Roughly 200 students are enrolled in the Geography and Urban Studies undergraduate majors, taking courses offered by the Department of Geography’s 20–25 faculty members. Geography is a broad and diverse field of study that focuses on processes and phenomena in terms of special dynamics and interactions. The field’s diversity requires geographers to evidence arguments with personal observation; visual, graphic, and numeric data; and, often, social and/or historical analysis.

Writing Plan

Creation Phase (Fall 2008-Spring 2009)
What became immediately apparent during the first faculty meetings we held in Geography, was that this department is composed of extremely diverse and interdisciplinary subfields–from Human Geography and Urban Studies to Biophysical Geography and Geographical Information systems (GIS)–that its faculty members were committed to effective writing instruction, and that they did not feel inclined to describe discursive commonalities when their fields were so varied and when many of the students they teach are non-majors. Nevertheless, Creation Phase resulted in the Campus Writing Board’s approving a Writing Plan that contained a list of thoughtfully articulated writing (and thinking) outcomes, a curricular plan that provides students with sequenced writing opportunities, a plan to create field-specific style guides, and plans to further investigate spatial communication applicable to GIS courses.

Implementation Phase (2009-2010)
The Department of Geography’s faculty members requested and have attended three customized workshops each focused on strategies for integrating effective writing instruction into Geography and Urban Studies courses. Sessions included, “Informal Writing;” “Designing Writing Assignments;” and “Commenting on and Grading Student Writing.” In addition, the faculty requested and were granted two RA appointments, one to create an online writing guide for students taking Geography and Urban Studies courses, and the other to look specifically at ways that writing instruction could be incorporated into the unit’s visually-oriented Geographic Information Systems (GIS ) courses.