Mason’s WAC Program – Writing Across the Curriculum

The WAC Program at George Mason University holds as a core belief that, at heart, all campuses are communities of writers. Course assignments, grant proposals, research articles, social media posts, and annual review portfolios: Mason’s faculty, staff, and students are frequently writing. The WAC program upholds this campus-wide “culture of writing” via a commitment to student writers, faculty writers, and writing-enriched coursework across all disciplines.

Our Mission

Our mission is to ensure that all Mason’s students have meaningful experiences with learning to write and writing to learn.

To that end, we advise faculty and academic units on how to design, teach, and assess meaningful writing experiences.

Our Goals

Our core mission informs the projects we undertake with our cross-campus network of partners. Our integrated, project-based approach aims to accomplish the following goals:

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.

Promote writing as a tool for learning and critical thinking
Support the teaching of writing across the curriculum
Advise departments on writing curriculum and faculty development
Research and assess writing and teaching with writing in the disciplines
Support the well-being of faculty teaching writing across the curriculum

WAC Principles and Practices

Our WAC program is guided by the INWAC Statement of WAC Principles and Practices. In particular, WAC Mason recognizes that:

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, builds from strengths, and provides direction rather than focusing solely on error.
Writing instruction must be continuous throughout students’ undergraduate and graduate education.