This program profile describes the process the Writing Program at the University of Arizona took to create a pathway to course completion for students during the pandemic-induced remote transition in Spring 2020. While the majority of students continued to have access to the hardware and software necessary to complete the term online, some students did not have these critical access requirements. We designed an independent study style correspondence packet that harkens back to traditional distance education offerings. Recognizing that students might not have access to the web or library for research, instructional materials, or printers, the packets allowed students to use the resources to which they had access and mail in their materials to complete their courses. Designing and implementing this course packet allowed us to continue our mission of inclusion in a moment of crisis by meeting our students where they were as they were displaced from the institutional spaces they had been relying upon to finish their coursework. This work has given us language to use in helping our instructors continue to support their students in crisis.

Using the British Academic Written English corpus, this study focuses on the use of grammatical complexity features in university level texts written by first language (L1) English writers to demonstrate knowledge and perform other specialized tasks required of advanced academic writers. While the primary focus of the analysis is on writing development from first-year undergraduate to graduate students, we also consider interactions with discipline and genre. The study goes beyond most previous work on grammatical complexity in writing by investigating the use of phrasal as well as clausal features. The results show that as academic level increases, the use of phrasal complexity features in writing also increases. On the other hand, the use of clausal complexity features in student writing, particularly finite dependent clauses, decreases as academic level increases. Results further indicate that the extent of the differences across level is mediated by discipline and genre, reflecting patterns observed in research on disciplinary variation in professional academic writing.