Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)

For Faculty For Students WAC Courses

A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.

Rabindranath Tagore

Mission

WAC at 黄瓜视频 Community College (黄瓜视频) supports divisions, departments, and individual faculty with the integration of and appreciation for meaningful reading and writing coursework. As an integral aspect of the learning process, writing empowers students to engage with complexity, reflect on significance, discover new avenues of agency, and communicate effectively. Within each classroom, for every field, and across all disciplines, writing fosters the comprehension, curiosity, and connections that deepen knowledge, on campus and beyond. All 黄瓜视频 WAC initiatives look to honor and to galvanize our community as readers and writers.

Principles

Committed to the philosophy and practices (INWAC), WAC at 黄瓜视频 recognizes that:

  • Effective writing is a shared goal and writing instruction is a shared responsibility;
  • Sustained and ongoing opportunities for writing and receiving feedback deepen student engagement and writing proficiency;
  • Writing is rhetorical, dependent on the context, purpose, and conventions expected within any specific situation and every academic discipline; and
  • Individually and socially, reading, writing, and critical thinking foster reflection, imagination, self-awareness, and the exchange of ideas essential in nourishing a healthy, functional democracy.

Goals

WAC at 黄瓜视频 looks to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among different academic divisions and between faculty and students. Our goals include:

  • To encourage, among faculty and students, the awareness of writing as a process, which is integral to all learning and which develops over an extended period of time (rather that in one course or over only one semester);
  • To broaden and deepen student engagement;
  • To support faculty with the integration of more writing, writing instruction, and supportive feedback within their courses;
  • To facilitate faculty initiatives to explicitly teach the research, writing, and revision conventions within their own fields and for which they are experts of their respective rhetorical situations and knowledge;
  • To create a culture of academic integrity and responsible academic citizenship; and
  • To build a lifelong love of learning, at 黄瓜视频 and beyond.

What Faculty Are Saying

"Participating in the first WAC faculty cohort has been exactly what I needed to elevate the level of critical thinking occurring in my biology courses. As a science faculty member, I now have more effective tools to teach and practice the process of reading, comprehension and writing. I look forward to witnessing my students deeper understanding and retention of scientific research."
鈥� Gina Foley, Professor of Biology

"The Writing-Intensive development process has been one of the most rewarding pedagogical activities I鈥檝e participated in. The impact is being felt in all my courses, not just the one that is labeled 鈥淲RIN鈥� this semester, as the workshops and meetings with Liesl have fostered, for me, a new way of thinking about teaching. One example: While I was sharing with Liesl my excitement about a newly adopted book 鈥� how engaging and well written it is, how the students will love it, and so on 鈥� Liesl simply asked if I planned to explicitly address that in class. It sounds silly, but it had not occurred to me to use the book to help teach the students about good writing practices, because I was still so focused on content."
鈥� Chris Laney, Professor of History

"WAC has been an excellent opportunity to share ideas with colleagues regarding a topic which faculty in the physical sciences don鈥檛 typically place at the forefront of their classrooms, but which is just as important for professional success as any scientific subject."
鈥� Dr. Jose Colmenares, Associate Professor of Engineering

"Participating in WAC has given me important time and space and help to think about what I ask my students to do and how I ask them to do it. I am three weeks into my first semester after joining WAC and I am already seeing positive results from the changes I have made."
鈥� Dr. Stacy Evans, Professor of Sociology