Vietnam

dents who show up in the senior year withpretty serious writing deficiencies, and youtry to figure out, how did that happen?”Burke says.There’s a balance, he says, betweenensuring that all students have access to theCollege’s resources and padding the curriculumso it catches those few students whostubbornly refuse to find them.There remains a strong will on the part ofmany faculty members and individual studentsto enhance writing instruction. Thiscommitment is leading to innovations anddiscussions never before initiated.Gladstein, with the help of a group ofWAs, has begun a detailed error analysis ofintroductory biology lab reports and a qualitativestudy of the writing experiences of thestudents writing those reports. The workhas energized the teaching of writing in thediscipline, professors say.“There is an evolution of all of us tryingto understand how we write in science,”says Assistant Professor of Biology Jose-LuisMachado. “We thought we knew.”In recent years, Assistant Professor ofBiology Julie Hagelin says introductory biologystudents were presented with a series offormatting guidelines: “Do this, don’t dothat.” The guidelines gave students theincorrect impression that science writing“was somehow fundamentally differentfrom writing a cohesive argument or essayfor another class,” she says. Professors arenow emphasizing the importance of argument,and, for the first time, have devoted abiology lab session to teaching writing.Other faculty members are also highlyengaged with the instruction of writing. AnApril student-faculty discussion on writingand feedback, closed to reporters, markedthe first such dialogue in recent memory.Over Indian food, students and facultymembers chatted about what feedbackworks and what doesn’t. They discussed thedread of finding the words “see me” on apaper: “I swear to you, I never thought thewords ‘see me’ would freak students out somuch,” Assistant Professor of FrenchCarina Yervasi said after the meeting. Studentsalso expressed a very Quakerly desirethat professors talk about their own writingstruggles—an acknowledgment, one studentsays, that “we are just simply youngerscholars in the field.”The stage seems to be set for a larger dialogueamong the community’s various scholars.As Associate Provost Willie says,Swarthmore’s writing program consists ofthe student WAs, the institutional Wrequirement, and the dedication of individualfaculty members to the cause. Althoughthose pieces are not as coherent as on othercampuses, Gladstein says there is a realeffort afoot to better integrate them.But Willie says there likely will be resistanceto any major change, particularly oneinvolving the creation of a more centralizedauthority. “If our current model is workingfor students and faculty, terrific,” she says.“If not, we need to figure out what will bemore effective.” TSince her graduation from Swarthmore, formerwriting associate Elizabeth Redden has been areporter for the Delaware State News. She willenter Columbia University’s graduate programin nonfiction writing in the fall.SOIZICK MEISTER/MEDIA BAKERYjune 2006 : 29