Writing Fellows as WAC Change Agents: Changing What? Changing Whom? Changing How?

• Published in: Across the disciplines Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 1 - 13
• Main Author: Zawacki, Terry Myers
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: WAC Clearinghouse 29.03.2008
• Subjects: Change Agents; Educational Change; Educational Practices; Faculty Development; Fellowships; Program Development; Student Placement; Teacher Student Relationship; Writing Across the Curriculum; Writing Instruction; Writing Teachers
• ISSN: 1554-8244; 1554-8244
• DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2008.5.2.05

To be effective sites for enacting WAC change, writing fellows programs, like WAC itself, must be attuned to institutional realities, adapting goals and practices accordingly. To illustrate what being "attuned" has meant to the program she directs, the author describes five writing fellow placements, each motivated by the sometimes competing goals of securing broad-based institutional support for the university WAC mission while also addressing the diverse needs of individual faculty assigned to teach upper-division writing-intensive courses. Drawing extensively on narratives written by the fellows in these placements, she argues that the less-than-successful placements that are the focus of the article give us important insights into teachers' practices and the delivery of writing instruction across the curriculum. These insights, in turn, suggest directions for both faculty and program development. Every writing fellow placement, she concludes, even those most fraught with struggle between the teacher and the fellow over appropriate strategies for working with student writers, become part of a network for change, thereby helping to build and sustain a culture of writing at the institution.