I started with very small steps. I moved the first year courses away from pure literary analysis to a wider expository or academic base. Since first year writing is the most visible of my jobs, I dealt with it first. And while first year writing is not the topic of this meeting, in effect, I was helping the English grad students who teach first year comp turn pure literature courses into writing courses about literature. We started to create a sort of hybrid content area / composition course. This was a remarkable change in how the courses had been taught, so I was careful to offer support before making any kind of mandates about the teaching of writing. For example, instead of 400 pages of reading a week, I convinced some of the instructors to offer less than a 100 or so. Instead of having a major paper due at the end of the semester, I convinced some to let writers turn in rough drafts, then provide feedback to guide revision. Because the English grad students are very active pre-professionally, I had to find a way to leave their content alone, but also to develop opportunities for undergraduate writers to write to learn and learn to write. 

This was the very same challenge that faced me in the vast “W” course system, which I began working with next. Although the Dean’s office gave me the option of completely dismantling the writing intensive designation, we kept it, because it had history, because faculty and students were familiar with the construct, and because “W” courses were a part of the undergraduate requirement. With a committee, I reviewed a large number of these classes, found hard evidence that they were lacking in rigor, and then took charge of mentoring and supporting the courses in an active way. 

The review we did of  “W” courses began with a request for departments to send in syllabi ahead of a semester, so I or someone on the committee could check that at the very least our policy’s guidelines were being met: 20 pages of writing, over multiple assignments, with at least one major essay revised after grading and/or consultation. And we didn’t think of this as police work, because our follow-up to a syllabus that didn’t show any useful writing compliance was to offer support and suggestions to help the faculty member meet with the guidelines. We were very wary of enforcing anything, because for years this had not been done. And instead, found that by offering to help tweak the syllabus, that we were acting as consultants rather than as a review board. Further, additional help with actual pedagogy in these classes was begun, not through faculty, but through graduate students.

At Hopkins, as in most R1 schools, TAs do the largest share of grading and responding in nearly all courses, especially the “W” courses. So, it made sense that we could accomplish much toward improving the undergraduate writers’ experience by simply training TAs to better converse with writers in those classes. Using “W” course syllabi to guide us, we’ve begun working with TAs from these courses on obvious things: holistic grading, paper responding, workshopping, and conferencing, tools that help section leading TAs deal with a bombardment of essays. Using some of the essay assignments provided by faculty, we’re discussing topic selection, thesis generation, and promise and delivery. Using sample student papers we’re running 5-10 minute mini-classes, letting TAs role-play a bit in workshops and in conferences before their semesters begin.

We have been leaving content alone in these “W” courses (and by extension, faculty as well), but preparing the readers and graders in a more active way. One of the things we’ve been aware of is the common perception that increasing the amount and type of writing in a college course somehow waters down the content. 

Now, with an average of 70-100 W course sections offered each semester, where did I begin this process of support? Well, because more students at Hopkins earn their W credits later in their undergrad career rather than sooner, I’ve started this job by reaching out to multi-section 100 level “W” courses. 

For example, in Spring 2002, introductory courses in History, Sociology, and History of Art will reach more than 500 freshmen, almost exactly half of our freshmen enrollment. In late January, just before our classes begin, I’ll begin meeting with 20 or so TAs from these classes, giving them a rapid infusion of writing instructor methods and practices.

Should these efforts pay off with better writing in these courses, we’ll continue to expand our reach to other “W” courses, those offered in smaller sections, with fewer TAs, and with more possible faculty involvement.

 But in addition to rethinking the way we would work with “W” courses, we also dreamed up a new style of course that we began to offer in Fall of this year. These “writing in the major” courses are taught by what we call “other department TAs,” not the English TAs who teach our first year writing courses, nor the discipline-area faculty who teach the “W” courses.

I envisioned a hybrid course, fully engaging in sophomore-level content, and fully engaged in the writing process. The choice to use graduate students for instructors was easy. We didn’t want to go to faculty members and tell them to cut their favorite courses in half. Nor did we want to require faculty to attend training seminars. Grad students were willing and able to do the job. Many of them came to us on their own, wanting to know how they might do a better job dealing with the essays their section students wrote. In fact, our first test courses are staffed by TAs who simply wandered into my office one day, and who I recruited for a job that wasn’t even fully formed yet.

We chose a sophomore level setup because undergrads at Hopkins no longer declare majors or obtain department-area advisors until the end of their first full year. We’re hoping to connect with writers with these classes when they are most receptive.

For example, Political Science, Sociology, History, and “general” Science majors now can take writing in the majors courses designed specifically for their needs The grad students who teach these courses have come to one of our standard summer training sessions, in this most recent case, a 6-day affair. The TAs are responsible – with additional help from their department – to work up the “subject” content. Then, with my program’s assistance, the “writing” content is developed. It should be no surprise that we buy into the notion that writers learn best when they study and write about their field, that it is only through writing and revising that they really come to know that field, and that the elements of writing process instruction need to be presented as practical application teaching, not merely as a theoretical structure.

What’s resulting from this plan is what we call a hybrid course, a marriage of a content area course full of readings and discussion and context of the field, with the concentrated writing, revising, workshopping, and conferencing of a typical first year or freshman writing course. The course acts as a twin gateway, to the field, and to the idea that writing is the path that a college student takes in order to achieve mastery.

For a simple comparison, last year in Political Science, a 200 level course in International Relations featured the “W.” But in the 13 weeks of the semester, undergraduate writers wrote only two 1-page responses to readings, and then a 10-page “report” at semester end. None of these was revised. Workshopping or conferencing was not available. There was a vague offer to have the course’s teaching assistants look over rough drafts, but the big paper came in so late at the end of the semester that students typically wrapped their essays up and turned them in unrevised, unread, and unchecked. There was assigned writing, but it wasn’t a writing class. 

Compare that with our Fall 2001 Writing in Political Science course. Students wrote 6 essays of varying lengths. While 3 of the essay were simply responses to readings, the other three included argument, explanation, and in a couple of cases, personal narrative. Each essay was revised; each essay was discussed in a workshop and/or conference. These Poli Sci undergrads were taught the “writing process,” and got an inside look at their instructor’s own process – a germane experience, of course, since their instructor is a writer at work on his dissertation. None of these last elements existed in any way in the old system. Writers in this class –and in future writing in the major hybrids – will expand their knowledge of a chosen field by writing about that field, in the company of a skilled writer and instructor whose interests and background are much more in line with theirs than any regular composition instructor. The writing is not just a measurement of their ability to take in information; the writing becomes the mode of learning. They aren’t simply acquiring knowledge, they are making knowledge.

Finally, while I was hired to primarily work with a group of tremendously talented readers and writers in the first year program, the needs of our undergraduate writers come more clearly in the writing intensive courses they take elsewhere. On table three of the handout you’ll see that in our recent study of 475 Arts & Sciences undergrads only 15% of “W” credits were earned in what we think of as our first year writing courses, the English grad student-led Expository Writing, and the creative writing department’s fiction/poetry course.

85% of the credits earned come from other places.

As I continue to study the field of writing across the disciplines, I find myself embarrassed at our level of development. We are ages behind the times, and that realization sometimes sends me rushing to install as much pedagogy as possible. But, each university’s culture must determine the speed and the direction of movement. 

For us, the path of least resistance has been through graduate TAs, most of them eager to improve their teaching and thicken their job portfolios. But with that choice comes the downside of rapid turnover and frequent re-training. What I get in return, however, is a cadre of eager and ever-inquiring instructors who, because they work in their own field, bring much more to the table.