Crimson Article Misrepresented Expos’s Efforts

To the editors:

As the directors of the two Expos divisions charged with building and maintaining relationships between the Expository Writing Program and Harvard academic departments, we were surprised that your reporters chose not to ask us about the concerns raised by Professor Richard Thomas and Morton I. Sosland ’46 on this issue (“Challenges Remain in Expos” news article, Feb. 5). We are writing to set the record straight: Collaborations between the Expository Writing Program and Harvard departments are not only ongoing, but have actually been expanded significantly this year.

Since September, we have collaborated with 17 academic departments across the disciplines (up from 12 last year) to develop writing components for undergraduate courses, produce pedagogical materials for students, and provide training workshops for Teaching Fellows. We have also worked with the history, psychology, and life sciences departments to create new Departmental Writing Fellows positions, which provide discipline-specific writing help currently unavailable to most Harvard students. We plan to expand this program to other departments next fall, beginning with government. In addition to our ongoing work in the departments, we have recently been invited by Professor Jay Harris to collaborate with the Committee on General Education in efforts to help faculty members integrate writing assignments into the College’s new General Education courses.

This year we have also made it a priority to work within Expos to identify ways that we might better teach students writing skills that are transferable to their other courses. So far, we have worked with Tom Jehn and other members of the program to organize two teaching colloquia at which TFs, lecturers, and preceptors from departments in the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences discussed the teaching of writing in their fields. This spring we will begin a dialogue with Directors of Undergraduate Studies about Expos and its initiatives for better integrating the program into the College.

We continue to receive more requests for collaboration than we have resources to handle, and we are in discussion with the Standing Committee on Writing and Speaking and the College administration about ways to expand our work further.


JAMES HERRON
JANE ROSENZWEIG
Cambridge, Mass.
February 18, 2008


James Herron is the Assistant Director of the Harvard Writing Project. Jane Rosenzweig is the Director of the Writing Center.