The First Year Writingfaculty embraces the role of literacy educators in higher education, challenging students to see writing as a multifaceted activity, and immersing them in multiple and far-ranging experiences with writing.   The faculty understands that students begin with First-Year Writing classes but must refine their writing skills throughout their academic lives. Professors help students gain comfort in writing, through a repertory of practices: pre-writing and generating techniques, multiple approaches for developing and organizing their own message, a variety of strategies for revising and editing their own original texts, and ways of preparing products for public audiences and for deadlines.  The faculty focuses on developing students’ reflective abilities and meta-awareness about writing by encouraging students to embrace writing, not simply as a set of strategies for the production of essays, but an exercise in thinking. Students are helped to grow as writers through multiple opportunities to discuss what they are writing about with their peers as well as by attending writing conferences with their professors. The faculty creates spaces for student-writers to experience a complex web of relationships and craft their own unique identities with texts, writing, and multiple literacies.

http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/centers/iws/firstyear