 |
 |
I have some observations and questions for you--so I tHought I would use your utterance as the frame for a response in good,old Baktinian fashion. On Tue, 4 Apr 1995, Roberta Lee wrote: > AAGH!(That was a primal scream) I am getting the run-around in my > efforts to get some clear administrative commitment to WAC. I need > some hard evidence. > I understand that at the Univ. of Toronto, Simon Fraser, and > Laurentian leadership for WAC comes from the Writing Centre. Am I > correct? Are there other universities out there that have a similar > set-up? I have just discovered that Windsor has a similar kind of Writing Centre. > I am proposing an official WAC committee, chaired by the > supervisor of the Writing Lab, composed of 5 > representative(interested, committed) faculty members, plus > Writing Lab instructors, reporting directly to the academic vice- > president. Any comments on that plan? This group would reconsider > what constitutes a writing intensive course, designate writing > intensive courses(in consultation with faculty desiring to teach > these courses), and plan writing workshops for faculty. The successful writing centres that have a strong WAC comittment also seem to have a strong connection with a disciplinary unit on campus. Laurentian, for example, has the strong support of both the English and French departments. Calgary has the support of the General Studies department. SFU has strong connections to the English department You need a disciplinary unit that will raise hell if anything happens to the writing centre, but also to continually affirm the academic respectability of the centre--especially with respect to its WAC efforts. > Writing Lab instructors will continue doing what they have been > doing: one-on-one (non-remedial) appointments with students, > consulting with faculty, leading workshops, hopefully teaching an > upper level comp course,etc. You haven't included the god term "research" in your description of your center. Are you conducting research into the language using ways of the disciplines? Both SFU and Laurentian conduct such research and use it as a strong argument to support their endeavours. > After months of reports, meetings, consultations we seem > to be worse off that we were when we started, because we have called > attention to ourselves and therefore opened ourselves to > criticism(the goal of which, I believe, is to justify not coming up > with any MONEY). > AAGH! > Roberta Lee Hope this helps Cathy Schryer >