The College's Institute of Writing and Rhetoric will use recent anonymous donations to fulfill its longstanding goal of requiring all incoming freshmen to enroll in a Writing 5 or Writing 2/3 course in addition to a First-Year Seminar beginning Fall 2012, according to Christiane Donahue, director of the Institute. Incoming freshmen who earned above a certain SAT essay, writing or critical reading score each year were previously exempt from writing course requirements due to a lack of available resources, Donahue said.
Donahue said she is unaware of the exact value of the donations.
The Institute initially planned to establish the two-course writing requirement for all incoming students when the program was first enacted in 2008, but resource constraints inhibited the implementation of that goal.
Dean of the Faculty Michael Mastanduno said in an interview with The Dartmouth that he is grateful that the recent donations will enable the Institute to fulfill its initial aims.
"Our goal has always been to allow every incoming first-year student the opportunity to do the writing sequence in full," Mastanduno said.
The exemption based on SAT writing scores never signified a belief that students who achieved that year's specified score would not benefit from a first-year writing course, according to Donahue.
"The previously exempt group may have had slightly higher SAT scores, but research clearly supports that those scores do not indicate better writing ability," she said.
While the majority of the funding for the new requirement will come from the recent donations, any additional requisite funds will come out of the Dean of the Faculty's teaching budget, Mastanduno said.
While the College plans to hire additional faculty, the Institute is still finalizing the logistics of fitting an additional 250 freshmen the number of students normally exempt from the writing course requirement into the first-year writing courses next fall, Donahue said.
One of the College's priorities is to maintain Dartmouth's small class sizes, according to Mastanduno.
"We believe you need to have a relatively small class to teach writing effectively," he said. "Otherwise, we could have done away with the exemption long ago."
The new compulsory writing course requirement is part of the College's larger effort to assess the current Dartmouth curriculum and ensure that students are receiving the best possible academic preparation for whichever path they hope to pursue upon graduation, Mastanduno said.
"This year the faculty will begin a review of the entire curriculum writing is just one piece of that," he said. "The review is symbolic of the commitment that we have to make sure we meet the needs of students in terms of skill development, critical thinking and substances of courses across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities."
The decision to eliminate the first-year writing course exemption has been positively received by faculty members across all disciplines, according to Donahue.
Writing 5 professor and Director of the Academic Skills Program Carl Thum said he was happy with the change and emphasized the importance of a strong writing background for each student.
"I think a writing experience that everyone has in common whether that's 2/3 or 5 is really important," Thum said. "There is no substitute for more writing."
Assistant Dean of the Faculty Jane Carroll, an art history professor who also teaches Writing 5 and First-Year Seminars, said the more extensive education would allow students to increase their writing sophistication to a college level.
"Students come from highschool prepared to write the five-paragraph essay, as part of their training for the SAT," Carroll said. "It has specific uses but it is not always the perfect way to write. We use Writing 5 to train students to think beyond the five-paragraph essay."
Sumayya Younus '15, who tested out of Writing 5, said she does not believe a first-year writing course is necessary for all students.
"There are people who are inherently good at writing and they shouldn't have to do something they're already good at," Younus said. "It's just a waste of time for them."
Seo In Lee '14, who also tested out of Writing 5 said a first-year writing course would have helped prepare her for the higher standard of writing expected by college professors.
"I struggled with my First-Year Seminar class because English is not my first language," she said. "It was a really difficult course to take my first term."
Sungsik Kim '15, who is currently enrolled in Writing 5, said the course has been helpful in teaching him to consolidate and organize ideas cohesively. Despite the benefits of the course, however, Kim said he is unsure if all students need a two-course writing requirement.
Part of the value of Writing 5 is learning a "different form" of writing, Donahue said.
"College writing demands a new set of abilities," she said. "Students coming from high school have learned and mastered high school forms, but success in college writing builds from previous abilities and requires new depth, new ranges of writing forms, new challenges in reading and research and new levels of control and intellectual work."
Jamie Mercado '15, currently enrolled in Writing 5, said she has learned from both her professor and fellow students.
"In my Writing 5 class, not everybody is at the same level skill-wise, but we're all still learning and enjoying the class," she said. "Regardless of how skilled of a writer you are, Writing 5 is a helpful class."
Raghu Vaidyanathan '13 said he disagrees with the change to the first-year writing requirement and that his own Writing 5 experience focused more on reading than writing skills.
"I think you learn just as much about writing from any other liberal arts course," he said. "Anytime you have to write an essay, you're writing, and that focus on writing is more important than anything taught in a writing class."
Writing is a "core skill" that the College hopes to develop among all Dartmouth students, Mastanduno said.
"What we're really trying to do is prepare students for writing across curriculum and across four years of college," he said. "Communication is an important life skill, as well as an academic skill, that cuts across different disciplines. It's just as important in science as it is in literature to be able to write and communicate well."
