Don Allen on GED-8005-1 Academic Writing for Graduate Students
“It is unabashedly ambitious, and yet completely accessible to those willing to put in the time and effort.”
Course Evaluation by Don Allen, Ed.S., M.A.Ed., MAT.
Reimer in the Summer of 2025, provided me with a foundational experience, helping me to develop my scholarly voice and enhance my graduate-level writing skills, including experimenting with journal and book writing in tandem with authoring a critical dissertation. As a doctoral student who has been a Piper for 15 years (10-years in graduate school), I took this course seriously and with enthusiasm, I can attest with certainty that GED 8005-1 is more than a support course, it is a required academic rite of passage that needs to be permanently integrated into the Ed.D. program for all subsequent cohorts.
I was a little nervous at first because I didn’t want what I thought was a random course to deconstruct my GPA. I sent an email to the registrar to inquire about obtaining a Pass or Fail grade for the course (the answer was a firm ‘NO’). Still, from the start, GED 8005-1 stood out by taking me on a profound, systematic, and practical dive into academic writing (helping me with my chapter two), specially designed for me; one size fits one. I was in class with students just starting their M.A. capstones and completing their dissertation work. I have earned a MAT, M.A.Ed., and Ed. S. at HU. I had the opportunity to look back and reflect on completing two capstones and the energy it took to reach the end (Oh, to be ‘green’ again).
Professor Reimer’s course's strongest suit is its laser-like focus on Chapter Two, the literature review, which is by far the most challenging and essential chapter of any dissertation or capstone project. The instructional design, in conjunction with scaffolded assignments, demystifies the scholarly synthesis process, empowering me to analyze sources, establish thematic coherence, and write with a scholarly voice.
Students who have arrived from professional, non-academic fields, many of whom are in Hamline's Ed.D. program, for example, will find that this course provides the foundational academic fluency and emotional intelligence necessary to transition into the role of practitioner-scholars. Most Ed.D. students are district leaders, school administrators, teachers, consultants, or instructional coaches with years of experience in the field but minimal experience with the rigors of academic writing. GED 8005-1 bridges that gap wonderfully. It teaches writing not as a skill, per se, but as a scholarly identity that must be cultivated, understood, and practiced with intention. The course structure respected my entry point and accelerated my development through personalized feedback, peer review, and iterative revisions grounded in APA 7th edition conventions.
Academically, this course stands on its own alongside writing-intensive graduate courses taught by veteran professoriate, such as Dr. Alice Moorhead, whose "Organizational Writing" course at Hamline is a standard for clarity, precision, and rhetorical sensitivity in professional writing. Like Moorhead's course, GED 8005-1 stresses audience, purpose, and structure - but takes it to the next level by introducing students to dissertation-specific genres like theoretical frameworks, conceptual maps, and critical synthesis. Likewise, the intellectual rigor of this course is on par with the expectations established by Dr. Jermaine Singleton and Dr. Mike Reynolds, who are both senior English professors with reputations for high standards in critical theory and composition. GED 8005-1 is in that elite group of courses that make students better writers through high expectations, good mentorship, and academic modeling.
What distinguishes GED 8005-1, however, is its applied focus for educational leadership students. This is not writing for writing's sake; this is writing towards the creation of change-driven scholarship. Each reading, discussion, and writing assignment was carefully designed to prompt me to create rigorous, equity-focused academic work that will be used in real-world contexts. It is unabashedly ambitious, and yet completely accessible to those willing to put in the time and effort.
The course also shines in terms of establishing a writing community and academic accountability. Weekly Google Meets and peer reviews foster a culture of constructive criticism, challenging me to improve without feeling defensive. This replicates the type of collaborative feedback loops I will encounter in dissertation committees and professional research environments. Overall, GED 8005-1 is a simulation of the dissertation experience that generates confidence and competence, two elements commonly lacking in early doctoral writing. In short, GED 8005-1 should not be optional; it should be required of all Ed.D. students at Hamline. The course is a game-changer. It constructs the mental model for what doctoral-level academic writing is supposed to look like, it helps provide equitable access to students with varied professional and cultural backgrounds, and it lives out Hamline University's mission of educating students who are prepared to lead, write, and reform systems. The clarity of instruction and the authenticity of the writing task are the equal to Hamline's finest academic courses, from Dr. Moorhead's legacy to the demands of literary theorists like Singleton and Reynolds. If the Ed.D. program is going to be serious about creating practitioner-scholars who can write, argue, and lead with clarity, then this course needs to be a staple of the curriculum.
Damn straight it does.
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