In the fall of 2014, Lynchburg College began implementing WE Write for Success, a new initiative to help students improve their capacity to engage in evidence-based writing. Beginning with the class of 2018, students are required to take at least six “writing enriched” (WE) courses, which help them engage in the writing process and develop their writing skills by using writing as a mode of learning. Students in WE courses address academic and professional audiences and purposes, they receive feedback on their writing, and they are encouraged to rethink, revise, and improve their work.
WE Write for Success is LC’s way of helping today’s students become more effective writers, which has long been understood as one of the central purposes of higher education. Regardless of their chosen field of study, college and university students have had to take “freshman composition” courses, engage in college-level writing in a broad variety of courses, and learn the conventions of writing in their particular disciplines.
Writing well is an important element of academic success; it is also a skill that employers say they are looking for. An April 2013 report sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) found that 93 percent of the employers they surveyed agreed that “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their major.” Moreover, four of five employers that were surveyed thought that colleges and universities should place more emphasis on these skills than they currently do. (For more information on this research, read “It Takes More Than A Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Success,” at www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/it-takes-more-major-employer-priorities-college-learning-and.)
More and more students are coming to college without adequate skills for the kinds of academic work we expect of them. Much of the poor writing we see stems from poor thinking — or to be more specific, from an inability to read actively and deeply — and from little practice in processing ideas into clear, organized thoughts and sentences. Whether we like it or not, it falls to us to help them develop an active reading, thinking, and writing process if we want them to succeed in higher education and afterwards. WE courses are designed to address that task.
Two facts supported by pedagogy are particularly pertinent here: 1) to develop an effective writing process, students need to have a chance to try and practice various approaches to find what works for them, an 2) requiring students to craft a writing project in stages can help them to do that.
Writing is thinking; it is often a more productive and thorough type of thinking than that required for an informal class discussion or an oral exchange of ideas. Thus, in WE courses, instructors not only require more writing but design writing projects and integrate writing in ways that allow students to hone their skills over time and across disciplines.
Writing Enriched faculty from a wide variety of disciplines have gathered in workshops, brown bag luncheons, and day-long retreats that we have designed so that they can talk about ways to strengthen students’ understanding of the writing process. They frequently report that they have been energized by the conversations at these events; they feel they are crafting better writing assignments and providing students with more appropriate feedback.
Those who earn a college degree are still expected to be able to think and write clearly. In essence, the WE Write for Success initiative aims to improve students’ power to think and write by helping them learn to organize thoughts and articulate them effectively. Although the ongoing “digital revolution” is profoundly changing society and higher education with it, in its WE Write for Success initiative, Lynchburg College addresses a goal for higher education that has not changed: to improve an individual’s chance of leading an intellectually fulfilling and productive life.
Judy