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November 2007 The Write Way to Learn
By Jamie L. Freedman Since its establishment in 2003, GW’s University Writing Program has helped thousands of students strengthen their academic writing and research skills. Now, thanks to a three-year special endowment payout for strategic initiatives, the program is multiplying in both size and scope. The targeted funding is fueling a substantial increase in the number of Writing in the Disciplines (WID) courses for sophomores and juniors and providing training and support for discipline-based writing courses. “WID courses, offered by departments throughout the University, use writing to push students to think about a field at an advanced level,” says Melinda Knight, then executive director of the University Writing Program. “In writing about and within their chosen fields, students wrestle intellectually with the work of scholars and learn to position themselves in the community of writers and thinkers.” All undergraduate GW students must take two writing-intensive WID courses to graduate, ideally one as a sophomore and one as a junior. Offered across a broad range of disciplines, including history, sociology, physics, math, anthropology, biology, and economics, WID courses build upon the required freshman writing class UW20. Both classes offer a low student-teacher ratio and are supported by several kinds of assistance. “To get the maximum sustainable impact from the strategic endowment funding, we designed seven initiatives to support the WID program,” says Knight, who directed a team of more than 50 writing specialists, including 25 full-time faculty, 17 regular part-time faculty, and 15 graduate writing preceptors. One of WID’s initiatives is the undergraduate writing preceptor program, which pairs top undergraduate students with full-time faculty members teaching WID courses. The students, who receive $1,000 stipends, provide individualized instruction to WID students under the supervision of a faculty mentor. “The program has been enormously successful, as it provides valuable support to our WID classes and gives our undergraduate preceptors an opportunity to shine as writing coaches,” says Knight. A second initiative pumps funds into the graduate writing preceptor program. “The endowment money has enabled us to fund three additional five-year, graduate writing preceptorships for Ph.D. students, bringing the total number of graduate preceptors to 15,” says Knight. The preceptors receive extensive training in the teaching of writing, as well as experience working in the Writing Center, assisting in WID courses, and teaching UW20. All graduate writing preceptors take a required doctoral seminar on the theory and practice of teaching writing. The endowment payout also helps fund graduate teaching assistantships in the School of Business, including a course that will soon be required for all sophomore business students called Analysis of Business Issues. “Students work together in teams on a community service project, which they ultimately write about and present,” Knight explains. In another School of Business initiative, the endowment money helped fund a teaching circle comprising five faculty members who met regularly last fall to discuss how to integrate more writing in their courses. An initiative last year focused on redesigning some of the University’s largest, most popular lecture courses to the WID format. “Departments were given funding for course development, as well as graduate teaching assistants trained in teaching writing in the disciplines,” says Knight. Consequently, five major courses—including a class on U.S. diplomatic history required for all Elliott School of International Affairs students and a core course in American studies—are now offered as WID courses. “Our final initiative focuses on increasing the number of WID courses at the sophomore level to build upon gains realized freshman year,” says Knight. Funding targets sophomore seminars and gateway courses. As a result of the initiative, the Department of History is converting all of its 101 sophomore seminar courses to WID courses, and several other departments are considering following suit. University wide, the number of WID offerings expanded from 92 courses in 2004-05 to 284 courses in 2006-07. The total number of WID seats available increased 50 percent between spring 2006 and spring 2007, while the number of WID seats rose by 383 percent in the School of Business and by 119 percent in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The latest venture is the WID Studio, an online environment of writing resources for faculty and students and a “live” version, on the first floor of Gelman Library. “We’re pulling together online resources to help WID faculty design writing assignments, use best teaching practices, and evaluate student papers,” she says. The studio will also provide online resources for students and will house a new site on responsible research. “We are helping our students get the most out of their college education by learning through writing and also preparing them for the modern information age by providing them with the information literacy and communication skills they need to succeed,” says Knight.
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