ILS staff members collaborate with faculty and administrators from The City University of New York to develop and lead the following initiatives:
Lehman College's Writing Across the Curriculum program brings together Lehman faculty members across a range of disciplines to consider ways to structure writing assignments, methods for responding to student writing, and strategies for using writing as a tool for learning. Faculty members also get assistance in developing and teaching writing-intensive courses from Writing Fellows, six CUNY doctoral students assigned to Lehman for this purpose. Lehman's WAC program is part of a CUNY-wide Writing Across the Curriculum initiative dedicated to improving student writing and learning. The coordinators of Lehman's Writing Across the Curriculum program are Elaine Avidon (Early Childhood & Childhood Education & ILS), Marcie Wolfe (ILS), and Jessica Yood (English). Along with Marcie Wolfe, Sondra Perl (English & ILS) was a founding coordinator of Lehman WAC.
CUNY's Looking Both Ways (LBW) is a faculty development program for high-school and college teachers of writing. In LBW, teachers share examples of good practice, read and discuss relevant theoretical articles, examine samples of student work in an effort to define standards and expectations, visit each other's institutions and classrooms, and consider the impact of high-stakes testing on their teaching. LBW was initiated in the fall of 1998 as a joint project of CUNY's Office of Academic Affairs, the CUNY Association of Writing Supervisors (CAWS), and the ILS's New York City Writing Project. Although CAWS, as an organization, is no longer directly involved in LBW, the NYCWP remains actively involved. This has allowed LBW to draw upon the extensive human and institutional resources that the New York City Writing Project has developed since it began working in the City's public schools in 1978.
In addition to these two efforts, the ILS receives funding from CUNY's Office of Academic Affairs to offer special programs through the New York City Writing Project, which has been identified as a CUNY Collaborative Program. Currently, these funds have enabled us to support a researcher working on the Writing Project's evaluation of its inservice work in Bronx high schools, and to offer additional professional seminars across New York City.