Renee Prymus

  • Teaching Associate Professor, First-Year Engineering Composition Program Director

Renee's Affiliations: Vibrant Media Lab, Swanson School of Engineering, First Year Programs

Renee Prymus is a Teaching Associate Professor and the Director of the First-Year Engineering Composition Program. She also teaches other courses in composition, currently Writing for the Sciences. Renee has been teaching at Pitt since 2007 and has also worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a writing consultant for graduate students in the Department of Chemistry.

Renee enjoys breaking open the traditional five-paragraph essay and inviting students into personal and academic inquiry. She specializes in first-year composition and science writing.

Courses Taught

ENGCMP 0530: Writing for the Sciences

ENGCMP 0412: Engineering Communication in a Professional Setting

ENGCMP 0210: Seminar in Composition: Engineering

ENGCMP 0207: Seminar in Composition: Education

ENGCMP 0200: Seminar in Composition

FP 0003: First-Year Seminar: Fun & Games

FP 0003: First-Year Seminar: Writing the Spiritual

ENGCMP 0152: ESL Workshop in Composition

ENGCMP 0550: Professional Editing in Context

ENGWRT 1330: Intermediate Nonfiction

ENGWRT 0610: Introduction to Journalism and Nonfiction

FP 0001: Academic Foundations

Writing Center

Education & Training

  • Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction, University of Pittsburgh (2010)
  • Master of Ministries, Bethel College (2007)

Representative Publications

“A Description and Evaluation of a Team-Based Composition Course Integrated into a First-Year Engineering Program,” American Society of Engineering Education (2025)

Keeping Score,” Creative Nonfiction (2019)

Research Interests

First-Year Composition, Engineering Education, Science Writing, Gamification in Education