The course description for WRI 1000\u00a0states\u00a0that a key element of the course includes understanding the rhetorical and cultural contexts that impact reading, writing, and learning. \u00a0That is, the course assumes that rhetoric and culture are necessarily and unavoidably intertwined. \u00a0This thinking appears again in the course outcomes for WRI 1000, under Rhetorical Knowledge: upon completing the course, students will be able to “demonstrate understanding of the relationship between writer, reader, text, culture, and medium.” \u00a0Recognizing the importance of culture to the work of the writer, WRI 1000 helps students gain a framework for cultural engagement. \u00a0Students take seriously the power of language, the power of words, the power of sentences in speaking, thinking, and writing, and students come to see rhetoric as a central part of reconciliation and a tool for critique and activism. \u00a0WRI 1000, then, lays a foundation for Seattle Pacific University’s Cultural Engagement Curriculum.<\/p>\n
Over 40% of SPU’s students are students of color, and because of SPU’s position as an urban, cosmopolitan, and multicultural campus, including issues of race, diversity, and multiculturalism in the WRI 1000 curriculum is of the utmost importance. \u00a0It is important because writers are able to write well only when they are in conversation with other voices,\u00a0learning to read the words of others, to hear the words of others, to do something with and alongside the words of others. \u00a0The Writing Program hopes that the students of SPU do more in their writing than merely echo the ideas they’ve heard their entire lives; we want our students to encounter the words and worlds of others, to do the difficult work of finding a way to put those words and their own into a sentence together.<\/p>\n