Writing Program Curriculum
NMSU’s Writing Program includes two writing courses required by all students: ENG 111 (General ed, Honors, or Multilingual focused) and a disciplinary writing course. After successful completion of ENG 111, students choose to take one of the following disciplinary writing courses: Business and Professional Communication; Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences; Technical and Scientific Communication; Advanced Composition; or Advanced Technical and Professional Communication.
NMSU’s WP curriculum is fairly new. When Lauren became the WPA in summer 2016, she brought her own visionary of how the program should operate. Lauren shared that “As the new WPA, I was expected (and I wanted) to bring my vision to the writing program…. The curriculum in place was pretty stale, in my view. An interim person had been running the WP for a couple of years, and her approach centered on rhetorical theory. So, the FYC course was all about rhetoric—classical and contemporary. Teaching 111 meant teaching freshmen about rhetorical theory. I knew that I want the curriculum to be much more student writing focused (rather than a freshman course in rhetorical concepts), and I wanted it to be focused on writing as inquiry.” The change in program curriculum reflects the evolution of WPs as expressed in David Smit’s “Curriculum Design for First-Year Writing Programs.” Lauren’s readiness to change the program from Current-Traditional Rhetoric to a mixture of new frameworks (cultural studies frameworks, discourse frameworks, ethnographic frameworks, and service learning frameworks) that better serve her WP’s population mirrors Smit’s concepts of change within writing programs.
The new curriculum Lauren designed for ENG 111 includes five units, and “each of the 5 units involves some kind of inquiry (inquiry into linguistic identity, inquiry into mindful critical reading, inquiry into community research, inquiry into broader ideas of research, reflection on the course and one’s work as a writer in the university).” According to Sheila Carter-Tod, “The key to a successful process of standardization lies in not allowing the exclusion of extremes to mean an exclusion of difference or a complete reduction in pedagogical range and explorative possibility” (84). Lauren’s standardization of curriculum in ENG 111 follows Cater-Tod’s advice in reaching a wide range of pedagogical frameworks and “explorative possibility” by having five diverse units of inquiry. Lauren further explained her first required unit: “The first unit is about linguistic identity. Students read essays that prepare them to explore their own language and writing experiences. I thought this was very important for students at a Historically Hispanic Serving institution who are living on the US-Mexico border.” Lauren specifically focuses on the needs of the primary demographic NMSU serves, enabling students to receive the most beneficial instruction. This WP begins with the linguistics unit for reasons outlined by Susan Miller-Cochran in “Language Diversity and the Responsibility of the WPA”, including combating the potentially conflicting struggle between honoring diversity and teaching SAE. Lauren’s curriculum choices agrees with Miller-Cochran’s views that “acknowledging the paradox, and realizing our classes are much more linguistically diverse spaces than we might have previously recognized, is the first step in a process that can lead to change” (212). Lauren made the change to highlight the “linguistically diverse spaces” in her WP in summer 2016 when she began created a new ENG 111 curriculum for all instructors to follow.
Though the five units in ENG 111 are determined and enforced by Lauren, all instructors (adjuncts/GTAs) have autonomy when selecting how they teach each of these units. Instructors choose the readings and design their own assignments/papers, as long as they adhere to the five units required and the outlined polices and expectations. Those expectations are as follows (included in every ENG 111 syllabus):
“Learning Objectives
The following learning objectives are standard for all English 111 courses. By the end of the term students are expected to:
- Practice writing processes, from invention, drafting, and revising to editing and polishing.
- Read actively and think critically.
- Use writing to persuade, inform, and engage an audience.
- Explore new methods of academic inquiry, rhetorical analysis, and documentation.
- Develop academic research abilities.
The following are objectives for Common Core classes determined by the State of NM Higher Education Department. State of New Mexico Gen Ed Common Core Learning Objectives
General Education (Area I: Communication)
- Analyze and evaluate oral and written communication in terms of situation, audience, purpose, aesthetics, and diverse points of view.
- Express a primary purpose in a compelling statement and order supporting points logically and convincingly.
- Use effective rhetorical strategies to persuade, inform and engage.
- Employ writing and/or speaking processes such as planning, collaborating, organizing, composing, revising & editing to create presentations using correct diction, syntax, grammar and mechanics.
- Integrate research correctly and ethically from credible sources to support the primary purpose of a communication.
- Engage in reasoned civil discourse while recognizing the distinctions among opinions, facts, and inferences.”
When questioned about the assessment process for learning outcomes, Lauren replied that she “would love to do some of the kind of assessment that I was able to conduct at Eastern where our program was small enough to conduct portfolio assessment. NMSU’s program is so big. That said, the English department has a gen ed committee (I am chair). The committee’s goal is to study one course a year. This academic year and last, we studied ENGL 218, one of our gen ed writing classes. We have a great deal to accomplish before the assessment is complete.”