About the Writing Program

The primary mission of the Writing Program, launched in July 2004, is to improve the quality of expository writing produced by Dartmouth students.

We believe that expository writing is important in every field, including highly technical areas. Ultimately, writing becomes a key factor in determining professional success.

In order to improve students' writing ability, we want to inspire students to think of expository writing as a creative—even fun—process.

The Writing Program's current curricular focus is on the First-Year Writing Courses and Seminars. In these courses, we strengthen students' awareness of how to use writing to sharpen analytical skills. We also initiate first-year students into the modes of college-level thinking, research, and presentation. Furthermore, we provide guidance, development, support, and interaction for the faculty teaching the First-Year courses.

The Writing Program is the largest program at Dartmouth. We offer over 125 sections of Writing 2-3, Writing 5, and First-Year Seminars. We are the only program at Dartmouth comprising faculty from all departments. We also offer three upper-level writing courses: Writing with Media, Composition Theory and Practice, and The Art of Science Writing.

We will offer courses in Speech starting in the 2008–2009 academic year.

We work closely with other offices at Dartmouth, among them

• the First-Year Office and the Registrar, for Writing 5 and First-Year Seminar selection; and
• the Library and Academic Computing, in our joint support of RWIT, the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology.