Our Mission Statement

Bronx Community College, in accordance with a 1999 mandate from the CUNY Board of Trustees, has a Writing Across the Curriculum program designed to improve students’ ability to write clear and correct prose and also to facilitate learning. A hallmark of the theory behind Writing Across the Curriculum is writing to learn, the idea that the process of writing helps students to focus upon a subject and organize their ideas in relation to it. Thus, writing helps students to master every subject.

All students at BCC, as at the other CUNY colleges, are required to pass the CUNY Proficiency Exam (CPE) in order to obtain a degree or to transfer to a four-year college. The exam, which lasts three hours, requires students to express their ideas in clear and correct prose. The Writing Across the Curriculum program helps to prepare students for this test by infusing writing into courses in all disciplines.

In order to help implement the Writing Across the Curriculum program, advanced doctoral students from the CUNY Graduate Center work with faculty and students at BCC. The graduate students, called Writing Fellows, are a resource both for faculty and students at BCC. The Coordinators of the Writing Across the Curriculum program work with the Writing Fellows, who in turn help faculty who wish to infuse more writing into their courses.

At least two special Writing Intensive (WI) courses are required for graduation. These courses are taught by faculty who have participated in the Writing Across the Curriculum faculty development seminar. Courses designated WI have limited enrollment in order to give students the opportunity for extra attention from the instructor. Students in WI sections will have extra writing assignments, sometimes involving multiple drafts, in order to develop writing proficiency.

The overall goal of the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program is to infuse more writing as well as different types of writing activities into subjects across the curriculum. This effort integrates critical thinking and writing processes into classroom activities, the underlying assumption being that writing is closely linked with critical thinking and that in presenting students with significant writing assignments and in creating an environment where students often write and revise their writing, we can promote students’ general cognitive and intellectual growth. Writing assignments serve not only to enhance students’ writing proficiency, but also to help students master the content and process goals of a course.

One component of the WAC program is the creation of Writing Intensive (WI) courses, which aim to accomplish the following:

• To transform students from passive learners to active learners;
• To facilitate learners’ engagement with disciplinary subject matter;
• To create a classroom context that encourages inquiry and exploration;
• To assign writing as a means of helping students achieve the instructor’s content and process goals for the course, i.e., employing a writing-to-learn strategy;
• To improve students’ writing through constant practice.

What's New?

The CUNY Proficiency Exam

Did you know that to graduate or to transfer to take upper division courses at a CUNY four-year school you have to take the new Proficiency Exam? More

BCC Writing Fellows

Did you know that CUNY has assigned six Writing Fellows to Bronx Community College as part of the WAC program? Find out who they are and what they can do for you. More