Welcome to the Washington State University Writing Program.
Our nationally ranked program--which has grown steadily over the last twenty years--combines formal institutional assessment with responsive educational support to help both graduate and undergraduate WSU students from across the disciplines to be more proficient writers. We also provide development opportunities for faculty and future faculty to enhance their skills in assignment design and in writing assessment techniques.
All writers need good readers to review and comment on their work before the work is made public. Our Writing Center staffs trained peer tutors to act as readers of students’ evolving writing. Concentrating our attention on how well students focus, organize, support and proofread their work, we offer students a feedback framework for noticing and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as writers that will serve them well beyond their academic careers. The WSU Writing Center offers a variety of writing support services for all undergraduates—ranging from credit-bearing tutorial courses, online writing tutoring (etutoring.org), and one-to-one undergraduate tutorial consultations. In January 2008, the Writing Center opened a Graduate and Professional Writing Center to assist graduate students with the demands of writing theses, dissertations, and seminar papers as well as assist graduate students face the challenges of teaching their own courses that integrate writing.
Our state-of-the-art writing assessment practices diagnose student-readiness for writing challenges at various levels of their educational experience. Students’ writing is assessed at the freshman-level for placement into freshman and sophomore level writing courses. In addition, all juniors are required to submit a Junior Writing Portfolio that demonstrates their readiness for the challenges of upper-division courses that assign writing in their majors. Our Writing Assessment Program uses an expert-rater methodology that employs Washington State University faculty who teach and evaluate writing at the various undergraduate levels at our institution to assess students’ writing. Such a system insures that assessment practices directly impact the classroom experiences of students at Washington State University.
In addition, Washington State University has a dynamic Writing in the Disciplines Program that spans the entire undergraduate curriculum. The Junior Writing Portfolio has documented student papers coming from more than 3,200 different courses. WSU offers more than 330 upper-division Writing in the Major courses that are cyclically reviewed and approved by the All-University Writing Committee. The Writing in the Disciplines Program provides on-going support for faculty to assign and evaluate writing within the disciplines. We offer two workshops per year for general faculty audiences, and conduct discipline specific workshops and one-on-one consultations as requested. Likewise, we are a participant and leader in statewide accountability efforts.
For more information regarding our exciting program, please visit us in room 305 of the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education.
--Lisa Johnson-Shull and Diane Kelly-Riley
Co-Directors, WSU Writing Program
