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This analysis of the Writing Across the Curriculum section of the TYCA national survey of writing programs covers Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines programs and initiatives, as well as writing centers and the overall satisfaction with two-year institutions' integration of Writing Across the Curriculum.
Introduction
In 2005, supported by a CCCC Research Initiative Grant and Two-Year College English Association (TYCA) volunteers, the TYCA Research Initiative Committee distributed the first national survey of two-year college writing programs. This online survey explored two-year college programs and satisfaction within four areas identified in the CCCC grant proposal: Assessment, Technology and Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines (WAC/ WID), and Teaching Conditions. The goals were to identify shared challenges and effective practices in these key areas, suggest potential areas for research, and provide a foundation for advocacy on local, state, and national levels.
The survey offered seventy-four closed and open-ended questions. To ensure a significant number of responses, TYCA National distributed the survey to all of its members, TYCA Regional Committees contacted colleges in their regions, and the TYCA Research Committee Chair and her assistant contacted colleges in low-response areas. If a college submitted two responses, only the earliest response was included in the survey count. Overall, we received 338 responses from across the nation, so the data reported represent the responses of roughly 338 two-year colleges. All fifty states are represented, with a fairly even breakdown between urban (21%), rural (22%), suburban (27%), and multisite campuses (30%) (Survey Question #4).
Our survey data, we believe, provide a unique snapshot of our profession at work at a particular historical moment. This analysis of the WAC/WID section of the survey, however, is not meant to be definitive or viewed as a reading endorsed by either CCCC or TYCA. As in the other analyses of core sections published in TETYC, findings presented here are one possible reading of the data, in what we hope to be an ongoing dialogue with teacher-scholars.1
As a graduate student at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in the 1980s, I participated in a local assessment initiative know as JEPET, the Junior English Proficiency Exam, an assessment, devised in response to a study of student writing abilities and...