Where Do We Go Next in Writing across the Curriculum?

Abstract

We must confess to writing from at least three contending perspectives. First, we have been and are now department-level administrators. As administrators, we are confronted all the time with the results of failed efforts to make writing across the curriculum an established part of the university's budget. Despite its obvious programmatic success in many institutions, our own among them, WAC has yet to establish permanent funding, staffing, and administrative bases in many universities. Second, we teach a great deal of writing, at several curricular levels. As teachers, we know that teaching process in a writing class in one part of an institution cannot ultimately be successful unless the writing in that one course is reinforced by the same kind of approach to learning in other courses. Yet many WAC workshops have produced a handful of dedicated and talented faculty who are able to provide a loose collection of writingintensive courses across the curriculum but who remain a beleaguered minority within the overall contexts of their departments and fields. Third, our research into the definition and function of genre in different academic and professional fields has made us aware of just how problematic the whole question of synthesizing form and context in the writing processes common to different disciplines really is (Comprone). Rather than submitting to despair because of the complex issues these perspectives raise, we hope to use them as multiple lenses, moving from one to the other as we define and suggest some solutions to what we believe are the major problems facing writing-across-the-curriculum programs in comprehensive universities.