We are devoted to increasing equity and inclusion in writing instruction through meaningful communities of practice.

Aligned with Arizona’s institutional mission, this program is a year-long professional development opportunity for Arizona faculty to learn about and improve writing pedagogy and equity-driven pedagogy in higher education. Our mission is to implement equitable, transformative, and transferable writing experiences for students by supporting all instructors and disciplines. WAC Faculty Fellows learn principles and practices of linguistic social justice that empower them to design meaningful writing activities in their context and to become agents of change at our land-grant, HSI institution. Each WAC Faculty Fellow receives $1000 compensation for completing a capstone project during this year-long program. 

The WAC Faculty Fellows Program supports faculty to:

• recognize the complexity of writing development and students’ existing linguistic repertoires as assets to build upon course activities.
• integrate writing as a tool for learning for students to apply course content to their experiences, backgrounds, and communities.
• establish a WAC vocabulary that explicitly defines writing assignments in terms of purpose, audience, and genre in support of student writing transfer.
• practice effective assignment design and scaffolding activities with topics and genres that foster student agency.
• identify genre expectations of the profession and examine the power dynamics that sustain them, including explicit attention to language conventions. 
• provide transparent assessment criteria that aligns with assignment objectives and include alternative, nonvertical methods of assessment.

“After taking part in the Writing Across the Curriculum Fellowship, I had the confidence and clarity of vision to transform my writing assignments into more inclusive and meaningful learning experiences.” 

- College of Public Health

Program History

Founded in August 2021 in UCATT, this program offers WAC training to five UArizona instructional faculty annually. Fellows meet weekly in a fall seminar to revise the curriculum in their class, program, or broader context toward equitable and antiracist WAC pedagogy. Faculty highly value their experience as a WAC Faculty Fellow as it promotes an enriching community with colleagues across the disciplines who remain passionate about teaching and writing pedagogy. This initiative has collaborated with faculty across disciplines such as, astronomy, business communication, classics, consumer science, information science, environmental sciences, immunology, film studies, microbiology, music, nursing, public health, iSchool, English studies, religious studies, and translation studies. All continue to have an impact as stewards of WAC programming. 

“The work we did encouraged a fundamental shift in approaches, not just to writing instruction, but to course design as a whole. It was especially valuable to be working alongside faculty from a variety of disciplines, which helped to highlight the different ways that institutionalized racism shows up across the academy.” 

- College of Humanities