Writing Intensive Courses

Writing Intensive Courses continue students' development by emphasizing writing and revision in the context of specific disciplines.

Each student must complete a Writing Intensive Course by the end of the first semester of the sophomore year. The Writing Intensive Course may be taken within or outside the major; it may simultaneously satisfy other Liberal Education Program requirements.

Course Goals

  1. To initiate the student into the rhetorical and epistemological conventions of a specific "discourse community."
  2. To reinforce the understanding of writing as a recursive, social process.
  3. To foster the practice of synthesizing support for arguments from multiple sources.
  4. To develop the student's ability to read textual materials analytically, practicing comparison and synthesis of ideas presented in sources read.

Course Objectives

  1. The student will produce at least one longer paper through a recursive process involving instructor feedback before final submission.
  2. The student synthesizes information and interpretations gleaned from research or textual analysis.
  3. The student produces research-supported assignments which focus on using information, inferences, and interpretations to support a thesis, rather than simply to catalog information.
  4. The student compares and distinguishes the epistemological and rhetorical conventions of the target discipline and outside disciplines.