Spring WAC Roundtable

The Spring Roundtable was a success!

Held on Wednesday, March 23, the aim of the roundtable discussions each semester is to promote writing across the curriculum. Presenters offer suggestions to instructors in all disciplines on how to incorporate writing into their classes and start a dialogue with attendees about how to include more writing in non-writing classes.

The roundtable was hosted by the College Writing Committee and the Writing Initiative, and was organized by Mark Tambone, English Instructor and CWC secretary.

This semester's presenters were CWC co-chair Mark Hillringhouse, presenting Text Rendering: Reading to Write and Writing to Read, Elizabeth Nesius, presenting Using Reflection to Enhance Student Learning, and Dave Bolger, presenting Reading and Questioning: Questions from the Text that Generate Writing.

The roundtable was well-attended, with between 25 and 30 people participating. The presenters will post their PowerPoint slides and materials on the College Writing Committee website.

Spring Roundtable

The College Writing Committee Presents:
Writing Across the Curriculum Spring Roundtable

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

3:30-5:00 PM

Paterson Room

This roundtable forum is focused on improving writing across the curriculum at PCCC!

 Topics will include:

Text Rendering: Reading to Write and Writing to Read—

M. Hillringhouse

Using Reflection to Enhance Student Learning—

E. Nesius

Reading and Questioning: Questions from the Text that Generate Writing—

David Bolger

Bring your own writing ideas to share!

Feel free to DROP IN!

Sponsored by The Title V Writing Initiative and The Professional Development Committee.

Who Is Visiting This Blog?

It is interesting to look at the usage logs for this blog to see who is visiting our blog's site.

Although the blog is aimed specifically for the Passaic County Community College community, we expected that eventually online searches would lead other people to us.

We hope that like-minded people at other schools who are doing similar initiatives might eventually contact us and perhaps even collaborate with us.  (See our Connections site)

Our Writing Initiative involves not only our writing-intensive courses, but also critical thinking, information literacy, portfolios and several technology initiatives (including ePortfolios, course capture, and LibGuides)

Most of our traffic comes from New Jersey, but we get almost half of our U.S. traffic from outside NJ.

Visitors - Hello, Islamabad!

We also have an international readership (as shown below).

Visitors ranked by countries

The majority of visitors find us via our Writing Initiative website or the Writing Center website.

Fewer find us through the college's website than find us via a Google search. Popular search terms that have led people lately include: course capture, community college, writing, faculty development, college writing exam, PCCC, writing initiative, promotional magazine and spring break.

An impressive number of people find us by the links we have on our Facebook page - so social media does work!

Spring Break

Passaic County Community College is on Spring Break this week.

The Writing Center will be open Monday - Wednesday this week until 8 pm and closed on Thursday & Friday.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan Honored as a Writer For Writers

From left to right: Michael Morrison, benefit chair; John Grisham, honoree; Maria Mazziotti Gillan,honoree; Elizabeth Nunez, honoree; Elliot Figman, Poets & Writers’ executive director;Jonathan Galassi, honoree; and Paul Rudnick, master of ceremonies. Photo credit: Christopher Smith

The recent Poets & Writers’ Annual Dinner, held Wednesday, March 2 at Capitale in New York City, raised more than $475,000 to support Poets & Writers' programs serving creative writers. The event was chaired by Michael Morrison, U.S. General Books and Canada, HarperCollins Publishers, and Paul Rudnick served as master of ceremonies.

Included in the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards was Passaic County Community College's own Maria Mazziotti Gillan. The Writers for Writers Award recognizes authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, a Paterson native and award-winning poet, has been the executive director of the The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College since it was established in 1980.

Over the years, the Poetry Center has been accorded international recognition for many of its activities including the Distinguished Poets Series, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. The annual Paterson Literary Review, the monthly New Jersey Poetry Calendar and the New Jersey Poetry Resource Book are also published by the Poetry Center.

For more than 30 years, Maria has powered the Center's mission to provide poetry events and workshops to a diverse audience and to provide opportunities for poets through offering contests, awards, a journal, anthologies, reference materials, and conferences.

Also receiving a Writers for Writers award at  the event were John Grisham, and Elizabeth Nunez. The Editor’s Award was presented to Jonathan Galassi in recognition of a book editor who has made an outstanding contribution to the publication of poetry or literary prose over a sustained period of time.