Program Rubrics

In 2001, WAC began responding to a mandate from the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV) requiring the assessment of student writing. Part of that process included working with departments to develop an assessment plan for evaluating student performances with writing. To learn more about this assessment process, please consider reading the collaborative article describing this process, written by former WAC Director, Terry Myers Zawacki, current Stearns Center Co-Director, Shelley Reid, and colleagues.

The rubrics linked below are a product of that collaboration with departments and were used by faculty in the respective programs to holistically score upper-level student writing. For this reason, they should be used as a guide for broadly assessing writing in these programs and not grading individual assignments within a course. For grading classroom assignments, WAC recommends developing rubrics targeted to specific course and assignment learning outcomes.

Rubrics are identified either by the date of development or the last date of posting prior to 2013. Should a program wish to update or add a rubric, please email us at wac@gmu.edu.