 |
|
|
Writing Across the Curriculum
INFORMING ASSUMPTIONS
The
fundamental informing
assumptions of Writing Across the Curriculum that drive this strategic
plan are as follows:
1.
Writing is a vital mode
of learning. In the academic environment, writing promotes intellectual
engagement, active learning and critical thinking.
2.
Learning to write is a
life-long process. It is never mastered completely, not by anyone.
3.
All academic disciplines
and their related professions have specific discourse conventions
particular to knowledge, understanding, and communication in their
fields.
4. University faculty, as teachers, experienced writers, and experts in
their fields, are best situated to help students acquire the skills of
the particular discourse conventions of their disciplines.
5.
Because the teaching of
writing can present distinct pedagogical and logistical challenges, it
is the responsibility of the WAC program to provide faculty with
ongoing assistance and support as needed. Part of this support may be
to assist faculty in articulating their own specific educational goals,
to discover how writing can contribute to the hopes they have for their
students, to adopt the pedagogical strengths of WAC in ways that are
intellectually and professionally meaningful and appropriate within
their own disciplines.
6.
Writing Across the
Curriculum is more transformative than additive. It does not
necessarily call for faculty to put more work into their teaching so
much as it invites modification of teaching practices.
7.
Writing Across the
Curriculum does not and can not exist as an insular entity. It shares
many goals with the faculty, other branches of Library and Technology
Services, and other programs and initiatives of the university at
large. Therefore, partnership and collaboration are fundamental to WAC
as an effective agent of easing the constraints imposed on learning by
traditional disciplinary and departmental/institutional boundaries.
8.
In particular, Writing
Across the Curriculum shares a common goal with the First-Year Writing
Program. Essentially, both programs are devoted to students’
development as writers and the centrality of writing to learning in the
undergraduate experience at Lehigh.
9.
Though Writing Across
the Curriculum is primarily a concern of faculty development, it is
also connected in vital ways to the curriculum and other matters of
university policy. The ultimate success of WAC will be affected
substantially by practices, policies, and decisions that transpire
beyond the domain of Faculty Development Library and Technology
Services.
10.
Therefore, WAC must
actively seek guidance from across of the Lehigh community in proposing
such changes and initiatives that are in the best interests of Lehigh
students.
11. When
students improve as communicators, they become better not only at
writing and speaking, but at reading and listening as well. They learn
that effective communication includes not only skills of explanation
and persuasion, but also the willingness and ability to empathize and
understand, to collaborate, to acknowledge, appreciate and assimilate
new, strange, and even opposing views. This is why Aristotle called
rhetoric the highest “intellectual virtue.” With a
successful Writing Across the Curriculum program, Lehigh will prepare
students to compete in a global culture while they also acquire the
skills and motivation they will need to make the world a better place.
|
 |
|
|
