The WIC program supports faculty development in a number of ways. Faculty Seminars, both Introductory and Advanced, are special features of the WIC program. Meeting once a week for five weeks, seminar participants learn effective ways to use writing in content courses. Discussions center on ways to use minimally graded writing to stimulate learning, ways to design compelling formal writing assignments and respond to them effectively, ways to help students revise, ways to use technology in improving writing and learning, and so on. In addition, seminar meetings give faculty the opportunity to discuss teaching with colleagues from other departments and disciplines. Participants complete the seminar with concrete plans for changes in their courses, and they receive modest honoraria to support their continued professional development. The WIC seminar is widely recognized on campus as a place where teachers learn new ways to offer students the compelling learning experience which is a major university goal.

The WIC program also offers weekly lunch seminars during Spring term and periodic workshops open to all teaching faculty. These seminars cover a wide range of topics related to the teaching of writing, with particular emphasis on effective use of computer mediated communication. As the university has begun to implement the goal of making the state our campus through delivery of courses and degrees at a distance, it has become necessary to adapt some WIC courses to distance learning. This adaptation is congruent with the goals of the WIC program and is supported by seminars and workshops as well as by assistance from the WIC director.

The WIC program also offers Department Development Grants designed to foster teaching-with-writing activities and discussions within and amongst departments. Three kinds of grants are available: Stage One grants support faculty interested in modifying current courses and teaching practices to include more teaching-with writing techniques; Stage Two grants support cooperative writing curriculum development and teaching-with-writing activities amongst departments and across disciplines; Stage Three grants provide seed money to help departments apply for more substantial funding of WIC activities from sources outside the university.

The WIC program has a half-time director who also teaches in the English Department. WIC is a university program; it is part of Undergraduate Academic Programs and shares office space and a secretary with the Center for Writing and Learning, whose Writing Center is key to helping student writers across the curriculum. The WIC newsletter, Teaching With Writing, is published once per term and is distributed to all teaching faculty, to all Oregon community colleges and some Oregon high schools, and to a number of interested subscribers throughout the country. The WIC director receives advice from the Writing Advisory Board, a body of the Faculty Senate that oversees all Baccalaureate Core writing courses, and the WIC Advisory Committee, a group of senior faculty from across the university who teach WIC courses.

The WIC program was created by a vote of the Faculty Senate in 1989 and is a key part of the Baccalaureate Core requirements. By 1993-94, each department offering an undergraduate major had developed and gained approval of at least one WIC course in the major. The first OSU students required to fulfill the WIC requirement graduated in June 1994. Over 125 courses across eleven colleges have earned WIC designation. Each course proposal submitted for review includes: a full syllabus for the course; copies of writing assignments; information on how students will use writing as a mode of learning, receive writing instruction and be given opportunities to revise; and information on how the course will meet the 5000 word writing requirement for each student. Approximately 275 faculty have taken the introductory faculty seminar (offered twice annually since 1990), and 50 have taken the advanced faculty seminar (offered alternate years since 1995).

Departments regularly assess the effectiveness of their WIC offerings and make changes where appropriate. The WIC director works with departments whose WIC courses are experiencing problems or are out of compliance with the Guidelines in some way. Problems are addressed as they come to light through faculty or student request, or when the department submits a request to change the course in some way. In addition, the Baccalaureate Core Committee recently conducted an across-the-board assessment of WIC courses. An exit survey of graduating seniors conducted by the Baccalaureate Core Committee indicated that students were highly satisfied with their WIC courses and rated the knowledge and skill gained in WIC as important for their future success.

One innovation of the WIC program unique to OSU is that a number of departments have designed and published writing guides for their discipline so that students will better understand what is expected of them as writers in that department. These guides were developed with the assistance of a WIC development grant and with help from the WIC director. Many of these writing guides—for the departments of Anthropology, Chemistry, Microbiology, Nuclear Engineering, Philosophy, Political Science, and Speech Communication, and for the Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program—are online. Writing guides for Apparel, Interiors, Housing and Merchandising (AIHM), Microbiology, and Sociology are available as printed texts; and guides for writing in Exercise and Sports Science and Human Development and Family Sciences (HDFS) are under construction. Because these guides are grassroots projects, each is different and specific to the needs of students in that department.

Other projects supported by WIC development grants in recent years include: departmental and inter-departmental workshops and retreats focused on teaching with writing; matching funds for purchase of computer software designed to provide invention and revision guidance for students composing essays in French, Spanish, and German; travel to a national conference for the presentation of a sequenced writing assignment designed for a Geology WIC course; development of writing activities to be incorporated into Odyssey, the University First Year Experience program; a workshop on evaluating student writing for graduate teaching assistants in the College of Home Economics and Education; development of writing activities using email piloted in Interquest, an introductory philosophy online course, and then publicized to all WIC teachers.