Crosswalk Reference

Say this instead ↗ "Writing-intensive courses aren't separate from your student success infrastructure — they are your student success infrastructure. AAC&U's research places them alongside undergraduate research and service-learning as among the most powerful predictors of retention and completion."

Say this instead ↗ "Rhetorical competence is more specific and more teachable than 'communication skills.' It means students can adapt what they say and how they say it to diverse audiences, purposes, and contexts — which is exactly what accreditors and employers are actually asking for."

Say this instead ↗ "Workforce readiness in communication means rhetorical agility — the ability to adapt writing and speaking across professional contexts. Programs that only assess whether students can produce an essay aren't measuring what employers actually need."

Say this instead ↗ "Writing Across the Curriculum is a reform model, not an add-on. Institutions that have tried to streamline gen ed by consolidating or cutting writing requirements typically see declines in both writing quality and student success metrics within 2–3 curriculum cycles."

Say this instead ↗ "The efficiency gains from AI are real — but they only hold if humans remain substantively in the loop. That's not a limitation; it's the educational rationale for assigning writing at all. Writing studies programs are the natural home for teaching students how to use these tools responsibly."

Say this instead ↗ "The AAC&U VALUE rubrics for Written Communication are the field-validated tool for accreditation-ready assessment — they're already used at 2,000+ institutions and align directly with SACSCOC and HLC expectations. We don't need to build something new; we need to implement what already works."

Say this instead ↗ "This isn't a preference — it's a documented threshold. The CCCC position statement specifies 20/60 based on empirical research on feedback quality. Once you exceed it, you're not just asking more of faculty; you're compromising the instructional mechanism that produces the learning you're assessing."

Say this instead ↗ "The CWPA's guidelines establish that running a writing program is scholarship — it produces knowledge about pedagogy, assessment, and curriculum. WPAs should be evaluated accordingly, not held to a service-hour model that erases the intellectual dimensions of the work."

Say this instead ↗ "Writing-to-learn assignments build exactly the curiosity, iteration, and evidence-based reasoning that your innovation agenda requires. We already have fifty years of research on how to design them — and they're free to implement."

Say this instead ↗ "Service-learning writing courses are how we make the partnership visible. They produce real deliverables for real community audiences — and they're among the strongest evidence you can offer accreditors of community impact."

Say this instead ↗ "When students fail professionalism assessments, it's often because the norms were never made explicit — they were assumed. Writing instruction makes those norms visible, nameable, and learnable. That's more equitable, and it produces better outcomes than implicit socialization."