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Naylor

The author wonders about the role undergraduate researchers in writing studies could play in large-scale curricular changes and assessments currently being undertaken at their university and other institutions. As the author chairs a committee overhauling first-year composition courses, they note no undergraduate or graduate students serve on these committees despite the changes aiming to help students. The author questions how undergraduates could contribute to designing changes, developing presentations to faculty, and offering new perspectives to complement traditional qualitative research on student retention and success.

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694 views2 pages

Naylor

The author wonders about the role undergraduate researchers in writing studies could play in large-scale curricular changes and assessments currently being undertaken at their university and other institutions. As the author chairs a committee overhauling first-year composition courses, they note no undergraduate or graduate students serve on these committees despite the changes aiming to help students. The author questions how undergraduates could contribute to designing changes, developing presentations to faculty, and offering new perspectives to complement traditional qualitative research on student retention and success.

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mrifenburg
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Undergraduate Researchers and Large-Scale Curricular Change

I spend a lot of time with undergrads in my teaching, service, and research. Working at a
teaching-mission university, sixty percent of my contract is based on my work in the classroom.
I’m contractually required to serve as an academic advisor and strongly encouraged to serve an
academic advisor for student clubs. My research is focused on student-writers. I’ve spent
countless hours transcribing student interviews; the student-writer experience is at the heart of
my publications.

Nothing I wrote in this opening paragraph is unique to colleagues in our field. But next semester,
my common experience will turn into a more uncommon one. My teaching load will shrink, my
research will pause, and my new service role with cause me to spend less time interacting with
students. My university system—the University System of Georgia—is undergoing a three-year
large-scale curricular change in voluntary partnership with the John N. Gardner Institute, an
external non-profit organization committed to, in their words, “advancing teaching, student
learning, success, retention, and completion.” All USG schools, including my home university,
the University of North Georgia, will use the John Gardner Institute’s Gateways to Completion
service, which identifies high-failure rate gateway courses and then, in partnership with faculty,
designs and implements a curriculum overhaul for these courses. I am co-chairing a committee
tasked with overhauling the first section of FYC. Our university populated various committees
with over thirty faculty and staff for this large-scale curricular change. Not a single
undergraduate or graduate student will serve on these committees. For the next three years, as
our whole university system moves through these changes, a large part of my service to the
university will be focused on students but involve no students directly.
As I think about the future of undergrad research in writing studies, I wonder the role undergrads
can play in large-scale assessment and curricular changes like the kind in which I will
participate. In response to a wave of systematic changes coming to American higher education,
many schools are undergoing large-scale curricular and assessment changes. Two recent edited
collection from writing studies were published in response to these changes: Retention,
Persistence, and Writing Programs (USUP, 2017) and Reclaiming Accountability: Improving
Writing Programs through Accreditation and Large-Scale Assessments (USUP, 2016). (This
July, the editors of the second collection will receive a Best Book Award at the annual CWPA
conference illustrating the timeliness and importance of this topic). As the editors and authors in
these collections argue, these changes, ostensibly, are undertaken for student learning and are
driven by retention and persistence rates. But these changes happen at institutional levels far
removed from actual student. In the rare case of a graduate student serving on these important
committees, the undergrad student is often left on the outside.
Though I am optimistic about the curricular overhaul at my home university, I wonder where the
student is in this process—not just a vague idea of Student, but a real undergrad. If the changes
are in response to students struggling in English 1101 and three other core courses, and if these
changes are designed to help student succeed in these courses, then where are the students on this
committee? More specifically, as I reflect on the fifth anniversary of the Naylor Workshop and
the impending changes coming to my university, I wonder
 What role might an undergrad researcher in writing studies play in this three-year
process?
 How might an undergrad research help author committee reports, help design data
visualizations, help rethink the changes the committee recommends to FYC?
 How might an undergrad researcher help develop a presentation that seeks to gain the all-
important faculty buy-in to our proposed changes?

Looking at the workshop motifs, I specifically wonder

 What role our undergrad researchers can play in contributing to our knowledge of
retention and persistence rates aside from offering qualitative interview responses?
 How can faculty gain institutional support for more directly including undergrad
researchers in large-scale assessment and curricular changes?
 How might undergrad researchers help us develop new research methods for studying
retention and persistence rates?

Certainly, I see problems with these questions. Undergrads don’t have training in curriculum
development, experience navigating shared governance structures or aligning institutional
changes with an institution’s mission or strategic plan. They are not schooled in the buzz words
of the moment. But our undergrad researchers are those closest to the changes and the ones that
will feel the changes. It’s easy to say no, but with colleagues at the Naylor Workshop, I want to
explore how. How can undergrad writing studies research play an active role in large-scale
changes? With colleagues at the fifth anniversary of the Naylor Workshop, I want to explore this
question, this possibility.

Works Cited

John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. Homepage, 2018.


www.jngi.org/. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Ruecker, Todd, Dawn Shepherd, Heidi Estrem, and Beth Brunk-Chavez, editors. Retention,
Persistence, and Writing Programs. Utah State UP, 2017.
Sharer, Wendy, Tracy Ann Morse, Michelle F. Eble, and William P. Banks, editors. Reclaiming
Accountability: Improving Writing Programs through Accreditation and Large-Scale
Assessments. Utah State UP, 2016.

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