riting is one of the key skills that the College and CUNY have long recognized as vital for success. The ACT Writing Exam is a required exit-from-remediation exam which CUNY students must pass before they can take their CPE exam; and the CPE exam is the required transfer/graduation exam which CUNY students must pass before they can get their degree conferred. The Campus Writing Center will continue to place emphasis on providing preparatory workshops and tutoring for both of these high-stakes exams, as well as for all EN and writing-related courses and assignments.

Moreover, all QCC students are required to take a minimum of two WI classes by the time they graduate. With more than 250 WI sections of courses offered over FY 06-07, the number of students engaged in completing both high- and low-stakes writing-intensive assignments in their courses easily reaches 60% of the College’s enrollment.

The Campus Writing Center understands that the demands of writing for one curriculum can be quite different from those of another curriculum (performing technical writing or explaining the process of constructing a simple circuit board vs. crafting a lab report for Biology or Physics. The success of WAC / WI as both a graduation requirement and a general education objective relies upon two vital academic support elements:

• awareness/mastery of these writing differences across curricula; and
• sufficient resources in the form of available tutoring.

Currently, other than individual faculty members’ office hours, there is no academic support resource other than the Campus Writing Center to address the needs of these thousands of WI students.

Outreach to academic departments for use of the Campus Writing Center as a support service for WI coursework and assignments was constrained by an inability to formally integrate Writing Center pedagogy and information with WAC’s WI Faculty Training. However, outreach to students and faculty was conducted by sending email to WI faculty and by having Writing Center staff members physically go, in person, class by class, to address as many WI sections of courses as was logistically possible.

To better assist faculty in both their delivery of WI strategies and receipt of adequately completed WI assignments, the Campus Writing Center will create informational materials for, and initiate and maintain an ongoing collaboration with, the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) project directors and Writing Intensive (WI) faculty, particularly as they attend in-service WAC training. It is the program’s feeling that the best way to ensure that the Campus Writing Center can most effectively support the needs of QCC students enrolled in WI courses is to allow CWC to integrate with and actively contribute to the content and dialogue about faculty, tutor and student roles and expectations in the WI process which is offered to WI faculty through WAC’s professional development efforts. It is hoped that there will be some institutional commitment on the part of the College and OAA toward helping to ensure that this integration occurs.

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