Our WIC team members have had a good year at conferences:

In June 2023, Alex-Mahmou Werndli (former WIC graduate intern and assistant), Dr. Vicki Tolar Burton (former WIC Director), and Dr. Sarah Tinker Perrault presented as a panel at the International Writing Across the Curriculum conference in Clemson, South Carolina. The panel was on “Award-Winning Writers Look Back on WAC: Lessons for Our Current and Future Programs.”

In March 2024, several current and former members of the WIC team attended the Conference on College Composition and Communication. WIC graduate assistant Casey Dawson shared her work in progress at the Research Network Forum, where Dr. Sarah Tinker Perrault was a table leader. On the same panel, former WIC intern Yvette Rosales presented on ““A Disciplinary Approach to Rhetorical Genre Awareness in First-Year Composition” and Sarah presented on “A Critical Approach to Teaching Science Writing.” WIC graduate intern Georgia Grace Wright also attended their panel and many others. The conference also provided opportunities to connect with former WIC team members, including Olivia Rowland (a current PhD student at Ohio State University) and Michael J. Faris (Associate Professor at Texas Tech University).

Finally, in May 2024, WIC undergraduate assistant Elizabeth Nguyen was the lead organizer of a Philosophy conference here at OSU with the theme “The Big Ideas: What Shapes Our World, the Way We Think, and Our Lives.” Elizabeth was also recognized for this with the Tony Vogt Outstanding Service Award from SHPR.

written by WIC Director Sarah Tinker Perrault

In this newsletter, I first want to celebrate WIC faculty and students, and then to say goodbye (at least in this role) and to express my gratitude.

In terms of celebration, WIC has had a busy spring and has much to applaud.

First, another two groups have completed the WIC Faculty Seminar. These 20 faculty came from fifteen schools across seven colleges, and you can read about them here.

In addition to the two seminars, we had three short events. Two focused on using the social annotation tool Perusall (available free for our classes); first Dr. Ciara Kidder talked about “Using Perusall to Engage Students with Readings,” then Angelique Pearson offered technical advice in “Perusall set-up and tech support.” Next, WIC team members Casey Dawson and Georgia Grace Wright presented on reducing student writing anxiety in “Write without Fright: Cultivating a Fear-Free Writing Classroom for Students.” You can read summaries and access recordings of these events here.

All of our work, whether in seminar or in workshops or in individual classes, is directed toward one end—excellence in student writing—and this year we are happy to be giving Culture of Writing Awards to 26 students from 25 majors; winners are listed here.

Finally, these are bittersweet celebrations for me as I write this Post/Views entry, my final column as WIC director.

Since my hire in 2020, I held a 100% academic position while serving for 50% of that time as WIC director and 50% as a faculty member in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film, an arrangement I assumed I would stay in until I retired. However, in February of this year, the university converted the WIC Director position from an academic to a non-academic appointment. While I have loved directing the WIC program, I am moving full time into a faculty role in order to maintain my 100% academic job appointment.

As I leave, I want to express my gratitude to the WIC team: operations manager Caryn Stoess, assistant director Dennis Bennett, graduate assistant Casey Dawson, undergraduate assistant Elizabeth Nguyen, and graduate intern Georgia Grace Wright. I am also deeply grateful to the WIC Advisory Board.

Most of all, I am grateful to all the WIC faculty with whom I have had a chance to work. You have made this the best job in the world. Thank you.

This term, the WIC team hosted 2 rounds of our Faculty Seminar, a 5-week course for WIC faculty across OSU’s campuses to develop practical skills for teaching writing in their disciplines.

Between our in-person session (led by WIC Assistant Director Dennis Bennett) and our Zoom session (led by WIC Director Sarah Perrault), our cohorts gained valuable insights into the main goals of writing intensive courses across the disciplines, how to evaluate student writing in ways that benefit both students and instructors, how to develop summative writing assignments for WIC courses, and more.

The WIC team congratulates our Spring 2024 Seminar cohorts on their successful completion of the course!

(Photo of this term’s online Seminar cohort, names listed below)

TOP ROW: Sarah Perrault (WIC Director), Casey Dawson (WIC Graduate Assistant),  Trevor Howard, María Paula Vela Zambrano
SECOND ROW: Izabela Gutowska, Kirsi Peltomäki, Elain Fu, Judy Liu
THIRD ROW: Ana-Maria M. Enesti, Frank Chaplen

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This term’s WIC team moderators and assistants for our online cohort included WIC Director Sarah Perrault and Graduate Assistant Casey Dawson. Our in-person cohort was led by WIC Assistant Director Dennis Bennett and assisted by WIC Graduate Intern Georgia Wright.

Across these 5-weeks of Seminar, participants engaged each other in conversations on topics on teaching writing across the disciplines today, including generative AI, effective and empathetic feedback, and more. They also shared their personal strategies for teaching, assigning, and assessing writing in their respective disciplines.

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Congrats again to this term’s WIC Faculty Seminar graduates:

Zoom cohort: 

• Pieter-Ewald Share (Geophysics)
• Jennifer Mower (Fashion History)
• Trevor Howard (Nuclear Engineering)
• María Paula Vela Zambrano
• Iza Gutowska (Nuclear Engineering)
• Kirsi Peltomäki (Art History)
• Elain Fu (Bioengineering)
• Judy Liu (Structural Engineering)
• Ana-Maria M. Enesti (French)
• Frank Chaplen (Ecological Engineering)

In-person cohort:

• Ashley Wilson (Business)
• Carla Mandell (Business)
• Elizabeth French (Business)
• Jackie Goldman (Psychology)
• Jeff Loucks (Psychology)
• Jen Beamer (Kinesiology) 
• Jonathan Andicoechea (Integrative Biology)
• Patrick Geoghehan (Engineering)
• Tara Massad (Ecology)
• Yanni Ma (Communication)

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ABOUT WIC FACULTY SEMINAR

Faculty are nominated to attend Seminar by their unit heads and receive a $500 honorarium for their participation. 

Click this link to learn more about WIC Faculty Seminar.

Dr. Ciara Kidder’s “Using Perusall to Engage Students in Reading” (Recording Linked) 

This term, Oregon State Ecampus instructor Dr. Ciara Kidder led a workshop on using Perusall–a free, online social annotation tool integrated into Canvas–to get students reading, thinking, and writing critically about course texts and materials. She opened the worship by describing the many different kinds of texts Perusall can be paired with, including PDF documents, YouTube videos, podcast recordings, and more. 

In the next section of this workshop, Dr. Kidder describes the different forms of low-stakes (or ungraded) writing that Perusall can be used for, including summarization, critical question asking, and more. Dr. Kidder also discusses Perusall’s integrated grading system and describes how it functions, as well as how faculty can customize it to the needs of their course.

Dr. Kidder also shares examples of how she has integrated Perusall into lower-, mid-, and high-level courses to target different skill and knowledge levels at various stages of the degree program. To close, she engages attendees in a question and answer session about this tool. 

You can access a recording of Dr. Kidder’s workshop here. 

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Angelique Pearson’s “Perusall Set-up and Technical Support Workshop” (Recording Linked) 

Ecampus Course Development and Training Specialist Angelique Pearson guides attendees through a technical walkthrough of Perusall, a free social annotation tool available through Canvas. She provides information for setting up the Perusall tool and assignments in Canvas, answers questions regarding grade syncing from Perusall to Canvas, and provides real-time support for Oregon State faculty troubleshooting Perusall for their own courses. (Note: This workshop exists independently of Dr. Kidder’s Perusall workshop.)

You can view Angelique Pearson’s workshop here. 

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Casey Dawson and Georgia Grace Wright’s “Reducing Writing Anxiety in the Classroom” (Recording Linked) 

In this co-led workshop, WIC Graduate Intern Georgia Grace Wright and WIC Graduate Assistant Casey Dawson discuss student writing anxieties and share strategies for making your classroom an inviting, judgment-free space for writing. They open the workshop by reviewing the many factors that may contribute to student writing anxiety, including previously harmful experiences related to writing or writing education, perfectionism, personal and financial stresses directly related to their education, and more. They then review data that showcases how writing anxiety disproportionately impacts marginalized students, such as English language learners and non-male students. Next, they review multiple ways that student writing anxiety may manifest in students, and work to connect student writing anxiety to a perceived lack of control over the writing process and academic writing success. 

In the second half of the workshop, Dawson and Wright share a variety of tips for making writing in the classroom a comfortable, accessible, and lower stress experience for all students, including considerations for classroom layout, integrating multimodal or tactile elements into writing exercises, and offering students more choice in how they approach writing exercises and assignments like peer review. To close, they walk attendees through a miniature version of the Writer’s Personal Profile (WPP), a self-assessment and goal setting tool for writing students to use at the start of the term. (Note: the original WPP was developed by Tracy Ann Robinson and Vicki Tolar Burton, former WIC Program Directors at Oregon State University.)

You can access the workshop here.

Every spring term, the Writing Intensive Curriculum program hosts the WIC Culture of Writing Awards in the Disciplines (COWA). These awards promote an academic culture at OSU that values the teaching, practice, and modeling of writing excellence across the disciplines. WIC’S COWA encourage our undergraduates and broader community to value the unique qualities of excellent writing within the disciplines.

Winners receive a $100 prize: $50 from the WIC Program, and $50 from the nominating unit. Winners will also be invited to submit their papers to ScholarsArchive@OSU, Oregon State’s thesis and dissertation archive.

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COWA Winners 2024

This year, 26 Oregon State University students across 25 majors have received a Culture of Writing Award for their outstanding disciplinary writing. One COWA recipient is a co-written effort by students Gareth Miller, Rabecka Moffit, Sara Vanaken. Another COWA recipient, Joseph Takach, was nominated by two different faculty members for two separate writing projects.

Congratulations to all of this year’s COWA winners:

STUDENT	PAPER TITLE	COLLEGE	NOMINATING MAJOR	NOMINATING PROFESSOR
Erin Armstrong	Elective Gonadectomy In Cats and Dogs	Agricultural Sciences	Animal and Rangeland Sciences	Giovanna Rosenlicht
Leah Biesack	Hot Bothered Quiet	Liberal Arts	Creative Writing	Sindya Bhanoo
McKenzie J. Brown	Exploring the Relationship Between Mindfulness and Independence in Individuals with Disabilities	Liberal Arts	Psychology	Kody Long
Margaret Brundage	The Style and Influence of Wallis, Duchess of Windsor	Business	Merchandising Management	Jennifer Mower
Elizabeth Cantu	The Impact of School Accountability on Student Outcomes	Liberal Arts	Economics	Paul Thompson
Carrie Chan	Research Project: Analysis of Mechanical Stress and its Effects on Determinate Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) Fruit Yield	Science	Zoology	Meta Landys
Rachel A Dodge	A School Based Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Program for American Indian/Alaska Native Children of Jefferson County, Oregon	College of Health	Public Health	Jill Hoxmeier
Tyler Doyle	Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Sieve Zeolite 5A	Science	Chemistry	Kyriakos Stylianou
Antoine Godefroid	Individual Design Report	Engineering	Civil Engineering	Don Frier
Reese Kunitzer	Where God Ends and AI Begins	Liberal Arts	American Studies	Catherine Malcynsky
Eduardo Lopez	The Web of Relationships: How Experiences Shape a Transcendent Though Invisible Bond	Liberal Arts	Religious Studies	Amy Koehlinger
Kayla McDowell	The Direct and Indirect Effects of Barred Owl Competition on Northern Spotted Owls	CEOAS	Environmental Sciences	Alison Lay Cranston
Gareth Miller, Rabecka Moffit, Sara Vanaken	Group 32- Baja Strain Gauge Controller	Engineering	Electrical and Computer Engineering	Rachael Cate
Autumn Moore	The Benefits & Risks of Raw and Pasteurized Milk	Agricultural Sciences	Agricultural Sciences	KJ Joseph
Roman Quick	Talking Down To You: Dynamics of Social Climbing and Teaching at Climbing Gyms	Liberal Arts	Sociology	Dwaine Plaza
Timothy Reynolds	Bringing Conservation Home: Building ecosystem resilience within urban spaces	CEOAS	Environmental Sciences	Tyler McFadden
Mallory Schiebel	The Use of Virtual Reality to Improve Gait in those with Parkinson’s Disease	Health	Kinesiology	Mike Pavol
Zachary Smith	Plutarch’s Educational Theory on Advisors, Anger, and Peace of Mind	Liberal Arts	History	Kevin Oserloh
Ibrahim Syed	The Übermunch: Sexuality, Ice Spice, and Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”	Liberal Arts	Music	Kimary Fick
Joseph Takach	Constant Negative Curvature: Uniformity Without Symmetry	Science	Math	Tevian Dray
Joseph Takach	Hamiltonian Truncation Applied to Lattice f4 Theory	Science	Physics	Heidi Schellman
Faith M. Townsend	Graduate research proposal: The impact of warming winter temperatures on kelp in the Beaufort Sea	CEOAS	Oceanography	Byron Crump
Logan Verplancke	Individual Design Report	Engineering	Architectural Engineering	Don Frier
Lucas Yao	Looking Back to Look Forward: How Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines queerness in the past to provie hope for the future of queer existence	Liberal Arts	English	Megan Ward
Tarek Youngapelian	Nirgendwo in Afrika: Flucht, Heimat und Identität unter dem Einfluss der „Rassenhierarchie“(Nowhere in Africa: Flight, Home and Identity under the Influence of Racial Hierarchy)	Liberal Arts	German	Adela Hall

Any paper that was written by an OSU student for an undergraduate course (including non-WIC courses) is eligible for COWA nomination. COWA nominees are nominated by participating departments. While the nomination process takes place within each unit, COWA awardees are selected by faculty within each discipline.

This Spring, WIC will host three workshops. Read more about and register for each event here!

PERUSALL WORKSHOP, PART I 

Dr. Ciara Kidder (Ecampus Instructor, College of Liberal Arts, School of Psychological Science) will be leading our first workshop of the term. Register for the event here. Learn more below:

Talk title: “Using Perusall to engage students with readings”

Date, time, place: Friday, April 12th, at Noon via Zoom

Description: In this lunch conversation, Dr. Ciara Kidder (Psychology) will talk about how she uses the social annotating software Perusall to engage students with readings.  Through Perusall, students annotate readings collectively, with each student commenting on the reading itself and responding to other students’ responses. Dr. Kidder will discuss how she uses Perusall to have students practice summarizing information, making connections to other materials, and explaining themselves and their thinking.

PERUSALL WORKSHOP, PART II

Angelique Pearson of Oregon State’s Ecampus will provide a technical support session for instructors interested in Perusall. Attendance of the previous Perusall workshop is NOT required for this workshop. 

Register for the event here. Learn more below: 

Event title: Persuall Workshop, Part II: Technical Support

Date, time, place: Wednesday, April 17^th from 3:00-4:30 via Zoom

Description: Ecampus Course Development and Training Specialist Angelique Pearson will be available to provide technical support for instructors wanting to use Perusall in their classes. Whether you already use Perusall or are looking to implement it in your classroom, this workshop will provide the guidance you’re looking for. 

WORKSHOP: REDUCING WRITING ANXIETY IN THE CLASSROOM 

Georgia Wright and Casey Dawson (WIC Program Graduate Intern and Assistant, School of Writing, Literature, and Film) will be hosting a workshop on how to reduce anxiety around writing in the classroom. 

Register for the workshop here. Learn more below:

Date, time, place: Wednesday May 22nd, from 3:00 – 4:00 PM via Zoom

Description: Research shows that low-stakes writing exercises in the classroom provide many benefits to students, including better course knowledge retention. But negative experiences with academic writing, perfectionist tendencies, or low confidence can make many students feel anxious about writing in any context. In this co-led workshop, Georgia Wright and Casey Dawson will discuss student writing anxieties and share strategies for making your classroom an inviting, judgment-free space for writing. Attendees will gain practical tools to improve their students’ relationship to writing in the classroom and beyond, and to increase student participation in writing activities.

Nominations for the 2024 COWA’s are due at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 30th, 2024!

Read more about the nomination process and access the nomination form below.

WIC CULTURE OF WRITING AWARDS IN THE DISCIPLINES 2024

Every spring term, the Writing Intensive Curriculum program hosts the WIC Culture of Writing Awards in the Disciplines (COWA). These awards promote an academic culture at OSU that values the teaching, practice, and modeling of writing excellence across the disciplines. WIC’S COWA encourage our undergraduates and broader community to value the unique qualities of excellent writing within the disciplines.

Winners receive a $100 prize, $50 of which comes from the WIC Program, and $50 from the nominating unit. Winners will also be invited to submit their papers to ScholarsArchive@OSU, Oregon State’s thesis and dissertation archive.

HOW TO NOMINATE STUDENT PAPERS FOR COWA

Any paper that was written by an OSU student for an undergraduate course (including non-WIC courses) is eligible for COWA nomination. COWA nominees are nominated by participating departments. While the nomination process takes place within each unit, COWA awardees are selected by faculty within each discipline.

To nominate a student paper for our Culture of Writing Awards:

• Complete the nomination form and submit to Caryn Stoess no later than 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 30th, 2024. (To receive the award certificate in time for your college’s spring awards event, submit this form as early as possible and include the event information/date.)
• After the award is processed, the $100 prize — $50 from WIC and $50 from the unit index noted on the nomination form — will be deposited in the recipient’s student account. Winners who graduate prior to June 2023 will be mailed a check.

NOMINATING TEAM PROJECTS

If your unit would like to recognize a collaboratively-written paper, contact WIC Director Sarah Perrault (sarah.perrault@oregonstate.edu) for more information.

Dr. Scott Graham’s “AI Has Entered the Chat: Promise, Peril, and the Future of Writing in Higher Ed” Talk (Recording Linked) 

Instructors and students alike are increasingly aware of the ways generative AI technologies are changing writing and higher education. This term, WIC invited Dr. Scott Graham (University of Texas-Austin) to discuss how instructors can navigate uses and misuses of artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom. In “AI Has Entered the Chat: Promise, Peril, and the Future of Writing in Higher Ed,” Dr. Graham, who uses AI to study health and bioscience communication, reviews the many ways students and instructors alike are using generative AI technologies (including Chat-GPT) in and beyond the classroom. 

In the talk, he highlights potential benefits and drawbacks of AI use, and shares ways that instructors might employ large language models (LLMs) as an electronic pedagogical resource in the writing classroom, as well as tips for designing assessments that facilitate students’ learning about the writing process. He also discusses the many limits and drawbacks of this tech, including the ways that LLMs produce false information and sources through “hallucinations,” as well as the dangerous data collection and storage methods used by major AI tech companies. 

You can watch the recording of Dr. Graham’s talk here. 

Dr. Scott Graham’s workshop “ChatGPT in the Classroom: Practicalities & Pedagogies” (No Recording Available) 

Following his talk on using generative AI responsibly in the classroom, Dr. Scott Graham hosted a workshop titled “ChatGPT in the Classroom: Practicalities & Pedagogies.” In the workshop, he explained how generative AI technologies like Chat-GPT gather data and create outputs based on that data; he then led attendees through various prompt generation exercises using Chat-GPT, discussing the tool’s limitations and capacities along the way. 

In the first exercise, attendees prompted Chat-GPT to summarize a book or reading they had recently assigned to students, and then shared their observations on the AI’s outputs with one another. Dr. Graham then reviewed the basics of prompt engineering, the practice of developing inputs for the strongest possible outputs from generative AI tools. In the following exercise, attendees tested the limits of Chat-GPT’s ability to localize its outputs by prompting the tool to craft a letter related to issues in Corvallis and the Oregon State community.

This quarter, we were fortunate to have S. Scott Graham on campus for a talk, “AI has Entered the Chat: Promise, Peril, and the Future of Writing in Higher Ed,” as well as a faculty workshop, “ChatGPT in the Classroom: Practicalities & Pedagogies.” Both events were engaging and informative, and you can see the recording of the talk here. You can also read an overview of the talk and workshop here.  

In fall, I mentioned that extra funding is allowing WIC to offer our Faculty Seminar several times this year. This term, 18 faculty from 13 schools across 8 colleges completed the Winter 2024 Faculty Seminar–you can read about them here.  

We will be finishing the ‘23-’24 year with two more Seminar sessions in Spring, and we have a few spots left. If you are interested in Seminar but have not been nominated by your unit head, please direct them to the Faculty Seminar page and ask them to email your name to WIC Director Sarah Perrault (sarah.perrault@oregonstate.edu). 

This spring, we will also have our traditional spring workshop series. It will feature a workshop on how to use Perusall, a tech support session for Perusall, and another on creating an inviting and fear-free writing environment in your classes. Dates, times, and registration information for the events can be found here.
 
Finally, spring will be the time to nominate student papers for the Culture of Writing Awards, so please keep an eye out for exemplary student writing. Winning papers must be in the major, but do not have to have been written for a WIC class.

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by Casey Dawson, WIC Graduate Assistant

TOP ROW: Dennis Bennettt (WIC Assistant Director), Casey Dawson (WIC Graduate Assistant), Sarah Perrault (WIC Director), Mike Blundgren, Jay Penry

SECOND ROW: Teresa Ashford, Ciara Kidder, Jenny Hutchings, Randall Palmer, Ingrid Arocho

THIRD ROW: Jenny Jackson, Lauren Seiffert , Mike Pavol, Nadia Jaramillo Cherrez (Ecampus Senior Instructional Design Specialist), Staci Bronson

FOURTH ROW: Stacy Rosenberg, Sam Logan, Sabine Huemer, Kristen Yax, Caiden Marcus-Brist 

BOTTOM ROW: Farid Bouya, Kenton Hokanson

This term, the WIC team hosted the latest round of our Faculty Seminar, a 5-week course for WIC faculty across OSU’s campuses to develop practical skills for teaching writing in their disciplines. Our weekly sessions included lessons on understanding the goals of a writing intensive course, how to evaluate student writing, designing summative writing assignments, and more.

The WIC team congratulates the Winter 2024 Seminar cohort on their completion of the course!

Along with Sarah Tinker Perrault, this year’s WIC team moderators and assistants included WIC Graduate Assistant Casey Dawson, WIC Graduate Intern Georgia Wright, WIC Assistant Director Dennis Bennett, and Ecampus’ Senior Instructional Design Specialist Nadia Jaramillo Cherrez. Nadia worked with our Seminar cohort on how to integrate writing exercises and assignments (including peer review and group discussions) effectively in the online teaching environment.

Across Canvas discussion boards and Zoom breakout groups, our participants engaged each other in conversations on the challenges of teaching writing today while sharing their own strategies for teaching, assigning, and assessing writing in their respective disciplines.

Congrats again to this term’s WIC Faculty Seminar graduates:

• Farid Bouya (Math)
• Sabine Huemer (Psychology)
• Sam Logan (Kinesiology)
• Randall Palmer (business)
• Kristen Yax (Psychology)
• Stacy Rosenberg (Forest Ecosystems and Society)
• Michael Pavol (Kinesiology)
• Ingrid Arocho (Civil Construction and Engineering)
• Ciara Kidder (Psychology) 
• Kenton Hokanson (Microbiology) 
• Jenny Hutchings (Atmospheric sciences)
• Staci Bronson (Integrative bio)
• Chris Bulgren (Music education)
• Caiden Marcus-Brist (Business)
• Lauren Seiffert (Arts, Media, and Technology)
• Jay Penry (Kinesiology)
• Jenny Jackson (Nutrition)
• Teresa Ashford (Human Development and Family Science)

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MORE INFO ABOUT WIC FACULTY SEMINAR

Faculty are nominated to attend Seminar by their unit heads and receive a $500 honorarium for their participation. For the first time, WIC will be hosting Faculty Seminar during all 3 terms of the academic year, including 2 sections (one in-person at the Corvallis campus, and one virtual) this spring! 

Interested in attending spring’s Seminar but haven’t been nominated by your unit head? Direct them to the Faculty Seminar page and ask them to email your name to WIC Director Sarah Perrault (sarah.perrault@oregonstate.edu). 

Click this link to learn more about WIC Faculty Seminar.