Faculty debate writing standards and requirements

The elimination of Expository Writing as a requirement has sparked an e-mail debate among faculty about the future of student writing instruction. Meanwhile, the First-Year Experience (FYE) committee met again last Thursday to develop how the new freshman seminars will assume that task.

"I strongly believe that there should be such a requirement because the quality of student writing is nowhere near what it should be," Ellis West, a political science professor, wrote in an e-mail, citing the problem of poor writing at the University of Richmond and nationwide. "It has gotten steadily worse in recent years."

FYE committee members envision that the change to topical seminars taught by full-time faculty will elevate the quality of student analytical writing, said committee member Joseph Essid, director of the Writing Center. Currently, adjunct professors teach Expository Writing, or English 103, and vary on the type and amount of writing they require. Smaller sections and the option to work with writing consultants from the Writing Center will also encourage more feedback throughout the writing process.

"I think the seminars will accomplish what [English] 103 accomplished in a much more coherent way," Essid said. "I don't see us losing anything."

According to two seniors, they won't.

"I would say that [Expository Writing] was the most useless class I've ever taken," senior Jess Dowe said.

The seminars will replace three first-year requirements: Core - a critical reading course - Expository Writing and Library Skills. The aim is to let students practice their writing skills in a topic they select, Essid said. Studies have shown that students write better when they are interested in the topic, said committee chairwoman Elisabeth Gruner, associate professor of English.

But other professors worry that students tackling reading, writing, speaking, library skills and the seminar-specific topic will pay less attention to writing than they would in a writing-specific course.

"I'm worried that the advocates of the first-year seminars are thinking that they're going to do everything well, and you can't do everything well," said Woody Holton, associate professor of history and American studies.

Similar concerns regarding writing courses have been echoed nationwide.

"As I learned more about the world of composition studies, I came to the conclusion that unless writing courses focus exclusively on writing, they are a sham," Stanley Fish, law professor at Florida International University, wrote a month ago on his New York Times blog, "Think Again."

A sham or not, professors said they wished there had been at least a more complete faculty discussion before making the decision to fold the writing requirement into the seminars. The faculty voted to replace two semesters of Core with two seminars at its end-of-the-year meeting in May. The seminar proposal also included eliminating English 103 as the Communications I (COM I) requirement, which Gruner said she had clearly highlighted during the meeting's opening remarks.

Professors acknowledged that they were aware of the requirement's potential elimination and had received e-mails during the semester on the matter. But, however unintentional, the debate about Core's fate overshadowed another crucial decision.

"We could have had a good debate, but the Core debate eclipsed the [English] 103 debate," Holton said. "It's a momentous step to get rid of a writing requirement without discussion."

But faculty members are talking now, circulating e-mails with their opinions and explaining their positions to one another. Holton said he had appreciated Essid's reply to his e-mail last week.

"While many of the adjunct faculty have long-term experience in writing instruction, they are not 'professional' by any sense of Richmond's faculty standards," Essid wrote to Holton. "They are hired term to term, with no promise of future work, often splitting their teaching between two or even three other institutions. They have no health benefits and must even pay to use our gymnasium."

Having full-time faculty teach writing is an important step, wrote Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, in his book "Our Underachieving Colleges." But they should be "compositionists," or experienced writers, which most schools can't afford to hire additionally.

Seminars will be taught by full-time faculty, from any department or school on campus, who submit their topical proposals and are approved by the committee, Essid said. That is one concern of Mary Thomas, an adjunct professor who has been teaching Expository Writing for 13 years.

"All teachers here can recognize good writing, but the people who teach Expository Writing have actually had training on the process of writing" and the process of teaching writing, Thomas said.

Gruner said this wasn't necessarily true for the degrees of all Expository Writing teachers and that seminar faculty would have a week of writing training before next year, as well as periodical workshops. The committee is still developing a specific policy.

The committee was formed in response to a call for an innovative, shared first-year academic experience in The Richmond Promise of the university's Strategic Plan for 2009 to 2014, Essid said. The seminars will aim for this shared experience by being required for all freshmen. Currently, students with high AP or SAT Writing scores are exempt from English 103.

With the new seminars, all freshmen will be exposed to writing practice for two semesters. Essid said the focus would shift from reasoning from a claim, as taught in high school, to reasoning to a claim. The focus would also shift from personal writing, commonly found in English 103, to analytical writing.

Thomas said uneven English 103 experiences (she required students to write ethnographies while other classes were writing about "what my name means to me") had been a main student concern. Her and others' main concern is the lack of review of, and reflection on, what impact cutting the requirement will have in the future before changing it.

When contacted, President Edward Ayers; Andrew Newcomb, dean of Arts and Sciences; and Suzanne Jones, English department chair, directed questions to Essid and Gruner.

As the School of Arts and Sciences cuts its writing requirement, the Robins School of Business has been requiring a half-unit business communications course starting with freshmen who entered in 2008. The course teaches students to write clearly and concisely for businesses by stressing case studies, business reports and the writing of coherent e-mails and memos, said Robert Nicholson, associate dean of the business school and associate professor of economics.

Strong writing and critical thinking skills have been the main reason employers have cited for hiring Robins School graduates, Nicholson said.

Contact staff writer Maura Bogue at maura.bogue@richmond.edu