Partnerships between writing across the curriculum (WAC) and civic engagement (CE) programs are not given much attention but these partnerships improve each program significantly. CE programs can borrow models from WAC for professional development and obtain support for specific kinds of writing assignments; WAC programs can find among CE instructors a willing audience for critiquing the structural oppression inherent in literacy and for valuing dialectical, linguistic, and genre diversity. This snapshot focuses on a faculty writing retreat that emerged out of a WAC/ CE partnership and demonstrates how such partnerships can open the door for critical WAC pedagogy.

of New Mexico hosted the inaugural Summit of the National Consortium of Writing Across Communities (NCWAC) in nearby Santa Fe. In attendance were twenty-four established and emerging scholars and graduate students working in (and across) fields such as community literacy, writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, and second-language writing.