ENCOURAGING FACULTY TO USE WRITING AS A TOOL TO FOSTER LEARNING IN THE DISCIPLINES THROUGH WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), the national movement to infuse writing activities into the academic disciplines, promises eventually to enhance student writing competence, although its immediate goal is to foster mastery of course learning objectives. Those faculty who use WAC solely to improve writing skills assume the role of an English instructor and obligate themselves to take on an enormous amount of additional work perhaps without advancing their primary instructional missions. A limited return on this investment of effort will have the likely effect of prompting a faculty member to discard WAC. Over the long run, doing so will diminish opportunities for students to engage in productive writing experiences. Presented in this article are five strategies used in a faculty- development seminar that are designed to encourage the use of writing as an instructional tool. Individual teachers may use these strategies as justification for initiating WAC; just as important, program supervisors may use them to sustain a WAC program once it has begun.