| U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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| Volume VIII, Number 3. |
April
2003 |
| U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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| Volume VIII, Number 3. |
April
2003 |
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Speaker: Writing-intensive courses affirm intellectual values Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) can help rearticulate the common importance of the university’s intellectual purposes,” claimed a nationally acknowledged expert in the field during a recent visit to Pitt. James Slevin, of Georgetown University, spoke to about 50 College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) faculty on the topic “Writing Across the Curriculum: Preserving the Intellectual Work of Higher Education.” Slevin’s visit was sponsored by the College Writing Board through funding from the office of CAS Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Patty Beeson. Slevin has reviewed writing programs and spoken at colleges around the country. Slevin has written and edited numerous books and articles devoted to the teaching of writing, and, according to the chair of the College Writing Board, James Seitz, English, his essays “are among the most interesting and vital statements on WAC.” WAC “can provide one common ground for a definition and representation of the intellectual work of higher education, a commonness that extends beyond general education into areas of specialization and advanced inquiry,” Slevin maintained. Alluding to a notion that market forces in higher education have tended toward a “marginalizing of the mind,” he asserted that WAC “might be a way for faculty members to reestablish intellectual values as central to the role of higher education as they work to ensure that writing-intensive courses are rooted in the intellectual work of our disciplines.” If WAC is to enrich student writing and to preserve as central the intellectual work of the university, Slevin continued, it must integrate three critical dimensions:
Based on this “three-dimensional model of critical inquiry,” Slevin espoused a faculty approach that “positively and generously” responds to student writing. He shared student writing excerpts accompanied by faculty commentaries motivated by the conviction that “There is somewhere to go with this paper, and we, as teachers of writing, don’t want to miss its possibilities.” He explained, “The most interesting, useful and responsible way to work with the student as a writer is to press the possible complexity of the question itself and to suggest sources to consult and methods to try out that can make the inquiry more rigorous. This is teaching writing. We can press for intellectual possibilities, more complicated questions and more demanding methods of inquiries in our assignments themselves.” He continued, “A faculty who can develop and demonstrate a common resolve to work for this kind of writing that I characterize as ‘three-dimensional writing in the disciplines’ can at least assure students that ‘You get to practice reading more slowly, patiently and carefully; explaining what you mean; giving reasons for what you claim to be true; embracing uncertainty and living with it; discerning lies and exposing liars; and sustaining prolonged inquiry and debate.’” Slevin pointed out additional intellectual benefits for faculty: “Faculty interest in WAC might arise out of interest in what has been happening in various disciplines. The field of literary studies, for example, is increasingly shaped by questions that social scientists ask, methods and forms of argument they employ as they search for social and cultural explanations. Exposure to writing in various disciplines can help faculty and students pose different questions and explore new ways to respond to those questions and to one another. WAC can be a way to make such conversations among faculty happen. Finding ways to talk about writing might depend on simply listening more closely to our best conversations and extending those conversations more broadly.” Slevin concluded by asking his listeners to envision a university where “education is an institutional effort in which all participate as colleagues in the intellectual work of engaged interrogation and where that goal depends, in part, on the three-dimensional model of writing as critical inquiry. Students would develop as writers because that is what they need to do in order to do work that is meaningful and important. Students would enroll for purposes that have long-term and immeasurable consequences.” | ||||||||||||||||
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