ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the curricular efforts toward making writing a central feature of the academic program at a small, liberal arts institution and the strategies adopted by the criminal justice faculty to accommodate the heightened emphasis on writing within the general education and major requirements. It outlines the university-wide, cross-disciplinary, integrative initiative which pairs or "clusters" core courses while emphasizing writing across the curriculum. In Criminal Justice, this has been a cluster with a single section of Freshman English. The chapter also describes how other writing in nearly all criminal justice courses has been strengthened to meet the university's General Education Requirements for proficiency in written communication. The revised assignment clearly requires that the student demonstrate factually correct knowledge of how the criminal justice system works. The writing intensive emphasis has helped faculty do a much better job of creating the kinds of assignments which develop critical thinking and good writing skills.
