WAC Mission and Goals
Central to our WAC mission is the belief that when students are given frequent opportunities
for writing across the university curriculum, they think more critically and creatively, engage
more deeply in their learning, and are better able to transfer what they have learned from
course to course, context to context. The WAC mission forwards goals laid out
in the university mission statement.
The most visible components of our program are the writing-intensive
requirement in the major and the advanced composition in the disciplines
(English 302) requirement—both
of which affect almost all undergraduates—as well as writing-infused programs across
the curriculum. Good teaching practice is reinforced through faculty development workshops, departmental
assessment workshops, and collaboration with other teaching-focused units across the university,
including CTE,
TAC,
and the University Writing Center,
which provides vital support for student writers. Additionally, this website and the
Writing @ Center newsletter celebrate and support faculty
effors in teaching with writing.
Our WAC program is guided by the following key principles and goals for student writers.
WAC Principles:
- Writing is an important tool for learning and discovery as well as for conveying
what has been learned and discovered
- Students gain proficiency as writers when they have frequent opportunities to
write in courses across the curriculum, addressing a range of audiences and practicing
the genres typical of their majors and the workplaces they will enter.
- Faculty across the curriculum share responsibility for helping students learn the
conventions and rhetorical practices of their disciplines.
- Students benefit from having opportunities to revise based on meaningful feedback
from their teachers, that is, feedback that teaches and provides direction rather
than focusing solely on error.
- Writing instruction must be continuous throughout students' undergraduate
education.
Goals for Student Writers
While the learning and writing outcomes expected of students are always particular
to courses and majors, most writing-intensive course(s) share the following goals for
students in the major:
- To analyze and synthesize course content using methods appropriate to the major;
- To make reasoned, well organized arguments with introductions, thesis statements,
supporting evidence, and conclusions appropriate to the major;
- To use credible evidence, to include, as applicable, data from credible primary
and/or secondary sources, integrated and documented accurately according to styles
preferred in the major;
- To employ a range of appropriate technologies to support their researching, reading,
writing, and thinking, with particular attention to the ways that advanced students and
professionals locate, analyze, organize, and share information;
- To employ rhetorical strategies suited to the purpose(s) and audience(s) for
the writing, to include appropriate vocabulary, voice, tone, and level of formality;
- To produce writing that employs the organizational techniques, formats, and
genres (print and/or digital) typical in the major and/or workplace;
- To produce writing that demonstrates proficiency in Standard Edited American
English, including correct grammar/syntax, sentence structure, word choice, and
punctuation.