Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)

Writing Across the Curriculum

“I needed to say the wrong words to get to the right words.” Peter Elbow

Writing is a recursive process that cultivates the intellectual habits of reflection and reevaluation -- the building blocks of critical thinking -- and thus is a vital life practice. Writing is a means to understand and communicate with the world as well as a way to develop our own ideas and know our own thoughts and feelings.

The Writing Across the Curriculum Program at LIU Post promotes these interdependent objectives through writing intensive courses in which students are taught the rhetorical conventions of communication in various fields and disciplines as well as the processes by which inchoate ideas achieve fuller articulation. Writing intensive courses here at Post are premised on the belief that writing is a powerful means of knowing realized through patient and persistent efforts.

As one student put it, ”WAC courses are thought provoking--you find out not everything is black and white.”

Writing intensive courses are taught by faculty from every discipline through WAC methodologies. If you are a faculty member interested in teaching a WAC course, please see the Course Proposals form for more information.

Contact:

Wendy Ryden
Writing Across the Curriculum
516-299-2965
wendy.ryden@liu.edu

Mary Pigliacelli
Director, The Writing Center

REQUIREMENTS

Students are required to complete 5 WAC courses: English 1 and 2, and three additional writing intensive courses offered by departments in LIU Post’s schools and colleges, preferably one each in the Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years.

Students who take eight or more writing intensive courses (including First Year Writing) and achieve at least a 3.6 GPA overall in their WAC courses will receive a Certificate of Achievement in Writing Intensive Studies.

Transfer students who have completed the required six credit First Year Writing sequence take one writing intensive course for each year of residence: transfer students entering as Freshmen or Sophomores (59 credits or fewer) take three writing intensive courses; transfer students entering as Juniors (60 to 89 credits) take two writing intensive courses; transfer students entering as Seniors (90 credits and above) take one writing intensive course.

Writing Across the Curriculum