EducationEducational AssessmentHigher EducationEducation ReformFormative AssessmentWriting InstructionAcademic WritingWriting Across The CurriculumWriting AssessmentAcademic Writing AssessmentFaculty Workload ManagementFaculty Workload PolicyInstitutional Support MechanismsInstitutional Support StructuresRetirementWorkloadWriting Across The Curriculum Assessment
I s Writing Across the Curriculum marked its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1995,1 a number of assessments, predictions, and proposals for the future appeared. What I notice first when chain-reading them is the pervasive sense of uncertainty. Writers identify troubling trends (Thaiss, Future), roadblocks to (Soven, Conclusion), (Cornell and Klooster), or of (Young and Fulwiler). Dangers include lack of full institutional support, the high cost of some WAC programs, the compartmentalized structure of academia, counterproductive attitudes and assumptions about writing and learning in the university, research and service demands on faculty, faculty workload, the faculty reward system, current emphasis on quantification and testing in the academy, lack of an appropriate theoretical and research base for WAC, and leader retirement or burnout. WAC may lose sight of its radical educational critique (Mahala). Or WAC programs may become instruments of those who would try to fix student writing, to shift responsibility for writing away from themselves, or to use language to restrict access to education (Russell, Lessons). Having led WAC programs for twenty-five years, I've seen all these threats and at work. But the enemies frame may limit WAC's responses to the complexities of its next quarter century.