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WAC Announcements

Announcements are archived by month. Click the corresponding tab to see the announcements for a past month.

August 25, 2008

Mason WAC Launches New Website

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August 24, 2008

Latest Issue of Writing @ Center Online

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February 2008

George Mason Review Seeking Exemplary Student Writing

The George Mason Review is a unique literary journal that seeks to promote a writing infused culture by publishing academic essays as well as creative work. Their mission corresponds with the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative at Mason. Students may submit any academic essay written for class (from any semester) provided that it is written well. The GMR wants to publish essays that not only inform but also keep the reader interested and excited about the material. We are also looking to publish short stories, poems, creative nonfiction, and art. Creative work should be captivating, original, and should use language powerfully. The exemplary pieces chosen for The George Mason Review are used in some composition classes at George Mason.

The GMR publishes annually. The deadline is March 1st, but we encourage students to send pieces sooner, as submissions are read on a rolling basis.

Please send all submissions to gmreview@gmu.edu.

And check out our new website at http://gmreview.gmu.edu.

September 2007

GMU's WAC Program Makes US News and World Report Top 15

For the sixth year in a row, George Mason's WAC program has been honored among the top fifteen Writing in the Disciplines programs in the country by the US News and World Report, College Issue 2008 (p. 45).

This distinction puts us in the company of Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and University of Chicago, among others on the list.

We are the only five public institutions* in the rankings.

  • Amherst College (MA)
  • Carleton College (MN)
  • * Clemson University (SC)
  • Cornell University (NY)
  • Duke University (NC)
  • * George Mason University (VA)
  • Harvard University (MA)
  • * North Carolina State U.—Raleigh (NC)
  • Princeton University (NJ)
  • * Purdue Univ.—West Lafayette (IN)
  • Sarah Lawrence College (NY)
  • Stanford University (CA)
  • Swarthmore College (PA)
  • * University of California—Davis (CA)
  • University of Chicago (IL)

We appreciate the good work of all the faculty across the university who support students in their efforts to write well in their disciplines.

October 2006

The Writing Across the Curriculum Program and the Center for Teaching Excellence invite you to a Fall series of workshops on Teaching with Writing. The workshops will take place on three Fridays, from Noon-2PM in the Johnson Center Assembly rooms on the third floor. The schedule is:

September 15th - Designing Good Writing Assignments
Keys to writing clear assignments and straightforward evaluation criteria.
Assembly room A
October 6th - Managing the Paper Load & Responding Effectively to Writing
Ways to grade more efficiently while still providing beneficial advice to students
Assembly room A
October 20th - What To Do When Students "Can’t Write”
Strategies for dealing with the errors that bog you down when you read student writing.
Assembly room G

You are invited to join us for any or all of these sessions.

Please RSVP to lfathe@gmu.edu or 993-8652 by Monday the week of the workshop to help us plan for lunch.

If you misssed a session, feel free to contact Terry Zawacki for the workshop handouts. We look forward to working with you!

April 2005

WAC and the Center for Teaching Excellence co-sponsor LabWrite workshop

LabWrite (http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite) is an NSF-sponsored website developed by Dr. Michael Carter, a professor at North Carolina State who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in science writing, and Dr. Miriam Ferzli, a biology professor. This free online resource is designed for a wide range of sciences and has been used at all levels of undergraduate education. Several control-group studies, according to professors Carter and Ferzli, have shown that students who use LabWrite are significantly more effective at learning science than those who use typical lab report instruction.

Among those in attendance was Dr. Chris Jones, chair of Environmental Science and Policy, who subsequently invited some of his faculty to participate with Dr. Laurie Fathe, a physics professor and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, in follow-up activities to implement LabWrite tools into some of the intro lab courses.

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