WAC Academy

Do you really want to improve your talents as a teacher in your discipline? If you’re committed to making positive, student-focused changes to your curriculum and your teaching practices, then you’re ready for the WAC Academy. Held each spring, the WAC Academy is a 6-week institute that aims to develop a supportive community of writing instructors and to empower faculty through writing, discussion, and reflection. Modeled after the National Writing Project’s innovative Summer Institutes, the WAC Academy funds ten faculty from across campus who meet once each week to read recent writing studies scholarship, discuss topics related to writing instruction, share writing-related teaching strategies, collaborate on inquiry-based projects involving writing, and refine their approaches to teaching writing in meaningful ways. The spring WAC Academy is a rare opportunity for college teachers to meet faculty from across campus and to work together on projects that will have a lasting impact on their teaching.

 

Advanced WAC Academy

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So you’ve attended the WAC Academy, or maybe you’ve enjoyed several of our WAC professional development events, and you’re wondering, “What now? This WAC PD is great!” Sounds like you’re ready to do a “deep dive” on a more specific issue with writing. Our Advanced WAC Academies are week-long intensive institutes in which a small cohort of experienced faculty work together to explore a key topic about teaching writing that our other workshops and academies have only been able to touch on briefly. The advanced academies support active and deep learning with direct application to the classroom.

Currently, a 5-day Advanced WAC Academy on “Teaching for Transfer” is planned for Summer 2020 to assist faculty in identifying and examining key genres in their disciplines in order to discover how these types of writing projects encourage (or discourse) learning transfer from general education courses to major course and then on to professional/workplace contexts. More information on Advanced WAC Academy 2020 is coming soon.