JAC Volume 10 Issue 2

For compositionists who know Toby Fulwiler and Art Young’s earlier collaborations—Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Cur­riculum (1982) and Writing Across the Disciplines (1986)—this recent collection will meet expectations. And for newcomers reading their first book on writing across the curriculum (WAC), Programs That Work will offer an eclectic and informative overview. The volume compiles essays by faculty involved with WAC efforts at fourteen institutions—ranging from community, business, and liberal arts colleges to state universities and large research institutions. Representing the efforts of local offshoots of the National Writing Project are chapters on the Baltimore Area and Minnesota Writing Projects. Fulwiler and Young commissioned their essays fortuitously. Many are refreshingly candid, pointing both to successes and failures. Though large research institutions are overrepresented, and though chapters vary in quality, the volume is readable throughout. And because it provides a national overview of the WAC movement in the late 1980s, it should become standard reading and a useful reference for advocates of writing across the curriculum.

In part because the essays deal with the historical evolutions of pro­grams, several affirm original ideals of the WAC movement. Carol Hartzog, former WAC director at UCLA and author of Composition and the Academy, suggests that the true function of WAC is “to be the university’s gadfly and conscience.” This calling informs an Afterword entitled “The Enemies of Writing Across the Curriculum,” in which Fulwiler and Young take aim at tendencies deleterious not only to WAC but also to higher education. They cite well-known antagonists, such as “English Department Orthodoxy,” “Compartmentalized Academic Administration,” “Traditional Reward System,” “Entrenched Attitudes,” and “Testing and Quantification.”

While the collection does not provide many alternatives to “testing mania”—perhaps the writers deliberately skirt the abyss of institutional writing assessment—the volume deals forthrightly with problems of en­trenched attitudes. Moving beyond the common complaint that WAC asks non-English faculty to “do the English Department’s work,” Joseph Wil­liams and Gregory Colomb indict the metaphors that devalue ourselves and our colleagues. They enlist the work of learning psychologist William Perry (Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years) to challenge the assumption that “regression” is bad. Perry’s insights suggest that when confronted with new task humans often backslide into behaviors they had previously outgrown. If we misunderstand this tendency or cling to linear assumptions about learning, we will be apt to “abuse those who taught our students before they reach us.” (What writing instructor has not wondered, at least silently, “Why didn’t they teach these kids?”) One reason why writing skills backslide is that students do not practice them often enough, and so the writers do speak to the practice provided by writing-intensive courses. There is less discussion, though, of writing increments in non-writing-intensive courses where writing is, or should be, essentially used as a learning tool. The belief that writing serves exclusively as a means of evaluating learning is one of those entrenched attitudes that WAC has so suc­cessfully challenged.

Faculty development workshops emerge as the central efforts to pro­mote and perpetuate interdisciplinary writing programs. Faculty from several schools report the difficulties of getting colleagues to attend work­shops, especially when no carrots are dangled. But many also speak to creative sessions delivered by local faculty—English and otherwise—and out­side “star” presenters. Sometimes electronic media contribute. The Minne­sota Writing Project has used videotapes and other creative methods to stimulate group interaction, role playing, peer review, and collaborative learning. The best workshops seem to be the experiential ones, and star pre­senters and financial incentives help assure adequate turnouts. Positive spinoffs to faculty development sessions include an increased sense of community. As Keith Tandy and Rosemary Smith comment, “We found ourselves mutually renewed by the visible and exemplary energy of our colleagues as discussions of writing and learning expanded to incorporate broader matters of good teaching.” Equally important, especially to faculty at publish-or-atrophy schools, are bursts of publication resulting from increased participant confidence: one professor published over fifty articles and reviews within three years of learning about process, heuristics, and computers.

In addition to enthusiasm, funding is key in efforts to re-educate college teachers. While schools have attempted WAC programs with and without investing much money, funding has not necessarily determined results. The Vermont program got underway with modest funds, though it now runs on year-to-year funding, “often with somebody’s leftover budget.” At Michigan, on the other hand, the writing program received $450,000 from the Mellon Foundation in 1978-79, plus a sizable grant the next year from the Ford Foundation, and more than $1.3 million over three years from the university itself. Such investment, however, may have paid off only briefly, for within a few years faculty had teaching assistants making the assignments and grading the papers. (This tendency to pass “down” the teaching of writing is by no means unique to Michigan, and it underscores the problems caused by skewed priorities.) Michigan’s program experienced another setback when faculty efforts to influence writing instruction at the secondary level (by means of “rigorous entrance assessment”) produced no results; public schools did not reduce class sizes, possibly because school officials sensed a lack of full commitment from the university.

Without question, Programs That Work assists writing program leaders seeking to design programs, but it also offers practical help to faculty across the disciplines. The book includes essays by faculty teaching writing in business, engineering, mathematics, and social, natural, and “hard” sciences. Environmental studies are particularly well represented. The collection, well conceived and executed, can be profitable for anyone interested in writing instruction and higher education.