Auburn Times

Spring Writing Across the Curriculum Academy strengthening Auburn’s culture of writing excellence

As part of its efforts to expand and strengthen writing excellence, the Office of University Writing, or OUW, launched its spring Writing Across Curriculum, or WAC, Academy earlier this semester with participation from 30 faculty, staff and professionals from across campus.

The academy is one of several key initiatives sponsored by OUW to strengthen the understanding of student learning within various content areas. Participants representing the departments of Human Development and Family Science, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mathematics and Statistics and Music Education, as well as the McWhorter School of Building Science, the School of Communication and Journalism, the College of Nursing and the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, are organized into teams to develop plans for integrating and enhancing writing across their units.

“The WAC Academy continues to be a tremendous success,” said Christopher Basgier, director of University Writing. “With representatives from eight different departments and programs, our participants have engaged in a collaborative and immersive process that integrates learning, reflection and planning with creation and writing assessment. I am confident their engagement in this work and with their colleagues will continue long after their academy experience.”

Across the program’s five in-person sessions, teams create a comprehensive plan for integrating and enhancing writing in their curricula, something Basgier hopes more departments will take advantage of at future academies. Project examples include a sequenced set of activities that will guide undergraduates to reflect on their curricular and co-curricular experiences and map their career future career goals from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and a program from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics to certify writing-enriched courses and the creation of resources for effective mathematical proof writing. 

Since its launch in January, feedback from faculty participants has demonstrated the program’s value thanks to its interdisciplinary nature and opportunity to accomplish diverse program goals.

“By learning what writing means to another department, we were able to identify what makes writing in our profession different,” said Andrea Smith, an assistant clinical professor in the College of Nursing. 

As OUW prepares to host a second academy this summer, members of this spring’s cohort encourage other members of the campus community to take advantage of the resource by identifying strategic writing goals and aspirations for their units.

“The Academy provided the structure and resources we needed to better understand how we can make coordinated changes across the entire curriculum,” said Erin Garcia, a lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “We fully expect these changes to result in greater improvement than we have been able to achieve before by identifying unique changes in individual courses.”

The summer 2023 WAC Academy is scheduled for five consecutive Tuesdays from May 23 to June 20. For more information or to register, please visit the academy’s webpage.

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