A comprehensive new report on the Expository Writing program recommends a stronger role for TFs in teaching writing and more integration between Expos classes and the rest of the Harvard curriculum.

The report, authored by new program Director Nancy Sommers, emerged out of interviews with 30 professors from 20 different concentrations, 25 TFs from 19 concentrations and a survey of 123 juniors from the Class of 1994. President Neil L. Rudenstine commissioned it in February 1993.

The report is intended to generate discussion, not necessarily to spark immediate action, she said.

"Change happens slowly," Sommers said. "What I hope is that people will read the report and find something useful in it that will help them think about their own teaching."

Expos, a troubled program under former director Richard C. Marius, has been plagued by low teacher morale and complaints that writing is undervalued in the curriculum.

Looking Up

Under Sommers, however, many teachers said the program has been looking up.

Students surveyed rated their first-year Expos experience a 3.2, slightly above "adequate."

Echoing complaints made by teachers and professors last year, the report calls for Expos to work more closely with the rest of the curriculum.

"The most important thing I learned is that professors and students don't want Expos to be an isolated academic experience, that Expos cannot develop its goals in isolation," Sommers said.

Students need follow-up writing lessons and classes in their concentrations, said Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell.

"The students surveyed desire to have writing taught beyond the Expos level with specific reference to their disciplines of concentration," Buell said. "According to the study, [Expos] comes out pretty well but not perfectly."

The report also stresses the importance of section leaders in teaching writing.

"Once they were just the graders of papers," Sommers said. "Now they've taken on this tremendous responsibility" to meet with students and comment thoughtfully upon papers, she said.

The report said that students often find their TFs lacking, and TF's seem to agree.

"Teaching fellows want training in how to guide undergraduate writing," the report says.