During the 1998-99 school year the College Faculty Council of Oberlin College has granted me release time from teaching a course each semester to study science writing as it is practiced at Oberlin College. For this project I am examining the current research on science writing instruction that I find in the field of composition and the pedagogical scholarship of the natural sciences, and I am making a detailed survey of the ways writing is used in Oberlin's Natural Sciences and Mathematics Division (NS/M) classes. I am studying exactly what kinds of writing skills are needed by NS/M majors and how Expository Writing Program resources might best be employed to develop them.

As a result of this project I will produce a plan for a 100-level science writing course for the Expository Writing Program, resources for accommodating the writing needs of science majors in other Expository Writing courses, and a collection of writing instruction materials to make available to our colleagues in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics division. In addition I would like for this project to contribute to improved networking between the Expository Writing Program and that division, yielding an increased number of Writing Intensive courses taught there.

Specifically here is how I plan to carry out the project. During the first semester course release time I am conducting the initial research needed for this project by:

• reviewing scholarship in the field of composition that focuses on teaching scientific writing to undergraduates.
• surveying Natural Sciences/Math division classes at Oberlin to discover exactly how instructors are using writing in their courses. To do this I am interviewing a range of NS/M faculty across the division about how writing is produced in the sciences and the role it currently plays in their pedagogy. Among the questions I am asking are what kinds of writing are required of students, what standards inform the evaluations of writing in these subjects, what forms of writing instruction are currently used, and exactly what colleagues in those fields feel is needed as support from the Expository Writing Program. If it seems appropriate to the instructors I interview, I will also visit classes in the NS/M divisional department where writing assignments are discussed (preferably more than once in any given course to see how assignments are followed up).
• collecting NS/M writing assignment sheet samples.
• collecting samples of what science and mathematics faculty see as the best examples of writing in their fields, both by professionals and by students.
• talking to lab instructors, Learning Assistance Studies counselors in the sciences, and peer tutors--this is important because these individuals might have a slightly different perspective on what is difficult about writing for the sciences.
• talking to Reference librarians, especially Alison Ricker in the Science Library, about their sense of the research skills needed by science and mathematics majors.
• interviewing science major alumni, when possible, to get a longer perspective on their writing instruction needs

During the second semester course release time I am using what I've learned in the first semester to:

• plan a course at the 100 level in writing for the sciences for the Expository Writing Program, including writing assignments, readings, and other course activities.
• develop scientific discourse resources for other 100 level writing courses taught in the Expository Writing Program, including readings for teachers, readings for students, a list of research skill needs, and new materials for EXWR 481 (the course in which we train peer tutors to assist in Writing Intensive courses).
• network with and develop writing pedagogy resources for teachers of in NS/M division with the goal of increasing the number of Writing Intensive courses taught in NS/M division.
• develop a plan for communicating what I've learned in the project with others in both the Expository Writing Program and the Natural Sciences/Mathematics division, especially concentrating on how the information I've collected might be useful in new faculty orientation and other college-wide pedagogy discussions or workshops sponsored by the Expository Writing Program.

The 1995-96 Program Review of the Expository Writing Program revealed that our 100 level courses serve a higher proportion of science majors (23% of our enrollments, as compared to 21% from the Social Sciences, 9% from the Humanities, and 30% undeclared) and the NS/M division has consistently offered far fewer Writing Certification or Writing Intensive courses for its majors than either of the other two divisions. Hence, improvement in both the Expository Writing Program's offerings in science writing instruction and the number of Writing Certification or Writing Intensive courses offered in the NS/M division were advised as goals for the program. Since that time, however, we have been so preoccupied with securing and recruiting for our third tenure track position that we've had no time to systematically pursue these goals.

The Expository Writing Program has offered a science writing course previously. In 1985 Dean Barclay offered Writing for the Sciences, which was also offered by Robert Shelton in 1988, and which Wendy Hesford later redesigned as Gender and the Rhetoric of Science (offered in 1994/95 and 1995-96). Since the departure of Wendy in 1996, however, the Expository Writing Program has been unable to offer any course focused on writing in the sciences and has had practically no time except that spent in our annual workshop on the Writing Requirement for new faculty to devote to working with NS/M faculty on writing instruction in their courses. Len Podis and I usually devote some time to discussing scientific discourse in our 100-level courses and in our training course for peer tutors, but we have had no time to collect science writing instructional materials to share with our colleagues in the English department or the revolving door of temporary instructors who have filled leave replacements and the third position in Expository Writing since the creation of the program. In 1997-98 Anne Trubek offered one section of EXWR 101 that addressed related issues by focusing on technology and writing, a course which she has significantly revised into a Special Topics course(EXWR 103) for this year. It appears to be crucial now, however, for someone in the Expository Writing Program to investigate exactly what the writing instruction needs of majors in the NS/M division are and how we as the program charged with carrying out the Writing Requirement might best support them as they attempt to fulfill the requirement.

Furthermore, I hope that this project will create possibilities for instruction that will help all students who take our courses to bridge the divisions in the curriculum. In both a science writing course and our other 100-level courses, one way of integrating the results of this project will no doubt include designing activities that encourage students to examine the goals and methods of various forms of scientific discourse and compare them to the forms of writing used in social sciences and humanities courses. Such activities can provide students with a means of making coherent their experience of the curriculum and our requirement that they take 9 credit hours in all three divisions.

I have heard my colleagues in the natural sciences comment before on the necessity of distinguishing clearly between what science courses do and what happens in courses in which the sciences are viewed through humanities or social science approaches, hence I recognize the importance of not claiming to teach science while undertaking other tasks, such as instruction in the history of science. Nevertheless, I think that all students would benefit from courses in which the different goals, values, and methods employed by different disciplines are viewed through the comparative/contrastive habits that are the soul of rhetorical studies.

One reason why I'm qualified to take on this project is that I'm one of two tenured faculty in the Expository Writing Program and am in the second year of a three year appointment as Director of Program. After working as Director for a year, I've noticed that this position is uniquely advantageous to doing the networking that fosters curricular reform. With the help of my colleagues in the Expository Writing Program, I am currently working to promote knowledge of the Writing Requirement and resources for teaching writing across the curriculum by participating in the new orientation program for new faculty and promoting discussion of writing instruction at noon meetings sponsored by OCTET and the Brown Bag Pedagogy series. In general I've been a leader in new pedagogical uses of technology in the Humanities at Oberlin, serving on the Educational Technology Committee for the past three years and testing uses of electronic discussion groups and web-based conferencing that have been adopted by a number of my colleagues.

In the distant past I worked as a technical writer for the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, mostly reporting on the work of Extension Service scientists for state newspapers, but also occasionally editing the scientists' work for their own professional organizations. Although I don't think that experience necessarily prepares me to teach science writing, nevertheless it gave me the experience of having to adjust as a writer to discourse conventions of the sciences. That experience makes me cautious about assuming that all science and technical writing is the same and equally needed by our students. Along with the many hundreds of papers for science classes that Oberlin students have shown me over the fourteen years I've taught here, however, it suggests to me that we need to closely examine exactly what our science students need and develop as much expertise in teaching that among the Expository Writing Program faculty as possible.