Starting in October of 1996, Kate Ronald began working with faculty in all departments of RTFSBA, meeting with department chairs, faculty groups, sitting in on classes, and consulting with faculty about writing in their courses. During the Spring semester of 1997, the Howe Writing Team took shape: Kate was joined by Sidelia Reyna and Serena Hansen, both teaching assistants and Ph.D. students from the Department of English. The team worked with 24 professors in 15 courses. We consulted with professors about writing assignments, read both student writing and professors' comments, made presentations in class about writing, interviewed and worked with students on their writing, helped with course revisions, and sat in on the following classes:

We consulted on an interesting range of writing situations, from hour-long PowerPoint presentations in Retailing, memo exams in Marketing Analysis, executive summaries in Accounting, application letters in Management, research papers in Economics, to case analyses in Finance, and we even persuaded a professor in Statistics to assign a written summary of a particularly convoluted problem, where the students and the professors learned a great deal about how writing and learning work together.

Overall, we hope that we were able to help these professors see more clearly how writing accomplishes their conceptual, disciplinary goals for their courses, and most importantly, we began the process of establishing good will towards writing as an interdisciplinary tool that will help teachers teach better, not simply add to their workload. In other words, we gained credibility and somewhat of a reputation for being useful. Kate also taught a graduate course in the English Department on the history, theory, practice and politics of writing-across-the-curriculum.