If I had a pretty good poem on the third draft, I would think, Boy,
this is going to be really good when I have really worked on it!     

University of Georgia students who write well think well. Writing is a cognitive process that helps students analyze and synthesize information, interpret and extend ideas, and communicate their learning clearly, coherently, and cogently. Further, undergraduates with training in communication—which includes writing, speaking, and new technology—enjoy greater success in their chosen fields after they graduate. (This report focuses on writing, but also touches on the institutional need for more investment in communication broadly defined.) Pragmatically, people who write well are more successful.

Imagine that UGA were offered a plan that guarantees these results: more students who will receive Rhodes, Marshall, or Gates fellowships; more hired by prestigious firms; more gaining admission to top-flight post-graduate institutions; and more graduate students winning external grants. Professors who participate would also obtain more external grants and more easily publish their research results, as well as becoming better classroom teachers. Finally, the plan guarantees to reduce instances of academic dishonesty. All of those results come from a writing initiative.

By “writing initiative” we mean a coordinated effort across all colleges to offer courses that include writing as an integral part of instruction, to help faculty learn effective ways to teach with writing, and to follow the best research and methodology in the field of writing. We envision a program that helps students and faculty understand how communication works in instruction and research. Ideally UGA will consider all forms of communication, written and spoken, individual and collaborative, manual and virtual. But this report focuses on writing, following the Task Force’s original charge, as a place to begin.

A central part of any writing initiative is to make more writing- intensive courses available to students. A writing-intensive course is one that helps a student develop writing skills by using a variety of writing assignments, that emphasizes revision by using sequenced writing, and that teaches the conventions of writing for a specific audience such as readers in a particular discipline. Generally the instructor has a combination of training and experience in how to teach writing, either formally, through classes or development programs, or experientially, through years of practice. The 2005 Undergraduate Task Force recommended that all undergraduates take two upper-division writing-intensive courses before graduation. Until the university has in place a screening process to identify particular courses as writing intensive, that recommendation cannot be implemented. Such courses not only improve the way that students think and write, but also have other benefits. For example, training in writing skills can eliminate most student plagiarism. Moreover, studies of writing-intensive curricula show that students are substantially more engaged by their work and retain information longer when they have to write about the subject. Finally, as UGA creates research opportunities in a new learning environment for its students, opportunities to think and write are central to that environment and to their research.

The initiative would address a documented need. (For a detailed account of UGA reports on student writing, see appendix “Data about Writing at UGA.”) University of Georgia students need to learn and then to communicate that learning. A decade ago, the Academic Literacy Committee (ALC) surveyed faculty to establish that while instructors thought writing mattered, they had a low opinion of the writing that students did (1996-97). The UGA Report of the Committee on the Quality of the Undergraduate Experience (1997) included a position statement that listed seven abilities that a UGA graduate should have. One of them was “to demonstrate effective written and verbal communication skills.” Our students consistently agree with that goal: they tell every survey that writing and communication matter, but that they do not feel well-prepared. Such responses might seem trivial. After all, one might get a similar set of responses were students asked about exercise or keeping up with current events. In 2003, however, a survey produced more disturbing results. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) revealed that students at UGA actually wrote less and spent less time studying than students do at peer and aspirational institutions. A repeat of NSSE in 2005 gave similar results.

We do a fine job in serving that need for writing when students enter UGA: our First-year Composition (FYC) program is excellent, and our students invariably have the highest pass rate in the system on the Regents’ Exam essay test. Yet they receive relatively little training after that FYC sequence. Additionally transfer students enter the university with uneven training: some meet UGA standards, but many more do not. After finishing FYC, students may reach graduation without having written another essay.

A writing initiative will bring UGA more clearly in line with its peer institutions. Of our fifteen peer institutions, seven have writing requirements beyond First-year Composition: Indiana University, University of Colorado, UC-Davis, University of Maryland, Michigan State University, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Virginia Polytechnic. Franklin College funds an excellent and popular Writing Intensive Program, and students seek out WIP courses. Yet that program cannot fund every faculty request. Furthermore, while faculty in other colleges want to offer WIP courses, funding issues make it difficult to grant such requests. (See the appendix: 2006-2007 WIP courses.)

Finally, both faculty and students at the University of Georgia have said that writing matters. Faculty would like to use more writing in their classes, although they are deterred by class size and time pressures. (In a 50-seat course, assigning a 10-page paper means the professor first has to help students produce 500 pages of work and then has to comment on and assess the equivalent of two books.) Students value communications skills and recognize that writing well will help them succeed, both in their classes and in their future careers, although the pressure of time and concern about grades may keep them from seeking courses with substantial writing assignments. Mark Dawkins interviewed one of his colleagues about the logistics of teaching with writing:

Professor Linda Bamber is a chaired professor in the School of Accounting who is well known in the Terry College of Business for the writing assignments required in her . . . managerial accounting classes. Linda explained that it is important to get the students to “buy into” the importance of improving their writing skills. She provides them with a PricewaterhouseCoopers document that discusses four (4) gaps the firm finds in most new hires’ skill set, and one of the gaps is oral and written communication. . . . She identified two barriers that faculty face in incorporating writing assignments in their classes: time and incentives. Incorporating writing assignments in class is extremely time-consuming for faculty to grade and provide feedback, and there are few (if any) incentives for faculty to do so.

Linda requires her students to turn in a memo about every two-three (2-3) weeks, or a total of six (6) memos a semester. Her writing assignments are done using teams. In a typical semester she forms 22 teams of 6 students, so the total memos submitted in a semester is 132 (22 teams x 6 memos per team) . . . vary[ing] in length and complexity . . . . Linda allows 20 minutes to grade each memo, so the total grading time is 44 hours. Linda has done all of the grading in past semesters, and has also used a graduate of the English program to grade in past semesters. She pays the grader $20/hour, or $880 per semester (actually $1,000 per semester). Linda notes that it is imperative to have reasonable class sizes to implement her approach, and each faculty must be able to use a TA to grade. It is also imperative that TAs have discipline-specific knowledge to be effective.

The other issue Linda raised is the need to change teaching evaluations for faculty who add writing to their classes to avoid penalizing professors who assign writing assignments. Based on student complaints I hear during the semester, I can attest that Linda’s stellar teaching evaluations would be even higher if she did not assign writing in her classes. (Email from Mark Dawkins, 31 January 2007)

This example shows the potential problems that will arise if UGA simply mandates more writing without the needed support and development. Professor Bamber points out that class size is a crucial factor, as is finding support. As an experienced instructor, she finds that assessing her writing assignment takes over a full work-week.

UGA needs to provide more courses and occasions that use writing and provide incentives to attract faculty and students to those programs: those incentives include simply explaining to students the importance of writing after graduation, modification of teaching evaluations, providing assistance for grading, and reducing class sizes. We need to have a writing initiative because it is the responsible thing to do, given the shortcomings revealed by NSSE, and because it will serve our students’ needs in the classroom and beyond graduation. UGA can begin a writing initiative by taking advantage of several existing programs that we already have and that we know work well. Such an initiative will allow us to use the best practices in the field, as do our peer institutions, and it also makes it likely that, when it comes to writing, we shall soon overtake our peers.