WAC works with faculty, departments, and schools seeking to foster students’ writing abilities, promote students’ learning through writing, and develop writing-enhanced courses in their majors and minors. We offer the following resources:

Seminars

Faculty Seminar on the Teaching of Writing 

We work with the Writing and Rhetoric Program to offer this annual faculty favorite. Join about twenty of your colleagues on Grounds for 4 days to (a) learn up-to-date pedagogy for incorporating writing into your disciplinary classes and (b) design a suite of materials for your own use. This Seminar combines the best of theory and practice, and you’ll walk away with resources you can start using right away.  

This Seminar typically takes place in the last week of May. We announce the dates and open registration midway through the spring term. You can find the most recent information by clicking here.

Graduate Instructor Seminar on the Teaching of Writing 

The Faculty Seminar was so successful that we decided to launch a parallel option for graduate student instructors. We work with the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs to offer this twice-annual Seminar, which serves both to improve writing experiences across Grounds and to support the professional development of our excellent graduate students across disciplines. 
 
This Seminar takes place in January and August. We announce the dates and open registration midway through the preceding semester for each Seminar. You can find the most recent information by clicking here.

WE Criteria Pilot

The Committee on Educational Policy and the Curriculum (CEPC) has approved a curricular pilot in the College which allows Second Writing Requirement (SWR) courses to adopt the newer writing-enhanced (WE) criteria.

Note: While the SWR is a College requirement, the WE criteria can be adapted for better learning in classes across all Schools.

Click here to learn more about the Second Writing Requirement and the Writing-Enhanced pilot.

If you have any questions about how this option might help you and your students better achieve your learning goals, please click here to reach our contact form.

Workshops

• Teaching Writing in a Time of Generative AI  

• What Counts as Writing in Your Discipline? 

• Scaffolding Assignments to Improve Writing Quality 

• Responding to Student Writing (and managing the paper load) 

• Designing Effective Peer Review in Large and Small Classes 

• Responding Together: An Instructor-GTA/Grader Workshop 

• Teaching Writing with Sources

          Click here to learn more.

Consultations 

We consult with individual faculty upon request to discuss assignments and syllabi, with the goal of improving the writing experience for both faculty and students. We can offer input on scaffolding for better outcomes using modeling, drafting, peer review, revision, and out-of-class resources available across UVA.  

If you’d like to meet, please click here and fill out our contact form.

Curricular Support 

We offer advising and material creation to assist with adapting curriculum at the assignment, course, and degree-program level. A writing-enhanced curriculum can improve: 

• learning outcomes 

• knowledge retention 

• peer and faculty collaboration 

• student retention within a field 

• acculturation and professionalism 

If you are interested in exploring options, please click here and fill out our contact form.

Spotlight Program: BSN, School of Nursing 

We work on projects small and large! UVA's School of Nursing approached us in 2018 to support their efforts to scaffold writing instruction across the four years of their bachelor of science in nursing program. The project has been recognized at the state level as a model for higher education:

 

 

Research 

Internal Projects

• Coding Across the Curriculum 

  • We are partnering with the CompEd Center and faculty/graduate students in Environmental Sciences to pilot a model for teaching coding pedagogy to disciplinary instructors, with the Scholar's Lab serving as project consultants'reviewers We're exploring overlaps in writing pedagogy and coding pedagogy to develop a sound model for roll-out to others leading small learning frameworks.

• Assessment: A Scalable Revision-Based Teaching Model? 

  • We are assessing a revision-based teaching model in a writing-intensive course with a low course cap to consider efficacy and possible benefits for disciplinary content courses with larger enrollments.

• Writing Across UVA

  • We supported a 3-semester project exploring the "History and Culture of Writing at UVA," in partnership with the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections library. Undergraduate students investigated writing at UVA from its inception to today, considering various ways in which the "culture of writing" presents and functions. Physical artifacts have been donated to special collections; the digital artifacts are in final curation with WAC and will be donated Fall 2024.

External Presentations and Publications

• "Coding Across the Curriculum: Developing a Model for Coding Pedagogy in Small Learning Frameworks." DH2024 (August 2024, Arlington, VA).

• "Coding to Learn || Coding to Communicate:  An Experiment in Merging Writing Studies and Computer Science Pedagogies to Improve Coding in the Disciplines." Digital Humanities Studies Institute Conference & Colloquium (June 2024, Victoria, Canada).

• “Partnerships, Scaffolding, and Adaptation: Lessons Learned from a Multi-Year Project to Embed WAC across a BSN Curriculum,” in Writing Worldviews: The 2023 International Writing Across the Curriculum Edited Collection (WAC Clearinghouse, forthcoming 2024). 

• SCHEV Q&A on Written Communication: forthcoming in February 2024, online (VA statewide). 

• "Quick Fix or Long-Term Vision: Hoping for WAC in an Age of Austerity." Conference on College Composition & Communication (February 2023, Chicago, IL). 

• "How Nursing Faculty Teach Writing: A Multi-Year Project to Embed WAC across a BSN Curriculum." International Writing Across the Curriculum conference (June 2023, Clemson, SC). 

• “Teaching Writing with Your Local Archives: Designing Archival Writing Courses to Improve Student Access, Citizenship, and Representation.” Co-led with Vanessa Rouillon, James Madison University. Conference on College Composition & Communication (Mar. 2022, Virtual).

Related Resources

WAC @ UVA, Selected Bibliography

UVA Libraries, Writing and Publishing Resources

Center for Teaching Excellence, Teaching Hub Collection: Writing Assignments and Generative AI