In 1990 Helon Howell Raines published "Is There a Writing Program in This College? Two Hundred and Thirty-Six Two-Year Schools Respond," in which she reported on her study, via survey and eight follow-up telephone interviews, of two-year college writing programs across the country. Raines asked questions about departmental and institutional structure, curriculum, conceived purposes of the writing courses, and other things, encompassing all aspects of what could be considered a writing program. In the twenty-plus years since Raines's study, numerous writers have likewise sought--explicitly or implicitly--a pattern or model for a writing program at the two-year college and, like Raines, have failed to find or articulate one. In this article, the author traces that arc of research and looks at implicit patterns of belief that shape discussions of writing programs that occur throughout the field to argue that the time has come to offer a definition, however tentative, of a model of a two-year college writing program. To do this, the author looks at this research and at these patterns of beliefs through the lens of activity theory to develop a concise and usable definition of a two-year college writing program.