WRI 101: First Year Writing at The TCNJ Writing Program

Beginning in spring 2004, The TCNJ Writing Program, in cooperation with the Department of English and The Write Place, began to offer Faculty Writing Preceptors to students whose preparation for college level writing was deemed “at risk.” Faculty Writing Preceptors were experienced TCNJ writing instructors who helped first year students with the writing intensive component of both the first seminar and other writing intensive classes. In fall, 2004, this program was expanded into WRI 101: First Year Writing. WRI 101—a zero-credit, graded P/F, capped at 7 writing tutorial— offers individual instruction and an individual learning plan for each student.

Despite the program’s serving only a few first year students, the Writing Program sees it as highly beneficial to both individual students and to the institution. The students served are those for whom undergraduate tutoring at The Write Place would not be a sufficient intervention. These students come to TCNJ with little or no formal instruction or experience with academic writing. Many are special admits with academic strengths outside writing. Their WRI 101 instructor is teaching them how to read and understand their writing prompts and how to approach and manage the myriad pre-writing and writing tasks required by an acceptable college writing assignment. Last spring, the Faculty Writing Preceptor worked collaboratively with students’ instructors in WRI 102 and with staff at The Center for Academic Enhancement.

The advantages of WRI 101 to the college are myriad. More faculty will become familiar with the Center for Academic Enhancement and The Write Place. Most importantly, however, the WRI 101 program will help with the successful retention of students whose secondary schools did not prepare them for TCNJ work, but whose socio-economic and academic diversity adds greatly to diversity here at TCNJ.

The WRI 101 instructors will:

• Be supervised by Jean Graham, the Interim Director of Writing and Nina Ringer, instructor in the Writing Program.
• Be assigned 5-7 “at risk” first year students with whom to work.
• Meet all of these students by Friday, Sept. 10, the end of the second week of classes.
• Set up weekly one half hour tutoring sessions with their students.
• Set up weekly hour tutoring sessions with undergraduate tutors and their students.
• Hold 1-2 hours per week of office hours for assigned students or for peer writing tutor-consultants with whom they are working
• Work collaboratively with peer writing tutor-consultants.
• Tutor-consultants supervised would be those working directly with the “at risk” students assigned to the Faculty Writing Preceptor.
• Put in about 7-10 hours of work per week for the 14 weeks of the fall term.
• Review the student’s schedule of classes and via e-mail contact all faculty teaching a course with a significant writing component to introduce the faculty member to the WRI 101 program and to explain its role in the student’s instructional program.
• Once an individual instructional plan has been made for each student, the WRI 101 instructor will communicate details of that plan to all of the student’s appropriate instructors.

Students assigned to WRI 101 can expect that:

• Their WRI 101 instructor will meet with them in the first two weeks of the fall term and set up a weekly 1 hour tutoring appointment for writing with a peer writing tutor-consultant. This appointment would be on-going and would allow the student to report weekly progress in writing assignments in all of her/his classes to the peer writing tutor-consultant.
• Early in the term, their WRI 101 instructor will also meet with them weekly for one half hour to review their writing progress and assignments, and will continue these weekly meetings past the midterm grade reports if the student is in danger of failing any classes in which writing is a significant component of her/his grade.
• Their WRI 101 instructor will help them use the St. Martin’s Handbook as a resource for all of her/his writing assignments.

Here’s what the Faculty Writing Preceptor is not able to do:

• Read all of the assigned student readings and learn the content of the students’ courses.
• Rewrite, edit, or keyboard students’ essays.
• Excuse students from any of their course requirements, or negotiate any postponements in due dates.