ABSTRACT
This chapter profiles a young writing program at a private STEM university, focusing on the program’s efforts to develop its mission, values, and identity within a complex institutional, disciplinary, and higher education landscape. Coauthored by the WPA and contingent faculty in the writing program at Lawrence Technological University, the chapter begins by chronicling the program’s history, from its beginnings as a collection of loosely related general education courses, to its acquisition of program status and the hiring of its WPA, to its transition into a university-wide program that will include technical and professional communication, writing across the curriculum, and a new writing center. In the context of the program’s profile, the authors analyze a faculty learning session in which the WPA and contingent faculty discussed the program’s compliance with the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” and the “WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition,” and consider how the program’s faculty engaged in dialogue about how to develop a curriculum that balances the interests of a traditional liberal-arts-focused department, with the mission of a vocation- and industry-focused university, with the disposition, principles, and best practices of the writing profession.
