In a unanimous vote yesterday, the University faculty approved the proposal to require all incoming freshmen starting with the Class of 2005 to take a writing-intensive seminar in place of the current writing requirement.
The plan will increase the number of classes required for A.B. students to graduate by one to 31.
Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel hailed the seminar system as a program that will "add to the educational experience of every student at Princeton."
Malkiel said she is confident that by delivering a more focused and rigorous writing program, the University will equip freshmen with the skills necessary to deal with their course papers and their independent work more effectively than before.
According to Malkiel, the mandatory writing seminars, which will comprise 12 students, will likely meet twice weekly in 80-minute sessions. The sessions will be focused on teaching freshmen to write through practice in revision, peer reviews and one-on-one discussions between students and instructors.
B.S.E. freshmen will be required to take the writing seminar, though the class will not count toward their social science and humanities requirements. The number of courses required for a B.S.E. degree will remain fixed at 36.
Despite the large amount of work it will take to coordinate such a program, Malkiel said she is optimistic that the initiative is feasible.
She said the first move the University will make is to hire a director for the program. The next step will be to identify the people who can teach the estimated 100 seminar sections.
"We'll invite members of the faculty, academic administrators who are qualified, post docs who already have appointments and select doctoral candidates who have taught very successfully," Malkiel said. She added that to fill the remaining spots, the University will run a national search for Ph.D. scholars in a variety of fields.
USG academics chair Jeff Gelfand '01 said the new program is a much-needed change. "The bottom line is that students deserve the best writing instruction the school can provide, given the resources that we have," he said. "That is just what the proposal plans to do."
And though the program will add to the average A.B. student's workload, Gelfand said he believes that is acceptable.
"We see this proposal as a trade-off between getting significantly better writing instruction and adding to students' course load," he said. "Most of the students we talked to believed it was worth it to have a top-notch writing program."
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