Finding Writing Where It Lives: Departmental Relationships and Relationships with Departments

Abstract

This chapter offers tactics for moving toward a sustainable, faculty-driven WEC process when the very conditions of working with a department seem to preclude faculty involvement. In the WEC initiative at the University of Oklahoma, our approach has been like that of a social activist doing grassroots work behind the scenes before they have achieved the critical mass to effect institutional change. The chapter first aims to update the general WAC conversation about social movement tactics with recent literature about relational dynamics (Tarabochia, 2017), including the rhetoric of respect (Rousculp, 2014) practiced in community-oriented writing centers. These relational dimensions are especially important for new or small WEC programs that must flexibly build coalitions and one-with-one ties to foster a campus culture of writing. We present evidence from WEC’s work with the OU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Drawing on faculty focus group responses and curriculum development materials, we demonstrate how one curriculum specialist, guided by WEC, gradually initiated a departmental conversation through one-with-one conversations, coalitions with other teaching initiatives, and strategically chosen curricular interventions.