Faculty members in the College of Letters and Science say it’s time to do the write thing for improving undergraduate composition skills at UC Davis.
Concerns that UC Davis students are not writing well during their college career and are entering the workforce with poor communication skills prompted a nine-month study from the dean’s office of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and within the English department.
The result is a report recommending the college replace its current two-course requirement with a three-course requirement that spreads writing instruction throughout an undergraduate’s career–and throughout the disciplines.
The report proposes requiring two "stand-alone" composition courses, as at present, plus a third "writing-intensive" course housed in disciplines throughout the college.
The report also said the campus should substantially boost its support for writing instruction by creating a centrally housed and funded Center for the Teaching of Writing.
Comments are being sought from across the campus among faculty members and administrators. After feedback has been received, revisions will be made and the final report submitted to the Executive Committee of the College of Letters and Science for approval. Requests to fund a new writing center will go to the provost.
The report is on the Web at http://www-lsdo.ucdavis.edu/HARCS/Reports/Comp_Req_task_force_repot.pdf.
Although this report is aimed at the more than 11,000 students affiliated with the College of Letters and Science, the 9,000 plus undergraduates housed within UC Davis’ other two undergraduate colleges may also be affected. Administrators involved with undergraduate education in those colleges say they pay close attention to L&S requirements.
• A call to conscience
Undergirding the report is a call to the conscience of the UC Davis faculty.
"One of the themes of the task force is that writing is a campuswide responsibility," said Elizabeth Langland, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and the administrator who asked for the study. "One reason students don’t take writing seriously is that few senate faculty members are engaged in teaching it. Writing instruction and practice are the responsibilities of the entire university–not of a single department or set of departments."
English professor Karl Zender, who chaired the Task Force to Review the L&S Composition Requirement, spent last spring visiting composition programs at Ohio State, the University of Michigan and UCLA, as well as attending the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication where writing instructors trade ideas on the pedagogy of writing. He also researched programs at Cornell, Duke and several other universities.
Based on these experiences and assessments by two outside evaluators, Zender said he believes that the present "stand-alone" courses need to be augmented with additional first-year courses and with new courses at the sophomore level. He also believes that successful models exist for integrating writing instruction into the curriculum in the form of "writing intensive" courses.
• Support services needed
The success of these other university programs comes from providing a number of support services:
• Faculty seminars on writing as well as on how to teach and judge writing;
• Financial incentives for faculty members to participate;
• Training and support for graduate students in writing instruction; and
• Tutoring services beyond what UC Davis is able to provide through its Learning Skills Center.
"I think the original vision of Campus Writing Center was similar to what we’re proposing in the new Center for the Teaching of Writing," Zender said, "but over time the center moved into the English department, and it has not been separately funded nor well funded. As a result it has lost visibility and the ability to be effective."
For the past 20 years, UC Davis has staffed composition classes almost entirely by lecturers and graduate student instructors. As a result, the Composition Program employs 31 lecturers, 24 of whom are long-term employees on three-year contracts.
Lecturers deliver about 15 percent of the lower-division classes meeting the current requirement and almost all of the upper-division classes, according to Mardena Creek, who has directed the English department program for the past three years.
• Taking a collective responsibility
In turning the campus toward taking on a collective responsibility in every discipline, the curricula will have to be revised, the report advises.
The plans calls for new first-year and sophomore courses in various disciplines, along with writing-intensive courses within majors. The writing-intensive courses would require a minimum of 3,000 words of final-draft writing in two or more assignments with opportunity for revision and with direct writing instruction. The committee suggests that the writing-intensive courses should all be certified as meeting the "writing experience" component of the General Education requirement.
Zender said he envisions that composition lecturers would continue to play important roles on campus if the report were to be adopted. They would continue to teach the upper-division English 102 and English 104 as well as many of the sophomore-level courses. In addition, they would staff the Center for Teaching Writing, providing the expertise to train faculty members and graduate students in writing instruction.
Creek said she supports the report but sees a long road ahead.
• Need for systematic training
"As a writing teacher, I’m concerned about being able to deliver high-quality writing instruction: Our faculty will need systematic training and that’s going to be a big job."
The report endorses the value of maintaining most of the existing 102 and 104 upper-division composition classes. It also considers the needs of the growing number of students who speak English as a second-language. Creek said recommendations concerning these issues are particularly positive.
Two other members of the committee, Christopher Reynolds of music and Richard Cowen of geology, say the trick will be to find a few dedicated faculty members in each discipline willing to take on writing instruction.
"You can’t force people to do this but there is always a minority of faculty members who will be active participants in any program," Cowen said.
He called on the administration to support the writing program with the financial resources to pay for added graduate student assistance and faculty incentives to encourage faculty members to include writing-intensive courses in their teaching load.
Reynolds said the committee held the unanimous belief that the composition lecturers are a resource to be guarded at UC Davis. "If we are really going to expect the faculty to take responsibility for teaching writing, then we need to provide the services to make this possible," Reynolds said.