Beyond Conventions: Liminality as a Feature of the WEC Faculty Development

Abstract

While many colleges and universities employ writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in disciplines (WID) programs, the embedded and faculty-driven character of the WEC program allows for a reconsideration of faculty development activities and the roles of writing professionals. This chapter argues that the structured conversations of the WEC model both unearth tacit assumptions about disciplinary writing and student learning and often challenge persistent assumptions regarding what writing is and how it works. Much as students encounter liminality in their transitions from novice outsiders to disciplinary insiders, faculty experience their own process of change and transformation, complete with the discomfort and resistance that such transformations imply. As faculty engage each other in understanding the constitutive character of writing in shaping knowledge, they often move well beyond an interest in policing surface-level conventions. Two case studies from the University of Minnesota illustrate how faculty members in departments negotiate this transition and revise their orientations toward writing through the WEC process, and how a transformed orientation toward writing leads to engaged, thoughtful, and sustained curricular change.