Editor's Note: The following article includes inaccurate reporting suggesting that the Knight Institute may hire undergraduates to teach First-Year Writing Seminars. In fact, the Knight Institute is not considering employing undergraduates as instructors for such courses. Updated coverage can be found here.

In a few years, first-year and transfer students entering Cornell might be sitting in a First-Year Writing Seminar taught by a fellow undergraduate.

In order to counter the effects of the recession, the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines is forced to consider changes to its FWS Program. Prof. Paul Sawyer, English, who also directs the Knight Institute, said that he does not want to loosen the writing requirement, but it is “a real possibility” that the Institute will begin hiring undergraduates as paid instructors.

Currently, the majority of Cornell students are required to take two semesters of FWS’s. The Institute offers over 100 courses in departments across the University, over one-third of which are taught by faculty, while the remaining are taught by graduate student teaching assistants, according to its website.

The Institute will face downsizing over the next few years as more faculty members retire and the number of graduate students decreases, according to Sawyer. At the same time, however, the undergraduate population is expected to rise. The problem, then, will be how to teach more students with fewer resources.

Hiring Undergraduates as Instructors

Sawyer pointed out that undergraduates in schools such as the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are already serving as T.A.s in large lecture classes for credit. Furthermore, undergraduates have proven to be successful as writing tutors in the Writing Workshop, another program offered by the Institute. If undergraduates were to be hired to teach FWS’s, the Institute would be ready to provide the necessary training, just as it has been providing training for its graduate student T.A.s.

Opinions toward the tentative plan vary among students. Erik Kenyon grad, having taught a FWS for a semester last year, said that while he enjoyed designing a course on his own, he found it to be highly time-consuming. Kenyon said that he would have reservations about hiring undergraduates to teach FWS’s.

“I would’ve felt swamped if I hadn’t T.A.’d before under close professorial supervision,” Kenyon said. “Being able to design a course is different from having to take a course.”

Kenyon said that in his previous teaching assistantships, he had received careful guidance from professors, who would give intensive feedback on the way he commented on student essays. This experience became invaluable when he had to teach a seminar on his own. Kenyon felt that an undergraduate who had never had such experience before would be overwhelmed, and the kind of training that the Institute provides to graduate students would not be enough to prepare undergraduates for actual teaching.

Kenyon said that he would have fewer qualms if the writing seminars were pre-designed and a professor were to take an active role in guiding the undergraduate T.A. behind the scene.

Undergraduate Sarah Kennedy ’10 shared similar sentiments as Kenyon, saying that she would strongly discourage hiring undergrads to teach FWS’s.

“I would feel nervous if my first class in college was taught by an undergrad,” Kennedy said. “Frankly, I want someone with a degree in the subject.”

Kennedy said that while peer-to-peer feedback is great in the context of the Writing Workshop, she wouldn’t want an undergraduate to teach an entire course. She added that even having graduate students teach FWS’s is rather unsatisfactory. She commented that the graduate student who taught her FWS did not seem competent in handling a class on her own, and discussions would often digress or fall flat.

Other students are supportive of the idea of having undergraduates as instructors. Christine Erie ’11 said that she would be able to relate to undergraduates more easily and feel more comfortable in discussions.

Anthony Liu ’10 said that he wouldn’t have a problem as long as students are given training and show that they are qualified.

“Age doesn’t make a difference,” Liu said. “Being older or a graduate student doesn’t automatically make someone more qualified.”

Keeping the Writing Requirement

Sawyer emphasized that his goal is to somehow find the resources to keep the current writing requirement despite the economic pressure.

“I don’t think A.P. credit reflects the work done at the level of FWS’s,” Sawyer said. “Writing in college is in a disciplinary context, and the FWS’s are an introduction to disciplinary thinking.”

In addition, Sawyer said that the seminars focus on revising, which is often not stressed in high school but is an essential skill in college. FWS’s also aim to teach students to envision writing as a process rather than a product. He believes that it takes at least two FWS courses in college to achieve such goals.

The effectiveness of the current FWS program remains contentious. Kenyon said that in the FWS he taught, he did see improvements in students’ writing over the course of a semester. In particular, students learned to steer away from the formulaic five-paragraph essay format they were taught in high school. Kenyon believed that FWS’s encourage students to be critical towards their writing and to learn that “getting a piece of writing shredded to pieces is a good thing.” He added that students should be grateful to be able receive so much individual feedback as first-year students in such a large university.

Most students, however, said that the FWS’s did not transform their writing in any significant way. Although students recognize some value in the writing requirement, they continue to attest to the rigor of their high school preparation, especially the A.P. and I.B. programs. For Liu, the revision process used in the FWS’s was not anything more intensive than what he had done in high school. Erie also said that she did not take much away from the FWS’s, and that she owes much of what she knows about writing to her high school I.B. program. She added that the writing seminars were time-consuming courses that prevented her from focusing on her introductory science courses, which were more relevant to her future.

Kennedy said that a good way to respond to the downsizing of the Institute would be to extend its goals to other courses across the University.

“Writing skills are not exclusive to FWS’s; other professors can incorporate the same goals into the courses they’re teaching,” Kennedy said.

An introductory history course she took, for instance, taught her the same skills of analysis, drafting and revising that the FWS’s aim to teach, Kennedy said.

As another way of giving more attention to writing in the University, Sawyer envisions implementing a Writing Fellows Program, in which undergraduate writing tutors would sit in class with their peers and offer feedback on papers before they are submitted to the professor. This program already exists in schools such as Brown University and Boston College.

For now, Sawyer is determined to do his best to ensure that the FWS Program will be here to stay.

“The FWS Program is the closest we have to a common education experience,” Sawyer said. “University-wide budget cuts will require an increase in lecture classes at the expense of small classes. Small, writing-intensive classes will be more important than ever as average class size grows.”