If Programs Could Talk

ON TURNING 25:

AN INTERVIEW WITH LONGVIEW'S WAC PROGRAM


How are you celebrating your 25th anniversary?

Instead of hosting one giant event, we decided to integrate our celebrating into all that we normally do. For instance, when we distributed “How to Write in College” tip sheets and blue highlighters emblazoned with “Write to Learn!” to students at the Student Resource Fair, we talked with them about how Longview instructors have been committed to using writing to help students learn for the past 25 years. They were impressed; the program is now older than most of them.

We also definitely plan to make the 25th anniversary part of our main student event on May 4, 2011, Imagination Longview: An Interactive Gallery of Student Work, which features students sharing their course projects with the larger Longview community and talking with attendees about what they learned.

We designed some ongoing activities for the entire Longview community, such as the read-along of Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody, as a way of instigating broad discussion of ideas about our communication behaviors in professional and personal arenas.

It seemed logical to launch our WAC blog, The Lake Effect, in conjunction with the anniversary since it represents a new way for instructors to engage with the program beyond the workshops. The blog will allow us to highlight hallmark aspects of the program as well as some of the great people who have been involved through the years.

In faculty workshops this year, we’ll be talking about the dramatic shifts in writing contexts and practices that have occurred in the past 25 years.

How has WAC changed?

Since it began pre-Internet, WAC was more event-driven when it was first taking off 25 years ago. They were trying to create an overall awareness about writing as a learning tool. The original group who designed the WAC Program thoroughly researched the WAC literature of the time and laid a rock-solid foundation.

The primary focus, though, has always been on professional development for faculty, whether through individual consultations with the WAC Coordinator or interdisciplinary workshops and forums.

What is the impact, value of having many disciplines involved?

From the beginning, the teaching of writing was framed as a responsibility of all instructors regardless of discipline, so the WAC Program was created expressly to support all full and part-time faculty at Longview. It was deliberately structured so that it belonged to all departments.

Sharing the writing conventions and values of their own subject area with colleagues from other disciplines gives instructors a much broader perspective on writing. They also realize why certain writing strategies and genres are more effective in some fields than in others. It can be stimulating and invigorating for instructors to share assignment ideas and evaluation techniques.

The WAC Program also provides information to instructors to help them understand the theories and practices that inform college-level writing instruction.

How has the program grown?

WAC at Longview has always been about creating and sustaining a culture of writing. It started with a handful of instructors from different disciplines interested in a new pedagogy and grew to include instructors in every division, full and part-time, engaged in practices that are now ubiquitous here at Longview. And now students are very much a part of the conversation. Instructors help them see the value of writing within the course as well as beyond the classroom in their future professional lives.

In the mid 1990s, the WAC Program interfaced with General Education writing assessment efforts and then developed the Writing Intensive model adopted by MCC over 10 years ago. Writing Intensive courses offer students powerful writing experiences beyond their composition courses so they are ready for the next level, whether it’s a 4-year school or employment.

Honestly, the program thrives because it was well-designed and supported and the whole college contributes to it: instructors get involved and avail themselves of the WAC Program resources; library staff assist students in the projects instructors create, guiding students to credible sources and with the research process; the Writing Center helps students with the entire writing process from creating drafts of projects to revising them; the Campus Life and Leadership Office coaches us on our student events; division chairs and division assistants help get WI courses scheduled; advisors and counselors help students understand why and when to take a WI course; administrators offer tremendous moral support and the necessary budget.

Where do you see WAC in the future?

Writing is now and always has been a central academic process. People probably write more today outside of school than they do in school. How writing is configured in teaching and learning environments will shift, of course, as new technologies emerge and trends in education develop. But the idea that writing is the key to deep understanding and long-term retention isn’t going away.

Instructors already incorporate more digital and multi-media options for students as a way of expanding the possibilities for projects. Expectations in regard to visual literacy will continue to evolve.

WAC will continue to support teaching and learning practices and innovations of all kinds---from distributed learning to service learning and everything in between, even as it adapts to new writing contexts.

Longview’s WAC Program will always hinge on what has sustained it all along: keen faculty interest in student learning and the collegial relationships across the campus that naturally follow in support of that.