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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

A Welcome Back from WAC!


The Writing Across the Curriculum Steering Committee welcomes you back into the classroom and, we hope, back to providing lots of occasions for your students to engage with course material through writing. We wish to thank those who have officially designated their courses this semester as WR, and to nudge the rest of you to nonetheless make student writing a component of your classroom practices.

Employers will thank you if you do. Communication skills (both written and oral) consistently rank at the top of what those hiring are looking for in employees. Take a look at this 2014 graph from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC): <https://tinyurl.com/zgd98d8>, and this 2015 report from Burning Glass: <https://tinyurl.com/jqa965a>. The message is clear: If we at MCC are to prepare students for success in the workforce, then writing is everyone’s business.

Unsure how to make it so in your classes? Start with Writing-to-Learn activities , not all of which need to be graded. Such writing won’t take away from course content because it becomes one way that students engage with content in order to draw connections and make meaning—all those things about active learning that all of us value. Also, when students do even just a little bit of writing in every course they take, it delivers an important message: written communication does not only matter for some disciplines; it matters for all.  See “Writing as Instructional Practice” by Stephen A. Bernhardt <https://www.nea.org/home/34959.htm> for more.

The WAC Steering Committee is here to assist and support you when it comes to the integration of writing in all disciplines. Please visit our website <https://www.monroecc.edu/depts/wac/?a-zindex> for more information, including who we are and how to reach us.

Here’s to a great semester!

Amy Burtner
Writing Across the Curriculum
02/01/2016