Faculty may consult with Writing Center staff in developing assignments that meet the intellectual goals of their classes. Where writing programs exist, similar solutions have sprung up to answer similar needs. According to Alan Lightman, award-winning author, professor of physics and creative writing at MIT, and former head of its Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, faculty there realized that the policy was insufficient in that students could get by with a minimal amount of writing. Each year a student would be required to take a communication-intensive course. At IIT, by contrast, students will be writing in virtually every semester throughout their college career, says Sharon Quiroz, director of IIT s College Writing Program.
Writing grows along with other intellectual skills.
It depends on a certain amount of maturity. I ve heard that a lot of technological schools don t have WAC programs. Inc. Quiroz points out that all engineering schools will have to respond to ABET 2000, which will actually take effect in 2002. The old static system of evaluation, like the number of Ph.D.s in the faculty and books in the library, is transforming into a dynamic, performance-based system where students are asked to do things for example, to communicate, she says. The journal that she edits, Language and Learning Across the Disciplines , will devote its June issue to communication in engineering.