Junior Faculty Mentoring in 2023 and was appointed Dean’s Innovation Scholar for FY 2019–2020. Notable publications include Wetzel et al., “Computer-Assisted Rhetorical Analysis: Instructional Design and Formative Assessment Using DocuScope” (Journal of Writing Analytics, 2021); Kaufer and Wetzel, “Rhetoric, Composition, and Design” (Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, 2017); Wetzel and Reynolds, “Adaptation across Space and Time: Revealing Pedagogical Assumptions” (Transnational Writing Program Administration, 2015); and Taguchi, Crawford, and Wetzel, “What Linguistic Features are Indicative of Writing Quality?” (TESOL Quarterly, 2013).