From: Art Young [apyoung@clemson.edu] Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 2:29 PM To: cwonline@nwe.ufl.edu Subject: Re: Martin's Larger Vision for WAC
Dickie, Charlie, Mike, and all, I think CAC at Clemson has a different culture than at UMass because of our different situations. WAC courses were never given over to graduate students or adjuncts to teach here--mainly I think because we don't have doctoral programs in the humanities, social sciences, arts, etc. We are top heavy in engineering and science. In fact, when I asked engineering faculty if they would like their graduate students to be included in our WAC/CAC workshops they said absolutely not. Grad students, for the most part, just teach labs--and the labs are all controlled--so that everyone is on the same page every day. They didn't want one lab introducing freewrites and another not doing so, etc. A requirement for a WI course at Clemson is that it must be taught by a full-time faculty member. As far as I know, that's being honored. Our program began in 1989 and we still have strong momentum at Clemson. But that has more to do with good fortune and material circumstances than anything else. Our program is endowed and has a good and, most importantly, independent budget. Our endowed center has no explicit connection to the curriculum--that is we work with faculty and students from all over the university--and the faculty decide and the maintain anything having to do with the curriculum--not us. So in one sense, we don't "deliver WAC courses" as the WAC program at UMASS does, so we don't have the problems associated with that particular WAC model, but we also don't have the curricular influence and opportunity either. Art Art Young Department of English Clemson University Clemson, S.C. 29634-0523 (864) 656-3062 fax: (864) 656-1846 apyoung@clemson.edu http://people.clemson.edu/~apyoung/