Timing is Everything or The Readiness is All

image by winond

Welcome back to The Lake Effect!  Though the blog blog has been on hiatus for the past two months, MCC-Longview's WAC Program has certainly kept busy, offering the first WAC Institute for Community Colleges in June, visiting with new students at the Resource Fair last week, preparing for the upcoming Introductory WAC Workshop and subsequent mini-workshop on issues related to plagiarism and social media, and helping instructors launch their assignments this semester through individual consultations and classroom visits.



WAC table at Resource Fair
photo by Liz Harmon, courtesy of the Longview Current


The WAC Institute went off without a hitch, thanks to the support of nearly every area of this campus.  All of the feedback from participants, who were community college WAC program directors from across the country, indicated that the experience was extremely beneficial and valuable, which was quite heartening given the time and energy that had been devoted to planning it.  Participants departed with new ideas and practical strategies for how to create or sustain a WAC Program at their own college.  As this was precisely the aim, the facilitators deemed the event a success.

Cultural Arts Center-MCC Longview
image courtesy of MCC

I would assert, however, that something else happened almost instantaneously: From the moment the participants and facilitators took their seats in the Cultural Arts Center, a community formed.  The speed and ease with which participants jumped into activities and discussions led by the facilitators and presenters who guided them suggested that the time was ripe for these conversations to occur. 

That is, participants came hungry for the very information facilitators and presenters by their experience and expertise were poised to offer.  Or, as Shakespeare's Hamlet has occasion to say in Act V, scene ii, "The readiness is all."

photo by Matt Banks

There was palpable synergy evident throughout the three days despite the acute fatigue noted by all at the end of the final session.  Working in such ways is exhausting, but, importantly, also exhilirating and rewarding.  When people meet face to face over mutual concerns and accord each other a healthy respect, great things are bound to happen. 

We've already heard some terrific reports of participants incorporating ideas from the WAC Institute into their home programs: Some are diligently working on developing programs based on design principles and best practices learned here.  Others are recasting existing programs by shifting emphases and adding features to strengthen their impact.

From the perspective of the facilitators and presenters, the institute offered a chance to give back to WAC.  As noted throughout the 25th anniversary celebrated last year, MCC-Longview's WAC Program has certainly enjoyed tremendous support from all corners of our campus---faculty, staff, administrators, students. 

But we have also benefited greatly though far less obviously from collegial sharing by WAC mentors, colleagues, and programs at other colleges via postings on listservs, phone conversations, college visits, conference sessions, websites, etc.  Scholarship on college writing and WAC produced by scholars and researchers in the fields of rhetoric and composition as well as other disciplines has also powerfully influenced the trajectory of this program.

Frankly, very recent reports produced by by two and four-year college researchers identifying some of the difficulties inherent in sustaining WAC in the community college setting were part of the impetus for us to create the WAC Institute.

And so 25 years' worth of growing a program serendipitously crystallized into a moment of academic philanthropy.

The upshot of all of this?  Keep learning and be ever at the ready for just the right time.  For the readiness, indeed, is all.

Just a few of the folks responsible for MCC-Longview's WAC Program over the years:
from Chancellors to Writing Fellows and everyone inbetween.