The University restructures its University Writing Seminar for fall of 2025
The program will now include greater flexibility, more diverse faculty across disciplines and change its name to First Year Seminar.
Starting next fall, the University Writing Program — the first year writing program which includes composition seminars and University Writing Seminars — will be restructuring as “first-year seminars.” This change was primarily initiated by the Dean of Arts and Sciences office when they established a committee to do a “five-year review of the Brandeis Core Curriculum,” according to an email sent to The Justice from Lisa Rourke, the director of the University Writing Program, and Katrin Fischer, who is the director of First Year Writing. The committee laid out how they took feedback from faculty, staff, alumni and students, in addition to reviewing “Brandeis Core learning objectives [and] curricular and financial data, and faculty, students, alumni and staff feedback.” They concluded that one of the priorities was making the curriculum more flexible, in addition to introducing students to faculty from other disciplines outside the University Writing Program.
The changes to the new curriculum include a wider range of “topic-driven seminars from different disciplines,” which will “feature a selection of readings that align with its themes, stimulating discussion, deepening understanding and serving as a foundation for writing assignments.” In addition, students will learn how “to formulate meaningful arguments, support them with observations and evidence, and convey them clearly and persuasively … Students will also learn to identify some of the conventions of disciplinary writing so that they can apply their writing skills to courses in their major and throughout the Brandeis curriculum.” The program will also offer more flexibility compared to previous seminars and will require different writing assignments for each course, compared to the old university writing seminar, which had the same types of assignments no matter the topic.
The website says that in the program “students will learn to identify the conventions of disciplinary writing, enabling them to apply these skills across their major courses and throughout the broader Brandeis curriculum.” It also lists six goals including: Making an effective writing process including Revisions, the ability to access arguments and central ideas in texts, generate original questions and research, construct “well-reasoned arguments and substantiate them with observations and evidence,” identity, evaluate and use sources responsibly, provide feedback effectively and develop the ability to distinguish differences across different disciplines.
The classes offered this upcoming academic year include some taught in years past, such as “Darwinian Dating: The Evolution of Human Attraction” by Prof. Elissa Jacobs (UWS), in addition to new topics taught by department professors like “Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain” by Prof. Jonathan Decter (NEJS) and humanities fellow specific first year seminars. A full list of topics will be available on Brandeis’ first year seminar website.
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