About WAC
The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program encourages the use of writing as a tool for learning in every discipline. A key premise of WAC is that writing will improve if students have the opportunity to write more frequently and in accordance with the conventions of particular disciplines. One of the most important concepts promoted by the WAC program is that writing is, and should be, a mode of learning in addition to being a mode of communication. WAC proponents believe that students who write as a part of the learning process not only become better writers, but are better able to absorb, analyze, remember, and think creatively about a particular subject or study. The primary mission for Writing Fellows at Brooklyn College, as at most senior colleges, is to help faculty more effectively incorporate discipline-specific writing practices in their teaching. The aim is to embed WAC institutionally and to help faculty absorb WAC practices and culture.
The Brooklyn College WAC program has four primary functions (a) working with faculty to improve student writing, (b) encouraging the use of writing to enhance learning, (c) implementing and administering writing-intensive courses and majors, and (d) conducting the assessment of writing-intensive courses and majors. To achieve the first two objectives, WAC works directly with faculty, departments, programs, and with College administrators. Individual faculty may request assistance, for example, in designing syllabi or writing assignments. WAC Fellows have worked with faculty in 28 of the 31 departments, and they have been particularly active in working with writing-intensive majors (currently, art, classics, education, English, music, philosophy, and political science). However, Fellows serve the college community in many capacities, especially in conjunction with other Coordinated Undergraduate Education (CUE) programs, such as the freshman Learning Communities and the Core Curriculum.
About WAC Fellowships
Writing Fellows work an average of 15 hours per week for 15 weeks each semester, with about five weeks off during winter break. These hours include all meetings (those on campus with each other or faculty members and those at CUNY-wide WAC professional development events). Brooklyn College is assigned six Fellows. The Brooklyn College Writing Fellow Program seeks both to serve its Fellows' professional development and to fulfill requests by various college programs and faculty for their help. Fellows have found it productive and fun to work on many projects in teams of two or three. Fellows and the two coordinators meet weekly for two hours to plan activities, report on ongoing work, develop group projects, and share ideas on each other's projects. We also sometimes discuss issues related to the careers of advanced graduate students (e.g., strategies for the job interview).
Working With Faculty and Departments
Faculty: Writing Fellows assist faculty who want help to better integrate writing into their courses. This includes assisting with revising writing assignments, implementing effective peer revision, working with faculty to develop low-stakes writing exercises, helping faculty devise more efficient protocols for responding to student writing, and creating specialized workshops to help faculty learn more about using writing effectively in the classroom. (Priority is given to faculty teaching a writing-intensive or a Core course for the first time.) Fellows are not permitted to teach (other than workshops or limited 20-minute mini-lessons) or to grade student papers.
Undergraduate Departments: As word has spread about the excellent work done by previous Fellows, deans, chairs, and groups of faculty are requesting help to further embed writing in their curricula. Fellows meet with the initiating parties and plan how they might best work with the program. In the 2011–12 and 2010–11 academic years, Fellows have worked with the peer mentors at the Learning Center to implement WAC methods in their writing tutoring.
Students: Fellows often present 20-minute mini-lessons on specific aspects of writing, such as various skills needed to write the research paper. The aim is for the Fellows to model these presentations in class so as to indirectly "teach" the faculty members how to present these topics themselves in the future. (We fondly refer to this practice as "stealth pedagogy.")
Publications
Fellows have written or edited:
- A series of pamphlets introducing WAC practices to the faculty: "Informal Writing," "Responding to Student Writing," "Effective Writing Assignments," "Peer Review," and "Writing in Stages."
- An article entitled "Assessing Assessment: A Self-Critique," which was written jointly by six Fellows and has been accepted for publication.
- A faculty handbook called the WAC Survival Guide.
- Resource materials for the Learning Center website regarding writing, peer editing, etc.
- Telling Our Stories, an annual publication of personal essays submitted by freshmen after reading the same autobiography for Freshman Comp. Each fall, a first-year Fellow directs this project, working with the director of Freshman English.
We are currently developing pamphlets on the research paper and on using technology to teach writing, and materials intended to motivate students to care about good writing.
Faculty Development Workshops
Daylong Workshops: Fellows work in pairs to develop and run four annual all-day workshops for full-time and long-term faculty:
- Basic: designing assignments, responding to student writing
- Advanced I: research papers
- Advanced II: writing to learn
Three-day Seminar: Two Fellows teach a three-day faculty seminar during the first week of June that covers the above topics. Incoming Fellows are invited to take the seminar.
Drop-in Clinic (for faculty): On student writing on Faculty Day.
Ad Hoc Workshops: These may run from one to four hours. Fellows are invited to tailor presentations for events such as New Faculty Orientation, a faculty seminar on Generation 1.5 (a variation of ESL) and group meetings of faculty teaching the same Core courses.
Individual Projects
Projects can be tailored or created to further Fellows' interests. Our goal is to find situations in which Fellows' interests, experience and talents are matched to specific programs. Some Fellows prefer to develop writing materials for their own fields; other Fellows have found it particularly fulfilling to work in fields far removed from their specialties. At the start of each semester the Fellows and the coordinators review short- and long-term requests from individuals, programs and departments to determine which projects are viable and how many we can handle; Fellows then divide up the work among themselves. Typical projects include:
- Working with those departments that offer or wish to offer writing-intensive majors. Priority is given to courses and majors undergoing changes so that WAC practices may be instilled within the curricula and department culture.
- Designing and presenting student writing workshops on thesis statements, summary techniques, transitions between paragraphs, and using proper citation and appropriate diction.
- Creating guide sheets for peer review of specific assignments.
- Presenting a workshop for a contingent of Core teachers on how to devise assignments that minimize plagiarism.
Writing Fellow Professional Development
If time permits, Fellows share their work with each other to discuss during our weekly meetings, typically in the spring semester after finishing our group readings of the “WAC canon” in the fall. In the past, Fellows have read each other's conference papers, dissertation chapters, and job letters and teaching statements. The WAC program has also had presentations about submitting journal articles and book proposals to publishers, how to evaluate the written work of English-language learners, etc.
Institutional Development
Fellows present to groups of faculty, department chairs and other administrators about WAC practices. Fellows help individual faculty members and departments create and revise writing-intensive courses and majors. When the writing-intensive requirement was redesigned, two interested Fellows attended meetings with the provost, dean of undergraduate studies, WAC coordinator, and certain committee members. Now Fellows meet with writing-intensive departments to ensure coherence in their curriculum.
