The Sweetland Writing Center is committed to continuing this activity through a variety of means. We continue to support small-scale efforts by individual faculty working with designated high schools. For some time now Barbra Morris and George Cooper have worked with teachers and students at Mackenzie High School to develop the writing curriculum there. And, with the help of a grant from the Ponting Foundation for 1999-2000, they will aid Mackenzie teachers in introducing an oral history and writing project. Reports from participants suggest that this opportunity to discuss the place of writing across the disciplines brought a new awareness of shared purposes and shared problems.
Plans are already under way for a second conference next spring.
These meetings provide much-needed occasions for dialogue among those teachers who prepare the students we encounter in our classrooms and between those teachers and ourselves as we try to focus our instruction most effectively on our students' needs and capacities. Last year, Terri Tinkle proposed the creation of a Sweetland Writing Center Executive Committee, and Interim Dean Pat Gurin endorsed that request. The committee is now in place and will begin meeting early in the Fall Term. Its members, many of whom have previously been involved in the work of the Sweetland Writing Center, are listed below. The creation of this group is an important step, I believe, in bringing the work of the Sweetland Writing Center into a closer relation with the College and in making that work more generally visible.