Writing Across the Curriculum

There has been much discussion in Writing Across the Curriculum circles about the best place to house a WAC Program. Louise Z. Smith contends that it should be housed in the English Department where faculty have "expertise in the study of the construction and reception of texts (both literary and nonliterary, written by professionals or students) and ... in composition theory and pedagogy" ( 1988, 40). According to Catherine Blair, a true WAC Program "should be designed, administered, and taught equally by all departments," based on an interdisciplinary dialogue, with the English Department as only one of the voices ( 1988, 383), therefore, not housed at any specific site on campus.

Writing Across the Curriculum at The University of Michigan-Flint works toward this ideal writing environment through a partnership between the WAC Program and the Writing Center, each adding crucial elements. Our WAC Program is based on the belief that writing should be embedded throughout the university curriculum, taking place in many courses and in all disciplines. Creating intradisciplinary environments that foster the development of critical thought through writing has also been central to our emerging WAC philosophy. And we do not separate writing-to-learn, with its many uses of informal writing to think on paper, from Writing in the Disciplines, with its emphasis on acculturating students into a discipline's discourse community.

Another argument against a writing-intensive approach to WAC is that it takes responsibility for writing in the disciplines out of the hands of many and places it in the hands of a few, who rarely have little more than a peripheral voice in department policy. In his 1990 College English article, "Writing Across the Curriculum in Historical Perspective: Toward a Social Interpretation," David Russell argues that, "Writing intensives, sometimes supported by a remedial lab, are perhaps the most common curricular model for WAC.

Michael Pemberton's article "Rethinking the WAC/Writing Center Connection" asks pointed questions about the success of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Programs and their relationship to Writing Centers. He addresses what he calls the "myth of disciplinarity" in undergraduate education in which students supposedly learn discursive practices specific to each discipline ( 1995, 120). Pemberton points to shortcomings in the practice, noting that students might simply relay information rather than create knowledge as social constructionists intend, and that students simply may be unaware that they must master discipline-specific conventions.

Writing Across the Curriculum, in theory, assumes (1) fields not unlike our own are already inviting initiates to join interesting disciplinary conversations and engaging in the sorts of practices we hope to foster; or (2) after colleagues are converted in Writing Across the Curriculum, writing in their courses will function in the ways we want it to: as a mode of social behavior characteristic of a particular discourse community.

In an article published in 1988, Catherine Blair observed of English departments that they "should have no special role in writing across the curriculum-no unique leadership role and no exclusive classes to teach-not even freshman English" (383). Entrusting English with writing across the curriculum (WAC), she asserts, stems from the belief that the "English department has a special relationship to language and is, therefore, the department that knows the most about writing-in fact, the department that owns writing" (384, her emphasis). For Blair, however, this belief has no merit. While English does own its particular brand of writing within its "particular cultural context," so does every other discipline; and no one discipline's context for language is an innately privileged one.