WAC Professional Education @ City College
The 1 Train to City College
Friday’s WAC Professional Education event at City College was another great success. The writing in the disciplines theme was perfect, and we had some very strong workshops.
The panel featuring four second-year Writing Fellows really illustrated just how much Fellows grow in their time with WAC. We saw some great examples of assignments that include “disciplinary writing” in sociology, psychology, history, and even comic book illustration.
I especially liked the way the Fellows did not present the standard “analytic” academic (or research) paper as disciplinary writing. While not quite Alt/Dis in the sense that compositionists might imagine, these were nice assignments/activities that worked a little out of the traditional box.
The WAC Coordinators meeting that preceded the day’s event was perhaps less successful. We’re working hard, and from behind the 8-ball, to reimagine the Writing Fellow roles in response to the Graduate Center’s decision to reconfigure the fellowships from a 2-year gig to a 1-year appointment that serves as the capstone for the 5-year funding package known as the Chancellor’s Fellowship.
Perhaps the high point of that meeting was the work done by the committee imagining ways to front load writing pedagogies in the early years of the fellowship. While perhaps something of a pipe dream, such a reimagining holds the potential to enable CUNY graduate students to have a sustained, multi-year engagement with pedagogical theory and practice. In my own group it was nice to hear that some of the other schools are adopting a model like the one we’ve moved to, a kind of project-based conception of Writing Fellow work. It’s a great group of colleagues, and we’re all committed to the work.
