In planning the future of Oakland University’s College of Arts and Sciences I have outlined three conceptual and three structural features (see “Plan for the College” article in the Fall 2007 newsletter for more details). In this newsletter, I will talk about how our plans to sharpen the focus on writing are taking shape.
This focus is critical to the success of our graduates – not just those who graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences, but from any school or college within Oakland University. We know a strong measure of the potential success of our graduates is the quality of their experience with writing and communication.
In fact, a recent report by the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools and Colleges that surveyed 120 human resource directors from U.S. corporations with combined annual revenues of more than $4 trillion found that advanced technology has made it even more important to write clearly and quickly. Specifically, the survey found that people who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired, two-thirds of salaried employees in large American corporations have some writing responsibilities, and 80 percent of high-employment growth companies assess writing during the hiring process.
Based on survey responses, the commission estimates that remedying deficiencies in writing costs American corporations as much as $3.1 billion annually.
With that in mind, CAS is giving a fresh eye to the writing that happens at OU starting with the writing program itself. Late this spring we will divide the Rhetoric, Communications and Journalism department into two separate departments: One for Communication and Journalism, the other for Writing and Rhetoric.
The first-year writing courses that almost every OU student takes are a critical feature of the entire first-year experience at Oakland University and will be delivered through the new department, which will be the largest in the college. These courses will be extensively revised to make that experience an effective introduction to university life, allowing a student to prepare for the rigors of advanced study and to discover the range of variation in discourse across all disciplines.
Along with the courses, a sharpened focus in the newly developed Writing and Rhetoric program will allow greater support of the university’s writing center, located at the Joan Rosen Writing Studio in Kresge Library, where hundreds of students have gone for help with their writing. The department offers the peer tutoring class that certifies the peer consultants who staff the writing center.
As the new department grows, expect to see renewed emphasis on writing across all disciplines — especially in general education courses. Another project for the future will be to offer a certificate of writing excellence for students who could use this additional credential in launching their professional lives after graduation.