New Program Aims To Improve Written Communication

There is no better way to master something, it is said, than to teach it to someone else.

The act of teaching also benefits the Someone Else.

These two principles are at the root of a new initiative from the University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science Honors Program.

The Writing Fellows Program, to debut this fall, will train excellent undergraduate writers to help peers with the often-daunting task of writing effectively. By forging teaching partnerships between fellows and professors, the program is intended to improve the quality of writing across campus and also to create new opportunities for intellectual exchange between undergraduates and faculty.

“This is part of a broader effort to make good writing a priority for all undergraduates,” says Phillip R. Certain, dean of the college, which is sponsoring the program.

Professors participating in the program will select the fellows. Each fellow will work closely with 15 or 20 students in a Communications-B (courses emphasizing communication through writing, speaking, listening and reading, and required of all undergraduate students matriculating after May 1996) or writing-intensive class.

Bradley Hughes, director of the Writing Center, where the program will be housed, says fellows will be chosen not only on the basis of their writing skills, but also their ability to work collaboratively with their peers. Fellows-in-training will receive extensive instruction via a special course Hughes himself will teach this fall.

Hughes says faculty who use fellows can expect to reap significant benefits, not the least of which will be reading more polished papers that have been revised at least once.

David Sorkin, UW–Madison’s Francis and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies, used a writing fellows system while on the faculty at Brown University. “It was the most effective pedagogical tool I have ever experienced,” he says. “Students are thrust into the writing process in a way that rarely happens in the classroom.

“Writing fellows,” he adds, “learn at least as much, if not more, than the students, and the professor can see results that are simply startling.”

Modeled after Brown’s program and a similar one at the University of Michigan, UW–Madison’s Writing Fellows Program is intended to encourage more than dexterity in written communication. Developing leadership also is a program goal, says William Cronon, L&S Honors Program director and Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies. “In addition to helping other students learn to be better writers and assisting faculty in creating writing-intensive courses, writing fellows will gain irreplaceable experience as peer mentors,” Cronon says.

He adds that this last point is part of a larger initiative for the L&S Honors Program. “We believe that one of the best ways to improve undergraduate education at UW–Madison is to empower students to play a real leadership role in the teaching mission of the university. To that end, we are trying to foster a number of peer mentoring opportunities that will enable older students to help and serve as role models for younger ones.”

Also starting this fall, students will have the chance to develop their mentoring skills through the college’s Ways of Knowing course, which introduces first-year students to different academic disciplines. “If we are successful,” Cronon says, “we could inspire students, faculty and staff to rethink what undergraduates are capable of contributing to the educational enterprise of this university.”

Students and faculty interested in participating in the Writing Fellows Program should contact Jean Lutes at (608) 263-3754/jmlutes@facstaff.wisc.edu. The deadline for completed applications is March 17.