What is University Writing Anyway?

Five years into its existence, students and faculty are still working to establish and understand the role of University Writing within undergraduate education at Columbia.
The pilot course was taught in 2002-03, and the finalized version replaced Logic and Rhetoric as the Core's official writing course at the beginning of the 2003-04 academic year. Now, Columbia's largest Core course is under review by the executive committee on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Logic and Rhetoric, the brainchild of Professor Edward Tayler, was an integral part of the Core for two decades before complaints about a lack of clear objectives and funding brought about its demise. The course, which was based on the skills of expository writing, was replaced by University Writing, with its focus on reading academic texts and conducting research beyond assigned articles.
One of the primary goals of the class is teaching students that academic writing is not conducted in a vacuum. "We want students to learn how to enter into conversation with other writers, and we want to draw students' attention to the language they use in their arguments," said Professor Joseph Bizup, Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program.
Shayne Legassie, a Literature Humanities instructor who has had experience teaching Logic and Rhetoric and both the pilot and final University Writing courses, shared the same opinion. "UW, CC, Lit Hum, and other core courses try to get students to see written work in a new way-not as the carrying out of an order but rather as an intervention in an ongoing intellectual discussion."
The essay-writing components of Lit Hum and CC tend to overlap, causing confusion among some students, according to Shilarna Stokes, a teaching fellow who instructs a University Writing course. "There are a lot of people who have the idea that UW is meant to help them write essays for Lit Hum or other classes," Stokes said. "It has its own worth."
Bizup disagreed. "In University Writing, the main emphasis is on the students' writing," he said. "In Literature Humanities, the main emphasis is on students' engagement with the literary texts. I don't see this as a conflict. I see the courses as complementing one another."
As designed, this complementary role for University Writing extends beyond Lit Hum to all other parts of Columbia's undergraduate education.
The fact that revision and editing is incorporated into University Writing has garnered positive student responses. "I like the workshopping," John Ruan, CC '10, said. "Before UW I never revised and I never knew how much better my writing could be," said Ruan. The course, however, is often not suited to every student's interests, according to Ruan. "I don't like how the course is structured so that you're forced to write essays based on assigned articles. ... It would be better if we could pick our own texts."
"I've had my fair share of grumbling over the work required in University Writing class, but there's no denying the necessity of it," countered Leanne Penna, CC '10.
When asked about the feedback the University Writing Program receives, Bizup responded, "We are constantly gleaning responses and suggestions from students, instructors, and faculty. We are constantly working to improve the course for Columbia's students."
Legassie and Stokes both agree that the principle of academic writing needs to be articulated more clearly to students. "I think a writing class is a great thing, but there needs to be more awareness across the curriculum that one's development as a writer is a lifelong process," Legassie said.
"He [Legassie] couldn't be more right," Stokes said. "Writing is not a set of skills but a process and cannot possibly be done in one semester." She added that many instructors feel it should be a year-long course.
"To some extent I feel that as a Literature Humanities professor I have to teach half my students how to write in the first semester because they will not have a writing class until spring," Legassie said. "It's challenging to teach a class where only half of the students have had training in the conventions of writing in the humanities."