Synopsis - September 2009: Director Annotations > Susan Coller Carlson

Building a Community

Greetings and welcome to another edition of the WAC newsletter! We are very excited by the conversations revolving around writing these days and would like to take our newsletter to the next level. Starting next month, the WAC newsletter will live online where everyone can more easily join our community of writers and add their proverbial two cents. You will receive a monthly invitation to visit our blog and will receive highlights of our newest articles via email. You will also have access to an archive of past articles. If you are interested in contributing an article, please be sure to drop us a line.

Many thanks go out to all the authors for their thoughtful contributions this month—your unique experiences and insight add a rich flavor to a topic some may consider bland. But as you will see, writing (and the teaching of writing) does not have to be bland. This month, we are featuring the School of Business and Management and have amassed a collection of articles that clearly show how writing matters outside a writing class—and that writing does not have to be dull. “Writing is More Than Mechanics,” by Dean Vandenbosch, illustrates how writers must seriously consider audience, structure and the story.

Josef Vice discusses how writers must work toward trading in bad writing habits for good. He explains how essays are never perfect the first time around, that we can’t do everything (like focusing on structure and mechanics) all at once, and that everyone has something to say. Susan Honea looks at writing from the perspective of both the instructor and the student (she is in dual roles right now) and Christie Zgourides gives us a fresh perspective on APA claiming, ”APA is as Real World as it gets.” Barbara Russell explores corporate jargon and Catherine Flynn discusses the benefits of peer review.

Robin Nicks provides faculty with great tips on using resources from the Writing Center to help students improve their writing (and make grading papers and providing useful feedback a little easier). Roger Geronimo, who teaches business analytics to graduate students, points out how, in an online environment (where a great deal of our communication with students takes place in “little dialog boxes”) we “must translate verbal skills from the traditional classroom setting into written communication.” Eric Wilson inspires us to try out software like Jing to create visually engaging resources for our classrooms, and James Fleming discusses how a good story can not only entertain, but educate. A story used in the classroom “will only prove successful if it balances entertainment with illumination and the tale itself has a kernel, at very least, of insight and wisdom stuck within it.” Well said, James.

And what does a perfect round de jambe have to do with writing? Joni Boone tells her story and how feedback can be greatly enhanced with audio. Diane Martinez urges us to approach cases of plagiarism as “teaching moments” and Kella Hammond gives us an enlightening story about her language experience in Costa Rica. Finally, Mike Jensen takes a poke at the conversations of men.

I hope you enjoy this issue of our newsletter, and please remember that you do have an effect on the students you teach—make it a good one!

Did you know…

Susan Coller Carlson spent a summer living in her car? Susan was researching birds in the Sleeping Bear National Park and could identify well over 100 different species by sight and sound. Susan is the director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Initiative and the Writing Center at Kaplan University.

[This article was originally published in our September, 2009 issue.]