2017 Four-Year Institution Survey
If you foresee changes to the institutional sites of writing do you foresee in the next four years feel free to explain. (n=136)
Results
Results- 1. As a result of a WPA consultant-evaluator visit and recommendations that took place in September 2017, we are examining our student learning outcomes for our first and second-year writing courses with the goal of streamlining them. We have defined and streamlined our Writing Program outcomes as a result of the WPA CE recommendations. These adjustments result from collaborative conversations with writing faculty at the regional campuses. 2. We are discussing offering WAC workshops through the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CET&L)
- We are currently in the midst of a campus-wide revision of our General Education requirement. This shift will entail a change from a competency-based curriculum to a largely distributive, outcomes-based curriculum. In its draft form, this requirement includes writing under the heading of Communication Skills, in which writing is one of three media for communication (visual and oral are the others). The current draft LO does not fully reflect the recommendations of the writing faculty. It remains to be seen whether WI will remain a part of the curriculum, and while attempts to initiate an explicit WAC/WID curriculum remain underway, the future of writing in light of these curricular changes is difficult to discern.
- We are moving toward the implementation of a WAC program
- We are moving from a general education model that integrates writing and oral communication and that includes an upper-division (mid-level) writing requirement to one in which writing and oral communication are separate and the mid-level writing requirement is becoming a writing-in-the-disciplines requirement in the majors. We are also beginning to work with a few departments on a WEC-style integration of writing across the majors.
- We are looking to more clearly define the learning outcomes of writing emphasis courses (to better emphasize rhetorical nature of writing and to make connections to WPA outcomes) as well as how courses qualify for the W endorsement. We are working to give departments more control and more support in order to ensure that writing instruction is more consistent and purposeful throughout the curriculum. We are looking to implement lower course caps, change the timing of the portfolio (from first year to late-stage) and ideally link it to the student's broader curriculum. We would like to have more structure for assessment. Really, we are looking to change just about everything without losing what is a rigorous requirement: 4 courses beyond first year seminar. We hope to require 1 in the major and 1 in upper division.
- We are looking to add a WAC or WID element. We are also launching an MA in English which will provide TAs to teach first-year writing. We also hope to create a few teaching-track tenured positions (without the scholarship or service requirements) so that more of our first-year writing classes can be taught by full-time faculty.
- We are in the process of updating our FYC curriculum and assessment, as well as our general-education program.
- We are in the process of redesigning the General Education program at the college. Our Writing Across the Curriculum program will be part of that larger discussion and redesign process.
- We are in the early stages of revising its general education curriculum. Changes are likely to impact the requirements of one first-year writing course and four writing-intensive courses.
- We are in the early stages of planning an assessment of students' writing and the sites of writing as part of the next university accreditation review. We also plan to propose a minor in Writing and Rhetoric in the next year, building on the success of our Notation in Science Communication.
- We are going through a Core Curriculum revision. And it's been contentious (as it typically is). The CC Steering Committee wanted to reduce the writing requirement, but data from the campus wide assessment indicated that the only place we were really making progress with our students is in writing and the campus, in a magical, once in a lifetime way, pushed to keep the writing requirement. The WPA position was formerly unfunded during the busy summer months, and we just got a $3500 summer stipend for the position. Also, we've been given a grad assistant for the coming year. All good things. Finally, just this past year we passed a writing major in the English department. It was a huge and multi-year battle, but it got done. This we added to the fairly new writing minor.
- We are gearing up for changes to the writing program course structure, including higher-level requirements (beyond freshman courses) and will be proposing an upper-division writing general education requirement.
- We are exploring changing the English major to include a writing and rhetoric track. Some departments have expressed concerns that could be best addressed by a WID program, though altering degree requirements to include an additional course is another concern for many majors. The Criminal Justice program is hoping to become the first non-English writing intensive major in the next few years (that is, a major that requires a certain number of writing intensive courses be completed; our WIC program is 1.5 years old). I am advocating for creation of a WPA position over the next few years, to coordinate efforts across our multiple sites of writing, most of which have been developed within the past 3.5 years. Currently, I am the de facto WPA.
- We are currently working extensively to convert our second-semester comp course to a third-year course that includes oral, digital, and written rhetoric. This would (hopefully) eliminate the proliferation of WID courses that our program has been required to create. I see this as both a consolidation and an expansion.
- We are currently revising our general education requirements, and some proponents of these revisions are interested in scrapping or diluting the freshman writing requirement.
- We are currently revising our general education program. There are forces that would like to minimize writing instruction across the campus, including cutting it from 4 to 2 courses. We have already begun the process of discontinuing our basic writing courses.
- We are about to revise our core to have a universal core for all colleges. Writing will be part of this, as its explicitly listed among the outcomes.
- We are planning to open a free-standing writing center on campus and begin a developmental writing program. We are also instituting a college-wide assessment that links upper-division writing, critical thinking, and information literacy.
- We are a university within a state system that is looking to align things more closely.
- We are a new and rapidly growing institution. We have a lot of policies, practices, and procedures to develop and institutionalize.
- Very unsure what the future holds, but quite certain there will be changes.
- Unsure about specifics; but change will happen
- Through assessment findings, we hope to add more writing classes in the sophomore and junior years.
- These changes are possible but by no means assured
- There is an increased interest in professional and disciplinary-based writing, which may result in some formalization of an advanced writing requirement. In addition, I am hopeful that there will be changes so that the pseudo-WPA position I now hold becomes more formal.
- there is a move for the writing program to separate from the English department. If this happens, there may well be expanded course offerings and increased outreach via multiple sites of writing across the university. if not, i think the English department will offer more writing courses and TT appointments in writing both of these would be a response to an internal push from writing program NTT faculty to increase the sites of writing and bring our writing program in line with national standards and best practices, and to enfranchise writing faculty
- There is a clear need for a stronger writing curriculum across the college as well as a more formal assessment structure, especially as the college's demographic shifts to include more "nontraditional" students. The recent hire of a permanent writing director (that's me) is the first step in this direction.
- There are two schools of thought in regards to what should happen with our current Writing Center. One school suggests the center should expand to having two full-time coordinators so that the center can serve more ELL and graduate students. The other school suggests a consolidation with the currently emerging "tutoring center."
- The writing requirement is part of the general curriculum, which is undergoing its first significant revision in 20 years. I'm not sure what the end result will be yet.
- The writing program is continually under threat. Economic issues cause administrators to look at the writing program and writing classes as places to cut.
- The writing program has been growing in strength and effectiveness within the English Department, and it has receive support from the dean and provost. More growth is likely in terms of an eventual writing fellows program and perhaps a graduate certificate in writing pedagogy (a comp-rhet focus). Assessment takes place within the department and is reported out from there. It's done through collection of student writing samples from Core writing classes at various levels. It will expand to include Writing Enhanced courses in the next several years.
- The Writing Center may move outside the Department of English and Foreign Languages.
- We are on the cusp of requiring undergraduate research for all students, and the research experience will be scaffolded throughout the majors. Students will then take our current writing requirements--a writing-intensive course in the freshman year, followed by one in the sophomore year--and will also take a writing-intensive course in their major before writing their research project.
- We are proposing a Writing & Rhetoric major.
- The Rhetoric and Writing faculty will probably form an independent department in the next three years.
- We have just learned that we will be moving out of the English Department and into a department with Communications and Graphic Arts. This is not official but we have been told that it will happen.
- Writing intensive courses offered across the majors within the college of liberal arts will be required (they will replace the current senior writing requirement that lacks a shared structural component or administrative base).
- WMU is readying the launch of a new general education curriculum in fall 2020. This new curriculum will change campus writing.
- We've proposed a minor in Writing and Rhetoric, which is currently in committee and will be voted on soon.
- We're in the middle of a general education curriculum review, and since WAC is part of the general education curriculum, we're hoping to make some minor adjustments to our requirements to strengthen writing in the disciplines.
- We're in the middle of a curriculum review, so it's hard to say what will happen.
- We're developing a second writing requirement, completion of a writing-intensive class.
- We will most likely partner with other departments to develop upper division WID courses and we may develop more WAC initiatives.
- We plan to move to a corequisite model for delivering writing instruction and support to our current basic writing students.
- We may support the creation of Writing in the disciplines courses taught by other programs to meet our existing junior-level Writing requirement. We may add a major in Professional Writing.
- We just passed a new general education curriculum, so changes will be coming soon.
- We instituted a new Core curriculum in 2013, and one of the goals is "to strengthen skills foundational to reasoning well and communicating effectively." The English department has started assessing "effective communication" by assessing the quality of student writing in the two English literature Core courses. However, as an institution, it isn't clear to me what sort of curriculum-wide assessment of this goal is taking place.
- We implemented the basic structure for a WAC/WID requirement during the 2016/17 academic year. Beginning with the 20117/18 academic year we began the work of institutional self-study and faculty development to begin the implementation of that requirement.
- We hope to strengthen writing instruction and hire additional faculty.
- We have just recently changed the writing requirement for graduation, shifting it to the mid-level writing courses. As part of this new change, I anticiapte additional changes to assessment. We may also look to make the writing center an site independent from Student Affairs/ Academic Support.
- We have been told to expect major changes to our Gen Ed structure at the institutional level, but do not have details of what form those changes will take.
- We are reviewing our Writing Priority placement system and considering its elimination or replacement. Stakeholder conversations have begun. We are also in the process of developing assessment instruments for our first-year writing program as well as our writing minor and curriculum more broadly.
- We have been in the process of revising the "skills requirements" in our GE since 2010. Depending on the success of the new curriculum, we may add an administrative structure. We will be changing assessment as we progress.
- We have a new president and provost who have expressed interest in undergraduate writing; we are hopeful that this will lead to the development of a new vertical writing program.
- We expect to add a second-level Core writing requirement, to begin staffing some courses with terminal-degree non-tenure-track faculty, and to add a WID requirement.
- We expect that within the next four years the majority of our full-time lecturers will have been promoted to the long-term position of Lecturers in Critical Writing, and also anticipate an increase in the number of Senior Lecturers in Critical Writing through promotion of current writing faculty.
- We currently have a Professional and Technical Writing Program housed in the English Department. This program is expected to move out of the English Department and become a stand-alone program in the coming year.
- We are working on new General Education program, which may or may not include writing in goals for ALL gen ed. courses (and we'd still have a WAC program, too.)
- We are working on creating a First Year Experience, coordinating the goals and vision of gen ed courses. Remedial classes will be decreased and replaced by Composition I with Review. Schools will be merged into new colleges resulting in new administrative structures. First Year Writing program being designed to include Composition I & II and World Literature I & II.
- We are working on building an undergraduate Certificate in Writing Studies and a Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Writing
- We are undergoing general education revision, so our writing requirement will certainly change.
- We are undergoing a GE review. We anticipate more rigid focus on writing as the focus of courses that were literature focused before. We also have a reduced number of faculty on campus. This leads to responsibilities being added to some positions with little pay.
- We are undergoing a comprehensive review of our general education program. Advanced drafts of the new program indicate that the current composition courses will be eliminated by Fall 2020, with writing instruction to be incorporated at specified, multiple sites across the new curriculum. It's unclear who will be the primary instructors or assessors of this form of writing instruction.
- We are undergoing a calendar change which will impact curriculum--both gen ed and in the majors.
- We are supposedly moving from a 4/4 to a 3/3 teaching load with no new resources devoted to hiring, so this may require reducing our first-year writing sequence from 2 courses to 1. Meanwhile, we have hired a full-time non-tenure track writing instructor, and may be approved to hire more, in place of adjunct instructors.
- we are revising general education and will probably consolidate WI courses into required breadth courses
- The School of Engineering is committed to providing more communication instruction for undergraduates and graduate students. The Dean of Engineering has offered me a newly created position as the director of an engineering communication program.
- The new Gen Ed requirements have led our program to overhaul our two standard required courses; they have also led departments to create writing-intensive courses. AY 18/19 is the first year the Gen Ed will take effect.
- A proposal to increase first-year writing requirement from one semester to two semesters is currently with the General Education Committee, to be voted on for implementation in Fall 2018
- Due to increasing numbers of International Students, the writing program plans to partner with the Foreign Language department to offer more writing support. We are also forging closer bonds with the Academic Resource Center.
- I expect WAC to be seen as a way of organizing and enhancing assessment, as a way to channel assessment findings into curricular changes on the departmental level.
- I expect more work to be done in WID, more connection to the School of Business, and an expansion of the Writing Center to include Speaking, Information Literacy, and Critical Thinking.
- I can see the size of the administration growing to include an associate director and further development of curricular and assessment initiatives
- I anticipate the development of a writing department, with writing faculty.
- I am starting an institutional ethnographic (IE) study to explore the sites of writing and the overall culture of writing on my campus. (Currently there is a focus on writing in ONLY the FYC courses.)
- I am hoping to develop a WAC/WID initiative.
- I am concerned that our General Assembly on the state level will institute a system-wide assessment of writing.
- Hopefully this is the right place to explain this: Our writing and speaking center, which was named the Center for Communication Practices, is run by faculty in the Dept. of Communication and Media but reports to the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Last year, the Dean was awarded a full-professor position for the Director of the Center to help fulfill her plans to expand the Center as a site that will support research and student work in visual communication of many different kinds. This academic year, a full-professor and visual artist in the C&M dept. was hired as Director; the person running the Center was given the title Faculty Lead. The Center has already hired an undergraduate student tutor to work with students who need support with design projects (data visualization, website design, posters, etc.). The Director has also begun to establish connections with other design-oriented research groups working in other centers on campus. We are also becoming the umbrella organization for the office that assists international students with oral English as well as for peer tutoring in the Chinese language.
- Hopefully our program will become more aligned with the field of Comp/Rhet. The final exam in its current iteration is pedagogically unsound. Hopefully we will move from the exam model into a portfolio system. We are also working more closely and collaboratively with the Writing Center; we hope that relationship continues to deepen.
- Further integration of our SLAC-modified version of the Writing-Enriched Curriculum project will, hopefully, lead to more discipline-relevant writing and writing instruction being thoughtfully integrated throughout both general education and programmatic pathways—from first-year writing through capstone courses.
- For 10 years, our SACS Quality Enhancement Plan theme was "Communicating to Succeed." That plan had four outcomes, three of which were explicitly about writing. There was a portfolio sampling method used to assess the QEP. As of the 2017/18 academic year, the new QEP is “Improving the Five-Year Graduation Rate." This plan, to my knowledge, has no wording about writing. So that impacts our assessment. Also likely impacting assessment are are changes we anticipate making to our Comp II curriculum, which would necessitate different assessment instrument. The university has also recently hired an outside firm, Credo, to work on GEC assessment of learning outcomes. Changes to be determined.
- Expansion of comp/rhet upper division offerings and possibly development of track within extant Writing Arts major and extant Certificate in Professional Writing. Hiring at least one additional FT, either TT or NTT, comp/rhet specialist in developmental writing, cultural rhetorics, or writing assessment.
- Enrollments have declined over the last three years and are expected to continue dropping. At the same time, more and more students complete many of their liberal arts requirements, including FYW, through AP/CLEP/dual enrollment credit or enrollment at other colleges and universities even as student writing skills are perceived to be in decline by university faculty broadly. The university is also currently undergoing a reconsideration of its liberal arts requirements, of which FYW courses are part. To balance all of these tensions, there is some informal but recurrent discussion of possibly creating a multidisciplinary first-year liberal arts/humanities seminar with a significant writing component to make the university more attractive freshmen (and their parents) by offering a means to quickly satisfy multiple liberal arts requirements while also limiting how many liberal arts requirements students can satisfy by outside means. These conversations are preliminary, but it does seem likely that a significant change could come to the FYW courses within the next four years.
- During AY 2017-2018, we will search for an associate professor-ranked WPA. Starting in AY 2018-2019, the first-year writing program will be independent and report to the dean of Arts & Letters.
- Due to budgetary constraints and the promotion of Business, Education, and Health Sciences programs, no WAC or WID is now in evidence; however, I foresee it may be necessary as graduates in ED for example are not passing the reading and writing certification at rate that is sustainable. I would guess these other majors may be seeing similar trends.
- I hope we can expand the WAC program. And we're undertaking a review of our general education requirements that will likely impact the writing program in some way (though who knows how).
- Depending on funding both the English Department and the Writing Center reevaluates its procedures and goals on a yearly basis. The English Department for example sometimes cuts and adds classes based on enrollment projections.
- Curricular structure changes: movement afoot to combine first-year orientation course with first-year writing to get a single FYWS. Not sure whether it will go anywhere. Admin structure changes: the writing coordinator just became associate dean of School of Arts and Sciences. Currently she does both, but would like to hand writing coordination to a non-specialist TT faculty member in another field to build buy-in for different faculty than English. This would be a two-year experiment (until the associate dean position is renewed or switched to someone else--3 year positions) with that person reporting to the associate dean (the current writing coordinator). There are only two comp/rhet experts on campus, the WC and another Engish faculty member whose time is dedicated to our Publishing and Editing major (therefore unable to take on WC). Staffing-type changes: see earlier comment re: adjuncts. We have shifted from mostly faculty across the disciplines (2008) to mostly adjuncts with humanities and social science masters. Not sure how long this will go on. Our adjuncts are regulars who get good training and we have a lot of confidence in them, even though we prefer a faculty-across-the-disciplines approach. As noted above, this is not part of a general trend to increasing adjunct faculty over the whole campus; we have an institutional commitment to 80% TT. That has remained pretty steady--it just seems that most adjunct work is happening now in first-year writing.
- Currently, there is no institution-wide writing assessment. But there is a requirement that the university report to the State Council on Higher Education (SCHEV) on writing. Right now, that responsibility falls to General Education, within the first "cluster" of courses most students take in their first year. The first-year writing course is in that cluster. SCHEV has recently indicated there will be increased attention and focus on writing as a key learning objective, and so I would suppose/hope/imagine that there will be increased institutional attention to writing assessment in all four years. No specifics, currently.
- Currently, a course is designated as writing-intensive if it meets 2 requirements: 1) students receive process-oriented comments from instructor that they use for revision, and 2) 15-20 pages of formal writing. Technically, a faculty member could assign 15 one-page papers, provide feedback on them, and meet the requirement. Thus, the requirement needs to be clarified. Secondly, students take 4 writing-intensive courses including our First-Year Seminar and our Capstone course. Students then choose 2 other writing-intensive courses. Often. students are waiting until their senior year to take 2 or even 3 writing-intensive courses, which defeats the purpose of the writing requirement.
- As some institutional personnel and processes changed, I think the University will need to re-visit the Writing requirement's administration and assessment.
- As part of our accreditation, a new QEP was established that will focus on a capstone experience for all majors - this includes internship, capstone project or similar experience.
- As part of budget cuts in 2017 the Composition Program was eliminated (the Director of Composition received a course release each semester to do administrative duties, assessment, and curriculum/teacher resource development of the composition courses). As a result, none of these things now occur. Teachers are on their own when they teach comp. New teachers are not trained. There is no standard or consistency across sections. No assessment. No teacher development or curricular oversight.
- as our Comp Program is new (in its 4th year, with my hire), I plan to move us into implementing a WID requirement, portfolio entry placement and exit and a basic writing requirement based on portfolio placement.
- An institutional requirement of an English Proficiency Exam will be removed and will be replaced by a senior portfolio assignment.
- Also forthcoming are possible changes to the number of First-Year Writing credits (from 4 down to 3).
- All of our programs (at all degree levels and in all majors, as well as within elements of our general studies programming) are working to create better mechanisms for assessment (at the institutional level).
- After the administration eliminated the developmental writing program in 2014-15 (part of a 4 semester sequence for students with the greatest need), which the vast majority of our students placed into, the English Dept proposed a 3 course sequence, with one developmental course for students with SAT below 440, and 6-credit accelerated versions of Eng 101 & 102 for students with SAT between 440 and 510. Only the two accelerated versions of Eng 101 & 102 were implemented, but Eng 100 was never approved. Success rates have been low, affecting not just comp class pass rates but also the Gen Ed program's success. For that reason, Eng 100 or something similar MAY eventually be approved to serve underprepared students who are not succeeding with two semesters of composition. We have also been exploring additional grant-funded summer stretch programs and programs for students repeating either of the existing levels of composition. In 2016, the administration eliminated the Writing Program Administrator position. We have asked to have the WPA position restored, but that has not happened yet; perhaps it will in the coming years.
- A WAC program is under development. Following program review our program will likely be relocated with the dissolution of our college. We may be reabsorbed back into the Humanities department, but that remains to be seen.
- A recent faculty retreat was centered on consolidation of areas at universities, such as an area of "Humanities" rather than discrete departments.
- I have proposed the creation of a committee that will support the development of writing curriculum and assessment across campus. This committee would include the Writing Program Coordinator, the Writing Center Director, a Writing in the Disciplines representative, a research librarian, and a representative from Institutional Research.
- I intend to launch a newly envisioned community engaged writing program. I will be advocating for a bigger role in hiring writing teaching faculty and collaborating with them. ...basically expand my responsibilities beyond the training of graduate students and into a fuller more robust role as director who leads new initiatives, oversees the mentoring of all teachers, leads an assessment of a portfolio based program, on boards all new teachers, including graduate students, and this new role means that I must teach a 111 every year.
- The future of the writing curriculum has resurfaced as a potential topic of discussion as the faculty enter a strategic planning process. Some faculty would like to eliminate the writing requirement for FYWS, currently situated in our FYS. Others would like to make it more robust with more of a focus on writing instruction. It's unclear if the discussion will have traction, but it might because the current administrative leadership--which is quasi interim--has some investment in the conversation. Right now, there is some unresolved confusion about whether the FYS is a first-year experience curriculum, a writing course, or both. It's currently both, but the focus on writing pedagogies has been scaled back significantly under our new dean.
- On hold for this year, there is a plan to institute writing plans for each program in the disciplines.
- The dean of the College of Liberal Arts has spoken freely about "the 106 problem" and is actively attacking Introductory Composition. He has reduced the size of our graduate student pool, redirected resources to his "Cornerstone" great books program, and refused hires in English outside of Creative Writing, over-riding faculty preferences. Most unites outside CLA are (understandably) pragmatic about this shift: they just want their students to write well, and don't really which course gets them there as long as it's effective. But some are establishing their own courses or weakening requirements to open up AP and transfer options.
- The CSUS Writing Reading Subcommittee conducted a pilot focused on disciplinary faculty using two institutional written communication rubrics to inform their course-level writing assignments, methods, and assessments. Those rubrics have been proposed to Faculty Senate for the adoption. This will give our campus a tool for institutional and programmatic assessment. CSUS Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) Coordinator is currently conducting a portfolio pilot to ultimately replace our current method, which is timed-writing test or 3-unit course.
- Starting with fall 2017, we have constituted a Core Standing Committee to evaluate the college's Core (or "general ed") requirements, including writing. Following the work of this committee, I anticipate that we are likely to make some changes to the structure of our First-Stage writing requirement, which most students (~80%) fulfill through a three-part assessment in their first year. We are also working closely with the Director of Assessment on more effective and perhaps equitable ways to conduct this assessment of student writing in the first year. Finally, as WPD, I have undertaken a project to gather data about how departments administer the Second-Stage writing requirement in their majors, and anticipate that following the information received we are likely to make some adjustments to this part of the requirement.
- Sites of tutoring on campus continue to be investigated. Right now, the Writing Center is part of Student Affairs and the University Writing Program is a department in the College of Letters and Science. Each have their own assessment teams, and the Writing Center is currently looking at ways to expand capacity.
- Right now we require four courses (four semesters) of "English" courses that are housed within the Writing Program. As the Gen Ed curriculum is revised, we will rename those courses "Writing" and require three rather than four courses so that majors can design their own writing courses. This won't be a full-on WAC or WID program, but we are trying to expand our discussions of writing across the curriculum and support faculty and students alike in their writing endeavors throughout their four (plus) years of college. Also, currently the required writing courses are very much rooted in literature, and as we revise the writing curriculum those courses will look more like composition/rhetoric courses rather than lit surveys.
- Revisions to general education program.
- Pilot of WAC program across the institution (five-year proposed roll out). Will be based on the WEC approach at University of Minnesota. Will align to WSCUC Core Competencies (external assessment and accreditation).
- Part of my charge as new faculty is to develop and coordinate a WAC program as part of a slightly revised core, or as something external to the core. (I prefer the former.)
- Our writing department is currently planning to assess writing through a portfolio system that will eventually include senior writing portfolios for all students. We are also proposing a writing major and working to collaborate more with other departments on campus.
- Our university is moving from a horizontal, six-hour FYC requirement to one three-hour FYC requirement followed by either three WAC courses or two WAC courses and one WID course. We will also move from 90% of our FYC classes being taught by adjunct faculty to perhaps 80% being taught by full-time Professors of the Practice. Finally, we will implement the first assessment of writing ever completed on our writing program.
- Our Graduate Student Writing Center is in the third year of a pilot, so that may or may not be continued. We no longer have graduate programs in English, so the GAs in the Graduate Student Writing Center come from other disciplines. We will likely lose some of the compensation for the Coordinator of Composition. There's a chance that we'll have a director of general education, and the writing program may be moved there. We may also have greater numbers of tenure stream faculty teaching in the writing program with fewer contingent faculty. The assessment is expanding to include information literacy, so we may end up with additional artifacts in our portfolio or a different team of people evaluating the portfolio.
- Our GenEd is being revamped. The Communicating through Writing (WC) requirement will remain the same, but there will be additions of capstone experiences (with reflection) that might feature writing in substantive ways. Also, we're looking at this change as an opportunity to integrate Phase 2 portfolios as part of the FYC/WC/Gen Ed structure.
- Our college is undergoing a "gen ed refresh," which will likely affect some of our writing requirements/institutional outcomes, especially for WAC courses.
- Our basic writing program is undergoing curricular changes. The latest proposal is a SWW (supplemental writing workshop) model that would utilize peer writing mentors who'll see each student for an hour of writing mentoring per week. We'll see how that goes.
- My position as WPA was created two years ago, specifically in order to build sustainable assessment mechanisms for remedial courses (also in Math and Reading) and first-year writing. There has also been some discussion of developing assessment mechanisms for writing-intensive courses in other departments.
- I suspect that the two-semester composition sequence we now have for all students will become a single semester requirement. At this point administrators think that there is duplication of effort the straddles the English dept. composition courses and the college-required first year seminar, which also has writing as an aspect of the course. I also think that we will move towards hiring a tenure-track professor of creative writing who will serve as a nucleus for a more general program in writing. Finally, there have been inklings that the administration may fund a "director of writing" who will oversee a full-on WAC program. Again, all of this is supposition at this point.
- In response to recommendations made by an external review team, the writing committee recommended that the college require students to take a writing-intensive course in their second or third year. Doing so may entail changing the first-year seminar structure, adding another GE to our list of requirements, and/or imagining ways to include a writing-intensive overlay over our GE requirements. Our academic affairs committee is currently reviewing the way in which writing is assessed on campus and is likewise determining how to effectively measure "oral communication," which is listed as one of our campus learning outcomes.
- I think our assessment of senior theses and oral communication will become more substantial.
- I would say these are aspirational changes rather than those we definitely foresee. We're hopeful.
- If the integrative course sequence proposal is passed, we will see writing embedded more deliberately across the curriculum, with extensive faculty development for all who will teach writing in the first year or the advanced courses.
- In 2015, we started an annual program assessment (that is funded by the college, but only through summer 2018). We have been circulating our findings up the administrative ladder. Simultaneously, campus has been preparing for reaccreditation, which has fomented lots of assessment across university/college/department learning outcomes, as well as a renewed conversation about the state of writing across campus. We are hoping to leverage this to make the WC into a "real" writing center again (in its own space, separate from the general tutoring center), and to rekindle WAC/WID programming that had flagged several years ago. Further, we are working toward eventually using this momentum to shift conversations about writing and its assessment across campus.
- In fall 2019 the College of Arts & Sciences is adopting a new core curriculum. The rest of the university is expected to follow.
- In order to align with the Indiana Core Transfer Library, we are examining how to align with other state institutions that require one semester of composition. We are also looking at the possibility of a more coordinated WID approach.
- It is our goal that as more departments adopt a Writing-Enriched Curriculum that writing will be expanded in the curriculum of those departments.
- My institution's experiment in removing first-year writing and communication from their respective departments and putting them together in a department/course that has no disciplinary affiliation has not been very successful or well received by faculty. In the next few years, I anticipate there will be substantial changes to the current structures as they relate to curriculum, administration, and assessment.
- It seems as though oral communication might also become a part of our writing across the curriculum. Faculty likely will determine this this fall ('18).
- It's hard to say, but we're in the midst of strategic planning, and there are conversations around student diversity and faculty development that will likely result in changes.
- Might possibly revise our First Year Program learning goals; add writing tutoring, etc.
- More department-level discussion and input on the nature of WID courses.
- More frequent assessment of FYC. Changes in staffing to writing center (add professional staff).
- My goals are to get rid of the writing proficiency exam and channel that funding to some sort of vertical curriculum or expanded writing center. Four years may not be enough, but it may get started at lease. Assessment is currently up in the air, so I suspect it will change.
- Writing Program will combine with Speech Communications Dept. to create new dept. and revised major: Rhetoric and Communication Studies Dept. and B.A.
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