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Volume CXXXII, Number 11 |
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Departments set new goals for writers
ALEC SCHLEY
STAFF WRITER
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| Kitty Sullivan '04 of the Writing Project assists Brian Dunn '05 with a history paper. The College is in the process of reassessing the role of writing among students. (Karsten Moran, Bowdoin Orient) |
Bowdoin faculty unanimously passed a measure pertaining to writing at their Monday meeting. The measure asked that each department articulate the specific standards for writing within its particular discipline.
Craig A. McEwen, Dean for Academic Affairs, said the main reason for the referendum on writing is the "recognition that the learning of writing develops over four years of college, often in relation to growing expertise in a discipline and its ideas." At Bowdoin, as at many other colleges, we have tended to think of writing as a skill that students bring with them or that can be acquired in the first year. That assumption is wrong and demands that we think about how we teach writing throughout four years at Bowdoin and in relation to student's majors."
The measure in part was born out of a need for cohesion within each department and to come up with a general standard to guide students. Susan Tananbaum, chair of the History Department, said "[Bowdoin professors] all need to communicate the methodology of our disciplines and to think consciously about how to do so. Thinking about how to teach those skills should be a useful exercise. The process will allow us to collect data, compare and contrast approaches, and enable departments to think about how and what we want our students to learn."
While the faculty agreed to articulate specific standards for writing with the Monday referendum, how each department will re-enforce good writing skills pertaining to their discipline was not explicitly stated. Tananbaum said, "There is always room to increase emphasis on particular skills-how we do that is an on-going debate. Good writing also requires students to be good readers and thinkers, and I suspect we can improve all those skills through a college-wide commitment to teach them explicitly and value them. Excellence in reading, writing, and thinking is essential to quality work in all disciplines."
The "college-wide commitment" to teach effective writing means potentially re-examining programs, like First-Year Seminars, that already exist on campus, or creating new ones. According to McEwen, "We are interested in improving the teaching and learning of writing over four years. If that takes new "programs" [the college] will propose them. We are also concerned with strengthening the first year seminar program which we think is successful but still has room for improvement. Without knowing what changes we might propose, it is premature to suggest a timetable, but I imagine that some changes might be in place for next year."
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