Report on Writing Across the Curriculum

January 1, 1996-December 31, 1996

January 9, 1997

WAC Workshops and Brown Bag Sessions

There have been two WAC workshops this year and two brown bag sessions. On May 13 and 14, we held a two-day workshop that surveyed WAC in general and then investigated computer applications in teaching writing. The schedule for that workshop is available on the WWW at

http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/wrkshpsche.html. On November 16, we held a one-day workshop on how to create an on-line, writing-intensive course syllabus. The materials for that workshop are fully available on the WWW at http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/wrkshop2.html.

The first brown-bag session was held on March 20, and featured Gina Piane, Winifred Creamer, and Mary Beth Koos. The second was held on September 9 as a follow up introduction to WAC for new faculty.

Writing Consultants Across Campus

There are ten consultants associated with the WCAC group. Some are wholly funded by other departments, some partially by WAC and one entirely by WAC.

Euel Bailey, Management; Brian Gilbert, Economics; A.J. Grant, Finance; Pat King, Psychology; Tony Medici, Chemistry; Janet Pariza, Special Education; Janis Rider, Philosophy; Anthony Estes, Philosophy; Sten Samuelson, Management; Mark Waters, Engineering

We met monthly in the Spring, and once at the beginning of the Fall semester. We have our own

listserv and keep in touch by e-mail, but we intend to pick up monthly meetings again. Several consultants have developed their own web pages, and they have written reports, which are posted at http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/wcac_reports.html.. The writing consultants provide valuable services as teachers and as readers of student writing.

I have been in touch with Political Science, History, and Sociology, and they seem interested in sharing a consultant if we can find the right person. I also have a very good candidate to be a consultant in the areas of Biology and Nursing and so will be try to make arrangements with those two departments for next year.

WAC Page

WAC Page, our newsletter has been distributed twice this year, once in the Spring and once in the Fall.

WAC Grants

The CIUE-WAC grants had no takers last year, and so this year, I have asked to publicize them myself. We used the left-over $5,000 from last year to hire TAs to work on the WAC@NIU Homepage during the summer.

WAC@NIU Homepage

One year ago we did not have a WWW presence. This year we have an impressive WAC archive online, which is widely linked around the country. Containing four major subdivisions, WAC@NIU files pages on journals, genres, syllabi, sentence structure, and many other topics. It is available at http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/wac.html.

On-Campus Visits and Presentations

Among others, I, as coordinator of WAC, have visited professors Scapperlandra, Glenn, Scarborough, Tulhurst, Deetz, Isabel, Piane, Carger, B. Miller, E. Spenser, McGinn, B. Minor about WAC, and have spent several hours in telephone contact with departments hosting writing consultants, such as Philosophy, Chemistry, Political Science, and Special Education.

I have given presentations to the Supervisors of Student Teachers, to the Special Education Department, and to the Electrical Engineering Department, and I had a table presentation at the orientation for new faculty at the beginning of Fall semester.

Off-Campus WAC work

I have been working with Jule Scarborough's grant to help high school teachers in Rockford develop team approaches for teaching science and technology. I have been a consultant present to help them develop significant writing components in their team courses. I have been with them over forty hours in the past year and have read their group module notebooks several times.

Future of WAC

Although WAC has now established a good foothold on campus, if it is to thrive, it needs to become institutionalized through writing-intensive course requirements, both in General Education courses and in disciplinary courses.

Respectfully Submitted by

Dale Sullivan

Coordinator of WAC at Northern Illinois University