Writing Across The Curriculum: Home

Welcome to the Brooklyn College Writing Across the Curriculum resource page. Here instructors and students alike can find a variety of documents to employ writing as a tool to develop writing skills, and to improve critical and creative thinking. Review the tabs above to access downloadable .pdf resource files.

More information about WAC is available at http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/wac

The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program encourages the use of writing as a tool for learning in every discipline. A key premise of WAC is that writing will improve if students have the opportunity to write more frequently and in accordance with the conventions of particular disciplines. One of the most important concepts promoted by the WAC program is that writing is, and should be, a mode of learning in addition to being a mode of communication. WAC proponents believe that students who write as a part of the learning process not only become better writers, but are better able to absorb, analyze, remember, and think creatively about a particular subject or study. The primary mission for Writing Fellows at Brooklyn College, as at most senior colleges, is to help faculty more effectively incorporate discipline-specific writing practices in their teaching. The aim is to embed WAC institutionally and to help faculty absorb WAC practices and culture.

The WAC program has four primary functions:

• working with faculty to improve student writing,
• encouraging the use of writing to enhance learning,
• implementing and administering writing-intensive courses and majors, and
• conducting the assessment of writing-intensive courses and majors.

To achieve the first two objectives, WAC works directly with faculty, departments, programs, and college administrators. Individual faculty may request assistance, for example, in designing syllabi or writing assignments. WAC Fellows have worked with faculty in 28 of the 31 departments, and they have been particularly active in working with writing-intensive majors (currently, art, classics, education, English, music, philosophy, and political science). However, Fellows serve the college community in many capacities, especially in conjunction with other Coordinated Undergraduate Education (CUE) programs, such as the freshman Learning Communities and the Core Curriculum.