By Brad Bormann ’14

Beginning with the class of 2016, the Values and Science/Technology (VaST) and College Writing (English 110) courses will be eliminated.

Instead, students will be required to take: one writing, or “W” course, within the major, one “W” outside the major and a third elective “W” in any desired discipline, in addition to the First Year Seminar (FYS), according to a report by the Curriculum and Educational Policies Committee (CEP.)

These alterations – which are the biggest changes to the Common Course of Studies (CCS) in nearly 20 years – were led by the CEP and approved by faculty last May.

According to Professor of Economics and last year’s Chair of the CEP Ed Gamber, the changes in writing requirements were driven by changing goals in learning outcomes.

“What I had learned from our writing specialists is that writing is best taught within a context,” Gamber said. “When you ask students to write about a subject that [the professor] know[s] about … it’s much more effective than the alternative, where you just go teach them about writing as a mechanical process. The better way to teach students to write is in the context of a discipline.”

“Students will be able to take more control of their writing education, and I think they will put in more effort,” Nirav Giri ‘13 said. “This is a good idea, as long as these professors in different disciplines are qualified to teach the writing.”

The College Writing Program, an organization run by students and faculty to support writing education at Lafayette, will help facilitate the new courses and programs tantamount to the success of the new CCS.

One of the largest and most visible groups within the College Writing Program, the Writing Associates (or WAs), assign individual College Writing Program liaisons to courses that desire their support to help students compose papers and adjust to college writing.

Traditionally, the WA program received much of its demand from VaST and English 110 courses. Even though these courses are being eliminated, Associate Professor of English and Director of the College Writing Program Bianca Falbo said that the WA program will be kept busy, since WAs will be assigned to the additional writing-intensive courses.

According to the CEP report, professors in the Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering Departments are currently working to develop about 10 new Science and Technology in a Social Context courses (STSCs). These courses will be designed for students who are not Science or Engineering Majors, and while they are not required to be “W” courses, they may supply great demand for WA support.

“WAs still always have the mission of supporting all of the writing-intensive courses throughout the College,” Coordinator of the College Writing Program Dr. Christian Tatu said. “We will still need 50 to 60 WAs each fall to support FYS courses. We even have an arrangement with Foreign Language and Literatures to provide Spanish WAs.”

“If anything, WA’s will be hired on the terms that it’s a one-semester deal. We’ll continue to do everything else the way we always have,” Tatu said.