List of Presentations

Conference presentations are listed below with short descriptions, alphabetized by the proposing presenter. Longer (250-word) descriptions of presentations can be found at Conference Abstracts. A pdf version of the conference program, with presentations organized by session, is also available. Please note that the abstracts and this list of presentations have been edited to reflect presentations actually given at the conference. The pdf version of the conference program has not; it remains in the form in which it was distributed.

10 E—Individual Paper
Assessing Faculty Development in Writing Across the Curriculum Courses

  • Joyce Adams—Brigham Young University

This presentation will include an assessment of faculty development for instructors teaching discipline-specific writing courses.


09 G—Organized Panel
Writing and the Factory: A Collaboration Between the Mind and Body

  • Elena Adkins—Michigan State University

This presentation will address how factory workers' mind and body work can contribute to the practices and process of composition.


03 E—Individual Paper
Single Source Content Management: Implications for WAC Programs

  • Rebekka Andersen—University of California, Davis

Single Source Content Management (an information development methodology that enables writers to create content once and reuse it many times) has profound implications for how WAC courses prepare students to be critical thinkers and writers in their disciplines; the presenter will highlight some of these implications.


05 B—Organized Panel
Powering Up Your WAC Program: Practical, Productive Ways to Use Assessment Data from NSSE's Consortium for the Study of Writing in College

  • Paul Anderson—Miami University
  • Robert Gonyea—National Survey of Student Engagement
  • Chris Anson—North Carolina State University

WAC leaders from various colleges and universities will explain how they are using national data and their own institution's data to increase the scope and effectiveness of their WAC programs.


06 E—Organized Panel
Big Rubrics and Weird Genres: The Futility of Using Generic Assessment Tools Across Diverse Instructional Contexts

  • Chris Anson—North Carolina State University
  • Pamela Flash—University of Minnesota
  • Deanna Dannels—North Carolina State University
  • Amy Housley Gaffney—North Carolina State University

Through examples of the assessment of specific, highly discipline-based genres of writing and speaking, this session argues for the universal abandonment of generic assessment rubrics and practices.


04 F—Individual Paper
Pressure, Pick Lists, and Patient Care: How and Why to Teach Writing to Future Nurses

  • Audrey Appelsies—University of Minnesota
  • Linda Herrick—University of Minnesota

The presenters explore how, as one faculty said, the "many, many masters that nurses have" impinge on the teaching and learning of writing in university classrooms.


02 C—Individual Paper
From Math Student to Mathematician: Training Summer Research Students to Write as Mathematicians

  • Patrick Bahls—University of North Carolina Asheville

The presenter examines the ways in which student participants in a summer math research program grow as writers and, through their writing, as practitioners of the discipline.


07 A—Individual Paper
Extending a Writing Center Assessment Culture Across The Curriculum

  • Kim Ballard—Western Michigan University

This presentation explores cross-curricular faculty participation in context-based writing center assessment and stresses how and why writing center assessment differs from writing assessment.


02 C—Individual Paper
Teaching Evolution: A Renewed Faith in the Value of Writing

  • Erin Barley—Simon Fraser University

Low stakes writing assignments were used in a third year evolution course to increase student engagement, understanding of evolutionary concepts, and the development of critical thinking skills.


08 I—Organized Panel
When General Education and Writing Programs Collide

  • Paul Bender—Roger Williams University
  • Jennifer Campbell—Roger Williams University
  • John Madritch—Roger Williams University

Faculty members from the Roger Williams University Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric,and Composition address issues raised as part of an outcomes-based general education reform.


05 I—Organized Panel
Engaged Learning through Writing: Physical Therapy Assisting Program

  • Glenn Blalock—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Marty Aime—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Leah Geheber—Our Lady of the Lake College

Faculty in the Physical Therapy Assisting Program describe how they develop and use "quality writing experiences" throughout their highly structured curriculum to enhance learning in this health professions degree program.


07 I—Organized Panel
Engaged Learning through Writing: From the Core to Nursing

  • Glenn Blalock—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Natalie Lenard—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Michael Dreznick—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Michele Walley—Our Lady of the Lake College
  • Valerie Schluter—Our Lady of the Lake College

Faculty teaching introductory biology, introductory psychology, and two courses in nursing describe their uses of writing and their focus on the transfer and expansion of knowledge and skills.


03 C—Individual Paper
Penning a Science Narrative: Assessing WAC as Curriculum Support

  • Jeanne Bohannon—Georgia State University

This quantitative study seeks to determine what effects, if any, an implementation of WAC tasks into a high school science curriculum will have on standardized science test scores and educational outcomes.


03 G—Individual Paper
Blogs: Learning through Writing in a Networked Community

  • Katherine Bridgman—Florida State University

This presentation will incorporate both the presenter's personal experience with this assignment as a graduate student and her experience integrating this approach into her own classroom with undergraduates. She will include illustrative personal narrative as well as a multimedia presentation that explores blogging as a space in which students write to learn and write to enter a broader community.


01 C—Individual Paper
Encouraging Communication: Including Faculty in a Workshop for Navigating the PhD

  • Marilee Brooks—Michigan State University
  • Elena Adkins—Michigan State University

Michigan State University (MSU)'s Writing Center and Graduate School cosponsor a two-day workshop for Ph.D. students facilitated by a Writing Center consultant. The presenter will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the workshop as it exists and discuss reshaping the workshop to include the faculty advisors of Ph.D. students.


02 D—Individual Paper
Cross-Pollinating Tutorial Approaches in a Hybrid Writing Center

  • Jackson Brown—Stephen F. Austin State University

This presentation examines a group tutorial model in the writing center.


08 D—Individual Paper
Influences of Academic Practice on the Production of Text

  • Marcia Buell—Northeastern Illinois University

The presentation explores how practices in art and design and mathematics influence how writers constructed texts in other fields.


W C—Pre-Conference Workshop
Past, Present, Future: Making High School-College WAC Collaborations Work

  • Pamela Childers—The McCallie School
  • Jacob Blumner—University of Michigan-Flint

Through an interactive workshop participants will be actively involved in designing creative solutions to the continuous problem of underprepared students of writing in colleges and universities through successful cross-institutional WAC/writing center partnerships.


05 E—Organized Panel
WAC/WID Faculty Strike Back: Reasserting the Importance of the Humanities in Today's Vocationally Oriented Universities

  • Julie Chisholm—California State University Maritime Academy
  • Ashley Andrews Lear—Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
  • Michael Perez—Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Faculty from a maritime university and an aeronautical university discuss methods used in the attempt to reinject humanist ideals into the writing-intensive classroom.


02 F—Individual Paper
Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability

  • Irene Clark—California State University Northridge

This presentation will report on a project that focused on helping students acquire "genre awareness" as a means of enabling them to make connections between academic argument as presented in first-year writing classes and the writing genres they encounter in other disciplines.


06 D—Individual Paper
Best Practices for Prospective Pre-tenured WPAs

  • Naomi Clark—University of Missouri

This presentation explores how graduate students can best prepare for the challenges they might expect to encounter as pre-tenured writing program administrators, thus identifying the best return on their present time investments.


09 E—Organized Panel
Interdisciplinary Partnerships for Faculty Writing Groups

  • Angela Clark-Oates—Arizona State University
  • Lisa Cahill—Arizona State University
  • Nancy Moore—Arizona State University

This presentation will describe an interdisciplinary partnership between a writing center and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation to develop faculty writing groups. Additionally, presenters will discuss techniques for connecting faculty writing group experiences to their work with student writers in the classroom.


09 H—Organized Panel
WAC Times Three: Aftermath of a Year-long Faculty Seminar

  • Cynthia Cochran—Illinois College
  • Mary Marshall—Illinois College
  • Elizabeth Rellinger—Illinois College

Three small-college faculty (from math, psychology, and English) present the pedagogy and assessment results of their efforts during two years following a research-based WAC seminar led by the writing center director.


03 E—Individual Paper
OMG, the OP Must Be On Dope! LMAO! STFU! :0!: Analyzing the Conversations, Arguments, and Discourse Conventions in Discussion Board Threads

  • J. Rocky Colavito—Butler University

This presentation addresses the practical considerations of rhetorical and linguistic features of discussion board activity and their place in the teaching of writing across the curriculum.


08 H—Organized Panel
Effecting a Paradigm Shift for Faculty Teaching (with) Writing Across the Disciplines

  • Matthew Cox—Michigan State University
  • Terri Barry—Michigan State University
  • Bridget Behe—Michigan State University
  • N. Suzanne Lang—Michigan State University
  • Michael Orth—Michigan State University
  • Scott Chiu—Michigan State University

Experiences with faculty writing workshops have shown that in order to maximize workshops' effectiveness, they need to offer practical applications with products that faculty will use in the classroom, time and appropriate context for feedback, and designated time for assignment development.


04 H—Organized Panel
Be OURs. Be WAC. Writing to Inquire across the Curriculum at BSC

  • Michelle Cox—Bridgewater State College
  • Nancy Van Leuven—Bridgewater State College

In this panel presentation, the leaders of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Writing Across the Curriculum will describe their combined efforts for integrating inquiry-driven writing across the core and in the majors. Then a communication studies faculty member whose pedagogy exemplifies what is possible when student research and writing intersect will showcase her approaches to teaching with inquiry-driven writing.


06 H—Individual Paper
Unconventional Resources to talk about Writing Conventions

  • Kim Crowley

Using campus resources like archives and special collections can help students from a variety of disciplines do great research and also talk about what goes into good writing, no matter what the area of study.


09 C—Organized Panel
Engaging Students Through Writing in Physical Education, Literacy Leadership and Criminal Justice

  • Dion Dennis—Bridgewater State College
  • Maura Rosenthal—Bridgewater State College
  • Elaine Bukowiecki—Bridgewater State College

Using lessons drawn from student-centered archival research in a first-year writing-intensive course, engagement with professional writing genres in a literacy education graduate program, and the encounter with new digital literacies in undergraduate criminal justice courses, these presentations ask the audience to reconsider the ways we use writing to challenge, engage, mentor, and professionalize students across levels, across programs, and across the curriculum.


03 F—Individual Paper
We All Shine On: Transition and Change in a Writing in the Disciplines Program

  • Christina Marie Devlin—Montgomery College

An award-winning program navigates leadership transition and economic change by sharpening its student focus.


08 D—Individual Paper
U.S. Undergraduate Writing, Disciplines, and General Education: Insights from Cross-cultural Linguistic Analysis

  • Christiane Donahue—Dartmouth College and Université Lille 3

Cross-cultural analytic methods for studying students' negotiation of general education vs. disciplinary participation through writing enable us to consider whether the role of meta-awareness is as important as that of discursive ability and expertise in students' growth as writers.


09 D—Organized Panel
The Transfer of Knowledge: Building Connections among Students, Faculty, and Administrators

  • Dana Driscoll—Oakland University
  • Laura Colbeck—Oakland University
  • Marshall Kitchens—Oakland University

This panel first describes the results of two research studies that focus on transfer, first-year writing students, and disciplinary faculty and then concludes by examining the role of transfer in curricular and administrative planning.


08 J—Organized Panel
Making Sense of Campus Writing

  • Michele Eodice—University of Oklahoma
  • Carrie Miller-DeBoer—University of Oklahoma
  • Daniel Emery—University of Oklahoma
  • J. Quyen Arana—University of Oklahoma

A WAC effort is assessed using Weick's "sensemaking" process.


03 G—Individual Paper
Blogging Across the Curriculum: Diverse Goals, Effective Practices

  • Jane Fife—Western Kentucky University

This presentation examines the growing literature on blogging in the college classroom to suggest best practices for blog assignments to achieve the goal of conversational learning in a variety of classroom contexts.


07 C—Individual Paper
Using the Online Experience to Move Students from Learning to Write to Writing to Learn

  • Sandy Figueroa—Hostos Community College/CUNY
  • Sarah Archino—CUNY Graduate Center and University

The presenters will share the use of formal and informal writing exercises, group projects, article summaries, and a cartoon in an asynchronous online course--Computer Literacy.


03 F—Individual Paper
A Case Study of First Year WAC Development: Ideological Conflict, Uneasy Alliances

  • Collie Fulford—North Carolina Central University

In one complex case of coincident reforms to first year writing and general education, writing across the curriculum ideologies and standards-based assessment ideologies come into conflict.


03 D—Organized Panel
At Home with Writing: WAC Faculty Fellows at St. John's University

  • Anne Ellen Geller—St. John's College
  • Natalie Byfield—St. John's College
  • Zachary Davis—St. John's College
  • Emilio Squillante—College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions
  • Jennifer Travis—St. John's College
  • Melissa Yates—St. John's College
  • Enju Wang—St. John's College

The faculty on this panel will describe reading and thinking with colleagues outside their disciplines, reflecting on and revising their practices of teaching writing, and working with undergraduate writing fellows in their spring 2010 courses. Each faculty person on the panel will also present a piece of action research from the year's work and invite the audience to respond as faculty colleagues, modeling pieces of the collaborative work this group will do together over the year.


10 H—Organized Panel
Using Wikis to Promote Best Practices of Writing and Assessment Across Disciplines

  • Victoria Genetin—The Ohio State University
  • Katie Linder—The Ohio State University
  • Vicki Daiello—The Ohio State University

Panelists will talk about how the WAC program at Ohio State University has found ways of influencing the conversation about writing and assessment in indirect ways by creating a wiki of resources that pulls together the best research on assessment and writing across the curriculum theory and practice.


06 C—Organized Panel
Online Publishing as WAC: The Case of Blogs@Baruch

  • Mikhail Gershovich—Baruch College/CUNY
  • Lucas Waltzer—Baruch College/CUNY
  • Keri Bertino—Baruch College/CUNY

Each of the three presenters on this panel will address an aspect of Blogs@Baruch's increasing centrality to the WAC landscape of Baruch and connect the project to broader WAC/WID-related issues.


03 F—Individual Paper
WAC at TSC: Writing Across and Up the Curriculum as a Gen Ed/Program Partnership

  • Chris Geyer—Cazenovia College

This presentation offers perspectives on the opportunities and dangers that face a WAC program at a very small college.


W F—Pre-Conference Workshop
Take Your Students to the Movies: Teaching Writing and Thinking Through Film

  • Chantal Gibson—Simon Fraser University
  • Stephanie Dayes—Simon Fraser University

Using Henry Fonda as the model critical thinker, this critical reading of 12 Angry Men offers teachers a fun and engaging way to guide students through the argument-writing process as they evaluate the strengths and limitations of their own thinking.


04 A—Individual Paper
PEER Review: Teaching TAs how to Provide Effective Evaluation and Response

  • Chantal Gibson—Simon Fraser University

This presentation describes the writing activities used in a workshop designed to teach new TAs how to provide thoughtful feedback that motivates students.


06 A—Individual Paper
Developing Textual Identity: Achieving "Optimal" Course Design for First-Year Multilingual Writers

  • Tarez Samra Graban—Indiana University

This presenter discusses how the concepts of "moves" and "interlanguage" from EAP/ESP research can be adapted for promoting more equitable cultural positioning among novice multilingual writers in the non-WID composition course.


06 F—Individual Paper
Writing across the Nursing Curriculum

  • Roger Graves—University of Alberta

This presentation will report the results of a descriptive study of writing assignments given throughout the nursing curriculum at one university.


W E—Pre-Conference Workshop
A New Approach to and Vision of Enhancing Learning Through Writing: Scenes and Issues in the US and Europe

  • Magnus Gustafsson—Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
  • Julian Ingle—Queen Mary, University of London
  • Paul Anderson—Miami University
  • David Russell—Iowa State University

A workshop to outline the pros and cons of a more far-reaching and departmentally oriented approach to promoting student writing. This workshop will discuss parameters such as effective strategies, decisive differences, organizational or educational obstacles, and characteristics of high quality learning through writing.


04 C—Individual Paper
What WAC/WID Faculty Need to Know About Multilingual Learners: New Approaches for Faculty Development

  • Jonathan Hall—York College/CUNY

This presentation offers a specifically WAC/WID model for faculty development which adapts research on L2 writing, language learning, and other fields to the challenges of upper-level WAC/WID courses enrolling students who are far removed from the level of the struggling beginning language learner, but who may nevertheless be working through important advanced language issues which instructors should be aware of.


04 G—Organized Panel
Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum

  • Al Harahap—San Francisco State University
  • Robert Cedillo—University of Nevada, Reno
  • Susan Mueller—St. Louis College of Pharmacy

This panel aims not only to reinforce the importance of collaboration between WAC and the writing center, but also to show through the three different presentations that we can collaborate in various ways.


06 H—Individual Paper
The WAC-ier UR, the WAC-ier You Can Be

  • D. Alexis Hart—Virginia Military Institute

Using a cross-disciplinary undergraduate research (UR) project in engineering writing conducted by a mechanical engineering major/writing minor as a case study, the presenter will examine how UR's compatibility with WAC initiatives makes UR a potentially rich site for WAC programs to realize many of their central goals.


06 F—Individual Paper
Developing Sequenced Writing Curriculum within Science Departments

  • Matthew Haslam—University of Hawaii at Hilo

This presentation describes the sequenced writing curriculum being developed within science departments at a 4,000-student state university.


10 G—Individual Paper
Teaching Writing in Unexpected Places: Using Portfolios and Learning Logs as Part of the Math Curriculum

  • Matthew Haslam—University of Hawaii at Hilo

Proof portfolios and written learning logs are used in mathematics courses to teach students how mathematicians write and to help them use writing strategically in their work.


02 D—Individual Paper
Writing Fellow Influence on Assignment Design in the Disciplines

  • Beth Hedengren—Brigham Young University

This study examines reports by tutors, professors, and students to determine the extent of the influence Writing Fellows have on professors' design of writing prompts.


03 C—Individual Paper
The Writing Fellow/Faculty Collaboration: Making It Work

  • Linda Hirsch—Hostos Community College/CUNY
  • Andrea Fabrizio—Hostos Community College/CUNY

This presentation will examine the various models of Writing Fellow/faculty WAC partnerships to distinguish those personal and academic characteristics which lead to effective collaborations and implementation of WAC principles and practices.


01 F—Organized Panel
Building and Sustaining a Viable WAC Program: Lessons from the Ten Year CUNY-wide WAC Initiative

  • Linda Hirsch—Hostos Community College/CUNY
  • Marian Arkin—LaGuardia Community College/CUNY
  • Dennis Paoli—Hunter College/CUNY

This panel presentation will examine the evolution and insights gleaned from ten years of an ongoing City University of New York (CUNY) WAC Initiative at both the four-year and community colleges with reflections on the particular challenges and successes of this vast undertaking at individual member campuses.


05 G—Individual Paper
Expanding the Walls of the Academy: Bringing WAC to Community-Based Internship Supervisors

  • Richard Holody—Lehman College/CUNY

This presentation explores the role that community-based supervisors of interns can play to help baccalaureate social work students (and, by extension, other disciplines that utilize internships) to improve their writing skills.


10 D—Organized Panel
Transferring Prior Discursive Textual Experience to New Writing Situations: Two Case Studies of Students' Survival Strategies

  • Kevin Hooge—University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Sergio Casillas—University of Washington

This panel will present two case studies of university students in the midst of transition, the first examining 14 students transitioning from high school writing tasks to general education research and writing assignments in college, and the second examining 3 students who are transitioning from general education coursework to major-required upper division social work classes.


04 F—Individual Paper
The "Hidden Curriculum" of Sociology Writing Instruction

  • Suzanne Hudd—Quinnipiac University

Presentation of data from interviews with sociologists on the east coast that describes their expectations and pedagogical strategies for student writing in the discipline.


10 E—Individual Paper
It Goes Without Saying: Locating Writing in Program Descriptions across the Disciplines

  • Debrah Huffman—Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

This study examines the presence of writing among the values and goals found in online program descriptions across the disciplines in two major university systems.


07 B—Organized Panel
Reconceptualizing How We Advise WAC Faculty to Praise Student Writers

  • Brad Hughes—University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Beth Godbee—University of Wisconsin-Madison

The panel explores what motivates faculty resistance to praising student papers and offers WAC professionals alternative ways to teach praise which draw on appreciative inquiry and a strengths approach.


W D—Pre-conference workshop
Developing and Sustaining an Undergraduate Writing Fellows Program as Part of a WAC Program

  • Brad Hughes—University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Emily Hall—University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Kathy Evertz—Carleton College

Collaboration among student peers is an especially effective mode of learning. The Writing Fellows program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison trains undergraduates to work closely with professors as well as student writers in specific writing-intensive courses. In this interactive workshop, staff from the UW Writing Center and WAC Program will lead participants through the philosophy and logistics of establishing such a peer Writing Fellows program to support writing efforts throughout the curriculum.


02 F—Individual Paper
Can Campus-wide Writing Centers Accommodate Diverse Discourse Communities?: Exploring Generalist Tutors' Genre Knowledge

  • Erin Kane—University of Alabama

Because more disciplines across campuses are incorporating writing instruction into their curricula, campus-wide writing centers must respond to increasing needs of students who write for diverse discourse communities. This session presents three case studies that detail potential factors affecting the feedback quality that generalist tutors provide to students writing in discipline-specific contexts.


04 B—Organized Panel
WAC, WID, and the Cultures of Writing

  • Ruth Kistler—Florida State University
  • Jennifer O'Malley—Florida State University
  • Kathleen Yancey—Florida State University

Using WAC--and her cousin WID--as point of perspective, the presenters identify ways to enhance student development within many cultures of writing: through critical pedagogy, blogging, and teaching for transfer.


10 F—Individual Paper
Implementation of WAC Enrichment in a Graduate Research Methods Course

  • Patricia Kolb—Lehman College/CUNY

This presentation will describe specific approaches for implementing a sustainable WAC-enriched graduate research methods course.


06 B—Organized Panel
Manifesto Against "Courseocentrism": Institutionalizing Linked-course Collaborations

  • Carrie Matthews—University of Washington
  • Joan Graham—University of Washington

Presenters and a respondent discuss the necessary development of social networks, training, and curricular planning to support and sustain the implementation of linked courses as collaborative sites.


02 F—Individual Paper
Science Students and the Development of Genre Knowledge

  • Suzanne Lane—Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Based on a longitudinal study that included interviews with 18 science students and analysis of their writing from freshman to senior year, this paper will analyze the development of genre awareness, and the effects that learning the genre conventions of science writing had on the writing that these science students produced outside of that discipline.


07 G—Organized Panel
Teaching Counselors to Use Writing as a Therapeutic Intervention

  • Noreen Lape—Dickinson College
  • Ric Long—Columbus State University

A writing center director and a counseling professor/psychotherapist will explain how they taught graduate students in a counseling skills course--half of whom were military chaplains just home from Iraq--to use writing as an intervention in therapy and as a form of self-care.


02 D—Individual Paper
How Individual Perspectives Promote Progress in Fellows Programs

  • John Lauckner—Michigan State University

The presenter will look at Michigan State University's Spring 2009 writing mentors pilot program, and how the perspectives of the mentors involved are already affecting the future of the program.


02 B—Organized Panel
Where Teacher-based Research Leads Us: New Questions for WAC Practitioners

  • Neal Lerner—Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Jennifer Craig—Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Panelists will describe how a multi-year research project on scientific and engineering communication sparked follow-up WAC research--particularly in international contexts and on diversity issues.


08 E—Organized Panel
Deploying Writerly Identity Across the Curriculum: the Institute, the Retreat, and the Hunker

  • Katie Levin—University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  • Kirsten Jamsen—University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  • Mitchell Ogden—University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

In this presentation, the panel discusses how three intensive summer cohort experiences for preK-12 teachers, graduate students, and faculty from multiple disciplines cultivate these participants' identities as writers. What new opportunities emerge when writerly identity becomes central rather than peripheral to our and our clients' work? And, what are the residual effects of this intensive experience, both on the clients and on the institution?


03 E—Individual Paper
Real World Teaching Tools: Wikis as Collaborative Workspaces

  • Adrienne Lewis—Davenport University

This session will explore best practices for using collaborative web applications to enhance learning in traditional college courses.


10 A—Organized Panel
Teaching WAC/WID with Threshold Concepts: Transforming Students' Assumptions about Writing in Science and Engineering

  • Jon Leydens—Colorado School of Mines
  • Robert Irish—University of Toronto
  • Marie Paretti—Virginia Tech

This panel explores how WAC/WID efforts in science and engineering can enlist threshold concepts (Meyer and Land 2006) as a framework to transform students' naïve assumptions about rhetoric and professional identity--acts of transformation with implications in many fields.


10 B—Organized Panel
The No-Budget WAC Faculty Writing Retreat: Creating Community on Less Than $1 a Day

  • Peggy Lindsey—Wright State University
  • Sarah Twill—Wright State University
  • Noeleen McIlvenna—Wright State University

This panel describes a low-cost initiative to build a community of WAC faculty by offering support and space for faculty writers to complete their own writing goals and to share their challenges and success as teachers of writing.


09 A—Organized Panel
Coherence Within Diversity: Writing In the Disciplines at the University of Houston

  • Steven Liparulo—University of Houston
  • Frank Kelley—University of Houston
  • JeAnna Abbott—Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management
  • Michelle Miley—University of Houston

As the presenters' university pursues student success as one of the five strategic principles in achieving Tier One status, ongoing college writing programs and other programs yet to be developed contribute to the effort by seeking to create coherence within the diversity that defines the University of Houston. In this presentation, the panel will talk about why the college is the key locus for ensuring student outcomes like writing.


10 G—Individual Paper
What Are My Options? Matching Assignment Type to Level of Course in Mathematics

  • LeighAnne Locke—Oral Roberts University

This presentation offers suggestions and examples of effective writing assignments that are tailored to different levels of mathematics instruction from general education to upper-division math courses.


06 G—Individual Paper
Wikis and Disciplinary Communities of Practice

  • Christopher Manion—The Ohio State University

Through three case studies from anthropology, education, and professional writing, this panel will explore how wikis change the communities of practice within classrooms and programs.


10 C—Organized Panel
Writing and the Academic Leap of Faith: Persuading Undergraduates that Philosophical and Theological Discourse Matter

  • Heather Matthusen—Columbia College
  • Sherry Jordon—University of St. Thomas
  • Carol Sebastian Curiel—California Polytechnic State University

The panel explores how courses in philosophy and theology, which emphasize improving composition skills through well-designed assignments, can help students "do philosophy" and "do theology," thereby bridging the gap between their everyday experience and academic discourse.


07 D—Individual Paper
Why Everyone Thinks Grammar is Easy

  • Mary McDonald—Cleveland State University

The history of easy, basic grammars shows reductionist trends that are present in the 1700s and our time but missing in the 19th century.


07 H—Organized Panel
Negotiating Territory: Undergraduate Scholars Research Project

  • Delma McLeod-Porter—McNeese State University
  • Harold Stevenson—McNeese State University
  • Linda Larson—McNeese State University

The Undergraduate Scholars Research Project epitomizes the spirit of academic excellence and writing across the curriculum.


04 D—Organized Panel
Adjusting, Surviving, Sustaining: Tales of WAC Program Upheaval and Change

  • Dan Melzer—California State University Sacramento
  • Lisa Johnson-Shull—Washington State University
  • Michael Cripps—York College
  • Fiona Glade—California State University Sacramento
  • Sarah Baker—George Mason University

In this panel, WPAs from established WAC programs will discuss challenges to the survival of their programs and offer advice for sustaining WAC during times of upheaval and change.


09 F—Organized Panel
Writing Across the Achievement Gap

  • Hannah Moeckel-Rieke—Norwalk Community College
  • Janie Burkhardt—Norwalk Community College
  • Arlette Werner—Norwalk Community College

This panel discussion will focus on how learning community faculty at an urban community college built writing across the curriculum into their courses and improved student success and retention, faculty involvement and the quality of writing instruction in all of the classes. The presenters will share their experience gained in three learning communities composed of a basic composition course paired with introductory courses in psychology, sociology and US history.


09 B—Individual Paper
"There's Nothing But Lint in My Pockets, But I Still Want a WAC/WID Program!" Creative (and Slightly Sneaky) Ways of Getting Started

  • Kelly Moor—Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Presentation of a method for initiating a WID-based curricular assessment method on a campus where no WAC/WID programming or funding currently exists.


03 B—Organized Panel
Inviting Students to Re-vision their Writing: Improving Speaking, Listening and Writing across the Curriculum

  • Susan Schorn—University of Texas-Austin
  • Joan Mullin—Illinois State University-Bloomington/Normal
  • Holly Bruland—University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Drawing on replicable studies, presenters demonstrate that when writing-center pedagogies which instantiate reader reaction are translated to WAC classrooms they increase metacognitive and reflective activity, two of the strongest predictors of longitudinal writing growth that are critical to successfully managing the variety of disciplinary expectations demanded of students.


07 D—Individual Paper
Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, Content, and Style: Using Metaphor to Teach Writing Concepts Across the Curriculum

  • Beth Nardella—West Virginia University

This presentation will discuss some strategies to discover shared experiences and tools for developing appropriate metaphors for the composition classroom that allow students to visualize unwieldy theories.


10 E—Individual Paper
Selling Writing to Learn: Repositioning the Value Proposition

  • Carroll Ferguson Nardone—Sam Houston State University
  • Sheryl Murphy-Manley—Sam Houston State University

This session shares results of a university-wide "W" syllabus assessment project, and provides attendees an opportunity to participate in WTL workshop strategies designed to reinforce the tenets of writing to learn across disciplines.


06 D—Individual Paper
Cohorts in Curriculum: Making it Work for WAC

  • Holly Norton—University of Northwestern Ohio

This presentation will address the philosophy, challenges, and results of WAC cohorts at the University of Northwestern Ohio.


01 C—Individual Paper
Approaches to Writing Development for Academic Staff in UK Universities

  • Rebecca O'Rourke—University of Leeds

This presentation reports the findings of a small-scale research project which set out to explore the recent trend of providing writing development activities for academic staff in UK universities. In particular, the presenter will explore how these activities challenge the assumption that writing is – or ought to be – an unproblematic part of academic identity and practice and the implications this has for student writing development.


06 I—Organized Panel
WAC at Three Levels: The Evolution of a Program

  • Audrey Allison—Kennesaw State University
  • Susan Rouse—Kennesaw State University
  • Beth Daniell—Kennesaw State University

This panel looks at one university's Writing Across the Curriculum initiative and explores the impact of this work at three levels: 1) the level of the student, as exemplified by adult learners in the communications field; 2) the level of the classroom, as demonstrated by an interdisciplinary American studies class's developing sense of community; and 3) the level of the program, as administrators discuss their use of WAC strategies to develop the WAC program.


07 D—Individual Paper
Thinking 'Big': Using Pop Nonfiction in Advanced Composition

  • Lisa Ottum—Indiana University

This presentation offers both a theoretical discussion and practical strategies for teaching so-called "big idea" bestsellers (e.g. Freakonomics) in advanced composition courses.


08 C—Individual Paper
Writing Instruction that Works

  • Susan Parnell—Professional Learning and Development, Inc.

This presentation will offer three writing strategies that yield results.


05 D—Organized Panel
The Empowered Powerlessness of Liminal WPAs in "These Tough Economic Times"

  • Talinn Phillips—Ohio University
  • Megan Titus—Ohio University
  • Paul Shovlin—Ohio University
  • Melanie Lee—Ohio University

This panel analyzes the paradox of empowered powerlessness in what are termed "liminal WPA" spaces.


04 A—Individual Paper
Training Graders as a Means to Grade Equity and (Future) Faculty Development

  • Laura Plummer—Indiana University

Norming sessions meet the short-term goal of establishing equitable benchmarks and standards for responding to student writing; the long-term effects reach not only to current faculty practice in writing in the disciplines, but also to preparing future faculty.


05 H—Organized Panel
Research Writing: The Whole in the Middle

  • Faye Prichard—Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Bonnie Orzolek—Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Donna Coghill—Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Laura Westmoreland—Virginia Commonwealth University

This presentation explores making whole the often fragmented process that students resort to in research writing courses and assignments


08 F—Organized Panel
North of the Border -- Canadian Writing in the Disciplines

  • Theresa Hyland—Huron University College
  • Boba Samuels—University of Western Ontario
  • Margaret Procter—University of Toronto
  • Brock MacDonald—University of Toronto
  • Roger Graves—University of Alberta

In the absence of central composition programs, Canadian universities have to build WID initiatives by educating administrators, course instructors and teaching assistants at the same time as students. Faculty from three Canadian institutions will report on their efforts at team-building and integration, with a commentator adding perspective from a newly-designed program at another university.


07 C—Individual Paper
Creating an Online Writing Center for an Online University

  • Renee Ramsey—Northcentral University

This presentation describes and evaluates the process of creating an online writing center to serve students in psychology, business, and education.


06 F—Individual Paper
Supporting a Vertical Writing Model

  • Georgia Rhoades—Appalachian State University

The presenter's WAC Program has created a faculty development structure in which composition and WID faculty support a vertical writing model in four required Gen Ed writing courses.


08 C—Individual Paper
Bridging the Gap

  • Lynne Rhodes—University of South Carolina Aiken

Using Freshman Folders (a sampling of writing representing all sections of USCA's composition program) and Writing Proficiency Portfolios (representing WAC), the presenter explores cross-disciplinary expectations for researched writing at her institution, notably the lack of significant gains in researched writing after FYC, concluding that partnerships must be established between FYC and WI instruction and that media/information-technology specialists must become more actively engaged in WI course design.


05 G—Individual Paper
The Reading/Writing Connection

  • Lynne Rhodes—University of South Carolina Aiken

This presentation offers a snapshot of how teacher participation in local writing projects can influence and build on teachers' professional development in literacy practices.


02 E—Organized Panel
Snapshots of a Campus Writing Program: Networked Assessment

  • Jeff Rice—University of Missouri
  • Catherine Chmidling —University of Missouri
  • Bonita Selting —University of Missouri

This is a presentation by the director and two coordinators in the University of Missouri's Campus Writing Program describing a distinctive assessment project.


07 A—Individual Paper
Measuring Writing Improvement in a Large-enrollment Social Science Course: Early Results from a Three-year Study

  • Brenda Rinard—University of California, Davis
  • Chris Thaiss—University of California, Davis

This presentation describes the process of incorporating writing assignments in a large-enrollment undergraduate sociology course at a Tier-One research university in order to fulfill the university's "writing experience" requirement.


05 F—Organized Panel
Professional Practices in the WAC Classroom: Journal Clubs and Poster Presentations

  • Leslie Ann Roldan—Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Jane Kokernak—Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The panel will explore two communication practices that are little studied in WAC literature but are valued by professionals: journal clubs and poster presentations.


04 C—Individual Paper
Salam Aleikum! You'd Like Some Help with Your Essay?

  • Lynne Ronesi—American University of Sharjah

This presentation highlights the perceptions of writing tutors at an English-medium university in the UAE regarding the relationship between their English writing ability and their identities as bilingual Arabs.


08 D—Individual Paper
From Transfer to Negotiation: Examining the Uses and Limitations of the Transfer Metaphor

  • Kennie Rose—University of Louisville

Building on the work of Wardle and actor-oriented transfer theorists, the presenter claims the 'transfer' metaphor distracts attention from how students transform their skills as they move between contexts and instead recommends adopting the metaphor of negotiation, which allows scholars to observe how students dynamically shape their knowledge to meet the demands of new tasks.


03 C—Individual Paper
Collaboration Website for Instructors of Upper Level Communication-intensive Mathematics Classes

  • Susan Ruff—Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Violeta Ivanova—Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Presentation of a website designed to support collaboration among mathematics instructors who are teaching upper level communication-intensive math classes at M.I.T.


01 B—Organized Panel
WAC as Platform for Integrated Learning

  • Nathan Grawe—Carleton College
  • Carol Rutz—Carleton College

At Carleton College, WAC pedagogy has proven fundamental to the establishment of a new curriculum based on integrative approaches to learning.


10 F—Individual Paper
Teaching Graduate WAC: A Practitioner's Experience

  • Enrico Sassi—North Dakota State University

Tasked with teaching a new graduate multidisciplinary writing course, the presenter used his practical experience as an editor, writer, and consultant to develop a course in which students do extensive independent work, grammar is taught as an art, and the invented field of Legology serves as academic writing practice.


09 I—Organized Panel
A Writing Center Greenhouse: Transplanting Expertise Across the Curriculum

  • Kurt Schick—James Madison University
  • Mark Thomas—James Madison University
  • Laura Schubert—James Madison University
  • Jared Featherstone—James Madison University
  • Karen McDonnell—James Madison University
  • Christina Wulf—James Madison University

Writing centers harvest rich but typically underused knowledge about college-level writing. This panel describes how our writing center has begun to systematically cultivate and transplant expertise across our campus.


10 G—Individual Paper
What We Teach, What We Measure: The Case of WAC in "Content Based" Classes

  • Jason Schneiderman—Borough of Manhattan Community College
  • Christa Baiada—Borough of Manhattan Community College

This paper will offer a proposal on how to revise learning outcomes in order to successfully integrate WAC pedagogy into classes traditionally assessed through multiple choice tests.


01 G—Organized Panel
Using Blogging to "Place" Students within Content Areas

  • Katherine Schutte—Western Illinois University/Moline High School

Using blogging technologies helps "situate" students within academia, increasing critical thinking, student engagement, and the motivation to write in all disciplines.


04 I—Organized Panel
Writing Fellows Remix: The TRAC (Technology, Research, and Communication) Writing Fellows Program at Lehigh University

  • Gregory Skutches—Lehigh University
  • Gregory Reihman—Lehigh University
  • Tina Hertel—Lehigh University
  • Jason Slipp—Lehigh University
  • Courtney Jackson—St. Paul's School

This panel will present the results of the pilot run of the TRAC (Technology, Research, and Communication) Writing Fellows Program at Lehigh University.


01 E—Organized Panel
"Naked Language": Writing to Advance the Disciplines, a New Rhetoric

  • Robert Smart—Quinnipiac University
  • Suzanne Hudd—Quinnipiac University
  • Andrew Delohery—Quinnipiac University
  • Glenda Pritchett—Quinnipiac University
  • Mark Hoffman—Quinnipiac University

The panel presents writing assignments crafted by colleagues in the content areas to bolster critical thinking and deeper disciplinary understanding, along with data gathered at their home institution and other outside schools, to suggest that engaging disciplinary learning in this more active, interrogative manner leads to a better, fuller understanding on the part of students.


09 B—Individual Paper
Devils in the Details: A Tale of Two Founding WAC Documents

  • Raymond Smith—Indiana University

The founding documents describing "writing intensive" courses at two large research universities, including the ultimate (and very different) shapes of those courses, are examined.


08 B—Organized Panel
Writing and Writing-to-Learn in the STEM Disciplines: A National Collaborative Project

  • Chris Thaiss—University of California, Davis
  • Marie Paretti—Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  • Lisa McNair—Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The panel will describe a new national collaborative project on learning in the STEM disciplines, with writing strategies and assignments at the heart of the project, which will involve 50 or more research institutions.


07 E—Organized Panel
Rubrics Across the Curriculum: The Results of A Summer Workshop

  • Stephanie Thomson—Ferris State University
  • Olukemi Fadayomi—Ferris State University
  • Lucy Ngoh—Ferris State University

A panel of faculty from varied disciplines at Ferris State University shares the results of a summer WAC workshop that focused on revising rubrics. This presentation will include reports of experiences and examples of student work resulting from the changes made.


06 G—Individual Paper
Conventional Wisdom

  • Jamie Thornton—Kaplan University

Using a multi-modal method (with the simple name of "conventional wisdom") can help students grasp how to clearly and effectively express themselves in the academic world of written essays.


06 H—Individual Paper
Writing History in Connected Courses

  • Kathryn Tomasek—Wheaton College

This presentation assesses the History Engine as a tool for helping students develop and deploy contextualized knowledges.


08 A—Organized Panel
Is There Life After WPA? The (Still) WACky World of the Recovering Administrator

  • Bill Condon—Washington State University
  • Martha Townsend—University of Missouri
  • Martha Patton—University of Missouri

Three former directors of WAC/WID programs describe how their teaching and/or research methods have changed now that they are no longer administrators.


05 A—Organized panel
Writing to Learn On Emerging Frontiers: Fresh Perspectives for 21st Century WAC Programs

  • Eric Dragseth—University of Missouri
  • Barri Bumgarner—University of Missouri

Panelists focus on an area of their own unique backgrounds to examine some of the most current trends in WAC studies, all revolving around the pedagogical pillar of writing-to-learn.


07 A—Individual Paper
Putting a WI Microbiology Course under the Microscope

  • Julie Trachman—Hostos Community College/CUNY

Assignment stategies used for a writing intensive section of a microbiology course will be discussed.


03 G—Individual Paper
Online Groupwork Across the Curriculum

  • Noah Ullmann—Michigan State University

This presentation will address the use of shared online spaces to support inter-class conversations.


10 I—Individual Paper
Non-American English and College Writing: Difficulties and Opportunities

  • Donald Unger—Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Our pedagogical and cultural approach to students whose first language is "non-American" English can usefully inform how we teach all students.


01 D—Organized Panel
From Tutor to Tutor: Acculturating Tutor Trainees

  • Jo Ann Vogt—Indiana University
  • Laura Clapper—Indiana University
  • Shabrelle Pollock—Indiana University

Using video clips from a tutor-training session, an experienced peer tutor and a graduate tutor who previously served as a peer tutor will illustrate how a question-based training session and other tutor-to-tutor interactions allow current tutors to acculturate trainees and pass on the essence of what good tutoring means.


04 E—Organized Panel
A New Frontier: Teaching with Wikipedia

  • Adrianne Wadewitz—Indiana University
  • Anne Ellen Geller—St. John's University
  • Robert Cummings—University of Mississippi

This panel will discuss ways in which Wikipedia can be incorporated into the classroom to teach digital literacy and collaborative writing. Branching off from these specific topics, the presenters will ask larger questions about the nature of knowledge and authority that arise from using Wikipedia.


09 B—Individual paper
Closure of a Writing Center: Effects on Writing Across the Curriculum

  • Mark Waldo—University of Nevada, Reno

The University of Nevada, Reno Writing Center's former director will discuss the closure of the university's writing center and its effects on the students and faculty.


06 D—Individual Paper
What's a Writing Specialist to Do? Making WAC and/or WID a Cornerstone of a Quality Enhancement Plan

  • Sylvia Whitman—Marymount University

A green writing specialist surveys the place of writing in quality enhancement plans (QEPs) instituted as part of a reaccreditation process and explores with the audience the possibilities and perils therein.


08 G—Individual Paper
"It's not just about Chinese": Activity Systems and Language Skill Transfers Reflected in an Upper-level Chinese Language Course

  • Dan Wu—Clemson University

This qualitative descriptive study probes the interlingual (English/Chinese) and intralingual (within single language) literacy skill transfers (Cummins, 1981) in an upper-level Chinese language course through the lens of North American activity theory.