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On a sunny summer morning in June, an unlikely collection
of USM faculty gather in a room at the Stone House in Freeport.
They are professors of history, environmental science, social
work, psychology, engineering, and English, and they are there
to study what is widely considered one of the more onerous
tasks of academia: practicing and teaching the fundamentals
of good writing.
"Some students' arguments have logical holes in them. It's
like a dish of BB's all rolling around in one paper," says
Ann Dean, USM's director of college writing. The room erupts
with the laughter of recognition. Throughout the rest of the
day, the group engages in an intense, often riotous, examination
of sentence constructions, common errors, and grammatical
gambits as part of Provostıs Annual Summer Writing Seminar.
"Now I know what's wrong when a student has done the assignment,
but has written a boring paper," says 2003 seminar participant
Jan Veinot, an English instructor from Southern Maine Community
College. Veinot is one of several non-USM faculty who have
taken the seminar, as space allows, as its reputation has
grown statewide.
Now in its fifth year, the seminar is gaining popularity
among diverse faculty at USM, helping to strengthen faculty
writing skills and forge interdisciplinary relationships.
It is led by USM English Professor Nancy Gish, who assembles
a cadre of faculty from across the University to present workshops
on the theory and practice of writing. The seminar is open
to 10-12 faculty, each of whom receives a $1,000 stipend for
their participation. In return, they acquire qualifications
to teach a writing-intensive, or "W-course," in their discipline.
Thus far, over 50 faculty have participated, from fields including
chemistry, physics, social work, media studies, nursing, law,
history, and business.
"The seminar addresses both your own writing as a scholar
and the way that's involved in helping your students write
in your field," says Gish. "We focus on the whole process
of writing from as many angles as we can."
The seminar is just one part of a university-wide initiative
to upgrade student writing opportunities and outcomes, to
create what has been dubbed "a culture of writing" at USM.
Although few have disputed the necessity of improving studentsı
writing skills, the mechanics of doing so have proved daunting
-- especially given the university's dwindling resources.
The requisite faculty development has been labor-intensive,
but, after five years, is gaining momentum and USM now is
developing a small, but vested, core of writing-intensive
faculty from many disciplines.
The issue was first formally addressed in the early '90s,
when a Provost's Writing Committee was established. In 1997,
then-provost Mark Lapping produced a report evaluating the
feasibility of developing a Writing-Across-the-Curriculum
program at USM -- part of a growing tide of national interest
in a cross-disciplinary approach to university writing.
Their recommendations included requiring all students to
take a W-course, developing more options for these courses
outside of the English Department, and hiring a university-wide
writing coordinator. These recommendations gradually are being
adopted, with ENG 120 and ENG 150 given writing-intensive
designation, and other writing-intensive courses developed
in Sociology, Philosophy, Business, Environmental Science
and Policy, Honors, and the Russell Scholars Program. Additionally,
a cross-disciplinary team of USM faculty developed a course
last year with a W-designation, "Power, Profit, and Pleasure,"
which enrolled 100 students, all first-time freshmen.
While the English Department has shouldered the lion's share
of W-courses while other departments get up-to-speed, more
W-courses are appearing in various disciplines across the
university. In spring 2003, eight W-courses were offered in
seven departments. For fall 2003, four more will be offered
-- three of them in Environmental Sciences.
Recruiting and retaining new faculty for the job remains
a challenge, say organizers. One concern among faculty is
the apprehension that a writing focus may compromise course
content, says Cheryl Laz, chair of the Core Writing Committee.
Additionally, there is the burden of time in reviewing and
grading what can be several drafts of work. "Essentially,
what you're asking faculty to do is to teach two courses in
one," says Laz. For students, however, it's a boon. "Any student
who takes that course is getting twice their money's worth,"
she says.
Some universities tackle the additional work load by farming
out papers to teaching assistants. The majority of USM's graduate
students, however, are not centered in humanities-based fields
that develop the level of writing expertise needed. USM Engineering
Department Chair Jim Smith avows that his W-courses require
less, not more, grading time. "I give a sophomore course called
"Physical Electronics," he says. "This is not stuff for the
faint of heart. Probably half of the final exam is in essay
form. Students can use equations to embellish their ideas,
but you can go through the essay and tell immediately if the
student understands or not. It's easier to correct an essay
than to go through a long computation to see where the student
made the mistake."
One way more faculty may be persuaded to commit to W-courses,
says Provost Joe Wood, is to develop incentives that compensate
them for their time and effort. Wood cites a current Writing
Committee proposal to increase the number of credit hours
for all W-courses. Students taking a W-course could receive
four credit hours for a normal-length course, without involving
additional class time. Faculty could effectively bank the
additional credit to trade in for course release time later
on. Wood is hopeful the proposal will gain faculty approval
this year.
One of the major benefits of the Provost's Seminar is that
faculty can concentrate on the specific set of skills needed
to write in their disciplines, enhancing their own scholarship.
Rob Sanford, associate professor of Environmental Science
and Policy, says this year's seminar has helped him to edit
and polish a book he is writing on site plan and development.
"The things I'm learning here I'm immediately putting into
action," he says. "My memories of grammar go back to the 7th
grade," he grins. "I learned to write largely by rewriting,
trial and error, the school of hard knocks. I hadn't thought
about the mechanics."
His experience is common among faculty in many fields, says
Gish. "They can see a student's misplaced modifier or mixed
construction and know it's wrong, but not know how to communicate
it. They've read all their lives and absorbed good writing,
but don't consciously know it. At the seminar, they learn
to bring that to a conscious level. And that improves their
own writing as well."
Although the Writing Intensive requirement is a relative
newcomer to revisions in the Core Curriculum, having only
been added since 2001, it benefits from hindsight. Over the
past two summers, a Writing Assessment Committee (headed by
Wayne Cowart of the Linguistics Dept.) has been working to
draft benchmarks and procedures for measuring the effectiveness
of W-courses. As a first step, that group developed a rubric
for writing assessment, which any faculty can use to determine
the quality of a studentıs writing. It's the start of what
Laz calls an effort to "assess over time if giving students
additional practice actually enhances their writing skills."
Laz currently is establishing a writing-intensive web site
for faculty that will provide a forum for sharing both general
and discipline-specific writing criteria and curricula.
In spite of the difficulty of implementing W-courses across
the university, few faculty would dispute the central importance
of writing to all majors. "You don't get successful in environmental
science without writing," notes Rob Sanford. "You can have
the best ideas about what should be done in the environment,
but if you can't express it in writing, it goes nowhere. In
fields of technical knowledge, where concepts are complex,
you can afford lack of clarity in your writing even less."
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