Workshops and Curricular Support

Heidi and her colleagues at WAC have been great partners and collaborators with us here at Batten. The trainings they have provided for graduate students have allowed us to create a writing tutor program, which we offer to support faculty and GTA teaching in the classroom. 

- Amanda Crombie, Academic Programs, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy 

Faculty Seminar on the Teaching of Writing

This is a seminar that will help you dream and conceive of different and unique curricula, assignments, and manners to engage students.

 - Anthony Palomba, Darden School of Business

In addition to the motivation/theory behind writing incorporation, the workshop helps you to think in terms of actionable approaches to incorporating writing.

- Don Griffin, Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science

Taking a seminar with WAC gave me practical strategies to make my approach to teaching writing more efficient and effective, while connecting to and learning from instructors across Grounds.

- Ajay Limaye, Environmental Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences

Collaborating with other instructors focused my thinking on my own process in the CS4991 course. I found that, with 100-140 students, I became the chokepoint in getting reviews back to students in time to revise and resubmit. As a result of my WAC experience, I decided to divide the Capstone report into 5, instead of 2, submissions. More work for me in some ways, but this approach broke the report into smaller chunks which enabled me to get through the reviews more quickly, which helped the students with their revisions. I also created new training aids, including a Sample Report Format, and enhanced the Syllabus and Writing Guide I had created.

- Roseanne Vrugtman, Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science

The Faculty Seminar on the Teaching of Writing is life-changing! It has completely transformed the way that I think about and assess student writing.

- Jennifer Sessions, History, College of Arts & Sciences

Graduate Instructor Seminar on the Teaching of Writing

It's more than writing instruction—it's a masterclass in pedagogy that prepares you to be an outstanding instructor. 

- Zhiyuan Wang, Systems and Information Engineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science 

This course has been extremely useful for preparing me to teach, and I love the global approach to incorporating writing into a variety of courses across many disciplines. It was empowering and very useful to have the wisdom, feedback, and suggestions from a super thoughtful group committed to teaching. 

- Katie Wu, History, College of Arts & Sciences

It was extremely helpful to learn course design to teach writing, the instructors were wonderful, and I learned a lot of valuable advice for commenting and grading papers in the future that I will probably use for the rest of my life. 

- Kelly Dunham, Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences 

This is one of the best pedagogical training experiences for graduate students at UVA, particularly those who intend to pursue a career in academia. I feel like we did in four days what might take weeks, if not months, in a pedagogy course.

- Yafrainy Familia, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, College of Arts & Sciences 

Writing-Enhanced Courses

Teaching using the WE criteria just makes my job easier--by clearly articulating my learning goals surrounding writing and explicitly teaching those skills, I end up with a higher quality of thinking (and writing) from all my students. And the more I add scaffolding and invest in the peer review process, the more genuine excitement and intellectual exchange I'm seeing from my students!

- Natalie Thompson, English, College of Arts & Sciences

WE was especially useful in an intro-level survey class (2050), where students didn't have the disciplinary or methodological expertise required for a 20-page paper. Instead, the final assignment emphasized a variety of writing forms and revisions. Students responded positively to the structure, and with higher quality, more thoughtful work, than I think I would have received under the traditional system.

- Alison Bigelow, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, College of Arts & Sciences