The College will require all incoming students to take at least two writing courses, abolishing exemptions from the current writing program, as part of the new Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, according to Wednesday's press release from the Office of Public Affairs. The institute will combine the existing writing program, which includes the first-year writing courses, writing seminars and writing support services, with new courses in speech, rhetoric and advanced writing.
The College will phase out exemptions to the writing program over the next two to three years, according to Lindsay Whaley, associate dean for international and interdisciplinary programs, who will oversee the director of the institute. Discontinuing the exemptions could require the College to offer up to 20 more writing courses, according to Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt. Because of budgeting issues, Whaley said he was not certain when exemptions will be terminated.
"The faculty has said they think that writing, and writing across the curriculum, is one of the most fundamental skills that you need to develop, and college is a place that you unite writing with critical thinking in a way that you really haven't done in high school," Folt said. "It's really extremely important to develop this skill set that you need for any professional field."
Folt said the writing exemption was initially allowed because of resource constraints, not because the faculty believed some students did not need to take two writing courses. The College has considered terminating these exemptions for the past at least the 15 years, according to Whaley.
"Although a lot of students come in here as good writers, some of them aren't as good as they think they are," Tom Cormen, chair of the writing program, said. "Most of them don't have experience writing college-level papers. A lot of students have learned how to write the typical five paragraph essays and haven't gone beyond that."
Many first-year students can benefit from additional exposure to Dartmouth's research facilities offered in a first year writing class, Cormen said.
The College will add two new positions to the faculty to teach courses in public speaking and plans to have one instructor begin by Fall 2008. First year seminars may incorporate a speech component into their curricula, although the College will likely not require students to take a speech course, Cormen said. Whaley said this "symbiosis" between writing and speech is one of the institute's primary benefits.
In addition to offering introductory courses targeting first year students, the speech program will likely offer advanced courses, such as a class on presidential rhetoric, according to Whaley.
The College has not offered any speech courses since spring 2005, when the sole professor in the Office of Speech, Jim Kuypers, resigned, citing a perceived administrative neglect of the speech program.
The institute will also include support services, offering editing assistance to students for foreign language papers, which Folt said would distinguish Dartmouth from other elite universities.
The creation of the institute comes shortly after the June 2007 termination of the Departmental Editing Program, which provided an in-house writing editor to art history, religion and mathematics departments. According to Joe Asch '79, who funded the editor program, Folt said she ended the program because it did not follow normal College procedures regarding the selection of editors and editors' compensation. In a 2006 interview with The Dartmouth, Asch said these concerns had existed since the program began in 1997.
Whaley said the decision to create the new institute was not related to the closure of the Departmental Editing Program. Cormen added that the new institute offers more than the former editing program.
"That program was three individuals, in three specific departments, editing student papers," Cormen said. "We offer courses, we offer faculty development, we have speech, we have the student support services, so there's quite a bit that we do that goes far beyond what the Departmental Editor Program was intended to do."
Cormen said the College created the institute because the current structure of the writing program, established in 2004, is inadequate. The original structure was created under the assumption that the writing program would become an interdisciplinary program, which never occurred because of lack of resources. Folt said organizing the writing program as an institute gives the program a cohesive administrative structure , which she said was particularly important since writing courses are taught by a variety of department.
"This really allows us to bring it together," Folt said. "I see it as something that is much larger than the pieces."
The institute, which was launched by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, was developed following recommendations by faculty committees and councils made over the past six years. The College is currently searching for a new director for the institute.
