History of WAC at CUNY: University-Wide Guidelines for Writing Across the Curriculum

CUNY creates WAC — Board of Trustees Minutes, 1-25-99

Resolution

To assure that CUNY graduates bring fully developed communication skills into the workplace and into graduate and professional schools, a major University initiative...will intensify and extend the colleges' efforts to teach writing in courses across the curriculum. This Board-mandated effort (January 25, 1999 Board of Trustees Resolution-The Enhancement of Student Writing Skills) affirms a broad commitment to writing. It recognizes that advanced writing ability represents the hallmark of a comprehensive college education and can only be developed through extensive writing practice, promoted across a wide spectrum of academic experiences. This initiative will be linked to a new CUNY Writing Fellows Program that will place specially trained CUNY doctoral students on undergraduate campuses and offer them the opportunity to be mentored by faculty members while assisting in a variety of capacities in support of intensive writing instruction.

Guidelines

The University-wide Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiative is envisioned as a program in which a set of goals, principles, and effective practices agreed upon by a University-wide committee is implemented and amplified on each campus according to its mission and needs. Each college's plans for implementing a full WAC program should address the following areas:

• Program goals (the college's policy on writing should be included in this description);
• Planned activities to achieve the goals of the program...(WAC and writing in the disciplines initiatives, including, but not limited to, writing intensive courses, collaborative paired courses [e.g., English Composition and Freshman Seminar], block programming, the use of technology, writing centers, tutorial support, and curricular change might be discussed in this section);
• Target faculty and students;
• Campus-based professional development plan;
• Role of the writing fellows;
• Assessment of the program including faculty, writing fellows and students (attitudes and writing); and
• Cost estimates for implementing the college's plan.

For the Founding Documents of WAC at CUNY, see www2.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/undergraduate-studies/wac/

WAC at CUNY Today: For CUNY-wide WAC-related Reports and Resources, and Job Descriptions for WAC Fellows on all CUNY campuses, see www2.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/undergraduate-studies/wac/