"Perspectives on the Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum: A Dialogue Between the Sciences and Humanities"

The Act of Writing

Stated plainly, writing is an act that is integral to success after graduating from college and upon entering “the real world.”  Whether a student is continuing his or her education or entering the job market, the skills of writing are absolutely necessary to achieve success.  Whether the genre is an e-mail to a colleague or a dissertation, proper writing skills include knowing how to create a rhetorically appropriate and effective communication, which could be the difference between getting the job, graduating from an academic program, or being unable to achieve success. 

Strong writing skills are not humanities-specific; in fact, all areas of study and professional work require effective writing in order to attain success.  Every discipline requires “good” writing of its students, yet what one discipline may consider an “A” paper, a different, even related discipline, could assign a failing grade.  Furthermore, individuals within the discipline—professors and students alike—may consider different forms of writing to be “good.”  An additional difference exists between the process and product of writing.  The overall process of writing is quite similar in many instances despite the genre or objective of the writing.  Yet, each discipline writes and speaks for a different audience, and therefore requirements in the final written product for any particular discipline will be inherently different from any other discipline. 

Despite differences in the final written product, all academic disciplines require their students to produce solid writing.  However, examining all academic disciplines at one time would prove impossible within the scope of this paper.  Therefore, I have chosen to focus my examination of the importance of writing outside of the humanities on biology—the non-English discipline I know best—in order to examine the relationship between the Writing Center, the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative, and the writing done by majors in biology in order to find out how each is viewed in relation to the others both from the outside in and inside out.  I argue that examining the idiosyncrasies of each of these areas and the interdisciplinary nature of the Writing Center can enable conversation which will create a more valuable experience for Wilkes University’s student writers who desire to bring their scientific assignments to the Writing Center.  Such an examination also benefits the Peer Consultants in the Writing Center who can learn new modes of writing, and even the science professors will benefit because they will be supported in turning out more successful student writers.  If “good” writing for each discipline is clearly defined by the professors, and if the communication gaps and implied assumptions of writing among different components of the university are bridged, then the Writing Center will be better able to serve the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative, and everyone—professors, students, and Writing Center consultants—will obtain invaluable experience and expertise in the discourse of writing, potentially even beyond the scope of Wilkes to other institutions of higher learning.

Since all science students will be engaging in writing-- whether it is through the publication of research or via the charts the student might later write up as a doctor or in the student’s later work as, perhaps, a science writer-- learning to write for the discipline at the undergraduate level is absolutely essential in order to effectively transmit information.  After all, science, at its very heart, is about discovering and sharing information, often through the act of writing.  Due to my specific interest in expanding Writing Center work within the sciences, I use that field as my example in this case; however, the principles and ideas I will discuss could be applied to any discipline across the University, and even beyond Wilkes University to other institutions of higher learning.