ASCRC Writing Committee Minutes, 9/10/12
TODD 203
Members Present: G. Burns, B. Chin, C. Corr, D. Raiford, F. Rosenzweig, R. Sattler, M Stark
Ex-Officio Members Present: E. Johnson, K. Webster, A. Walker-Andrews
Members Absent/Excused: B. Bach, K. Ryan
Guest: A. Kinch
The meeting was called to order at 10:10 p.m.
The minutes from 5/2/12 were approved.
Committee members introduced themselves and new members were welcomed.
Communication Item:

Chair Chin invited members to attend the live seminar September 14 th on how technology is changing students’ writing performance in k-12. Chair Chin is the senior consultant for the
NAEP Writing Framework and will be participating in the webinar. www.nagb.org/writing2011

The Faculty Development Office is collaborating with the Writing Committee to offer a
Writing symposium. Director, Amy Kinch indicated that the symposium is included in the fall faculty development series. Her office sends out campus communications advertising the events. The Faculty Development Office responds and serves the interest of faculty. The
Pedagogy Project is also sponsoring the event. The Pedagogy project is a group of faculty that help one another with student assessment through class observation and conversations.
The November 2 nd
symposium has three sessions:
How Rubrics Help Students and Teachers (Professor Corr & ?)
Providing Productive Feedback in a Reasonable Amount of Time (Director Webster)
Revision Strategies that Work (Professor Chin & Bach)

Associate Provost Walker-Andrews provided a summary of the current status of pilot project.
Work on the third phase involves seven departments (Biochemistry, Communication Studies,
Economics, Geography, Sociology, History, and Liberal Studies). These departments developed rubrics last year and will collect and assess students’ work this academic year. An additional five departments mention rubrics in their assessment information. She sent a summary letter to the departments (The letter was sent to ASCRC electronically after the meeting).
Efforts on the second phase will continue this year with the collection of students work in approved writing courses. Instructors were sent a letter this summer with instructions to put a statement on their syllabus, identify an appropriate paper, and send them with identifiers stripped for inclusion in the project. The Provost’s Office advertised for a .25 temporary position to coordinate this. The recruitment closed last Friday. The spring retreat to score

students’ writing is scheduled for April 12 th
. The committee will help facilitate the evaluation of a random sampling of student papers using the rubric.
Chair Chin informed the committee that the next challenge will be reliable scoring. It was suggested that departments not participating in the project be informed about the progress as a means of outreach.
Data will be collected for the first phase during the rolling review of writing courses this fall.
The rubric is now an electronic form so that responses go directly into a data base.
It is hoped that a preliminary report will be prepared this spring so that ASCRC can start talking about the possibility of replacing the UDWPA with this type of assessment. The various phases should identify patterns of weaknesses so that they may be addressed. Teaching students to write is a shared responsibility. Therefore sharing effective teaching strategies is important.
The UDWPA is not a discipline specific writing experience. A few years ago there was an experiment with a second composition courses (Writing in the Humanities /Science /Social
Science). It did not work well because there were no qualified instructors available.
Business Items:

Director Webster summarized the executive summary (handout) of the Writing Center’s
Annual. The full report was sent to members electronically as well.

The committee should be apprised of the assessment efforts taking place in composition given that the Committee is charged with ongoing evaluation and assessment of the appropriateness and effectiveness of writing requirements and criteria.
There should be more discussion regarding alignment of WRIT 101 with approved writing courses.

The committee has various projects this semester. The best way to accomplish these is for members to work in workgroups outside of meeting time. Members were divided into two groups to work on the items.
Group 1 (Writing Course Equivalent
Procedure & Training Papers)
Group 2 (Position paper on the need for additional lower-division courses that teach writing & Writing Course Review, Annual
Review =WRIT & LIT [34])
Kate Ryan, Comp
Cathy Corr, AAS
Gene Burns, HHP
Betsy Bach, Comm
Frank Rosenzweig, DBS
Jill Melcher
Megan Stark, Library
Kelly Webster, Writing Center
Richard Sattler, Anth
John Glendening, Engl
Nancy Hinman, Geos
Jody Drew
Mark Triana
The initial meeting of group 1 will be convened by Camie. If members not in attendance today (Kate or
Betsy) is not willing to Chair, Professor Rosenzweig volunteered with the condition that his work will

not take place until after October 4 th as he will be out of the County starting next weekend.
Chair Chin hopes that the workgroups will have drafts of the Writing Course Equivalency Procedure and Position Paper by the next meeting October 1.
Camie received a request from the English department for an extension of the September 21 st deadline since the majority of LIT courses are writing courses. The Committee agreed to extend the deadline for one week.
Camie was also notified that History advertised a course as satisfying their upper-division writing requirement, but neglected to apply for the designation. The department is asking for a retroactive approval. The graduation appeals process is available; however it is unfair to make students pay for the department’s oversight. However, departments are not held accountable when exceptions are made.
One suggestion is to have a policy to charge the departments for special processing. Professor Hinman will draft a procedure.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:00 p.m.