Reinventing Invention: Writing across the Curriculum without WAC

Work for this essay began with a problem that will sound all too familiar to most of us in higher education: It has recently dawned upon administrators and faculty in many departments across our university's curriculum that our students can't write. Or more accurately, enough of our students write poorly enough that we have cause for concern. This concern is usually expressed in the unequivocal if vague resolution that something ought to be done. But exactly what? And by whom? Our university has no institutionalized way of trying to solve this problem. There is no single writing course that all students are required to take. Indeed, students at our university can avoid taking any writing course at all. Moreover, it is unlikely that our university will undertake any formal writing across the curriculum program. Such a program existed at our university a decade ago; when funding ran out, interest disappeared. It's unlikely that interest will somehow reappear, especially in these days of budgetary constraints. So what's the best way to respond to the familiar but newly perceived problem of improving students' writing? There is, of course, no magic bullet, no single response that will solve the problem satisfactorily. There's every reason to think that part of the solution lies in providing good writing instruction, both through writing courses and drop-in tutorial work at our school's writing center. However a course in writing (especially if students take only one such course during their college careers) is not adequate to solve the problems we see in