Stetson University’s Writing Program has undergone tremendous change in response to student needs, institutional development, and national “best practices” standards and expectations. In only ten years, the Writing Program has expanded to supporting efforts at writing across the curriculum in Arts & Sciences, Business, and Music; been integrally involved in the curricular shift resulting in three required Writing or Writing intensive courses; instituted a wide ranging and far seeing assessment initiative with impressive early results; and been instrumental in raising campus awareness of the critical place of written communication in the teaching and learning process.

History: The Last Ten Years

In 1999, for example, the Writing Program—known then as the First Year English program--consisted primarily of three  English courses:

• EH 111, College Writing (a developmental course for students needing additional preparation);
• EH 121, Research & Argumentation (a traditional writing and research course); and
• EH 131, Analytical Reading & Writing (a second-semester writing-intensive course focusing on literary analysis and close reading).

 Students who attended Stetson in those years were offered two “tracks” for completion of their FYE requirement. Students who were placed in EH 111 earned credit toward graduation and completed their FYE requirement by finishing EH 121. Students who were placed in EH 121 completed that course and EH 131 to fulfill their FYE requirement. The two tracks for completion were fairly unusual in higher education, which on the whole does not grant credit toward graduation for developmental courses.

 By 2010, the First Year English courses had expanded into an engaging campus wide Writing Program, a transformation happening at the same time as the University-wide revolution in the General Education curriculum. The General Education curriculum shifted from a traditional distributional, “first two years” model to the principles for contemporary liberal arts studies advocated by the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). The LEAP principles supported by the AAC&U identified writing and critical thinking as hallmarks of a liberal education, and the list of examples of high-impact learning processes was headed by the use of writing in a careful, deliberative, measured way to enhance student learning.  Because of the dramatic shift in the perception of writing’s role in the educational process, the First Year English program’s efforts shifted to a more inclusive and challenging set of curricular principles. This revisioning suggested that a renaming of the FYE Program was in order.

The Writing Program since 2008

The Writing Program at Stetson has thus expanded and grown to meet the needs of this striking and effective General Education curriculum reform. Among our initiatives since 2008:

• A substantial revision to the course content of ENGL 101 (formerly EH 121) to focus more intensely on critical thinking and reading, elements of rhetoric, the incorporation and synthesis of multiple voices and a heightened awareness of audience needs and rhetorical contexts
• A shared responsibility for teaching research and writing skills with FSEM courses, writing-intensive experiences that introduce students to the substantial and striking demands of a high quality college intellectual journey
• A campus wide commitment to Writing in the first year, evidenced by the requirement that students take both an FSEM and their Writing requirement in the first two semesters with us
• A campus wide commitment to Writing in the learning process, evidenced by the General Education requirement of a writing-intensive Junior Seminar (JS), offered from a specific department but accessible to students from all programs and majors
• A reassessment of the needs of students who transfer in credit for ENGL 101, resulting in the new initiative that all students—regardless of incoming credit or transfer courses in Writing—take a Writing course at Stetson to fulfill the Writing requirement
• A raised expectation of our academic quality in ENGL 101 by requiring that all students complete the course with a C or better
•  An institutional commitment to Writing in the teaching and learning process, evidenced by the development of Writing intensive courses
• The establishment of an in-house Guide to Writing at Stetson, designed primarily to assist the incoming first year student in meeting the specific expectations and academic demands of their professors.

The Writing courses now offered in the English Department include ENGL 100 College Writing, ENGL 101 Writing and Rhetoric, ENGL 109 Writing Workshop, and ENGL 201, Intermediate Writing. In the university-wide FSEM and JS courses, the Writing Program offers pedagogical and curricular support with faculty development workshops, an enhanced and expanded Writing Center, and an ongoing series of awareness-raising offerings designed to reinforce the role of writing in the learning process, resulting in a rapidly developing Writing-rich University curriculum.

Outcomes Assessment and Results

Such a curricular revision requires careful assessment to ensure success, raise academic quality and rigor, and monitor results—and, where necessary, implement subsequent revisions. Thus, in order to measure the success of the new General Education program at Stetson, the General Education Assessment Committee (GEAC) was formed in the summer of 2008. First on its list of tasks for Fall 2009 was a wholesale assessment of Writing in General Education (full report available here). Our first tasks were to develop an outcome statement and derive a rubric from that statement that would allow us to assess student examples. (Rubric available here.)

Our outcome statement for student writing at Stetson—the first on our list of General Education learning outcomes--reads as follows:

1.1, Writing

Students can compose and revise written texts that employ an appropriate voice to coherently express relationships between ideas from multiple sources, illustrating awareness of rhetorical context and purpose.

 The 2009 Writing assessment results showed that nearly 75% of our incoming students—and nearly 76% of our graduating seniors—met or exceeded our learning goals.  While these results are laudable, our expectations are high. Further examination of the assessment data offers some direction. We identified several gaps in our curricular programming and the related assessment:

• Students tended to lose some of their writing skill between the first and fourth years, suggesting the need for additional reinforcement of those skills by means of additional writing opportunities in the second and third years
• Assessment samples from senior students in the School of Music revealed that writing in the Music curriculum can be reinforced by WAC pedagogy and teaching
• Assessment samples from senior students in the School of Business suggested that while an increased emphasis on case study analysis should remain the capstone expectation for seniors, additional pre-senior year writing experiences should also be incorporated systematically
• Students taking FSEM in a separate semester from ENGL 101 tended to show slightly lower results than students taking FSEM and ENGL 101 concurrently; this desired immersion is, however, currently impossible for all students because of staffing issues. We continue to work on creative approaches to staffing and curricular offerings to ensure that the effective immersion experience of Writing in the first year can happen for as many students as possible.

We have continued our embrace of writing at all levels of the learning process by offering more and more opportunities for student writing in Writing intensive courses across the campus.  Currently Stetson offers more than two dozen Writing intensive courses for students who are eager to heighten their effectiveness at writing in all situations, an ability achieved only by careful instruction by a wide range of faculty who are experts in their respective fields. The number of Writing intensive courses continues to grow at an exciting rate.

Projecting Forward: Plans for the Writing Program

Pending the visit of a consultant/evaluator team from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, which we hope to schedule for Spring 2012, the plans for growing the Writing Program are as follows:

• Establish a University wide committee to oversee and implement the goals of the Writing Program on the Deland campus
• Expand and support the Writing Center so that Writing in all our disciplines can be supported by trained, discipline-specific peer tutors
• Develop and expand the Writing intensive course list, with special attention to a breadth of disciplinary approaches
• Implement an English Department assessment of the ENGL 100 course, to ensure quality education and development of our students who are in need of additional preparation for college demands
• Explore additional placement methods and refine our current placement techniques to ensure that every student starts in the right Writing course