This collection of resources for faculty is a thoroughly collaborative effort. It reflects the work of current and former WAC Coordinators, including Elaine Avidon, Sondra Perl, Marcie Wolfe, and Jessica Yood, who have brought together Lehman faculty throughout the years to address issues around writing in the college classroom. It draws on the scholarship of Peter Elbow, Ann Berthoff, and John Bean, among others. And, it is the product of work by twenty-three Lehman faculty from over ten academic disciplines who, in collaboration with Graduate Writing Fellows, have participated in WAC’s faculty development workshops, experimented with various ways of using writing in their teaching, and generously made their work available to the larger College community.
The materials are organized around a series of themes or topics, so that faculty can zero in on a particular area of interest. However, many of these areas overlap, just as they do in our teaching. Each section explores various strategies involving writing in the classroom and, when possible, provides examples from actual assignments and teaching practices to illustrate the various approaches. We hope that faculty exploring these resources will be inspired by the work of their colleagues to continue to rethink and refine their own approaches to writing instruction. It is a foundational principle of WAC that writing can and should be part of every college course, but we also hold that the best teaching happens when faculty learn from one another, are willing to take risks, and adopt an intellectually engaged relationship to their own teaching.
Former Writing Fellows Rachel Ihara and Tanya Radford began selecting and annotating materials in the summer of 2007. Since then, the resources section has been expanded and enhanced by current and former Writing Fellows, including Madeline Pérez, Carla DuBose, and Tyler T. Schmidt. We see this collection of resources as a starting point and hope it continues to expand over the years. We welcome comments and suggestions.