Pre/Views: WIC Turns Twenty-Five
By Vicki Tolar Burton, WIC Director
WIC Turns Twenty-Five
The class of 1994 were the first Oregon State students required to have taken a Writing Intensive (WIC) course in order to graduate. That first class of WIC grads had 2,534 students who took WIC classes from a curriculum that offered 98 sections of about 85 different WIC courses. The OSU class of 2019 will be about 5,800 students strong, having satisfied WIC from a curriculum of 309 WIC sections of 157 discrete WIC courses across the disciplines. The growth in WIC reflects not only enrollment increase but also numerous new undergraduate majors and concentrations.
This 25th WIC anniversary marks OSU’s Writing Intensive Curriculum Program as one of the longest-established Writing Across the Curriculum programs in the nation. This is something to celebrate!
In spring we will mark that achievement of sustained university and faculty support for student writing in the majors with a Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration—details to come winter term.
In this issue of Teaching with Writing, you see evidence of both the people and the programs that have sustained the Writing Intensive Curriculum for 25 years, as the university grew from 11,261 undergraduates in 1994 to 25,699 undergraduates today.
- Read an interview with Natchee Barnd, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, as he talks about his own writing process, student writing process, and to how he brings WIC approaches to his courses, which include his specialization of Indigenous Studies.
- Read about energetic WIC faculty engaged with student writing in the WIC Fall Seminar. Thanks to this lively group of scholar-teachers for a fun five weeks focused on improving student writing.
- See a reminder to faculty to identify exceptional fall term student that might be nominated in spring for the WIC Culture of Writing Award in your discipline.
- Save the date of Monday, Feb. 4, 2-3:30, for our WIC Winter Event, where you can workshop your writing assignments with other faculty.
Have a great winter break, OSU! Let’s all keep writing!
