As Chris Thaiss and Tara Porter wrote a decade ago, more than half of the 418 WAC programs that they studied either failed or were significantly reconstituted (2010, p. 558). Recent pressures due to budget cuts, the effects of Covid-19, and rapidly shifting priorities in higher education have further threatened the sustainability of WAC programs at the same time as these challenges have highlighted their importance. This workshop will examine ways to keep WAC programs thriving, including the formulation of strategic plans with stakeholder input, aligning program goals with campus priorities, using SWOT analyses to mitigate external threats with internal strengths, and the ability to be flexible in order to meet changing campus needs. Drawing from the literature in strategic planning as well as the recent book Sustainable WAC (Cox, Galin, Melzer, 2018), the presenters will discuss the ways in which they have focused on program sustainability in three different institutional settings. We will save a significant amount of time towards the end of the webinar for brainstorming further ideas for sustainability and for participants to apply these frameworks to their own institutional settings.
