Welcome Back! First workshop this week!!

Welcome back CityTech faculty for the 2015-16 year! We in the Writing Across the Curriculum program are excited for another year of working with you to incorporate stronger writing assignments into your classes and help to foster an environment where students learn about their subject through the process of writing. Whether you teach math, engineering, architectural technology, dental hygiene, hospitality, history, or English, the WAC program can help you foster a culture of writing in your classroom that will get students engaged and still deliver all the course content you need teach this semester.

We are once again running our Writing Intensive Certification program this fall. This program, started last year, is a way for faculty who are teaching WI courses or who would like to teach WI courses to get some professional development and hands-on training in writing pedagogy, and includes a course release if the program is completed (pending department approval). Our first workshop, on Designing Effective Assignments, is this week, Thursday September 24, from 1-2:15pm in Namm 521 (with FREE lunch). Open to all faculty, it is a requirement if you are participating in the WI certification program. Not sure if you’d like to participate? Come to our workshop and talk with our fellows and coordinators about the program.

We are also available for one-on-one help or to come in and give a workshop presentation to your classes. Browse our workshops page to get an idea of what we do, scroll through the Fellow’s Corner blog to be inspired by some innovative writing ideas, and learn more about who we are. As we update the site over the next few weeks, come back often to find a weekly blog post on writing pedagogy written by our fellows, and check for updates on our events!

Our Fall 2015 workshops are listed below, all are on Thursdays, 1:00-2:15pm, room TBA:

  • “Designing Effective Assignments” – September 24
  • “Avoiding Plagiarism” – October 22
  • “Effective Grading and Minimal Marking” – November 19
  • “The Creative Classroom” – December 10

We hope to see you there! And feel free to leave questions below in the comments or email us.

Welcome back! Fall 2014 WAC Workshops

We at WAC hope that you had a relaxing and productive summer! We’ve got a ton of great writing ideas and pedagogical tools and strategies to present to you in four workshops this fall semester. Workshops are open to all faculty and staff, are free, and include lunch (and cookies!). Location TBD, but please save the dates and times below for our WAC workshops

  • Tuesday, September 16, 1pm: Effective Assignment Design
  • Tuesday, October 14, 1pm: Effective Grading and Minimal Marking
  • Tuesday, November 11, 1pm: Avoiding Plagiarism
  • Tuesday, December 9, 1pm: The Creative Classroom

Check our workshops page to find details about the next workshop, and also to peruse last year’s workshops. All this year’s workshops will be updates of previous ones, so even if you attended last year, you’re bound to learn something new this year. And follow our Fellow’s Corner page to see weekly blog posts on writing strategies, assignment design, and other writing across the curriculum philosophies written by our talented Writing Fellows.

If you would like us to present a workshop to your department on one of these or a related topic, or if you would like to work one-on-one with a Writing Fellow on improving your students’ writing and your feedback, please contact our co-coordinators, Rebecca Devers or Marianna Bonanome.

8th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing

I received the following message about a conference on writing that will interest many in our WAC community:

Dear CUNY English Faculty and Students,

The University of Connecticut’s Freshman English Program will host its Eighth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing on Friday, April 6, 2013. Last year’s conference was our most successful yet, attracting over 120 attendees from more than 20 institutions for a rich program of presentations, roundtables, and panels. Our theme this year is “Collaboration and Conversation” and Dr. Judith Goleman, Associate Professor of English at University of Massachusetts Boston, author of Working Theory: Critical Composition Studies for Students & Teachers, will deliver our keynote address. 

We’ve attached a copy of our call for papers and hope you’ll consider submitting a proposal for this year’s conference. We would appreciate it if you could also distribute the CFP among your colleagues.  We welcome proposals from tutors and students that address issues pertinent to writing instruction from all disciplines and programs. The deadline for proposals is Monday, February 4. You can also find regularly updated information about this year’s conference on our website at http://freshmanenglish.uconn.edu/instructors/conference/.

We hope to see you in April!

Sincerely,
Steven Mollmann and Laura Wright

The call for papers includes many possible topics about which those working on WAC projects will have much to contribute.