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In 2000, Duke University put into place a new curriculum that requires all undergraduates to take a seminar in "Academic Writing" in their first year and two "writing in the disciplines" courses afterwards. This new emphasis on writing as a mode of learning and inquiry was spearheaded by the dean oi Trinity College, Robert Thompson, who made professionalizing the first-year writing course one of his priorities. Under his leadership, Duke decided to invest in a new postdoctoral faculty to teach an ambitiously reimagined first-year writing course.
"Academic Writing" is now the only course taken by every undergraduate at Duke. There are no prerequisites and no exemptions. More than 80 percent of the sections of this course are now taught by a faculty of twenty-five postdoctoral fellows in the University Writing Program. This multidisciplinary writing program is housed in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Wiiting (CTLW), which also sponsors various programs supporting the work of undergraduate teachers at Duke-including workshops and consulting on teaching, a tutorial writing studio, training in teaching and technology, a Preparing Future Faculty program, a series of teaching breakfasts and lunches, and speakers and symposia on the scholarship of teaching. Our efforts to remake the first-year writing course are thus tightly connected to college-wide attempts to rethink the intellectual work of undergraduate teaching.
"Writing in the disciplines" (WlD) courses are designed and staffed by faculty and graduate teaching assistants in the various departments throughout Duke. Students in WID courses are expected to write regularly throughout the semester, to discuss the work they are doing as writers in class, to revise their work in response to comments from their teachers and peers, and to leam about the roles and uses of writing in the ReId they are studying. To have a course designated as writing intensive, faculty must show how they will teach towards these four guidelines. The CTLW offers both workshops and one-on-one consulting for teachers of WID courses.
In the last four years, more than 200 WID courses have been developed and taught across a wide range of departments, many several times and in multiple sections. Not all of these courses center on teaching the critical essay; rather, since their aim is to introduce students to the actual forms of...