Author: caitlincholmes

Practice Makes Perfect: A Student Perspective on Mason’s Culture of Writing

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date May 14, 2015

by: Mikal Lambdin

Mikal is a senior studying English at George Mason. She previously worked with WAC to create disciplinary writing guides for student use. Mikal is graduating in May 2015! To reach her, please contact wac@gmu.edu.

When first asked to write a blog post about my experience with Mason’s “culture of writing,” I will admit that my first question was “What is a culture of writing?” In response, Dr. Michelle LaFrance, Director of Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, showed me the WAC program website. It reads:

At Mason, the WAC program upholds a campus-wide commitment to student writers, writing-rich coursework, and writing in the disciplines. . . Central to our program’s 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.

Looking back at my own undergraduate experiences, I can clearly see that Mason’s culture of writing had an impact on both my overall education and my development as a writer in many ways.

Tags culture of writing, Mason WAC, rhetoric, student writing, undergraduate research, undergraduate writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing community, Writing in the Disciplines, writing practice

Faculty Writing Teaching Writing Technology

Inspiring Faculty Community at George Mason University

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date May 7, 2015

Cameron Carter is the Communications & Marketing Specialist for the Office of Distance Education at George Mason University. She earned her MA in English (Professional Writing & Rhetoric) from Mason in 2013, and she is currently a graduate student in the Higher Education Administration certificate program. You can reach her at ccarte17@gmu.edu.

Over the past five years, Mason’s Office of Distance Education (DE) has supported a number of faculty and programs transitioning their courses from face-to-face to fully online. From partnering each faculty member with an Instructional Designer in Learning Support Services (LSS) to connecting them to the accessibility experts with the Assistive Technology Initiative, highlighting the research and copyright expertise of the University Librarians to emphasizing the resources available through the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence (CTFE), our role has focused largely on how best to connect Mason’s online faculty with the services and resources available across our campus.

As the DE Office, along with online education at Mason, continues to grow and take shape, we’ve asked ourselves – is this enough? This question has sparked a new effort for faculty support from the DE Office, mainly via an upsurge of faculty development opportunities. We don’t only want to support online program development and link to specific resources. We want to promote a sense of faculty community and a culture of shared knowledge and practice. Through a string of faculty development events hosted in collaboration with CTFE and LSS, we are making a push to inspire this shared place for faculty at Mason. Here’s the kicker – we aren’t focusing on online faculty alone.

Tags best practices, Collaborative Teaching, distance education, education, faculty development, George Mason University, Mason, multidisciplinary, Office of Distance Education, online teaching, pedagogy, WAC, WID, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

Faculty Writing

Supporting Faculty Writers: Book Proposal Workshop

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date April 30, 2015

by Caitlin Holmes and Caitlin Dungan

On Friday, April 24th, Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum invited three experts on academic publishing to present on crucial information for writing and submitting book proposals. Our panelists, Dr. John Farina, Dr. Peter Stearns, and John Warren (click here for full biographies), provided thoughtful and supportive advice to attendees before workshopping proposals. Here, we will summarize a few key points that our presenters discussed, our tweets of the event (see the full Twitter feed here), and one presenter’s handout at the end of this piece.

Tags book manuscripts, book proposals, book publication, faculty, faculty writing, faculty writing support, How to publish, Mason WAC, WAC, Writing Across the Curriculum

Undergraduate Perspectives

Writing For Real-World Audiences: What It’s Like to Get Published in The George Mason Review

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date April 23, 2015

By: Mikal Lambdin

Mikal is a senior studying English at George Mason. She previously worked with WAC to create disciplinary writing guides for student use. To reach her, please contact wac@gmu.edu.

Last month, I was excited to learn that my essay, “Someone Who Cares a Whole Awful Lot: The Rhetoric of Dr. Seuss’s Political Parable,” won the award for Best Submission in The George Mason Review, GMU’s student-run journal of exemplary undergraduate scholarly works. Like any writer, I have faced the overwhelming task of trying to be published, a feat that is at best elusive and at worst seems impossible. But when I got the news about my success through GMR, I began to reflect on how publishing my work is different from trying to publish other texts or writing for classes. Throughout the entire process – the writing of my essay, its submission to the journal, and its ultimate acceptance – I learned some valuable lessons about what it means to “re-vision” scholarship, and the significance of a journal like GMR as a starting place for students to think about how to write for readers other than their teachers.

Tags Assignment Design, audience, composition, george mason review, GMR, student publication, undergraduate research, undergraduate writing, writing for real audiences

Teaching Writing

When and How Should Your Students Use the Writing Center?

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date April 16, 2015

Alisa Russell is a Master’s student in the Teaching Writing and Literature program at George Mason University. She works as an administrator in the Writing Center, a research assistant for Writing Across the Curriculum, and a teaching assistant for First Year Composition. Her current research interests include the Writing About Writing movement in composition theory/pedagogy and Writing Center training and strategies for working with multilingual writers. You can reach her at wac@gmu.edu.

Whenever we assign writing assignments in our classrooms, we often peripherally acknowledge that the Writing Center is a viable option for our students to work with a tutor toward improvement. However, students may not fully understand the extensive options that the Writing Center provides for them. After scrambling for an appointment or not making one at all, the student may bring in a near-final draft for a quick check mere hours before the due date, which fosters little learning and room for growth. Instead, as the instructor and grader of your students’ work, you can steer your students toward when and how they should be using the Writing Center even more convincingly than our website or bulletin boards. Teaching your students when and how to use the Writing Center will not only provide more opportunities for your students to engage in transferable learning, but it will also lead to more fully developed and reviewed writing assignments.

Tags Online writing, online writing lab, pedagogy, teacher advice, technology, tutoring, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing center, Writing in the Disciplines, writing tutoring