Charles Tung, Nalini Iyer, June Johnson Bube, Sean McDowell, and David Leigh, S.J; and SoTL scholar David Green of Seattle University's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Thanks also to Larry Nichols, director of the Writing Center at Seattle University, my longtime friend, workshop cofacilitator, and fellow advocate for good writing assignments and engaged learning.
A larger network of WAC friends has also nurtured and inspired my work: Joanne Kurfiss Gainen, former director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Santa Clara University; Linda Shohet, the Centre for Literacy in Montreal, Canada; Martha (Marty) Townsend at the University of Missouri, who spearheaded the development of her institution’s remarkable pioneering WAC program; John Webster, SoTL scholar and director of writing for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington; Michael Herzog, my Teagle Grant co‐investigator and longtime SoTL colleague at Gonzaga University; Carol Rutz, director of the writing program at Carleton College; Carol Haviland, former director of the writing center at California State University at San Bernardino; Paul Anderson, now retired from his important WAC work at Miami University and Elon University; and nursing professor Rob van der Peet of the Netherlands, who translated the first edition of Engaging Ideas into Dutch. I also owe a special debt of gratitude and warm thanks to pioneering SoTL scholar Maryellen Weimer, emeritus professor of teaching and learning at Pennsylvania State University, who wrote the foreword to the first and second editions of Engaging Ideas. Her faith in my work, her encouragement, and her extraordinary generosity of time gave me the confidence to produce the first and second editions.
I offer a special thanks to the Seattle University teaching community during the years 1988–1993, when I wrote the precursor to Engaging Ideas as an in‐house book for Seattle University's new core curriculum using examples from more than forty Seattle U faculty. As a Jesuit institution, Seattle University created a new core curriculum that reflected the Jesuit commitment to inquiry and debate along with a passionate belief that rhetoric, as eloquentia perfecta, should serve the common good. These beliefs, combined with the student‐centered ethic of cura personalis (care for the whole person) and mission commitment to social justice, created a teaching environment where faculty could develop and share the pedagogical practices that eventually emerged in Engaging Ideas. That remarkable Seattle U community discovered modern ways to enact the principle of active learning aimed at the growth of persons revealed in St. Ignatius's 1583 Ratio Studiorum, the originating “plan of studies” for Jesuit education. It took a village to write Engaging Ideas.
My deepest thanks and love go to my wife, Kit, who is also a professional writing teacher, and to our children—Matthew, Andrew, Stephen, and Sarah—who have grown to adulthood since I first started writing about Writing Across the Curriculum.
From Dan
I've had the good fortune of having many mentors in the field of writing across the curriculum who helped me along the way: Jon Leydens at Colorado School of Mines, Mike Palmquist at Colorado State University, Terry Myers Zawacki at George Mason University, Chris Anson at North Carolina State University, David Russel at Iowa State University, and Chris Thaiss at University of California, Davis, among others. These mentors became colleagues, and I have also been fortunate to have had wonderful English department colleagues at California State University, Sacramento, as I grew into my role as a WAC and writing center director: Amy Heckathorn, Linda Buckley, Fiona Glade, Cathy Gabor, Cherryl Smith, and Mandy Proctor, among many others. I have also been blessed with great writing partners. Working on a book about developing sustainable WAC programs with Michelle Cox and Jeff Galin had a tremendous impact on my thinking about WAC as a movement, and now I have the great fortune of having John Bean as a writing partner. I thank John for the invitation to join him in his good and important work helping all teachers become better writing teachers.
From Both of Us
Finally, we would like to thank Riley Harding, our editor at Jossey‐Bass/Wiley, for the skillful way she encouraged John to seek a coauthor for the third edition and for her talent at managing the logistics. We would also like to thank Christine O'Connor and her team at Wiley for the smooth production process from manuscript to published book. For their insightful reviews of the second edition with advice for the third edition, we thank Todd P. Primm, Carroll F. Nardone, and faculty workshop participants at Sam Houston State University; Pamela Flash, University of Minnesota; Brian Hendrickson, Roger Williams University; Jessie L. Moore, Elon University; and J. Michael Rifenburg, University of North Georgia.
John C. Bean
Vashon Island, WashingtonOctober 2020
Dan Melzer
Sacramento, CaliforniaOctober 2020
About the Authors
John C. Bean is an emeritus professor of English at Seattle University, where he held the title of Consulting Professor of Writing and Assessment. He has an undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University (1965) and a PhD in Renaissance literature from the University of Washington (1972). He has been active in the Writing Across the Curriculum movement since 1976—first at the College of Great Falls (Montana), then at Montana State University (Bozeman), and, since 1986, at Seattle University. Besides Engaging Ideas, the first edition of which has been translated into Dutch and Chinese, he is the coauthor of four composition textbooks with varying focuses on writing, argumentation, critical thinking, and rhetorical reading. He has also published numerous articles on writing, writing across the curriculum, and discipline‐specific pedagogies to promote students' growth from novice to expert. He has done extensive consulting across the United States and Canada on writing, critical thinking, and university outcomes assessment. In 2001, he presented a keynote address at the first annual conference of the European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing (EATAW) at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. More recently, he and his wife Kit (who is also now a retired college teacher of writing) have facilitated workshops on writing and critical thinking for BRAC University in Bangladesh, Ashesi University in Ghana, and Charles Lwanga College of Education in Zambia. In 2010, his article “Messy Problems and Lay Audiences: Teaching Critical Thinking within the Finance Curriculum” (coauthored with colleagues from finance and economics) won the 2008 McGraw‐Hill–Magna Publications Award for the year's best scholarly work on teaching and learning.
Dan Melzer is a professor in the University Writing Program of University of California, Davis, where he directs the First‐Year Composition program. He was formerly director of Writing Across the Curriculum and coordinator of the University Reading and Writing Center at California State University, Sacramento. He has an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Florida (1993) and a PhD in rhetoric and composition from Florida State University (2002). He has been active in the Writing Across the Curriculum movement for two decades as a cochair of the International Network of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs, chair of the mentoring committee of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum, and a board member of the WAC Clearinghouse. He is the author of the monograph Assignments Across the Curriculum and coauthor of the monograph Sustainable WAC. He has also published numerous articles on writing across the curriculum and writing program administration. His articles have been reprinted in Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2017 and 2020 and Writing Across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. He has done extensive consulting across the United States on writing across the curriculum. He presented keynote talks at the 2019 TYCA West conference, the 2017 All Write Symposium at Finger Lakes Community College, and the 2017 Writing Pathways to Disciplinary Learning conference at IUPUI. His current research interests focus on peer and teacher response to college writing and student self‐assessment.
1 Using Writing to Promote Thinking : A Busy Professor's Guide
