“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.” From Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves
“In my life, writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions." From President Barack Obama’s 2012 Times Person of the Year Interview
As Virginia Woolf and Barack Obama suggest, writing helps us connect, reflect, and ask important questions, a transformative process for both ourselves as writers and for the diverse audiences with whom we interact. The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) group at MCLA, comprised of faculty from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, believes that writing is central to the liberal arts mission of helping citizens successfully navigate complexity, diversity, and change. Writing is a transformative act, capable of changing the world and our connections to others.
The mission of the Writing Across the Curriculum group is to support and promote writing across the curriculum and beyond, from first-year writing, to writing in the disciplines and the Core, to writing for civic and creative purposes. The WAC initiative at MCLA provides faculty professional development through regular workshops and faculty gatherings focused on best practices in the teaching of writing, while also supporting faculty and staff with their own writing projects through the Faculty and Staff writing group. The WAC group also promotes student-centered writing initiatives, like MCLA’s Writing Studio. As Woolf suggests, every time we as community members use writing to better connect with each other, we, our courses, and our writing projects are “remade” anew.
Has it been a while since you've talked about writing with in a collegial, welcoming environment? This session will offer a chance to sit down with each other in a shared space to talk writing: about our students’ writing; how we teach it; about ourselves as writers…
Are you worried about and/or intrigued by ChatGPT and other AI tools? Join WAC and the Offices of Academic Technology and Assessment for a collaborative CTL-sponsored conversation about our pedagogies and how AI might complicate—and perhaps transform in positive ways—what we do in our classroom spaces.
Are you interested in getting students' perspectives on writing instruction and support? Join us for a conversation with MCLA students about what they value when it comes to writing, what works for them as writers and thinkers, what doesn't, and why.
The WAC group supports writing at MCLA in the following ways:
To become involved with WAC or to participate in WAC activities, please e-mail Dr. Amber Engelson at a.engelson@mcla.edu.
