The Department of English began its Writing Across Communities (WAC) initiative in January. A series of three, semester-long conversation building events and culminating colloquia were planned, with the first colloquium scheduled for Monday, April 25 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Student Union Building.
Dr. Juan Guerra, associate professor of English at the University of Washington, will deliver the keynote
Guerra was born in and raised in the Mexicano barrio in the “borderlands” of South Texas. He taught writing for 15 years in an educational opportunity program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also earned his bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. Guerra is the recipient of the Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Ford Foundation Fellowship and the Martin Luther King Jr. Award from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A former director of the Expository Writing Program at the University of Washington and the current co-director of the Washington Center for Teaching and Learning, Guerra's principal areas of research are highlighted in two recent books, “ Writing in Multicultural Settings,” (1997) and “Close to Home: Oral and Literate Practices in a Transnational Mexicano Community” (1998). His current book project, “Transforming Cultures of Writing: The Role of the University in the Teaching of Writing in the Disciplines,” is forthcoming.
Guerra will address the values of academic literacy and how these relate to access and success in higher education, as well as in professional and community settings. His keynote address will center on effective approaches to teaching writing that help students move among their different communities of belonging with authority. Guerra will examine how an understanding of cultural diversity enhances students' ability to write appropriately (with an awareness of discourse conventions), productively (achieve desired aims), ethically (attune to the cultural ecology around them), critically (engage inquiry and discovery), and responsively (responsibly negotiate the tensions of exercising authority).
The goal of the WAC project is to help UNM, graduate teaching instructors, administrators and staff understand the many contexts in which students need to read and write effectively, and to provide instruction to meet those needs. UNM, a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution with a diverse student body, enrolls approximately 5,000 freshmen each year. The presence of diverse discourse communities represents a source of strength in our classrooms as we educate students for global lives in the new century, lives in which the ability communicate fluently across boundaries is essential.
The WAC project, which works closely with the Rhetoric and Writing Program in the Department of English, engages students and teachers together to examine and explore the linguistic, rhetorical and literacy resources brought to the classroom by UNM students. WAC seeks innovative approaches to developing literacy resources, and helping students gain the knowledge needed for leadership in academic, professional and community contexts.
An outline of the questions that will be posed each semester follows:
Spring 2005 “Knowing Our Students”
What are the characteristics of the discourse communities—personal, civic, and academic—that our students bring to the university? How diverse are these practices, and how does that diversity affect curriculum and teaching?
Fall 2005 “Inviting Our Students to Academic Literacies”
How do disciplinary discourses at the university build on what students learn in writing courses? How can we bridge academic and community discourses, to help our students enter the disciplinary communities they seek to join?
Spring 2006 “ Preparing Paths to Professional Literacies”
How can we prepare all our students for access to and success in the professional and workplace discourse communities they will enter after graduation?
For more information about Writing Across Communities, visit: www.unm.edu/~wac.
Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920
Posted by scarr at April 20, 2005 03:11 PM