It’s after midnight in St. Louis, Missouri, and this is what I’m meditating on: “Specialization has weakened our ability to see interdisciplinary connections.” These are the words of Professor Pan Papacosta, a man born in Cyprus and educated at the University of London in Physics and the History of Science. He teaches physics to non-science majors in Chicago. I have transcribed Mr. Papacosta’s Association of General and Liberal Studies’ plenary speech in fits and spurts in a spiral-bound notebook with a kaleidoscope cover in aquamarine, crimson, mustard yellow, and olive green.
In this colorful book, I note Papacosta’s thrilling charge, and then sketch,
• A lump of coal that a grade-school teacher created a single year-round course around, from the Industrial Revolution and clean energy to organic chemistry and art.
• A Baudelaire quote in my best cursive, “Modernity … to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in the historical envelope, to distill the eternal from the transitory” (qtd. by Carter Goebel, 2009).
• Double stars next to Papacosta’s call to action, “We need to start talking with each other. Not chit chat… real, meaningful conversations about what we teach and the bridges we want to build” (2009).
While writing down these fragmented thoughts, I begin to consider how writing at our university plays a crucial role in spearheading and deepening the conversations we are currently having about what we teach (aka, our content areas in addition to general-education literacies such as communication, research and writing) and how our students benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.
As a relative newcomer to Kaplan University, I am impressed by the fact that writing courses here are, for the most part, geared towards a student’s major field of study, that the rhetorical situation is customized by each departments’ unique yet uniform standards, and that our learning institution truly values the notion that “real knowledge is not how much we know, but how much we use and integrate that knowledge into our lives” (Papacosta, 2009).
I am thrilled to see theoretical knowledge and real-life examples come together as an integrated whole because we know students will benefit from this marriage, and meaningful, authentic writing often connects higher-order concepts to concrete examples, humanizes audiences beyond the professor’s comment boxes, and requires students to consider their voice and its effect on future employers, colleagues, and professional communities.
That’s the great news.
What I contemplate at this late hour is how writing plays an essential role for students who are struggling to make sense of disparate, disconnected information (Papacosta, 2009). For instance, recently I received an e-mail from a disgruntled student who bemoaned, as she saw it, the over-emphasis on APA guidelines above writing and the invention of engaging, informative viewpoints. I assured this student that most, if not all, of us are concerned not only with her ability to write for a professional audience in an agreed-upon style (and the importance for writers to be informative and credible at the same time), but we’re also excited to see her thought processes and the ways she connects readers to her ideas based on evidence, insight and analysis. She wasn’t buying my assurances.
Which makes me wonder how much more work needs to be done across KU departments and schools to help our students see not just one aspect of the writing process, but rather the panoramic whole? What can we model in our instruction, curriculum, departmental collaboration, tutoring services, workshops, reference materials and tutorials, and writing feedback that reinforce the notion that while APA is incredibly important, it’s not the forest, but the trees.
The more we listen and talk to one another and our students, truly converse about how writing and research skills help or hinder us in the here-and-now and beyond, the better the chance that students like the one I mention above will begin to see how and why APA matters in addition to feeling listened to and respected for putting new, often unformed and emerging, ideas on the page. The goal, I believe, for a successful WAC program to grow and flourish is to promote the synthesis of writing skills by honestly talking about the perceived and real fragments in an otherwise solid curriculum.
References
Carter Goebel, C. (Plenary speaker). (2009, October 1).
Bridging the cultures: Humanities, science and art.
Plenary speech at the annual meeting of the Association
for General and Liberal Studies.
Papacosta, P. (Plenary speaker). (2009, October 1). Bridging
the cultures: Humanities, science and art. Plenary speech at
the annual meeting of the Association for General and
Liberal Studies.
As a relative newcomer to Kaplan University, I am impressed by the fact that writing courses here are, for the most part, geared towards a student’s major field of study, that the rhetorical situation is customized by each departments’ unique yet uniform standards, and that our learning institution truly values the notion that “real knowledge is not how much we know, but how much we use and integrate that knowledge into our lives” (Papacosta, 2009).
I am thrilled to see theoretical knowledge and real-life examples come together as an integrated whole because we know students will benefit from this marriage, and meaningful, authentic writing often connects higher-order concepts to concrete examples, humanizes audiences beyond the professor’s comment boxes, and requires students to consider their voice and its effect on future employers, colleagues, and professional communities.
That’s the great news.
What I contemplate at this late hour is how writing plays an essential role for students who are struggling to make sense of disparate, disconnected information (Papacosta, 2009). For instance, recently I received an e-mail from a disgruntled student who bemoaned, as she saw it, the over-emphasis on APA guidelines above writing and the invention of engaging, informative viewpoints. I assured this student that most, if not all, of us are concerned not only with her ability to write for a professional audience in an agreed-upon style (and the importance for writers to be informative and credible at the same time), but we’re also excited to see her thought processes and the ways she connects readers to her ideas based on evidence, insight and analysis. She wasn’t buying my assurances.
Which makes me wonder how much more work needs to be done across KU departments and schools to help our students see not just one aspect of the writing process, but rather the panoramic whole? What can we model in our instruction, curriculum, departmental collaboration, tutoring services, workshops, reference materials and tutorials, and writing feedback that reinforce the notion that while APA is incredibly important, it’s not the forest, but the trees.
The more we listen and talk to one another and our students, truly converse about how writing and research skills help or hinder us in the here-and-now and beyond, the better the chance that students like the one I mention above will begin to see how and why APA matters in addition to feeling listened to and respected for putting new, often unformed and emerging, ideas on the page. The goal, I believe, for a successful WAC program to grow and flourish is to promote the synthesis of writing skills by honestly talking about the perceived and real fragments in an otherwise solid curriculum.
References
Carter Goebel, C. (Plenary speaker). (2009, October 1).
Bridging the cultures: Humanities, science and art.
Plenary speech at the annual meeting of the Association
for General and Liberal Studies.
Papacosta, P. (Plenary speaker). (2009, October 1). Bridging
the cultures: Humanities, science and art. Plenary speech at
the annual meeting of the Association for General and
Liberal Studies.
... that Kella Hammond once sold baked goods at a farmer’s market in Liberty, Missouri? She also made cinnamon rolls, scones, and cookies at 5 am before she went to market at 8. Yum!
Kella is a Resource Specialist at the Kaplan University Writing Center.
Posts
4 comments:
I really enjoyed reading this article because it made me stop and think about the emphasis we put on writing assignments based on our background and experiences. For some, they focus solely on content leaving mechanics and style for someone else to comment on. For others, grammar supercedes the incredible ideas that our students sometimes share. It's really putting it all together that's important, and another thing I would add is that we need to give students room to practice writing. We are sometimes so focused on the end product of a project that we don't afford students the opportunity to practice. Just how can we incorporate more practice into our curriculum and resources?
In school, we learn academic writing, often a kind of write-by-the-numbers exercise. Outside of school, many of us -- and I'm in that number -- actually learn to write by writing what matters: letters and dreams, wishes and locker-notes, contest entries and magazine quizzes, songs and late-night poems. What would happen if we invited life-writing into the academy?
I love both of your ideas, Diane and Robley!! I think we definitely need to give students more room for authentic writing practice and to incorporate more life-writing into the classroom. One practice I've seen done at other higher learning institutions is the use of "writing studio" time within composition courses. I wonder if there would be a way in the Writing Center for us to embody this part of the writing process, just providing a place for students to write, share ideas, and brainstorm?
In any case, thank you so much for your comments. This article was a lot of fun to write.
Cheers,
Kella
I have often wondered how we can bring more meaningful writing to our discipline-specific courses. While I understand the logic behind the discipline-specific composition courses, in doing so, we do seem to be losing some of the interdisciplinarity (my own made up word) of our composition classes.
Connected to this, I was recently part of a forum called "Faculty for the Future," which was focused more on part-time faculty in my state. We also discussed how this "interdisciplinarity" is useful for instructors. As a part-timer, it wasn't even something I had given much thought to, but I now believe that our conversations with each other--especially those outside our own disciplines--are so important. It's easy to become isolated as a part-time instructor and even easier to do so in an online environment. I would be interested in developing more groups that maintain or enhance the communication between disciplines to help us all to communicate those connections to our students more effectively.
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