Writing Across the Curriculum
Communication Across Curriculum (CxC) is a part of the nation-wide WAC movement. According to Susan McLeod ("The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum,” A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, 2001), the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement has one primary goal: to help students become better thinkers, problem-solvers, and communicators (150). To do this, WAC focuses on writing in disciplines across the university. Moving outside of English, where a first-year writing class emphasizes writing as an academic skill, WAC pedagogy considers how the content information, terms, purpose, and genre expectations differ across disciplines. Ultimately, WAC supports course-relevant approaches to teaching writing.
The WAC movement began in the 1970s in response to an increasing number of student writers who struggled with college writing. Over 50 years later, as university writing adapts to changes like AI, this sentiment rings true. But it’s also true that WAC pedagogy is responding to one of the central challenges of writing: “good writing” is hard to define, and more often than not, what counts as “good writing” varies across disciplines, sub-fields, faculty, and students.
To account for these differences, WAC includes multiple orientations to writing, including writing to learn, learning to write, and writing in the disciplines. WAC also focuses on pedagogical tools that are true across disciplines, like understanding that writing is a complex process connected to thinking. Finally, WAC aims to support faculty and students through faculty development opportunities, student support services like the Writing Center, and by helping faculty and students make connections with each other.
Additional WAC Resources
- WAC Clearinghouse: An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum to Composition Pedagogies
- AWAC Statement on AI and WAC (2025)
- Write-to-learn and Writing in the Disciplines
The Least You Should Know About Writing
The Least You Should Know About Writing (LYSK) Series is designed to provide faculty with knowledge to help them develop writing instruction, activities, and assignments that builds on contemporary theory and research in Writing Studies. Here, you can find 5-10-minute videos covering writing theories (like writing about discourse and teaching for transfer), pedagogies (like how to take a process approach to writing), and practical tips (for things like managing work and grading).
Teaching Resources
The University of Wyoming has earned its Research Level 1 (R1) status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, placing Wyoming's only four-year university with the top research universities in the United States.