Writing Program Mission Statement

Our writing program is designed to help students understand and produce effective academic writing and to foster critical thinking, diverse cultural literacies, and intellectual and personal growth.

Our classes create opportunities for students to learn that writing is:

a critical and essential skill that can be learned

a complex and recursive set of processes of inventing, planning, drafting, revising and editing activities

always related to audience and thus relies on feedback, collaborative learning, and one-on-one conferencing

Our classes create opportunities for students to learn that they can:

trust their own voices and value their own diverse vernaculars and dialects while developing the essential skills of effective academic writing

draw from their own experiences and background towards engaging with complex and sophisticated ideas and texts

benefit by engaging with values and experiences different from their own and from one-on-one conferencing with their peers and the instructor

learn to apply the principles of writing across the curriculum


Our faculty increase student opportunities for successful learning by:

valuing diverse student learning styles

helping students use college resources to meet their learning goals

seeking to extend the connection being made in the classroom through writing to the community

engaging in professional development to stay current in effective teaching practices

seeking fairness and consistency in teaching and evaluation practices through collaboration, norming, and sharing of innovations and best practices, such as portfolios, descriptive rubrics, and teaching grammar in context