Tracking the Sustainable Development of WAC Programs Using Sustainability Indicators: Limitations and Possibilities

Abstract

Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing Across the Curriculum Programs (Cox, Galin, & Melzer, 2018a) lays out a systematic whole systems approach to program development that draws on complexity theories and integrates the use of sustainability indicators (SIs) for monitoring and assessing program sustainability. However, the SI part of the whole systems approach methodology may be overly burdensome and even premature for assessing the sustainability of smaller and younger WAC programs. Further, aspects of the SI methodology need clarification to be useful to the larger WAC programs that would benefit from its use. This article provides important correctives to and elaborations of the treatment of SIs in Sustainable WAC that will help WAC program directors more effectively decide whether and how to use this tool as part of a whole systems approach to develop more sustainable and impactful WAC programs. In response to a need for a more theorized and systematic approach to developing WAC programs that are both transformational and sustainable, we, along with our co-author, Dan Melzer, drew from complexity theories to create the whole systems approach (WSA) to WAC program development. Our book, Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing Across the Curriculum Programs (2018), emphasizes a slow, deliberate, and strategic approach to program development that includes coming to a deep understanding of campus culture and context, the use of mission and goals to guide development, the inclusion of stakeholders in determining program mission and activities, and ongoing assessment of program sustainability through the use of sustainability indicators (SIs). Sustainable WAC lays out a methodology that includes four stages: Understand, Plan, Develop and Lead (see Figure 1). Each stage draws from ten principles (pp. 46-47) we derived from the theories and includes associated strategies and tactics. We integrated the development and tracking of SIs across all four stages, a strategy we adapted from sustainable development theory to define, assess, and ultimately monitor program sustainability (Bell & Morse, 2008; Bossel, 1999; Hardi & Zdan, 1997). During the Understand stage, the director, while coming to a deeper understanding of campus context and mood, identifies “baseline” SIs, which we are here reconceptualizing as “proto-SIs.” During the Plan stage, the director gathers a group of stakeholders to form a WAC committee and then works with this group to consider how to best position WAC for connectivity within the campus network, develop the program’s mission and goals, develop program SIs, determine the slate of projects that Tracking the Sustainable Development of WAC Programs 39 ATD, VOL16(4) would fulfill the mission and goals, and consider how these projects would impact different groups on campus, particularly marginalized and disenfranchised groups. During the Develop stage, the director, along with stakeholders, generates project SIs and launches these projects (i.e. writing fellows program, writing-intensive curriculum, faculty development workshop series), while moving slowly and managing challenges and obstacles to program development. During the Lead stage, the director, along with stakeholders, seeks to manage growth and change within the WAC program while creating visibility for the program, connecting with systems outside of the university, and gathering SI data from across the program to keep an eye on program viability and make any necessary adjustments. We assert in the book that operationalizing SIs is a necessary part of the WSA. Here we want to soften that position a bit. Figure 1: The Whole Systems Approach to WAC Program Development From Cox, Galin, and Melzer, 2018b, p. 76. Since the publication of Sustainable WAC, we have come to realize that the SI strategy is the element of our framework that creates the most stumbling blocks for WAC program directors in taking up the whole systems approach. We have received questions related to how to identify SIs, how to operationalize them, and even the extent to which this strategy is relevant, particularly for smaller and younger WAC programs for which the impediments to sustainability may be obvious. Indeed, the use of SIs originated to address far more complex problems than those faced by WAC programs. Outside of writing programs, SIs are used to bring together data points across human, economic, and social systems in order to guide decisions about sustainable development at different scales,