University of Arizona Writing Across the Curriculum
Mission Statement and Goals
The mission of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) at the University of Arizona is to create a university culture that understands writing to be the principal means by which scholars conduct inquiry (writing to learn), display their knowledge (learning to write), and share their learning with others (writing to build knowledge collaboratively). Through faculty development and institutional structures to support student writing, the program is intended to teach that rhetorical analysis, review, and revision are the writing/thinking processes used by writers in different fields to construct written texts for sharing their thinking effectively in their rhetorical contexts.
The goals of The University of Arizona WAC program are
- To teach the writing process in first-year composition--context analysis, drafting, peer review, and revision--with a view to its applications across the curriculum.
- To incorporate writing in the general education courses in Tier One and Tier Two to build on and reinforce that writing process.
- To provide adequate faculty development through partnerships between Writing Program specialists, the Writing Center, the University Teaching Center, the major departments, and the Teaching Teams Program to help faculty use writing as a means of supporting students= learning to write and writing to learn.
- To develop common writing objectives for the lower division that elicit critical and creative thinking and articulate university-wide standards for student performance.
- To provide stability and reinforcement for lower division writing through the University-Wide General Education Committee.
- To provide adequate writing support for students and faculty through development of the Writing Center and college satellite writing centers, where students may get feedback on their writing and faculty may work with Writing Center consultants to help students perform their writing assignments.
- To identify students, through college-specific Mid-Career Writing Assessments (MCWA), who may be at writing risk before they enter their upper division majors and provide supplemental instruction and opportunities for them to improve their writing.
- To provide courses in the majors that teach the rhetorical contexts, processes, and conventions for writing in those fields.
- To support student writing in the majors through faculty development in teaching the writing/thinking process for individual disciplines.
- To provide professional writing courses that support students= writing process and help them transfer rhetorical skills learned in first-year composition to writing at the upper-division level in the careers they will enter.
- To support student writing in individual colleges through consultation services to administrators and faculty on department-specific writing interventions for students in the majors.
- To help faculty and administrators develop and assess curriculum that supports student writing development throughout their undergraduate experience.