Last year, Monroe Community College’s Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
Committee initiated its Outstanding WAC Faculty Award because, according Angel
Andreu, the College’s previous WAC Coordinator, “the WAC Committee has realized
that its success is due not just to its mission, but to the hundreds of faculty who design
their courses to be writing intensive.” Currently about 140 full-time and adjunct faculty
teach writing-intensive courses at this College, all of whom are eligible for nomination.
After careful consideration of the nominees, the WAC Committee unanimously chose
Professor Stasia Callan in English and Philosophy to be this year’s award recipient.
In many ways, this was an all-too obvious choice. As impressive as the other nomination
materials were, no other candidate matched Stasia’s individual and College-wide
commitment to Writing Across the Curriculum as a viable model for teaching and
learning. In fact, Stasia’s contributions to the WAC program at MCC cannot be
underestimated. After all, it was Stasia herself who, in 1988, researched and initiated the
program on this campus. She spent the next several years working hard to build the
program’s presence and importance, and for the next nine years facilitated and/or
presented over 40 informal faculty WAC assignment/ideas sharing sessions and 23
formal workshops. Certainly such accomplishments would be more than enough to
ensure Stasia’s far-reaching influence on the educational direction of this campus. But
her WAC involvements continue. In the last decade she has delivered over 20 WACrelated conference presentations across the United States. And, on an equally significant
level, continues to act as a hired consultant to several local colleges on WAC-related
matters.
One, however, should not merely quantify Stasia’s involvements. It is, after all, her
passion about writing-intensive instruction throughout the disciplines that has benefited
the College community in far-reaching ways. Last term, for example, Stasia spearheaded
a committee to assess student performance in the mythology class offered through
English department. The group decided, upon her instigation, to use an essay as the
assignment it would assess, despite the fact that doing so would mean hours more of
work and reading for all of us. Persuaded by her passion for writing and its importance in
determining students’ ability to critically think, we bowed to her suggestion and eagerly
set to work on a rubric that would allow us to assess their skills.
In short, Stasia has contributed so much to the intellectual vitality of the College that her
receiving this award is, in many ways, a recognition not only of her outstanding
contributions to WAC, but an acknowledgment of her vitality and dedication as a teacher,
mentor and colleague.