As part of the original charter of the University, the English requirement - which requires that students demonstrate writing competency - is one of the few curricular requirements undergraduates must fulfill prior to graduation.
But Katherine Saviskas '06, who has worked for six semesters as a Writing Fellow, said she was unaware of the requirement until this year.
The education concentrator echoed several professors in saying she believes the requirement is not widely enforced, a fact that might allow some students to graduate without demonstrating writing competency.
"It's something the University is claiming to provide us and it's clear that the University thinks this is important," Saviskas said. But she "can't make sense of the silence."
Saviskas is writing her honors thesis on Brown's academic writing support system in hopes that her efforts will start a "dialogue about writing at Brown," including discussions among departments. Because Dean of the College Paul Armstrong will step down at the end of this semester, Saviskas said now is an opportune time to increase awareness of the writing requirement and encourage Armstrong's replacement to address the issue.
Little oversight, professors say
Before 1998, Saviskas said a committee of English professors evaluated incoming students' applications to determine whe-ther or not a student should be recommended to take an expository English course at Brown. However, students were getting so much help on their applications that their essays were not reflective of their abilities, she said.
Currently, the disconnected nature of Brown's academic departments and writing programs makes enforcing the requirement difficult, she said. Several professors said the University lacks a widely used mechanism to enforce the requirement. The requirement states that if professors feel a student has fundamental writing problems, they can note this by checking a column on a grade sheet that is submitted to the registrar. If a student receives multiple checks, the registrar forwards a notification to the dean of the college. The student is then referred to an expository writing course. Several professors, however, said they rarely make use of the check system and are more prone to deal with a struggling writer themselves.
In "typical Brown fashion," the enforcement of the writing requirement is left to the individual students and individual faculty, said Jonathon Waage, professor of biology and senior advisor to the dean.
Because the requirement is "not pegged to a specific course requirement," it's a vague policy, said Kevin McLaughlin, professor of English and the department's chair. McLaughlin added that he does not believe a specific course requirement would solve the problem. Different fields have different norms and expectations for writing, so there is no one view of what constitutes writing competency, he said.
McLaughlin admits he has never used the check system himself, in part because, as an English professor, he considers it his own responsibility to help improve a student's writing performance. If a student continues to struggle, he encourages that student to take an expository writing course himself rather than sending the student to a dean.
For professors in departments that do not place as much emphasis on writing, it might be appropriate to refer a struggling student to a dean, he added.
A growing problem?
Kurt Raaflaub, professor of classics, says he has been "noticing with dismay and worry that the writing ability amongst the student body has gone down." Since returning from an eight-year sabbatical in 2000, he said he has observed that there are not only "more and more freshmen that are less and less well-prepared, but that the writing ability amongst the seniors has gone down."
According to Waage, "We are not talking about the difference between getting an A on a paper and getting a B, but someone who has trouble conveying certain ideas, communicating coherently."
Raaflaub said he worries that seniors with poor writing abilities have no time to develop their skills and may graduate without demonstrating writing competence. "We are in danger of shortchanging our students," he said.
The use of teaching assistants to grade writing assignments may enhance the deficiencies of the current system, he said. Moreover, students do not always bother to see how they performed on certain writing assignments, particularly final papers.
It's "not only a fault within the system and faculty, but of the students," he said, pointing to a stack of graded and critiqued papers on his shelf that students have failed to pick up.
Still, McLaughlin argued that many students do take the initiative to improve their writing, citing 50 expository writing courses a year that are over-enrolled.
"By the time a student wanders his or her way through Brown, they will find problems and address them. It's not a terribly efficient way to do it but it all comes down to the question of whose responsibility it really is," Waage said.
This system is "giving a lot of responsibility to the students," McLaughlin said.
Possible solutions
The College Curriculum Council has had several discussions about enforcement of the writing requirement, according to Waage, who is a CCC member.
Waage believes the University should do more to emphasize the importance of writing "because it far exceeds what is on a transcript" in terms of usefulness in whatever fields students enter after college.
McLaughlin said a mandatory writing requirement for first-years is not the answer because a required writing course might "turn students off to writing."
Raafluab recommended that the University evaluate its incoming students by requiring them to produce a writing sample in a monitored test setting. If the student's writing is considered insufficient upon evaluation, that student should be referred to a writing course, he said.
But Waage said it might be difficult to evaluate a student's writing before that student's first year. Often, it is not until sophomore or junior year that a student is fully able to delve into academic material and develop an original argument, he said, so a "freshmen screening process might not be the most effective way" to evaluate a student's writing proficiency.
