After years of failing to impose comprehensive goals and standards on Composition and Rhetoric I and II, Yeshiva Colleges English Department has recently decided to revamp the two courses responsible for introducing college students to university-level writing. Over the summer, new department head Dr. Richard Nochimson, in conjunction with Composition Director Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald, charted the necessary steps to begin improving Yeshivas requisite writing classes.

The Composition restyling is part of a general English Department self-reevaluation that dates back a number of years. A recent change resulting from the protracted scrutiny includes the hiring of Fitzgerald to fill the newly established position of Composition Director. Yeshiva also hired four full-time professors who specialize specifically in Composition Drs. Joshua Kotzin, Michael Matto, Elizabeth Stewart, and Gillian Steinberg.

Over the summer, Fitzgerald set up two workshop-style meetings. Only full-time faculty members attended the first meeting, while the second meeting included all Composition-oriented faculty and the Yeshiva College deans. Fitzgerald deems a fully-articulated list of course goals, indispensable to increasing students writing proficiency. In her view, the lack of uniformity in past years has sanctioned numerous teaching approaches, many of which impart writing skills inefficiently.

To facilitate their task, the English Department enlisted the help of Dr. Rita Malenczyk, Composition Director at Eastern Connecticut State University and co-author of a widely adopted set of goals for Composition courses. She led the second exploratory workshop, which took place less than a week before school started. The session focused on how Yeshiva can best adopt some of the goals in her book.

The department heads anticipate that the new standards will convey an improved understanding of how to govern and organize Composition classes. However, enforcing specific criteria will not produce twenty robot-like teachers, each mimicking the new guidelines, stressed Fitzgerald. Well work toward the same goals using different means, she promised.

Although the process is still underway, confusion regarding the scope of the alteration has already emerged. Fitzgerald and Nochimson describe the current Composition courses as highly effective, asserting that the predominant problem is simply one of perception. Their assertions seem to suggest that the Composition restructuring is merely superficial in nature.

Matto, who co-led the summer meetings, disagrees with Nochimson, though. My feeling was, as it still is, that the [new] goals should set the bar higher than they currently do, he explained. Matto believes that the standards expected of Yeshiva students can, at the very least, equal those at NYU and Iona College, where he has taught previously. Matto admits that Yeshivas current Composition requirements are below par in its tier. While he agrees with faculty members that the courses are currently better than students perceive them to be, Matto did indicate that there is always room for improvement, and the best way is through periodic self-evaluations.

The overall faculty support for the current Composition protocol contrasts markedly with student sentiment. While the current system allows individual instructors greater flexibility in deciding course content and teaching method, the general feeling that Composition has little focus and no real goal prevails on campus. Students often complain that upon completing Composition they have garnered few writing skills. David Turk, an Sy Syms Junior, noted that he enjoyed the classroom discussions, and perhaps gained greater literary appreciation, but is not sure he came away knowing how to write an argument much better than before [he] started Yeshiva.

Many English professors, however, insist that students learn a great deal about writing in the Composition courses, relegating Turks assessment to an imprecise generalization espoused by students jumping on the bandwagon, in the words of one veteran instructor. Its rosy view of Compositions current merits notwithstanding, the English Department has decided to continue planning the course restructuring, emphasizing the need to flesh out Composition objectives. The move left one Yeshiva College senior wondering what prompted the change. If Comp is so good, why did they devote so much effort to changing it? he wondered. I feel this professors cheap shot against the students is just an attempt to whitewash the current inadequacy of Comp, the senior speculated.

Whatever the impetus, the department hopes to draft a complete list of Composition goals in the near future. The preliminary list includes the basic fares of presenting a strong, persuasive argument, accounting for all views, integrating all sources and quotations, executing thorough revision, and reinforcing basic knowledge of English grammar. The next step will be to initiate a pilot program in several sections of both Composition I and II. Fitzgerald forecasts the second steps implementation as early as the upcoming spring semester.

With rumors of the imminent Composition changes buzzing, student feedback has been mostly positive. One Yeshiva College senior, majoring in Economics, lauded the efforts, but wondered, why has it taken them so long to realize there was something wrong with Comp? After learning that the changes will not take place immediately, he bemoaned the departments lassitude. If they were truly taking this seriously, he noted, they would have the new system in place already.

Because the departments planned changes are mainly in-house, that is, changes that affect only the style of the classes, but not their length or any other factor outside of the English department, they are not subject to review by either the Curriculum Committee or the Academic Standards Committee. Rabbi Shalom Carmy, chair of the former, believes that the changes should have few, if any, problems finding their way into Yeshiva classrooms.