Last modified: Tuesday, March 2, 2010
IU to host 2010 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 2, 2010
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The 2010 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference will be hosted by the Indiana University Campus Writing Program and co-sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin. It will take place May 20-22.
Four pre-conference workshops will be offered on the Thursday morning for an additional fee. All events will take place at the Indiana Memorial Union on the IU Bloomington campus.
Art Young
The biannual conference, the only U.S. conference dedicated exclusively to writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID), is typically of interest to people who are concerned with using writing to improve teaching and learning -- faculty, administrators and students from post-secondary institutions, as well as faculty and administrators from secondary schools. Participants in the past have come from throughout the world.
This year's featured speakers are Art Young from Clemson University, speaking on "WAC Today and Tomorrow: Composing in Many Modes and Media," and Terry Myers Zawacki from George Mason University, on "Researching the Local/Writing the International: Developing Culturally Inclusive WAC Programs and Practices."
Young is the Robert S. Campbell Chair and professor of English emeritus at Clemson University, where he founded and coordinated Clemson's award-winning communication-across-the-curriculum program (1990-2009). South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges awarded him the Order of the Palmetto in recognition of his role in Clemson's being selected Time magazine's Public College of the Year for 2001.
In March 2002, Young received the Exemplar Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) for outstanding achievement in teaching, research, and service. He is the author of Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (Prentice-Hall, 4th edition, 2006). Young co-edited with several Clemson colleagues Teaching and Learning Creatively: Inspirations and Reflections (Parlor Press, 2006), an anthology of creative works by more than 50 Clemson students from numerous disciplines with accompanying reflections by their teachers. He also co-edited Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum (NCTE, 1998).
In addition, he is author of numerous articles and co-editor of four other books on writing across the curriculum. He has served as a consultant on writing and communication across the curriculum to more than 70 colleges in the U.S. and abroad.
Terry Myers Zawacki
Zawacki is associate professor of English and director of George Mason University's Writing Across the Curriculum program. Her publications include the co-authored Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life and articles on writing assessment, writing centers and writing fellows, alternative discourses, writing in learning communities, and feminism and composition.
Zawacki serves on the editorial board of Across the Disciplines and on the review board for the Digital Books series on the WAC Clearinghouse, for which she is also Writing Fellows section editor. She is a member of the Consultants Board of the International WAC Network and the CCCC Committee on the Globalization of Postsecondary Writing Instruction and Research. Her current research interests focus on writing instruction transnationally and what WAC programs and writing centers need to learn from second language scholarship and practice to work effectively with multi-lingual writers. She investigates the academic writing identities of multilingual students, faculty perceptions of "accented" writing across disciplines, and how both get complicated in our current assessment culture.
Plenary sessions include topics on administration, assessment, curriculum, economics, faculty development, history of WAC, interdisciplinary collaboration, student learning, politics, research, school/college collaboration, sustainability, teaching, technology, theory, writing, and other forms of communicating across the disciplines, as well as collaborative projects involving contributors from varied disciplines.
Pre-conference workshops include:
- "Developing an Undergraduate Writing Fellows Program as Part of a WAC Program" with Brad Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- "A New Approach to and Vision of Enhancing Learning Through Writing: Scenes and Issues in the U.S. and Europe" with Magnus K. Gustafsson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; Sally Mitchell, University of London, UK; Paul Anderson, Miami University; David R. Russell, Iowa State University; and Michael P. Carter, North Carolina University
- "Take Your Students to the Movies: Teaching Writing and Thinking Through Film" with Chantal N. Gibson and Stephanie Dayes, both from Simon Fraser University
- "Past, Present, Future: Making High School-College WAC Collaborations Work" with Trixie G. Smith, Michigan State University and Pamela B. Childers, The McCallie School
The deadline for conference registration is April 1, 2010. For registration information, visit https://www.indiana.edu/~wac2010/registration.shtml. For general information, visit https://www.indiana.edu/~wac2010/ or e-mail wac2010@indiana.edu.
IU Campus Writing Program
The Campus Writing Program (CWP), IU Bloomington's writing-across-the-curriculum and writing-in-the-disciplines program, is dedicated to improving undergraduate education by promoting writing as a way of learning and teaching. The emphasis on writing at IU Bloomington is not only an attempt to give students additional practice in basic composition skills, but is intended to foster their ability to articulate complex positions within their chosen fields of study. Staff at the CWP assist campus faculty through consultation, course development grants, writing prizes, and workshops to integrate writing into their courses. They also assist students on writing via Writing Tutorial Services, the university-wide writing center administered by the CWP.
IU Bloomington writing programs and initiatives were recognized by U.S. News & World Report in their rankings of Best Colleges 2010: Writing in the Disciplines category of those "Academic Programs to Look for." This is the sixth time since 2003 that IU Bloomington has been recognized.
On the Bloomington campus, curricular decisions have strengthened writing instruction; in addition to the university's first-year composition requirement, other school initiatives -- such as the College of Arts and Science's Intensive Writing requirement (one of the nation's oldest programs) and the Kelley School of Business's two-course writing sequence -- have solidified writing as a cornerstone of undergraduate education.
For questions on the WAC conference or the Campus Writing Program, call 812-855-4928.
