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Suzanne Long: Winner of the 2010-2011 Outstanding WAC Faculty Award


The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program’s success is due not just to its mission but to the faculty who design their courses to be Writing Intensive (WR). Their dedication and devotion help sustain our efforts to keep WAC thriving at MCC. Ten years ago, the WAC Committee created an annual award to honor an individual faculty member who has made a significant contribution to the development of WAC at the College. The Committee is pleased to recognize Suzanne Long, Associate Professor of Biology, as the recipient of the 2010-11 Outstanding WAC Faculty Award.

Suzanne has been an enthusiastic supporter of the WAC Program since 2004, when she began teaching an online section of BIO 133 (“Human Machine”) as a Writing-Intensive (WR) course. In 2008, she added BIO 202 (“Microbiology”) to her list of WR course offerings, thereby reaching a vast range of Biology majors and non-majors. In both of these courses, Long has worked hard to create rigorous, field-specific writing assignments that enable students to engage more fully in the course content and become better writers. Students in her “Human Machine” course, for example, are challenged through a number of formal and informal writing assignments, including “Learning Journals” and “Blue Book Assignments.” According to Long, Learning Journals were introduced as a way to guarantee feedback at the end of each learning module, regarding what course activities students felt were most beneficial, but it became “more of a metacognitive introspective document in which the students evaluated their own learning.” With the “Blue Book Assignments,” students are asked to write for several minutes in response to a question she poses, either about a previous lecture, a recent lab activity, or the assigned reading. “The activity settles the class into thinking and learning modes. It furthermore provides a meaningful transition into lecture, facilitates attendance collection, provides a glimpse into their thinking, and occasionally exposes misunderstandings that she can address in later lectures.” As a result of students being allowed to refer to these responses on their exams, they have a legitimate motive for taking the exercise seriously.

Assignments in Long’s “Microbiology” course are similarly innovative and rewarding. However, her support of the WAC Program goes well beyond her commitment to WR instruction. She has attended several WAC Faculty Workshops and in her tenure as Coordinator of the Teaching Creativity Center, she sponsored WAC-based Faculty Workshops that addressed methods of critique and teacher feedback on student written work. In 2008, she even presented some of her own model assignments at a workshop on informal writing strategies.

As a colleague, Suzanne has also been instrumental in providing support to teachers who teach WR courses in the natural sciences. Moreover, her strengths are perhaps most evident when one sees how her efforts have helped students understand that writing is integral to Biology. In a recent email, for example, Suzanne quoted a student’s evaluation of BIO 133: “She cares as much about writing as she does Biology. Overall, it was a very good experience, as long as you make sure you are ready for a WR heavy course.”

The WAC Committee is pleased to present this award to such a deserving colleague. Please celebrate Suzanne’s achievement at the Employee Recognition Ceremony on Wednesday, June 1, from 2:25-4:30, in the MCC Theatre.

Tony Leuzzi
WAC Coordinator, English/Philosophy
05/18/2011