Having anticipated an enrollment increase with the elimination of an SAT-based exemption for Writing 5, the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric has seen a smooth transition facilitated by nine new sections of Writing 5 and the hiring of six new faculty members, according to Institute director Christiane Donahue. This fall, 110 more first-year students are enrolled in Writing 5 courses than last year, with another 46 opting to enroll in the Humanities 1 and 2 sequence, according to the Office of the Registrar.
In past years, students who scored above a certain threshold on the critical reading, writing and essay sections of the SAT I received exemptions from Writing 5 and 2/3, enabling them to take just a first-year seminar. Under the new policy, students must take both courses or elect to enroll in the application-only humanities sequence, a seminar that takes place over the course of the Fall and Winter terms.
Despite the expansion of the program, the teaching load of current faculty members has not increased, Donahue said.
"Our faculty vary year to year by their request for how many sections they teach," Donahue said. "There may be normal variations on who's teaching what this year, but there is no additional load. It's actually worked very well."
Among the six new faculty members in the writing program, three are new to the College and three have joined the program from other departments like the sociology and psychological and brain sciences departments, according to the Institute's website. All Dartmouth writing courses are taught by full or part-time faculty members.
Writing professor Michelle Cox, for example, also works at the graduate level as the College's multilingual specialist and helps undergraduate tutors from the Student Center for Reading, Writing and Information Technology to work with multilingual writers.
An anonymous donation made in Fall 2011 allowed the Institute to eliminate the exemption, a stated goal since its inception in 2008, according to a press release announcing the foundation of the Institute. In 2008, Dartmouth officials speaking to Inside Higher Education estimated that the expansion of the writing program would cost close to $700,000 annually, but the size of the donation last fall has not been confirmed.
Reed Latrowski '15, who took advantage of the exemption last year to opt out of Writing 5, decided this fall to return to the course he had avoided. While he initially believed that choosing not to take the course would create room to take another course he found more interesting, Latrowski said he quickly realized that he was missing an important component of his education.
"I went to a performing arts high school, so my writing has always been good, but I wasn't really prepared for the college writing style," he said. "It would take me longer to do my work."
Latrowski said he fully supports the elimination of the exemption because the course provides a common basis of knowledge for all students.
With the two-class writing requirement now posted on the Institute's website, many members of the Class of 2016, including Robert Neuhaus '16, were not aware that the exemption ever existed.
Despite having scores that would have allowed him to opt out of the program in recent years, Neuhaus said he supports the exemption's elimination.
"The SAT is only vaguely meritorious and only somewhat indicative of actual ability, so it makes sense to ensure that everyone is on the same playing field writing-wise," Neuhaus said.
Nick Duva '16, who is taking a Writing 5 course this fall, said he likely would have taken advantage of the exemption were it still available.
"I'm lucky because I have a great professor and the class is interesting, but I would have loved to have opened up my schedule a bit," Duva said.
Despite mixed student opinion, Donahue said that the Institute has received no complaints about the exemption's elimination.