How Well Does Writing across the Curriculum Work?Toby FulwilerCollege English, Vol. 46, No. 2. (Feb., 1984), pp. 113-125.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-0994%28198402%2946%3A2%3C113%3AHWDWAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-WCollege English is currently published by National Council of Teachers of English.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/ncte.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]://www.jstor.orgWed Aug 15 13:31:16 2007Toby Fulwiler How Well Does Writing Across the Curriculum Work? For over a year now my colleagues and I have been assessing the impact of Michigan Tech's six-year-old writing-across-the-curriculum program. We have surveyed, interviewed, and questioned both faculty and students, and we have measured, collected, and scored whatever and wherever possible. Some of these data, once analyzed, may confirm or deny with numbers that our program works. However, numerous unexpected problems and benefits are already ap- parent. It is these I wish to report on here. This essay is my attempt to set down, as frankly as possible, some of the lessons I have learned from overseeing a writing-across-the-curriculum program and conducting faculty workshops for the past six years. The goals and objec- tives, the theories and the successes of writing-across-the-curriculum programs have been fully described elsewhere in books, periodicals, and conferences; this essay will try not to repeat those assertions and descriptions.' Suffice it to say that I believe the programs do work and that the interdisciplinary writing work- shops are the very best way to introduce those programs to college and univer- sity faculties. We attempted from the beginning to influence faculty first-through the writ- ing workshops-and students second-through attending classes taught by fac- ulty who had attended the workshops. We believed that to improve student writ- ing we had to influence the entire academic community in which writing takes place, to make the faculty sensitive to the role of writing in learning as well as to the relationship of writing to other communication skills-reading, speaking, and listening. We began our program in 1977, based primarily on the ideas of James -1. For a description of the Michigan Tech Writing-Across-the-Curriculum program see: "Show- ing, Not Telling, at a Writing Workshop," College English, 43 (1981) 55-63; "Writing Across the Curriculum at Michigan Tech: Theory and Practice," WPA: Writing Program Administration, 4 (1981) 15-20; "Interdisciplinary Writing Workshops," CEA Critic, 43 (1981), 27-32; and Language Connec- tions: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, ed. by Toby Fulwiler and Arthur Young (Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1982). Also see Randall Freisinger's "Cross-Disciplinary Writing Workshops: Theory and Practice," CE, 42 (1980), 154-156. From 1976 to 1983 Toby Fulwiler directed the writing program at Michigan Technological University. He is currently the director of writing at the University of Vermont, where he is starting a new writing-across-the-curriculum program. With Art Young he co-edited Larzgrrage Connections (NCTE. 1982). and both are presently working on a sequel, Research Connections, which reports what they learned in conducting the Michigan Tech program for the past six years. College English, Volume 46, Number 2, February 1984114 College English Britton and his colleagues (The Development of Writing Abilities, 11-18 [London: Macmillan, 1975]), to introduce faculty from all disciplines to a variety of ideas and strategies for using more writing in whatever courses they teach. We con- ducted intensive, two- and four-day writing workshops off campus for fifteen to twenty-five faculty at a time to introduce them to these general concepts: 1) that writing can be used to promote learning as well as to measure it; 2) that the writing process can inform all assignments and evaluation; and 3) that students write poorly for a variety of reasons-including poor motivation, immaturity, inadequate rhetorical skills. To date, spring 1983, we have conducted twelve such workshops for approximately 200 faculty and staff at our university. In addition my colleagues and I have conducted similar workshops at numerous colleges and universities throughout the country. Teaching writing in English classes or outside of English classes remains more art than science: we still know very little about what happens at the moment of insight, inspiration, or ideation. Nor do we know predictable routes of faithful translation from thought to language, from pen to paper. So in every attempt to "teach" others to teach writing more often and more thoughtfully in their classes, problems arise with translation, motivation, situation, assumptions, pedagogy, terminology, personality, and turf. At the same time we who started such programs hoping to amplify the lessons of freshman composition soon found that we had stumbled into fertile territory for pedagogical research, faculty development, institutional cohesion, and personal growth. The following personal reflections address two central issues which may never yield answers solely in numbers: what didn't work that we