When faculty members asked for help to integrate writing into their curricula, no matter the discipline, they heard from Gary, eager to lend her assistance.

When lecturers struggled successfully to establish an independent University Writing Program, the whole campus heard from Gary, as a leader in the effort.

When U.S. News & World Report recently recognized UC Davis’ Writing Across the Curriculum program as one of the best in the nation (for the third year in a row), Dateline heard from Gary, trumpeting the news.

When the campus engaged in discussions of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Devil’s Highway, in the Campus Community Book Project, you heard from Gary, as the project coordinator.

When the Academic Federation handed out its prestigious James H. Meyer Distinguished Achievement Award in years past, you heard from Gary, as the author of the recipients’ biographies.

Now, Gary Sue Goodman is receiving the Meyer award, and Dateline has come calling on her.

Normally, it is the other way around, with Goodman the writing teacher, administrator and “indefatigable networker” getting the word out about various causes, programs and awards. “I think PR is in my blood,” she said. In fact, her father was a public relations man and a writer.

Goodman said she appreciates the Meyer award because it comes from the Academic Federation, which she said “has played an incredible role in demonstrating the importance of nontenured academics,” and because the award recognizes her teaching as well as her administrative work, “which often gets a bad rap at the university.”

Goodman went to Wellesley College for her bachelor’s degree (psychology major, English minor), New Mexico State University for her master’s in American literature and the history of the novel, and Stanford for her doctorate in modern thought and literature.

She came to UC Davis as a lecturer 23 years ago, first in the Composition Program and the Campus Writing Center and then the University Writing Program, teaching advanced writing in the disciplines and professions — especially journalism.

“UC Davis faculty in all disciplines have always been supportive of the writing program,” Goodman said. “But, before we went independent in 2005, we had no tenure-track writing teachers.”

Today, the independent writing program has five tenure-track positions, which Goodman said is unprecedented in the UC system. Goodman is a continuing lecturer without tenure.

She said writing instruction has come a long way from the days when first-year students wrote about literature.

“Frankly, very few people are ever going to write about literature again,” Goodman said. “As professionals or academics, they will be writing in the genres of their specific fields.”

This is where the University Writing Program comes in, teaching expository, essay and research writing, for example, as well as writing in the disciplines and in the professions.

“The students love it, because the courses are very practical,” she said, for biologists and engineers, lawyers and journalists, to name a few.

The University Writing Program also teaches graduate student writing, trains graduate students to teach writing and consults with faculty all over campus on how to better incorporate writing into the curriculum.

Gone are the days when professors simply advised their classes: “You need to turn in a paper at the end of the quarter.”

Goodman initiated workshops to help faculty members set up a process for writing, by crafting better assignments, establishing deadlines for topics and first drafts, having students review one another’s papers and coaching students in revision strategies.

Her colleagues credit Goodman for being instrumental as a lecturer and an administrator in bringing the writing program to where it is today: respected around the nation.

She became director of the Composition Program in 2000, at a time when lecturers were being let go and morale was low. No one else applied. Goodman said she dove in “because it gave me a platform from which to fight for the program.”

Fellow UWP lecturer Raquel Scherr Salgado, in nominating Goodman for the Meyer award, said: “These years were fraught with difficulty both inside and outside the program and demanded exceptional administrative and leadership skills.

“Gary embraced the challenge, using the position to expand and strengthen the program.”

Goodman would go on to serve as associate director of the newly established University Writing Program, then as assistant director for Writing Across the Curriculum. Among the UWP’s more recent accomplishments: the establishment of a writing minor. (Goodman, who serves as the writing minor and internships faculty adviser, said she knows of 55 people who already have declared the minor.)

Professor Chris Thaiss, who holds the Clark Kerr Presidential Chair and serves as director of the University Writing Program, heartily endorsed Goodman’s nomination for the Meyer award.

“For more than 15 years she has been building connections between the writing program and disciplinary faculty across campus, helping them develop techniques that not only allow them to make student writing an integral part of their teaching, but also help writers improve through constructive feedback, efficiently given,” Thaiss wrote.

He described Goodman as “an indefatigable networker,” adept at gaining support for her cross-disciplinary efforts.

Salgado said Goodman “has contributed immensely to the intellectual and public life of this campus,” not only with the University Writing Program, but with the Campus Community Book Project and by advancing conditions for underrepresented constituencies at UC Davis.

Goodman has been active in the book project since it began in 2002. She was director of the Composition Program at the time, and recalled saying, “If there’s going to be a campuswide reading project, we need to be involved in it.”

She incorporates the selected books into her writing classes, has taught freshmen seminars on five of the books and has lectured on the books in other classes (presenting one program titled “Kites as Imagery in The Kite Runner,” for example). She served as the project’s interim coordinator for two years, 2006 and 2007.

For Goodman, the book project is like the University Writing Program and its work all across campus. “I enjoy the collaborative process,” she said, “having a vision and the optimism to believe it could actually happen and then seeing it come true.”

AT A GLANCE

A dinner in Gary Sue Goodman's honor is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 3 in the AGR Room at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. Reservations should be directed to Nancy Kilpatrick, nlkilpatrick@ucdavis.edu. The cost is $35 per person; checks payable to the UC Regents are due by Oct. 21 to Nancy Kilpatrick in the Academic Senate office, 402 Mrak Hall.

The James H. Meyer Distinguished Achievement Award, named after a former chancellor, is the Academic Federation’s highest honor.

The federation comprises some 1,200 people, including lecturers, researchers, Cooperative Extension specialists, academic administrators and academic coordinators.