CU's Knight Institute supports 300 courses in writing, to promote learning

By Susan Lang

What do more than 300 courses a year at Cornell -- ranging from Democracy and Corporate Power (Anthropology 133); Pests, Pesticides, People and Politics (Plant Pathology 101) and Imagining the Holocaust (English 221) to Biotechnology and the Law (Biology and Society 406), Meditation in Indian Culture (Asian Studies 277) and Euclidean and Spherical Geometry (Math 451) -- have in common?

They all are writing-intensive courses with special guidelines and support from Cornell's John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, a diverse, universitywide, undergraduate program that incorporates the teaching and use of writing as a way to promote learning in a broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

Graduate instructor Karthika Sasikumar, second from left, leads the first-year writing seminar class Militaries and Societies in the Modern Age in Stimson Hall. Joining in the class are, from left: Katherine Purdy '05, government; Sasikumar; Kane MacAniff '05, arts; Michael Orenak '05, engineering; Ashima Chitre '05, architecture; Damen Gillard '04, government; and Mike Shanahan '05, engineering. Robert Barker/University Photography

The program's first-year and sophomore writing seminars are guaranteed to be small. The advanced courses in students' majors (Writing in the Majors or WIM), such as astronomy, Asian studies, natural resources, design and environmental analysis and even physics, attend to languages of the specific disciplines and have specially trained graduate-student teaching assistants who are supported by the Knight Institute to help with the extra workload a writing-intensive course generates.

"We understand that there is no one way to teach writing and that the learning that goes on in each field is inseparable from the content," says Jonathan Monroe, professor of comparative literature, associate dean of College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Knight Institute. "The kinds of writing in each discipline are completely integral to the quality and quantity of learning that takes place. We know of no writing program that exceeds Cornell's in the richness and diversity of its course offerings."

In fact, last fall, the Time/Princeton Review named Cornell the private research university "College of the Year" because of its writing-in-the-disciplines approach and strength.

The roots of the institute were sowed in 1966, when Cornell revitalized its teaching of first-year writing by establishing the freshman humanities courses across nine departments to emphasize writing in the disciplines. Becoming one of the first colleges in the nation to place writing initiatives in the disciplines, it has served as a model for other universities such as Harvard, Duke, Princeton, Florida A&M and Temple. By 1975, some 50 courses across 17 departments were being offered, and in 1986 the John S. Knight Program was created with a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation, in the memory of its founder and Cornell alumnus John S. Knight.

In 1988, a Cornell President's Initiative grant founded the WIM program, which was endowed by the Knight Foundation in 1992. In 1997, the Knight and Park foundations provided further funding for WIM, and in 1999 the Knight Foundation gave Cornell $5 million (of which $3 million is endowing the new sophomore writing seminars), and that amount was augmented by an additional $1 million from Cornell. In 2000, the institute took on its current title.

Today, the institute coordinates, annually, more than 300 first-year writing seminars across 30 departments, up to 30 advanced courses across 15 departments and, for the first time this year, collaborative sophomore seminars intended to excite students in various "gateway" courses into the majors (see accompanying story, below).

The vast majority of first-year undergraduates take two first-year writing seminars, says Katherine Gottschalk, the Walter C. Teagle Director of First-Year Writing Seminars. Although the seminars are on a myriad of subjects -- for example Love and Other Heroes from Asia (History 100), The Problem of Evil (Philosophy 100), Moral Panics: What Americans Are Afraid of and Why (Psychology 114) and Technology: Utopia or Brave New World? (Science & Technology Studies 107) -- they all have specific writing guidelines. These include six to 12 formal writing assignments that total about 30 pages, some with drafts and revisions, and at least two private conferences with the instructor.

Professor David Henderson, second from left, instructs, from left, James Odierna '03, math; Bridget Kelly '02, math; and M. Scott Berkowitz '03, earth and atmospheric science, in the Writing in the Majors class, Euclidean and Spherical Geometry (Math 461), Nov. 6 in Malott Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography

"Writing always occurs within, and for the purposes of, specific contexts. Students learn to write in the context of learning about a particular discipline -- for example, music or anthropology," says Gottschalk.

Lauren Mary Boehm, a sophomore in the College of Industrial and Labor Relations, took Reading About Fiction (English 270) last fall as one of her first-year writing seminars. "This was undoubtedly the best educational experience of my life," she said. "The class was small enough to have intimate, intensive discussions and guided enough to keep those discussions focused. The idea of synthesizing a piece of writing as a exploration in thought was revealed to me in the best possible way; I was allowed to find it on my own. I learned so much in that class -- a lot about writing, of course, as every paper had specific, detailed commentary from the instructor [senior lecturer Lydia Fakundiny], but also about thinking, most importantly perhaps, about the merger and unity of the two."

Says Avi Giladi, a premed sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences majoring in cell and molecular biology, who took Gender, Race, Society and Space (History 100) last year: "The analytical and historical writing required very different styles than I was used to. As someone interested in research and medical sciences, I will need to write very detailed and analytical papers later in life, and many of the skills that I used in this class will definitely give me a great advantage."

To integrate more writing into advanced courses for juniors and seniors, the WIM program, launched in 1988, works on further developing communication skills. "Our initial perception was that learning in many upper level courses was too passive and solitary," says Keith Hjortshoj, senior lecturer and the John S. Knight Director of Writing in the Majors. "Thus, our initiatives not only include extensive writing as one form of active learning but also oral presentations, lively discussions, field studies, peer review of works in progress and collaborative projects. Ideally, it should be impossible to distinguish our writing initiatives from the learning experiences of students and the content of the course."

Like the first-year seminars, the WIM courses are offered throughout the university in all kinds of disciplines, including math. "I use writing, usually weekly, in all my math courses because it is most important for students to think about the meanings of mathematics," says David Henderson, who teaches Euclidean and Spherical Geometry (Math 451), a WIM course. "This course cultivates imagination and a willingness to struggle with ideas, starting with the question, 'What is straight?' and ending with 'How can we determine the shape of our universe?' The students write their attempts to answer such questions and then I respond with comments and they respond to my comments -- this dialogue continues and produces increasingly refined and complex understandings of geometry."

Explains Henderson's teaching assistant (TA), Cynthia Francisco, a graduate student in math education who will teach the first-year writing seminar Experiencing Mathematics Through Writing (Math 189) next semester: "A lot of people think using writing in a math class is strange, in part because they think of mathematics as a set of rules used to do computations mechanically. In reality, mathematics is a creative endeavor and mathematicians use writing to sort out their ideas and communicate them to others. In Math 451, we encourage students to explore their own mathematical thoughts through writing."

Ji-Yoon Kim is a junior computer science major taking the course. "I think the process of writing helps greatly in formalizing initial ideas that you had in your head, and the errors (if there were any) come out clearly when you start writing. Sometimes new ideas come out while you are writing, and you realize that the initial ideas were wrong. Overall, I think writing is really a great way to learn math, especially geometry, where the words you use to describe the problem are very crucial in clarification."

Chris Conway, a doctoral student in psychology and a TA for the WIM course Introduction to Cognitive Science (Cognitive Studies 101), agrees: "The types of writing exercises I assign are meant to encourage the students, not to merely regurgitate information, but to think critically about and integrate the material they are exposed to in the readings and lectures."

The Knight Institute also provides training to instructors in how to teach writing and how to redesign their syllabi to incorporate writing; a peer collaboration project to mentor TAs; and walk-in tutorial assistance across campus to help students and specialists instruct students for whom English is a second language.

An overview of the Knight Institute writing programs

First-Year Writing Seminars
Most first-year students (with some exceptions) take two courses from a choice of more than 300 courses offered in 30 departments. Syllabi follow specific writing guidelines. Maximum size per class is 17 students.

Sophomore Writing Seminars
New electives, being phased in as of 2001-2002, offer sophomores small, writing-intensive classes taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty across the university. They serve as gateway courses to the majors and have strong interdisciplinary orientations and cross-department collaborations. Maximum size: 15 students

Writing in the Majors
The program includes 30 sophomore-, junior- and senior-level courses across the disciplines; each course has at least one specially trained TA and a wide variety of writing assignments.

Writing Workshops

These are non-discipline seminars for students who might otherwise struggle in the other seminars; services include tutorial writing classes and tutoring services.

Walk-In Service
Trained tutors, including an instructor with particular expertise in English as a second language, are available for students, staff or faculty seeking help with writing.

Writing Instruction Training
Faculty and graduate students may take several seminars and courses to learn how to teach writing.

Outreach
The Knight Institute also supports the Cornell Consortium for Writing in the Disciplines, an annual national and international meeting that typically includes nine institutions of higher education, as well as a distinguished scholar-in-residence for one semester each year and two visiting postdoctoral fellows in the disciplines each year. In June 1999, the Knight Institute hosted the Fourth National Writing Across the Curriculum Conference at Cornell.