Following months of collaboration with faculty and administrators, Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt decided this July to put an end to the Departmental Editing Program by June 2007.
The program, which in the last year has surfaced as a contentious topic of debate, provides an in-house writing editor to the art history, religion and mathematics departments.
DEP's founder and financier, Joseph Asch '79, informed The Dartmouth of Folt's decision in late September, saying that he had been on a family vacation since receiving the letter with Folt's July 2006 decision. The College itself never notified the public of its decision and Folt was only available recently to comment on the situation.
Asch originally decided in January 2006 to end funding for the program at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year. The College at that time expressed no interest in taking on funding for the program.
In light of the various requests and departmental testimonials that Asch said he received following his January decision, Asch decided in April 2006 to continue funding for an additional year. Asch at this time announced his hope that Dartmouth's administration would in the meantime come to see the value of the program and decide to adopt it as its own.
After an evaluation of DEP by a faculty committee on writing, Folt relayed to Asch a number of the concerns the committee raised as well as her own concerns in a July 2006 letter.
"The program lacks faculty prioritization," Folt wrote. "It functions without the benefit and expertise of those members of our faculty who are specialists in rhetoric and composition and completely without faculty committee oversight."
In addition, Folt voiced concerns that the program operates outside the normal practices and procedures of the College in a number of areas including selection of editors, their workload, their job duties and the compensation they receive.
"In light of my concerns, I plan to work with the departments that use the program during this coming academic year to evaluate it and develop a plan to integrate the valuable components of the program into the institution-wide writing efforts," Folt wrote.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Asch expressed confusion regarding the reasoning behind Folt's decision.
"DEP is much appreciated by the faculty, and students seem to find it enormously beneficial," Asch said. "It costs the College virtually nothing. Why throw three dedicated editors out of work?"
Chairs of the art history, religion and mathematics departments have written letters to Asch praising the positive effects of the program.
Asch, a businessman and Hanover resident who has regularly audited Dartmouth courses since 1990, developed DEP in 1997 after hearing complaints from professors about the weak writing skills of some undergraduates.
One such professor was Joy Kenseth of the art history department who noticed a decline in student writing.
"People were having a hard time putting a paper together in some coherent fashion and really being careful about proofreading and organizing ideas," Kenseth said last year.
The writing editors in DEP, all of whom have taught high school English in the past, address these shortcomings in student writing and also offer course specific assistance and a knowledge of the material.
Iona McAulay, the art history department's writing editor, expressed that DEP was an addendum to Dartmouth's Writing Program. She also distinguished the services offered by DEP from those of the Research, Writing and Information Technology center, in which student editors help other students with writing in any field.
"What DEP does is teach writing that is course specific," McAulay said. "It seems to me sad that a college that has this program, a program that is envied by other schools, doesn't value it and is prepared to get rid of it."
The three DEP editors assist between 65 and 70 students per term and are paid up to $40,000 a year.
Asch, who to date has contributed more than $500,000 to the program, questioned the basis on which the decision to end the program was made.
All of Folt's expressed reasons for ending the program, Asch said, were issues that have been valid when the program first began in 1997.
"The program is in its ninth year in art history, seventh in religion and fourth in math," Asch said. "Why all of a sudden are these bureaucratic concerns so important to Folt that she has to cancel the program and all of its benefits?"
Folt responded to Asch's comments and explained the logistics of her decision. Following Asch's original decision to withdraw funding for the program, the faculty committee on writing convened and decided not to recommend Dartmouth funding for the editing program, Folt said.
"They recommended to the faculty that writing and critical thinking go together and that is what we want faculty working directly with students to do," Folt said.
Folt also explained that DEP did not receive much scrutiny in its early years because Dartmouth's Writing Program, which thoroughly investigated all aspects of writing at Dartmouth, did not start until 2004.
Asch also speculated that the decision to end the program was a political one, suggesting that Folt's decision was based on Asch's criticism of College President James Wright.
Associate Dean of International and Interdisciplinary Studies Lindsay Whaley, however, disagrees with this speculation, saying that Folt's decision was not politically motivated, but informed by the opinions of many members of the faculty and was a judicious review of the program.
"We're doing a lot at Dartmouth in terms of writing and the Writing Program ... and the Departmental Editing Program was not an integrated part of that," Whaley said. "As the representative I think [Folt] made exactly the right decision."
While Whaley believes there is still room for Dartmouth's Writing Program to improve, he thinks it is important to focus the College's energies on addressing writing through the context of a class.
Dartmouth's Writing Program -- an initiative that began in 2004 to address writing at Dartmouth -- is ahead of the game in keeping writing strong, according to Folt. The Writing Program, a College-sponsored initiative, is separate from the privately-funded DEP.
Though Whaley agrees with Asch as to the importance of being able to communicate effectively within a chosen discipline, he says that interaction with the faculty who are experts in the topic should be the primary means by which training in writing goes on.
While Asch has said he is willing to continue funding until the administration recognizes the value of the program, the program will close down by the end of the current academic year, allowing time for the current editors to find other positions.
Despite the coming termination of DEP, Asch has expressed a desire to continue his involvement and support for Dartmouth.
"I'll support things that I think are effective, but I have to say it's very disillusioning to see something that is so highly regarded by faculty and students terminated by the administration," Asch said.
Despite her enthusiasm for DEP as expressed in a letter to Asch, religion department Chair Susan Ackerman said she was confident in Folt's reasoning.
"I think we all want good writing and good writing instruction at Dartmouth," Ackerman said. "The College has multiple funding priorities around writing and the trick for the College is to balance these multiple priorities."
Ackerman said that many students in the religion department have benefited from the work of their DEP in-house writing editor, but she believes that Folt has raised legitimate concerns about the priorities of the Writing Program and the degree to which issues of undergraduate instruction are reviewed at multiple levels.
Tom Cormen, chair of the Writing Program, outlined a number of priorities for the program. Among them are eliminating the exemption from Writing 5, decreasing writing class sizes and furthering the diversity of the themes for writing courses. The Writing Program has also held a number of workshops for faculty to help professors before more effective teachers of writing.
In addition to overseeing the first-year writing curriculum, which includes a total of 126 courses this year, Dartmouth's writing program oversees the RWiT and Writing Assistance programs.
"I think there's more that we can do, but I do think that we certainly have been doing some good things that have been helpful," Cormen said.
Cormen has been working to expand the Writing Program through a plan for "writing in the disciplines."
"Writing in the disciplines" would allow students to receive specialized writing instruction by department professors. Students who opted to take these courses would receive a certificate of writing in the discipline tied to their major.
Cormen, who met with the chair of every academic department regarding the plan, said that a majority of department chairs expressed interest in this program.
"Should this happen, it really would put us at the forefront of writing in the disciplines," Cormen said.
Staff reporter Christine Paquin contributed in reporting for this article.
