This article examines the pedagogical response of English and writing faculty to a controversy that took place at their liberal arts college. Findings from faculty interviews highlight a number of ways that instructors might engage local controversies, in keeping with their curricular goals and commitments to pedagogical transparency.

This essay reports on a writing-based formative assessment of a university-wide initiative to enhance students’ global learning. Our mixed (and unanticipated) results show the need for enhanced expertise in writing assessment as well as for sustained partnerships among diverse institutional stakeholders so that public programming—from events linked to classroom-level learning to broader cross unit mandates like accreditation—can yield more rigorous, responsive, and mixed method assessments.