CAS ready to alter writing requirements

In a move aimed directly at improving undergraduate writing skills, the College of Arts and Sciences will revamp their writing program this fall, creating a new year-long seminar requirement, placement exam and tutoring center.

“There was a perception we weren’t doing enough for undergraduates in the teaching of writing,” said Director of the College Writing Program and associate English professor Michael Prince. “We’re moving from the general rhetoric of an EN104 to embrace the model of the writing seminar.”

All freshmen entering CAS in the fall will be required to complete “a full year of formal instruction in writing based on the reading of enduring and exemplary works.” The current composition classes — EN101, 102, 104 and 201 — will be discontinued at the end of this semester and replaced with new WR seminars.

Writing Seminar and Writing and Research Seminar make up the heart of the program. These classes will feature readings focusing on a common academic theme, such as philosophy, history and the sciences. Papers and oral presentations will focus on critical analyses between works, all seeking to improve the writing skills of students. Prince said the thematic design of the seminars makes these more beneficial to students.

“Students will get to read complex and rewarding works in the context of a course that is teaching them to write at a collegiate level,” Prince said. “They’re very grateful that this gives them topical content.

“For science students, the only literature they’ll encounter will be in a meaningful course. Since students choose their focus, they’ll know what they’re getting into.”

The only notable exception to the seminar system will be students enrolled in the Core Curriculum. Students who complete the full Core humanities requirement will satisfy the writing requirement. Any student who drops out of Core prior to completion may need to complete one or both seminars, Prince said.

Changes are also being made in class placement. BU will no longer use SAT or ACT scores to determine English placement, nor will AP credit be accepted to satisfy the requirements.

All incoming CAS students will take the newly created BU Writing Assessment test, or BUWA, during Summer Orientation. In a November 1999 proposal outlining the program, the College Writing Committee explained the rationale behind the BUWA.

“Personal experience suggested to the Writing Committee that the ability of the SAT-I and ACT to test proficiency in reading and writing is severely limited by a multiple choice format,” the report said. “The AP could not stand as the Writing Program’s sole placement instrument since the majority of CAS students do not take the AP course and exam in high school.”

A committee headed by Prince designed the BUWA, which will be taken before and after the seminars to determine student progress. The trial run of BUWA tests taken this past summer gave students 50 minutes to summarize and critically respond to two pages of Ralph Waldo Emerson essays.

“Preceptors worked with me to determine the fundamental goal; for students to be able to read challenging texts and respond critically,” Prince said.

WR100 will “almost always be the first placement,” according to Prince. A small number of students who score well on the BUWA will be placed directly in WR150. Poor scorers on the BUWA, along with students taking English as their second language, will be placed in classes lower than WR100 that will stress vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.

Also created by the plan is a new College Writing Center, located directly above Radio Shack on the third floor of 730 Commonwealth Ave. The Writing Center serves both as a monitor of the entire program and its professors and as a place where students can go for additional help.

Staffed by salaried undergraduate tutors, as well as seminar leaders, Prince said the Writing Center is not meant to replace the relationship built in seminars, but enhance them.

“It offers the chance for one-on-one tutorials in writing,” Prince said. “It’s not mandatory; it leaves the option open for students to go as much as they want.”

Before instituting these changes, Provost and CAS Dean Dennis Berkey formed a College Committee of Writing in November 1997 with 10 members of the humanities faculty. No single event led to the changes, Senior Associate Dean Susan Jackson said, but rather a general feeling that change would benefit all undergraduates.

“A degree in the liberal arts and sciences from BU ought to certify more than minimal, or entry level competence in writing,” Jackson said. “[Berkey articulated] that an intellectually ambitious and exciting program for progress in writing at the college level should incorporate closely related advances in reading, thinking, speaking and research.

“Writing, alongside the Core Curriculum as a flagship program of the whole College would be, more than a good move among others, the single most responsible provision we could make for our students flourishing, here and in later life.”

Following a year’s worth of redrafting by the Committee, the initial plan was released in the spring of 1999 to faculty, administration and staff. According to Jackson, a “handful of composition sections were randomly selected for transformation into pilot writing seminars” during the 1999-2000 academic year. This past fall, all EN104 and EN201 classes were taught as writing seminars.

“Without having to wait for the new requirements to kick in, this year’s students have gotten in on the ground floor of improvements,” Jackson said.

Prince was appointed to Director of the College Writing Program last March, eight months before the CAS faculty approved the proposal by a nearly unanimous vote. Prince believes the new writing seminars will strengthen not just the student’s writing, but their ability to learn in all disciplines.

“The ability to read with comprehension and critical discernment; to write with clarity, correctness and rational integrity; to conduct independent research; and to speak with poise and purpose is basic to all study, as well as to continued growth as an educated person and contributing citizen,” Prince said.

Peter Hawkins, religion professor and Director of the Luce Program in Scripture and the Literary Arts, is one of the faculty members who will teach the writing seminars. After spending 24 years on the faculty at Yale University, Hawkins joined the BU faculty this past year.

“One of my main reasons for coming to BU was to teach undergraduates,” Hawkins said. “I’ve never taught freshmen before.”

In the seminar he plans to teach, “Biblical Fictions,” Hawkins will help students analyze the way the Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament tell stories. He seeks to show them how these ancient texts “continue to live,” while enhancing their own writing skills.

“They’ll read everything as writing. Not just what does it mean, but how does it mean it,” Hawkins said. “Look carefully at how the text is put together, and how to love that. The amount of creative work we do will get them closer to the writing, they’ll write their way into it.”

The changes in the composition requirement will affect only CAS freshmen this fall, Prince said. While most, if not all, of the other Colleges anticipate adopting the seminar model for Fall 2002. For example, the College of Engineering will require all their students entering this fall to take the BUWA for placement in an “appropriate writing seminar,” according to an ENG proposal. Full changes to their curriculum won’t be made until next September.

Building on Berkey’s vision over three years ago, these changes will more than double the size of the undergraduate writing program, moving it beyond just the Department of English. Prince said this “major commitment of resources and energy” shows the University’s dedication to undergraduate education.

“The administration gets a lot of bad press,” Prince said. “This is the administration allocating tremendous resources to ensure that every freshman that comes through our doors leaves here an accomplished writer.”