The meeting was called to order at 12:37.
The committee welcomed new spring term members Sarah Alexander and
Rachel Crosbie, representing the junior and sophomore classes respectively.
“Wells 101”et al:
Dean Denard recapped the history of the “Wells 101” revision for the
new members, and offered a revised proposal for the first term, consisting
of a 3-credit First-Year Writing seminar, and a 1-credit introduction to
college course, following closely the recommendations of last year’s subcommittee
on the issue.
As proposed, the writing seminar would have a Faculty Coordinator, meetings of the involved faculty to discuss strategies for teaching academic writing, expectations for teaching writing as a process. The teaching faculty would serve as academic advisors for their first-year students. The topics and texts for each section would be chosen and developed individually by the faculty member teaching it.
The 1-credit course would meet weekly and consist of five modules:
1. Introduction to Wells (College resources) 2 weeks.
2. Introduction to the liberal arts (History and usefulness of; the
“majors” at Wells) 4 weeks.
3. Information technology, research, and documentation. (Knowledge,
skills, implementation in an academic context.) 3 weeks.
4. Experiential learning (Practice, connection of liberal arts to life
after college/beyond academy) 2 weeks.
5. Individualized College Plan (ICP) (Writing, presentation) 3 weeks.
Dean Hall reported that she regarded the 1-credit course as “doable” in the fall, in terms of staff resources. Diversity, a big effort for the college, should find a venue here as well.
She also felt that staffing the fall writing seminars was practical; one of the main difficulties for the present 101 being the (understandable) unwillingness of faculty to teach outside their areas of expertise.
Discussion continued centered on the remaining issue of the subcommittee’s suggestion that a second writing course of some sort be required.
A second course similar to the present Wells 102 was generally regarded as too taxing on the staffing of majors at this time, especially with the expected influx of new students into lower-level courses. It was later pointed out that such a second course would offer more practice, but not fundamental instruction in writing.
A return to requiring one “Writing-intensive” course was decried; the old courses so-labeled often did not serve the purpose of teaching writing, since they only required a page count of writing, not a level or kind of instruction or process-of-revision . The old requirement was abused, with courses being declared “writing intensive” after the fact to facilitate graduation of students who had failed to take a properly labeled course. Tracking the completion of this requirement would be labor-intensive and difficult unless a small fixed collection of courses were thus designated. (The suggestion for a W or R suffix to a course number fails since the suffixes don’t appear on the transcript.) Wells students can’t now graduate without doing a fair amount of writing, so no further “quantity” requirement is needed.
The discussion turned to the problem that some (or more) students have not learned to be adequate writers after a single term of instruction. Paralleling this is the problem that some transfers have never learned to write, and seek instruction.
Prof. Talbot: The question of what structure is most effective for remediation with students who have failed to learn the techniques of writing adequately in the first course would bear looking into; there must be research on this.
Prof. Groth: Our faculty are equipped to help students to refine and extend skills already in place, but are by and large not trained to do remediation. Furthermore, it should be made clear to the faculty that the first year seminar is not designed to remediate.
There is no course at Wells that specifically addresses basic issues of grammar and composition; although English 275 (Topics in Writing Prose) comes closest, it is usually at a higher level. The Writing Center student staff are equipped to assist, but not teach at the fundamental level. Prof. Bennett reminded us that the Dean had proposed a professionally-staffed Learning Center, and this might be the appropriate environment for such work.
Rachel Crosbie, supporting a second required course, pointed out that those who most needed a remedial writing course would be least likely to voluntarily take one. Also the skills in oral expression / public speaking once taught in Wells 102 are vital, and no longer addressed. Others concurred, and offered quantitative skills as another lack.
Chair Staples urged that we have a clear proposal for the first-year course(s) by the end of the next meeting.
Anent the 1-credit course, some remaining questions were raised:
Who will assess the students’ progress/success (and how?), and read the
final essays? Should it be P/F or letter grade? The student
members concurred that P/F would guarantee that students would do
the bare minimum, and not take the course seriously.
Nicole Pellegrino, who is rewriting Collegiate Constitution, asked the committee members to examine the definition of APPC therein to ensure consistency with the Faculty definition. The question was raised whether the Faculty Manual contains a current definition or whether we are still working under the previous committee’s definitions. [Secretary’s note: Prof. A. Shilepsky found that the new committee name was approved by the faculty at the time of the reorganization of the majors—May 18, 1993—but did not find a description of the new committee.]
The meeting was adjourned at about 1:35.
Respectfully submitted,
Sally Sievers
Secretary pro tem.