“Foundations of 21st Century Writing” is now the only required English course for first-year students. 

In previous years, both “Writing and Rhetoric I” and “Writing and Rhetoric II” were required core classes for students. Now, just one class is required under the revised core, which reduces the number of general electives students have to take from 42 to 30. 

Columbia has reevaluated the need of students to have particular kinds of writing instruction,” said Brendan Riley, an associate professor who will teach the new course and is coordinator of first-year writing.

However, because different students in different programs need different kinds of writing instruction, the “Writing and Rhetoric II” course, now called “21st Century Writing in Creative Disciplines,” “isn’t as necessary as it used to be” for some students, he said.

Riley believes that the change in requirement would benefit students due to the flexibility that the Columbia core committee has given with the idea of “student ownership of their education.” 

“Students can decide how much writing instruction they need or want and it can fit the individual student in line with whatever else they’re pursuing,” he said. 

Sincere Townsend, a senior graphic design major who had taken both “Writing and Rhetoric I” and “Writing and Rhetoric II” said, “I feel like it could be more efficient because taking two writing classes can be overwhelming to some people, so I think that it could be beneficial for those that are trying to get past the hump without going through another year or semester.”

“Writing and Rhetoric I,” listed as ENGL 111, has been changed to “Foundations of 21st Century Writing,” and “Writing and Rhetoric II,” listed as ENGL 112, is now “21st Century Writing in Creative Disciplines.” 

Riley said that there are some differences between “Writing and Rhetoric I” and “Foundations of 21st Century Writing.” These changes include:

• A revised version of the textbook that includes an updated and extended list of key concepts “with the idea of giving students a broader approach to learning to write for themselves.”
• Addition of “intellectual nimbleness” – with only one semester required, making sure students come out of the class prepared for any writing challenges they may face through college or going into the workforce.
• The usage and understanding of AI tools.

Ames Hawkins, a professor and the interim director of the School of Communication, Culture and Society, said the new class is less about a change in curriculum, but more about a change in framing how the class is taught. 

According to Hawkins, instead of just preparing students for a second English writing course, “Fundamentals of 21st Century Writing” aims to make connections between what students are doing in the class and what they will be doing in their other classes.

“We haven’t drastically changed the content,” they said. “We’re talking about shifting how it might go in the classroom in order to have students see the connections that have always been there.”

Hawkins has worked with faculty across the college to understand how writing works in other programs. 

They have also been working with instructors to better support them in teaching the course through faculty development sessions. One already took place in May and there are two others taking place — one at the Faculty Development Days on Monday, Aug. 19 and one at the All-School Meeting on Aug. 27.

Hawkins said that they have started to message other foundation courses and are encouraging “Big Chicago” courses to become familiar with some of the same vocabulary and key concepts. That way, there is a “common vocabulary that students can understand when they think about writing and how to think about all the different ways we write,” they said.

“At the most basic level, it’s a vocabulary, but it’s a far richer idea than that,” Hawkins said. “It’s trying to figure out ways to open that conversation across the college and throughout the students’ experience here.” 

Riley said the biggest change between the courses is the opportunity for students to get more in-class writing time.

Part of the core idea of the course is that students will be doing writing every day, and as the semester goes on, students will participate in progressively longer stretches of writing, he added.

Devon Polderman, a part-time instructor and one of two academic managers in the School of Communication, Culture and Society, has taught fiction writing at Columbia and has had much experience with having students write more in the classroom. With this background, he assisted in the concept of more in-class writing with this new course.

“We’re looking to have more of the writing done in class with a group of supportive peers and coaching from an instructor,” Polderman said.

In his own work, Polderman recalled students being surprised when he had them start writing during week one of the semester. However, he said that they became conditioned to it quickly.

“I’m also quite confident that even those students who don’t identify or think of themselves as writers, are going to find writing in class with coaching with [an] immediate sense of audience and immediate gratification of their work — I think they’re going to like it,” he said.

Polderman hopes that the new course will produce a more engaged class. He said he believes writing in class is a “pretty fundamental difference” than what was happening in the course before.

Previously, there was more discussion instead of writing, and students would be asked to apply their writing outside of class. “So I don’t want to suggest they were less engaged or not engaged previously, but I’m hoping this takes levels of engagement up to another level,” he said.

Matthew McCurrie, an associate professor teaching the honors level of the course, has already implemented more in-class writing in his other courses, and he said that he felt students benefited from writing in class with the guidance he was able to provide.

He added that writing in class definitely helps stimulate thought. “A lot of students have their own writing process, and sometimes those writing processes benefit from revision, from rethinking what they normally do, and sometimes working together in class is one experience of writing that students don’t often get,” he said. 

McCurrie said writing in class is enormously helpful for those students that often experience writing blocks. He said that students deal with many distractions that they are “negotiating outside of class” from mental health to their jobs, making it harder for them to do coursework outside of class. 

That resonated with Taylor Davis, a senior film and television major who passed out of “Writing and Rhetoric I” and took “Writing and Rhetoric II.” “I think it will be good to get more in-class writing because it takes the burden off of doing homework, and hopefully, it will motivate [students] more to try harder if they’re already in a set area to do it.”

McCurrie said the changes to the curriculum are healthy. 

“We need to do them, even if they’re not huge changes,” he said. “We need to go back and keep asking ourselves, ‘Are we doing the best that we can for our students and preparing them for, not just career success, but for lives that they deem to be fulfilling? Is this going to help them do that?’”

Copy edited by Doreen Abril Albuerne-Rodriguez