The Writing-Enriched Curriculum
A faculty-driven model supporting discipline-relevant writing and writing instruction
Thursday, April 1, 2:30 PM
https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/5502274698

Sponsored by the University of Iowa Writing Center and the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

In this discussion, Pamela Flash (University of Minnesota) will introduce the Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) model and will think with local stakeholders about affordances and challenges associated with its potential implementation at the University of Iowa. WEC offers a departmental model designed to (1) support the curricular integration of relevant modes of writing and writing instruction and (2) to increase the rate at which student writing meets locally-generated faculty expectations. These ends are achieved by engaging departmental faculty members in a series of structured, data-driven discussions that result in their identifying writing abilities they expect of students graduating in their majors and by supporting them as they implement and assess faculty-authored, iterative, Undergraduate Writing Plans. Pamela Flash serves as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, Co-Director of the Center for Writing, and Affiliate Graduate Faculty for the Literacy and Rhetorical Studies Minor at the University of Minnesota where she has taught and has administered teaching-oriented programming since 1991. Flash is founding director of both the University of Minnesota’s Writing-Enriched Curriculum Program and of its interdisciplinary Teaching with Writing Program. Her research, publications, consultations, and presentations focus on the WEC model, writing pedagogy, composition theory, discourse communities, and the use of qualitative research methods (particularly inductive consultation, collaborative action research, and ethnographic methodologies) to enable sustainable pedagogic change on individual, departmental, and institutional levels. She has consulted extensively with colleges and universities interested in adapting the WEC model to their institutional contexts. Flash serves as Co-PI in a five-year, multi-institutional NSF grant investigating the impact of brief writing prompts on conceptual learning in large-enrollment STEM courses.