As we were setting up for the day, we were excited although we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We had researched other campuses’ celebrations, planned with colleagues across campus, purchased a variety of swag, so we were ready to celebrate the National Day on Writing for the first time on Mason’s campus. Continue reading
Inspired by the season, we here at The Writing Campus would like to thank all of our friends and colleagues who helped us make our first National Day on Writing celebration a success. Continue reading
The Writers of Mason, based on the Humans of New York, attempts to capture the diversity of writers on campus by profiling students, faculty, and staff through interviews and photos. To date, we have published 45 profiles on the blog, are currently processing multiple different profiles, and have snapped 189 photos of writers in our Mason community. Because we strive to showcase the human experience, creating a profile for an interviewee takes time and patience; each profile must go through a series of stages: conducting the interview, transcribing the interview and selecting the quotation to publish, taking and adding the finishing touches on the photo, and then editing and publishing the profile. Now that we have been publishing these profiles for a while, we thought we would share a little bit about the process of creating our Writers of Mason profiles. Continue reading
Throughout the course of the school year, faculty members at universities across the country assign a plethora of writing assignments. Whether for an English, Chemistry, or Art History class, professors understand the importance of teaching college students how to write well, not only for the sake of the students’ academic career, but also for their professional careers as well. Upon graduation, however, many students are finding themselves unprepared to write for their new jobs, which means they might not be successfully transferring what they have learned about writing in college to the workplace. This lack of transfer presents a real challenge for faculty members, who find themselves asking: how do we better prepare students for writing in the workplace? Part of the solution, according to Professors Brian Fitzpatrick of George Mason University and Jessica McCaughey of George Washington University, is for faculty and students to better understand the expectations of writers in the workplace, so the two researchers teamed up to explore the numerous types of writing professionals produce in the workplace.
Join Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum Program on Friday, October 20th to celebrate the National Day on Writing. Tell your writing story using #whyIwrite #whatIwrite #whereIwrite #whenIwrite #howIwrite to join in the nationwide celebration of writing in our everyday lives. Continue reading
Friday, October 20th is the National Day on Writing!
The National Day on Writing celebrates the role of writing in our everyday lives. Whether it’s academic papers, email, texts, tweets, or graphic novels, we all write.
Since our first interview in February of 2017, we’ve been very busy with the Writers of Mason project. To date, we have interviewed 42 writers, transcribed each of those interviews, and taken 189 profile pictures. We have met and spoken with writers across campus, talking writing in all its messy and awesome glory, with faculty, staff, and students. To date, we have talked with writers from: Fenwick and Johnson Center Libraries, the Students as Scholars/Office of Student Creative Activities and Research offices, Stearns Center, English, Anthropology, B-School, Game Design, Philosophy, Physics, Education, and Mason Korea.
Check in each week as the profiles on our site update.
Writing Across the Curriculum is proud to sponsor “Partners on the Page,” a special event at George Mason’s annual Fall for the Book festival featuring an evening with author Laura Micciche as she showcases the power of partnerships in the writing community and the genre of written acknowledgments.
Partners on the Page will take place on Thursday, October 12 at 4:30pm on the 3rd floor of the Johnson Center in Meeting Room G.
WAC is also excited for our partner’s event, “Research in Rhetoric: Digital, Visual and Archival Methods.” The George Mason University chapter of the Society for Technical Communication brings Dr. Douglas Eyman, Dr. Laurie Gries, and Dr. Jennell Johnson together for a panel discussion about research methods in the fields of rhetoric, composition, and communication.
Research in Rhetoric will take place in Meeting Room G of the Johnson Center at 6:00pm following the Partners on the Page presentation.
Don’t miss these two great, back-to-back events!
Fall for the Book runs from October 11th – 14th. Find more information about the many incredible authors coming to campus at www.fallforthebook.org.
For the 16th consecutive year, Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program has been ranked among the best writing in the disciplines programs in the US by US News and World Reports. In spring 2017, US News invited college presidents, chief academic officers, deans of students and deans of admissions from more than 1,500 schools to nominate up to 10 institutions with stellar examples of writing in the disciplines. Mason was once again included in the final listing.
Mason’s WAC program supports the efforts of faculty across the curriculum to make student writing a priority in course work for the major. Established in 1993, WAC was designed to develop students’ understanding of the writing in their disciplines, as well as their ability to communicate as professionals within their respective fields. The program fosters a number of ideals, but the core of the program advocates that students should have frequent opportunities to write in diverse contexts and for diverse audiences, to receive feedback, and to engage in revision strategies. This foundation helps students to think more creatively and critically, engage more deeply in their learning, and transfer their learning from context to context.
The list of educational institutions ranked by US News and World Reports includes Brown, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and several others.
Congratulations to Mason WAC!
To see the listings, go to:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/writing-programs
The Writing Across the Curriculum Program is excited to welcome the new Stearns Center to the Mason community!
August 29th saw the opening of the brand new Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, a merging of the Office of Digital Learning and the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence. Located in Innovation Hall, the Stearns Center brings together resources and services for faculty and graduate students looking to develop their teaching methods with the latest developments in teaching and digital learning. The Center will host weekly open labs, collaboration spaces for faculty to utilize the same technology available in their classrooms, and allows teachers to research, experiment, and learn new skills to better serve their students.
Learn more about the many incredible resources the Stearns Center can offer faculty and students: http://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/
