Challenges Remain in Expos

While Harvard’s Expository Writing program tries to teach every freshman the importance of coherent organization and improvement through revision, the record of the course’s leadership on these fronts has been spotty over the past few months.

A Crimson investigation conducted this fall concluded that the program was suffering from a lack of permanent leadership, closed lines of communication with the University, and less than stellar relations with the preceptors it employs.

But since the resignation of the program’s director in July—followed by the exit of the assistant director at the beginning of this month—little effort has been made to find permanent leadership, and there are no plans for a search until there is a permanent Dean of the College. And while much feedback on the current administration’s performance has been positive, long-standing concerns about the job security of preceptors, their pay, and class sizes remain unresolved.



IN THE INTERIM

This summer, Nancy Sommers stepped down as director of Expos, a position she filled for 13 years, for reasons which she did not specify.

Thomas R. Jehn, a writing instructor at the College since 1997, was chosen to serve as interim Expos director.

Months later, however, the promised national search for Sommers’s replacement has not begun. According to Kathryn B. H. Clancy, an Expos preceptor, faculty were told this fall that a search would take place in the spring.

One administrator with knowledge of the program said that the absence of a national search for a director could be viewed as a lack of commitment to making Expos a nationally-recognized program on the part of University Hall.

Georgene B. Herschbach, associate dean of undergraduate academic programs, said that the College will wait until a new College dean is appointed before looking for a leader for the program. But because of uncertainty regarding when a new dean will actually be appointed, the time frame for having a permanent Expos director remains up in the air.

Interim Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam declined to comment on the issue, saying only, “You’ll have no need to quote me.”

Jehn, the interim director, has been lauded for his personable leadership style and for bringing stability to the program.

“Tom has made it a priority to work with us on ways to help our students connect what we do in Expos to the writing they will do during their four years at Harvard,” Jane Rosenzweig, an Expos preceptor, said in an e-mail.

Yet concerns have been voiced about the treatment of long-term projects given the potentially-transient nature of the current administration.

For example, the long-standing goal of reaching out to departments throughout the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in order to pinpoint the particulars of writing in various disciplines seems to have lost traction, according to Classics Professor Richard F. Thomas and philanthropist Morton I. Sosland ’46, whose family gave millions to start Expos in the 1990s.

“We had hoped that [the Expository Writing Program] would reach out to some of the departments,” Sosland said. “I would assume those relationships have now been demolished.”

One preceptor added that there has not been “any curricular development going on” under the present administration.

The Crimson granted anonymity to three members of the program because they said their jobs would be jeopardized if they spoke about Expos’s internal affairs.



UNRESOLVED ISSUES

Many of the concerns that have long been voiced by preceptors—the desire for job security, higher salaries, and smaller class sizes—remain largely unaddressed, according to interviews with several preceptors.

One administrator close to the program said the year-to-year contracts that characterize Expos hiring practices devalue the preceptor position.

“The danger for a program like Expos is that it becomes a low-level service course, [that] anyone can teach it, [that] there is no permanent staff to it,” the individual said.

Despite what many preceptors say has been generally positive leadership under Jehn, little has been done to address these issues.

Clancy, a preceptor, recalled a study commissioned by the University’s human resources department in the summer of 2007 to gauge employee satisfaction with the program.

“We never heard back the results,” Clancy said.

Though discussions are in the works with the Faculty’s Standing Committee on Writing and Speaking and within the FAS administration regarding these concerns, “no decisions have been made yet” about ways to deal with the concerns, Herschbach said.

In fact, the issue of a lack of job security reaches into the higher echelons of the program: Suzanne Lane, the former assistant director of Expos, decamped for MIT earlier this month in order to lead the technical institute’s writing programs.

“I left Harvard for this position...because this is a permanent position, and Harvard hadn’t yet decided whether my position could be permanent,” Lane said.

Because little has been done to address the problems, Thomas said that the number of applications for preceptors has fallen this year.

“Word seems to be out that the program is somewhat troubled in terms of its administrative situation,” Thomas said.



TIGHT BELTS, TIGHTER LIPS

In addition to the fact that few structural reforms have been put into place, Expos may also be feeling the strains of a College-wide focus on frugality.

While Herschbach said that Expos has been able to effectively cut back on costs without “compromising the quality of the Program,” one preceptor said that some teachers feel that the “focus on ‘fiscal responsibility’” has rendered the Expos building an uncomfortable environment to work in.

“I’ve literally been told that they don’t like working at the office,” the preceptor said, “that they prefer to work from home.”

The preceptor added that extra pay for grading freshman placement exams and choosing essays for ‘Exposé’, the collection of student work published by the program each year, may be cut. Weekly e-mails on how to limit spending are sent to all preceptors, and preceptors even have to request permission to use manila envelopes, the individual said.

But James Herron, a current preceptor, said that belt-tightening has happened in “non-essential areas (parties, mainly),” and that this has not affected his teaching or research.

Another preceptor said that the atmosphere of the building has changed dramatically since Sommers’ departure.

“It’s an extremely depressing place to be,” the preceptor said. “People are leaving their jobs as quickly as they can.”

The preceptor added that communication between higher-ups and preceptors was limited at best.

“People aren’t certain that Expos is going to stay in the form that it is, they aren’t certain that their jobs are secure,” he said. “It’s because we’re not getting any information.”

And the biggest financial backers of the program, too, feel as though they are being left in the dark.

“They tell us very little,” Sosland said. “We’re interested because we invested a devil of a lot of money in it.”

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Maxwell L. Child can be reached at mchild@fas.harvard.edu.