This month the written word moved officially into the top priority basket for UC Davis' undergraduate curriculum.

The Executive Committee for the College of Letters and Science approved a faculty program committee for the new, independent University Writing Program -- which in academic parlance means the faculty has signed off on bringing the University Writing Program into the college fold.

UC Davis is making campus history by devoting a group of ladder-rank faculty members specifically to writing as a distinct field of research and instruction. The program faculty will include five Academic Senate faculty members who will join two dozen lecturers who formerly taught in the Composition Program.

The new program will operate with a $3 million budget, delivering about 400 courses over the year to about 9,000 students. Besides the program faculty that teaches the upper-division courses, the program will employ graduate students, mostly from the English department, to teach the lower-division courses and postdoctoral lecturers to teach in the upper division.

The program is recruiting a director and another search is under way for a faculty position at the associate or full-professor level. The University Writing Program is within the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and housed in Voorhies Hall.

Undergraduates will see little change initially, since the program is already up and running under the interim direction of Brenda Schildgen, professor of comparative literature. Until this quarter, the program was operated as the Composition Program under the wing of the Department of English. By next year, the catalog will be listing those English 1, 18, 19 and 100 series classes as University Writing Program 1, 18, 19, and the 100 and 300 series.

"This is an exciting new beginning," Schildgen says. "It's taken a lot of work from a lot of people in what has been considered a problem area for a long time."

A related support unit -- Writing Across the Curriculum Program -- is reporting to the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Aimed at assisting faculty members and graduate students to better integrate writing throughout the campus, the program will greatly strengthen writing instruction in General Education classes.

Many faculty members despair over their undergraduates' writing ability, acknowledges Gary Sue Goodman, assistant director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. "I want them to call me and complain that their students can't write. That give us an opportunity to analyze the students' cognitive skills and put together a plan for success."

The UC Davis faculty members and administrators who crafted these solutions say they are savoring a victory few thought possible three years ago when faculty indecision, labor strife and a lack of resources were problems.

"Underlying this change is the long-time belief that UC Davis stood out from the other UC campuses in doing the right thing by undergraduates," says Joe Kiskis, a physics professor credited as instrumental in changing the dynamics for the writing program. "We still want UC Davis to be known for having strong undergraduate education -- and this program demonstrates our commitment."

Kiskis points to the coalition of supporters. They include Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and Provost Virginia Hinshaw, who made writing a priority in the undergraduate curriculum by giving substantial long-term resources. The directorship has been given an endowed chair, the Clark Kerr Presidential Chair of the University Writing Program.

Jeff Gibeling, former chair of the Academic Senate until August 2002 (now dean of graduate studies), and Bruce Madewell, who served as chair 2002-04, are credited with focusing the senate faculty on the issue. Gibeling worked with the senate to create a new Undergraduate Council in June 2002 and charged it to look into writing instruction. The senate appointed Kiskis to chair it.

The Undergraduate Council and senate committees had broad representation. Staunch writing advocates across the discipline joined together to hammer out an agreeable program.

In addition, Pat Turner, vice provost for undergraduate studies, Elizabeth Langland, former HArCS dean, and English Chair David Robertson led in constructing solutions.

"Brenda deserves credit for working extraordinarily hard on the proposal and on relations among the University Writing Program, the Department of English and the lecturers that were key to success," Kiskis adds. "Gary Goodman has been a champion of high-quality writing instruction for many years -- without her dedication and that of all other lecturers, it would not have been possible to build a program with such a strong base of talented, experienced instructors."

Schildgen says having a unified program will trigger other much-needed reforms:

• A redesign of graduate student pedagogical training for writing instruction in the General Education classes and for teaching composition;
• The creation of a designated emphasis in rhetoric and composition for graduate students to help employment prospects;
• The development of an undergraduate minor in rhetoric and composition;
• The creation of a program to help at-risk doctoral students who need help with their writing skills;
• The set-up of an advice line for students concerned about their writing assignments; and
• The development of computer labs and staff dedicated to writing support.

As a designated priority in the upcoming Comprehensive Campaign, the program will hopefully be the beneficiary of a new facility.

Kiskis has high hopes for the future of undergraduate writing, quoting UC Davis mathematics professor Evelyn Silvia, an avid advocate of writing.

"Evelyn makes this point about student writing: Students will rise to our expectations when we explicitly value high-quality writing in our classes."