Writing Associates program at Swarthmore College

interesteddad · September 1, 2009, 1:13am

Several weeks ago, questions were asked about why I tout the Swarthmore Writing Associates program. The claim was made that the program serves “remedial” students who are “forced” to go there. This post addresses those issues and provides background information and links.

The Swarthmore writing program is viewed in academic circles as a national model for college writing instruction – cutting edge in its design, the resources Swarthmore invests, and the widespread use of the program. It is an example of the financial investment, undergrad-centric focus, and collaborative spirit that contributes to Swarthmore’s unusually strong undergrad educational program.

Here’s a paragraph from the University of Richmond, describing their writing program:

[WAC</a> Program Information - University of Richmond School of Arts & Sciences: Writing Center](<a href=“http://writing.richmond.edu/program/information.html]WAC”>http://writing.richmond.edu/program/information.html)

As a bit of history, student-mentor writing programs were first conceived in the late 1970s when colleges realized that the old models of teaching writing were not effective with a much more diverse student body. It was one thing when the whole student body came from private prep schools with intensive prior writing instruction, but a different challenge as the student bodies at elite colleges broadened to include increasing numbers of students from public high schools. Specifically, educators came to realize that the model of a professor telling students how to write a paper may not be the most effective approach, largely because there is an element of just giving the professor what he asked for rather than engaging a dynamic learning process. The approach of draft, discussion, editing, and revision appeared to be more effective, especially discussion and review in a peer relationship rather than a teacher-student relationship. In Swarthmore’s version, the student must turn in the original draft, the reviewed copy with comments, and the final revision.

From the preface to the book, Writing Across the Curriculum by Susan McLeod:

<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mcleod_soven/preface.pdf[/url]”>http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mcleod_soven/preface.pdf</a>

In the mid-seventies, a few colleges provided space and time for composition instructors to exchange ideas with colleagues in other disciplines. Often these conversations began as confrontations at meetings of curriculum committees, with instructors from “content” disciplines offering diatribes on the various failings of English 101. Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota), under the academic leadership of Dean Harriet Sheridan, was the first institution that I know of to move the venue of these cross-curricular exchanges to the more civilized setting of a summer workshop. With modest funding from the Northwest Area Foundation, Carleton College instituted the first faculty writing workshops during the summers of 1974 and 1975. These workshops included under graduates who were later designated “rhetoric fellows” and during the academic year were assigned to assist instructors of writing-intensive courses, performing the functions of what we today call writing fellows or writing associates. (In 1979, when Harriet Sheridan became dean of the college at Brown University, she moved quickly to establish the well-known Brown Writing Fellows program, which she had already conceptualized and implemented at Carleton.)

At Brown, Harriet Sheridan tasked a young PhD, Tori Haring-Smith (Swarthmore ’74) with developing what is now known as the prototype Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program at Brown. Starting in 1982, Haring-Smith built the program, with at least three unique attributes:

1) Student writing mentors trained in a full-semester graduate level course for credit in writing pedagogy.

2) A sequence of writing mentor review of papers incorporated into courses across a range of departments.

3) Writing review gaining widespread usage by a cross-section of Brown students, not just for remedial purposes.

A few years later, Haring-Smith’s professor at Swarthmore, Thomas Blackburn, began sharing experiences with her as he implemented a version of the program at Swarthmore, beginning as early as 1985. The development of the Brown program and some discussion of the Swarthmore program are covered in Haring-Smith’s chapter in the aforementioned book:

<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mcleod_soven/chapter11.pdf[/url]”>http://wac.colostate.edu/books/mcleod_soven/chapter11.pdf</a>

On the surface, it may seem that many schools have a comparable program, but Swarthmore’s writing program is leagues beyond what even top LACs offer:

1) Swarthmore requires that all students take at least three “Writing” courses. A “Writing” course is built around a write – conference review – revision sequence, the preferred pedagogical approach for teaching writing. In 25 courses per semester, there are student WA’s assigned to the course, including science courses such as intro Bio (hence the term, “writing across the curriculum”). In others, the professor handles the review/revision sequence. By comparison, Amherst has no requirement for a writing course; Williams just implemented a requirement for one designated writing course.

2) Swarthmore devotes massive financial resources to writing. One permanent faculty position responsible only for running the Writing Associates program, teaching the writing courses, and coordinating with the faculty and a second faculty slot dedicated exclusively to teaching freshman writing courses. By comparison, Williams had NOBODY running the writing program or training their student mentors for several years. They got cited in their accreditation review and hired an interim director – a recent PhD from UMass. Most colleges have a faculty member handling the writing center as a sidelight to teaching “regular” courses. The cost of the 60 some student WA’s each semester is not trivial. Bryn Mawr just cut the number of writing mentors in half as a budget cutting move.

3) Swarthmore’s training of WA’s in unequalled. After being nominated, WA’s take a full semester graduate level course in teaching writing. Currently, about 24 students a year (or about 6% of all Swat grads) take this course and get years of experience helping their peers write better. This, folks, is a real-world job skill that lasts a lifetime – making a boss look better, helping associates write better grant proposals, etc. In comparison, Williams had NO in-house training for several years. Amherst has a few training sessions. In their own self-study, Amherst cited Swarthmore’s program as the gold-standard with resources they could only dream about.

Swarthmore’s program is anything but limited to “remedial” students. In a recent fall semester, 700 students had papers reviewed by Writing Associates – about half of the entire student body in a single semester. Or, put another way, in a given semester nearly 1100 papers were WA’s, split about evenly between walk-in Writing Center review and review as part of a WA’d course. The use of the WA process is consistent over all four classes at Swarthmore, with 33% of the drop in Writing Center sessions being with freshmen, but a full 19% with seniors. That makes the Swarthmore program (like Brown’s) very unusual. Collaborative writing is an ingrained part of the campus culture. It’s impossible to call half the student body “remedial” or participating only because they are “forced” to. The best students in the school are encouraged to and indeed do get papers WA’d.

[Detailed</a> Description: Swarthmore College’s Writing Associates Program](<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/fellows/description.cfm?programid=13]Detailed”>http://wac.colostate.edu/fellows/description.cfm?programid=13)

The Course Writing Associates (WA) Program aims to engage students in the writing process across the curriculum. This goal is largely accomplished through an extensive network of WAs, who are assigned to assist specific classes in writing. Trained by the program director, the WAs work with fellow students during all stages of the writing process: forming an argument, developing rough drafts, and refining a final draft. Typically WAs engage in a series of individual conferences with students, but they have also served as facilitators of larger peer-review sessions and workshops. In both capacities, WAs enable students to improve their writing within a particular discipline and to hone their prose in general. 

Faculty request use of a WA for their course. WAs are placed throughout the curriculum, ranging from an introductory biology course to an advanced spanish seminar. Approximately 700 students, or half of the student population, were estimated to have worked with a WA each semester last year.

[Collection</a> - Swarthmore College Bulletin](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/publications/bulletin/june02/collection.html]Collection”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/publications/bulletin/june02/collection.html)

The WA Program was originally based on the Writing Fellows Program at Brown University, which was developed there by Tori Haring-Smith ’74. Blackburn consulted many other college peer tutoring and writing programs when designing English/Education 001C, The Writing Process, the mandatory training course for WAs. 

According to Blackburn, the WA Program grew out of a curricular change in the mid-1980s that implemented required primary distribution courses designed to give students both exposure and a good foundation for writing in a variety of disciplines. 

“The WA Program addressed one of the goals of the College— to have students become competent academic writers,” Blackburn says.

The program now consists of course WAs, a staffed Writing Center that is open Sunday through Thursday evenings, an on-line writing lab, WA mentors, thesis WAs, and workshops. In fall 2001, 585 papers were “WA’d” at the Writing Center, in addition to more than 500 papers through course “WAing.” In spring 2002, there were 64 WAs, with 22 courses being served by the program.

If you would care to learn a little more, here is an interesting paper recently published in the WAC journal by current Swarthmore writing professor, Jill Gladstein. This focuses on the WA process teaching lab report writing in the intro Bio course:

[Gladstein</a>, Conducting Research in the Gray Space](<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/fellows/gladstein.cfm]Gladstein”>http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/fellows/gladstein.cfm)

shellfell · September 1, 2009, 8:21am

I just find it sad that students don’t come to college with better preparation in how to write.

momuv2 · September 1, 2009, 8:33am

I had to laugh at the "remedial’ component of WA input. My D used the Writing Center for most of her papers last year as a freshman and found the input very helpful, especially in structuring for optimal clarity and emphasis. She is an excellent writer (objective assessment: SAT writing 780; writing sample 12 [perfect score]). Even students who think they’ve written a perfect paper could benefit from passing their work by the WAs, I think.

Burb_Parent · September 1, 2009, 8:51am

When I was an undergrad at a top-ranked University, one of the smartest things I did was to visit the Writing Center. A talented Ph.D. candidate was willing to work with me so that I could learn how to write an A paper in order to get A’s on all my papers. I was a great student at that time, but I wanted to be even better. There is a model of writing that is accepted among academics.

I graduated with almost straight A’s (2 B’s in math!), and this was at a time without as much grade inflation as today.

Later when I went into the business world, I had to re-learn how to write because there is an entirely different style and expectation. Writing learned in high school should be a good foundation, but it not the end of learning how to write.

Anyway, the Swarthmore program sounds great.

CollegeDadX3 · September 1, 2009, 10:42am

This is very interesting to me as S2 just started at Swarthmore. While somewhat gifted in Math, I feel his writing skills need some work. So the first week has been a complete surprise to me. He has met with his advisor three times, talked to many faculty members and picked courses that are perfect for him. The one course I really feel will help is a course that is called Transition to College Writing. What a wonderful opportunity to learn to write successful college level essays. Along with the pass/fail first semester, I feel that Swarthmore makes every opportunity for S2 to be successful. I have followed many of your posts interesteddad and have passed on your opinion about the writing tutors/help available to Swarthmore students and told him to take advantage of this wonderful programs. Please continue to post about the programs that Swat students can/should use. You are a HUGE help!

epistrophy · September 1, 2009, 12:09pm

One aspect of undergraduate writing programs that is sometimes overlooked (though mentioned by idad) is the tremendous educational opportunities they provide for the students who work in them as “mentors.” My older son works at such a program at another school and – between the frequent conferences with students (who come from many different backgrounds and bring in many different types of writing assignments) and the weekly programs offered by different professors (who talk about, among other things, the distinctive qualities they look for in writing in their field) – his participation in this program has been an education in itself (as well as a source of spending money).

dchow08 · September 1, 2009, 12:46pm

I think the Writing Associates program is a very good resource to have on campus. But I must say, if it’s truly that wonderful, I would think that more people would use the program voluntarily. If it’s that great, then why did one poster mention that very few people he/she knew actually used it without being “forced”? I could have used the program more, but I have used it throughout my freshman year in biology and English. I think the main problem students have is that for classes without designated WA’s, students might want to revise a paper on a subject that the WA knows next to nothing about. For example, one of my friends went to see a WA for an econ paper, but since the WA knew nothing about econ, the student had to explain everything. Even then, there’s only so much that WA could have said–how, for example, would the WA have told the student to emphasize one economic issue more than another? I’m not saying that the Writing Associates program is bad or unhelpful. I’m just saying that I feel that most students probably are not so thrilled and joyed by the WA program as interesteddad is (I could be wrong, though.), and that your WA experience I think depends a lot on the particular circumstances. And I do have some authority in this, in that I am the only poster in this thread so far who has actually used the program.

This will probably be my last post for a while, since I will be busy with classes. To any prospective students, I maintain that it is best to talk to actual students to find out more information. And I also maintain that it is not good to say only good things about Swarthmore, because prospective students won’t know about the unpleasant things at Swarthmore, and they may be misled when they are applying and disappointed when they are here. I’ve tried to express how I see Swarthmore, as accurately as possible–in other words, to tell it like it is.
Which is not to say I don’t like it here.

I do like Swarthmore. One does not need to be effusive about Swarthmore to express enjoyment. I actually find effusiveness very annoying. Overall, I am content here.

interesteddad · September 1, 2009, 2:27pm

I provided the statistics above. **In a recent fall semester, approximately 700 (of the 1400 students on campus) had at least one paper WAd. 580 papers were WAd at the drop-in center and another 500 or so in WA courses. **I find it difficult to believe that these numbers are being achieved without widespread voluntary student use of the resources. I know that my daughter voluntarily used the WA resource in all four of her years at Swarthmore, as did the students of several parents here, including students who were themselves WAs and thus identified as top writers at Swarthmore. Each year, the Writing Associates even WA wriiting for alumni who voluntarily submit application, scholarship, and grant proposal writing for independent review.

The paper from Professor Jill Gladstein I linked above specifically addresses the issue of writing peers as generalists focusing solely on writing or specialists with specific knowledge in a department.

The fundamental premise of Writing Across Curriculum (WAC) programs – as opposed to Writing in Department (WID) programs – is to provide a mechanism for collaborative learning about writing that is not department specific, i.e. that effective writing communicates well whether it is in biology or sociology or literature. The reason I used the term “cutting-edge” to describe Swarthmore’s writing program is that, because Swarthmore invests in full-time faculty whose sole responsibility is the writing program, Swarthmore contributes to national discussions of the state of the art in the field. Here is a brief excerpt from Prof. Gladstein’s paper that sets the stage for a discussion of course WA’s in biology:

As directors of WAC and writing fellows programs, we often need to negotiate the different expectations that exist in a course-based peer tutoring situation. The professor may be assuming the WA possesses skills or knowledge that the writing program does not deem as essential, or the students in the course may demand that the WA note errors in content and format in addition to aiding them with their writing. Peer tutors may feel stuck in the middle as they need to navigate the expectations of the professor they are assigned to work with, the expectations of the writing program director and program, the expectations of the students enrolled in the course, and their own expectations for what defines their work as successful. We attempt to ease the tension by creating protocols for the WAs by applying what we know from current research and theory to our own practice.

A list of such guidelines might include: 

* WAs should not work with the content of a paper but rather remain as a generalist who works only with the writing. They are not TAs or graders.

 WAs should not assume the responsibility the professor has for teaching writing to his students.

 WAs should not serve as proofreaders, making notes about formatting and sentence level issues. Instead they should work with students’ writing processes.

 WAs do not need to have disciplinary knowledge because it is the writing rather than the content that they are working with in any given paper.*

Even after we create and distribute these protocols we still hear from the WAs about the anxiety they feel when working as a required resource within a WID context. Asking them to remain as generalists who lack responsibility for the content and who lack disciplinary knowledge does not address the reality of the situation. The work of the WA does not fit within the binaries of generalist/specialist or content/writing, but rather the work takes place in gray spaces between these binaries.

Gladstein continues to describe how a Swarthmore WA synthesized her knowledge of lab reports with training in rhetoric to help chemistry students:

Each spring I meet with WAs for a reappointment meeting when we discuss the feedback they have received and their goals for the next year. On the course feedback form there is a question that asks students which strategies the WA used to help improve their writing. Reading over Kathleen’s course feedback, I saw that several students mentioned a chart that Kathleen had used to illustrate how to write a chemistry lab report. 

When I met with Kathleen I asked her which chart the students were referring to and she said, “Jill you know them, they are the ones from 1C.” What she was referring to were the argument boxes from Williams and Colomb’s (2001) The Craft of Argument. The graphic is used as a form of post-outlining to show writers how to better organize their writing. Kathleen had discovered during her conferences that the students did not understand the purpose of the lab report and therefore did not see it as a form of argumentation. Through the use of the argument boxes, she used the language of the lab report to show students that even though the lab report follows a particular format, it still needs to contain an argument.

Kathleen was a chemistry major who, left to her own devices, took what she knew about writing a chemistry lab report with what she had learned about writing strategies and combined them to help a group of students. By showing students that the lab report was not just an exercise but rather a form of argumentation, she operated within the gray space of WAC and WID, combining the disciplinary expectations of the lab report with WAC’s goal of using writing as a tool for learning. Additionally, she educated me on science writing and how it compared with writing in other disciplines. She showed me how the WAs could wind up as proofreaders if they did not take what they learned from the training course and adjust it for work in the sciences. By listening to and asking questions of Kathleen I discovered at that moment that the situation with the WAs in the sciences was not a matter of whose expectations were right or wrong. Kathleen, through her navigation of the gray spaces, used her knowledge of the discipline, her status in the course, her expectations for the written product, and her communication with the students to create a relationship between the lab report, the students, and herself as the WA.

And a bit on how the WA program has evolved at Swarthmore:

Prior to my arrival at Swarthmore, the WA Program followed Haring-Smith’s (1992) recommendation that tutors remain generalists in order to keep their distance from the content. For some time I was not sure what I thought about the content question. Most of the literature suggested that WAs remain generalists, yet through observations and conversations like the ones with Kathleen, I started to see the benefits of having WAs assigned to a course where they did have some disciplinary knowledge. I was not alone, as Soven (2001) documents a shift of thinking in a survey she conducted at the beginning of the new millennium in which directors articulate the importance of disciplinary knowledge in the course-based tutoring situation. Now when assigning WAs to courses I do look at the majors of the WAs and the courses they have taken in order to place them in a course where they have some knowledge of the course content or experience with the professor making the request. It is not always possible or desirable to assign a knowledgeable WA to each course. There are times when a faculty member requests generalist WAs to guarantee that the WA will not address the content of a paper, though this request is not made often.

And, just for kicks, a comment from a Bio professor who taught the intro Bio course before and after it had course WAs:

The professors teaching the course had been satisfied with the work of the WAs:

Since I taught here before there were Writing Associates I remember very much what happened in that first year or two when we had Writing Associates, and essentially it meant that students gained two to three years sophistication in their writing. Cuz there was a period there where you know, students who had Writing Associates in their freshman year were then sophomores, and they were writing as well or better than seniors. And so, it was just very clear that this is an enormously useful thing. (interview between student researcher and biology professor, 2005)

Even though the department was satisfied with the WAs’ relationship with the course, some WAs experienced frustration and anxiety. During training some WAs questioned how writing was being taught in the natural sciences, if at all, and shared the belief that the focus might be too product based before students understood the process of writing a lab report. These student-generated questions, along with my own question as to why writing and WAing in science is perceived as different from other disciplines, led me to share these insights with a colleague in the biology department. Together we discussed approaches for researching these observations in more depth. These discussions led to a larger research project where we looked at what happens when writing is assigned in an introductory science course and when WAs are a required resource. I wanted to look at this question from the perspective of the students taking the course, the faculty teaching it, and the WAs working as the main resource or mode of support for the students’ writing.

dadx3 · September 1, 2009, 2:39pm

For those interested, Tori Haring-Smith is currently President of Washington & Jefferson College
[W&J:</a> President Tori Haring-Smith](<a href=“http://www.washjeff.edu/content.aspx?section=1352&menu_id=378&crumb=649&id=89]W&J:”>http://www.washjeff.edu/content.aspx?section=1352&menu_id=378&crumb=649&id=89)

interesteddad · September 1, 2009, 2:44pm

This struck me as interesting. It’s an interview in the WAC Journal with Bud Weiser, Chair of the English Department at Purdue and one of the country’s top experts on teaching writing. He is the author/editor of notable books on WAC writing instruction programs and trains PhDs in teaching writing. Ironically, his own university does not have a WAC program:

cr: Your own university is not a WAC campus. There must be a story about that.
Would you care to tell that story?

bw: … Almost ten years ago, the College of Liberal Arts revisited its curriculum and
adopted a requirement for a writing intensive course, post-first-year composition,
for every student in the College. But the College has over 6,000 students, and
the resources for implementing that requirement simply havent been available. We
were able to conduct some very popular and effective workshops for faculty who
wanted to incorporate more writing in their courses as part of the preparation for
the W-I requirement, and I know that a number of the faculty who attended the
workshops continue to use ideas and assignments they generated as participants.

cr: As an administrator as well as a faculty member, you must have an internal scale to
assess the difficulty of various problems that come to your attention. In your experience,
how do WAC-ish problems rate relative to other administrative challenges?

bw: Since we dont have a WAC program, WAC-related issues arent part of my regular
work. The closest to addressing WAC issues I face is when other Colleges want us to do
more teaching of writing than were able to do and I instead offer to help them develop
ways of doing more writing instruction in their existing courses, or when an administrator
from another College wants to talk about how a course we offer isnt meeting
their expectations. Both of these things happen rarely.

If we had a WAC program, I doubt Id be particularly involved in it, since as a
department head, Id only support having such a program if we had the personnel to
do it rightat least one person designated to direct it, an appropriate way to support
instructors in the program, and sufficient resources to sustain it. My sense is that at
large research universities, its been very difficult to sustain WAC programs because to
do them right, it costs money, and too often theres not an institutional commitment
to provide enough.

<a href=“http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol19/rutz.pdf[/url]”>http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol19/rutz.pdf</a>

interesteddad · September 1, 2009, 3:12pm

BTW, you can see a complete list of W courses at Swarthmore by going to the Tri-co Course listing:

Click the semester you want and click SWARTHMORE as the college, then enter:

, W

in the keyword search box (with the comma and space exactly as shown).

Not counting duplicate cross-listings, it looks like their are 70 W courses this fall. That’s 70 courses where papers are submitted, reviewed by the professor or WA, and then revised before a final draft is turned in.

Swarthmore · September 5, 2009, 2:13pm

So Interesteddad, assuming that the statistics you cite from 2001 more or less reflect how students use the writing center today, at most ~41% of students get exactly one paper WAed at the drop-off center each semester. My hunch is that students who use the writing center once often use it multiple times, with a handful bringing in nearly every paper they’re assigned. With that in mind, I could easily imagine the 41% figure shrinking to 20% or lower.

Maybe it was someone in an earlier thread, but I never claimed that students who take advantage of the writing center are in any way remedial or that the writing center is designed for remedial students. When I said that students were “forced,” I meant to say that a lot of students have their papers WAed because it is a blanket requirement for anyone taking a particular course. However, I knew many people who consistently wrote great papers on time but didn’t want to have them WAed (for individual reasons… found it unhelpful, found the peer-led dynamic uncomfortable, thought their topics would be too obscure, etc.). Then there were students who probably could have benefited from trying it out but didn’t, and finally, there were those who just procrastinated too much to dream of ever having a paper WAed (I think a good many Swarthmore students fall into this category).

Honestly, I’m not trying to knock Swarthmore here. My issue is that ID’s tales about the writing center and its role at Swat are exaggerated. For someone who actually spent four years at the school, it’s frustrating to hear someone who did not spout the company line better than the company does. I doubt even the most ardent WA-cheerleaders at the writing center would sing its praises to the extent that ID did in his OP… nor would they be so needlessly defensive, nor would they make preemptive attacks against Swat’s peers. For me and a lot of the people I knew, the writing center just wasn’t an important part of academic life. If I hadn’t attended Swarthmore (something that would put me in the same boat as many on this board), ID’s posts would have me thinking that WAs are an integral component of a Swat education and that almost all students benefit from them. Though that sounds great, I don’t really think it’s the case.

interesteddad · September 5, 2009, 3:27pm

The issue is not whether the Writing Associates program is an integral part of every Swarthmore student’s experience (comparing it to some hypothetical ideal). The issue is how the Swarthmore Writing Associates program compares to the offerings at other peer colleges and universities (comparing it to the real world). When you make a real-world comparison, it is very clear that the Swarthmore Writing Associates program is quantifiable strength of Swarthmore College and a nationally-recognized model for the type of program that is currently a hot-button action item in every accrediation review and academic selft-study. Academic graybeards are very concerned that colleges are failing to produce students who can write. Swarthmore’s direct peers are getting cited in their accreditation review reports for needing to address substandard writing programs and instruction. Until they hired one interim position last year (in response to the accrediation report citation), Williams College had not had a single staff member assigned to teaching writing or the writing program for several years. Their writing peers were getting zero training or institutional support – basically being hung out to dry. Compare to Swarthmore where writing associates benefit from a graduate level course in writing pedagogy and the support of two faculty members exclusively assigned to the writing program. Amherst has two professors doing the writing center as a part-time gig (again in response to citations in the accreditation process) and a grand total of 14 writing tutors – compared to 65 at Swarthmore. These are real differences in real programs that impact real students.

By your logic, we shouldn’t consider the Honors Program a defining strength of Swarthmore College, because two-thirds of Swarthmore students major in course and don’t do honors.

Yet, both the Writing Associates program and the Honors program are major initiatives at Swarthmore with long histories, each with a sizeable quarter million dollar a year price tag. Both are significantly interwoven into the curriculum (25 courses a semester are WA’d; honors seminars have led to a style of teaching across the curriculum) and both directly impact a full third to half of the students at any given time. The fact that many of those students are “forced” to get papers WA’d is a fundamental characteristic of the Swarthmore (and the Brown) WAC program and a key reason that Swarthmore’s writing program is a national model. The whole point is that writing instruction is both integrated into and a mandatory part of the curriculum across many departments. I believe a case can be made that these programs ARE integral, differentiating components of a Swarthmore education, in some ways even for the students who choose not to use them on an ongoing basis. The vast majority of colleges and universities have zero writing instruction beyond an intro composition course. Or, forget the students on the receiving end and consider just the value of the WA program to the 6% of the student body that takes the WA course each year and gains real-world experience in writing review. By any measure, that is a major extracurricular endeavor of the college, one certainly on par in terms of impact to the widely touted War News Radio (another defining strength of Swarthmore).

BTW, Swarthmore is now leading a national project to implement formal mentoring and study groups in the sciences. They have just received the second major Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant to further develop these intiatives started a few years ago and I understand they’ve recently recruited Williams to participate in a research project to measure statistical peformance of these types of innovative programs over time (retention rates in the sciences, etc.).

interesteddad · September 5, 2009, 4:00pm

To clarify something. The most fundamental element of Swarthmore’s WAC program is the process of submitting an outline or draft for review and comment followed by a revision based on that review. In a WA course, this review takes place in conference with one of the WAs assigned to the course. However, there is a larger number of W courses at Swarthmore where the professor handles the submit, review, revise sequence.

My daughter described several of these courses to me, where she turned in preliminary outlines and drafts, reviewed them in conference with the professor, and then revised for a final draft. This is all part of the Swarthmore WAC program. Active collaborative learning, one on one with professors and with specially trained student peers. Undergrad education doesn’t get any better than that.

These mechanisms and the requirement for a minumum of three W courses to graduate have evolved from nearly 20 years of faculty discussion of writing, with the professors in charge of the WA program as key players in the discussion. And, of course, the money to fund it. To have an institution place that kind of emphasis on writing is unusual.

See the quotes from Purdue above – one of the top Writing Insstruction PhD programs in the country and they have no WAC program for undergrads because they can’t afford it.

Writing Associates program at Swarthmore College

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