As the only course at Harvard that every first-year student must take, Expository Writing (universally known as Expos) has a far-reaching impact on undergraduate education.

Professors, administrators and students agree that critical thinking and analytical writing rank among the most important skills undergraduates need to learn at Harvard--hence the creation of the first-year writing requirement in 1872 at the suggestion of University President Charles N. Eliot.

Because most concentrations and Core courses require students to write papers and analyze source materials, a standardized program which teaches first-years the basics of college-level writing is necessary.

However, in addition to ensuring that all first-year students have comparable instruction in writing, Expos provides a model for the small course with individualized instruction to which Faculty and students alike frequently point in debates over course size.

During the controversy over Core curriculum reform this year, former Dean of Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell suggested to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) that the Core begin to incorporate small, seminar-style courses instead of the traditionally huge lecture classes.

Buell's amendment to the Core reform legislation invites an examination of Expos, which already embodies most of the points in Buell's plan.

A Program With a Mission

Expos clearly has one objective: to teach students to write well. But preceptors and administrators differ on the program's other goals.

Gordon C. Harvey, a preceptor who served as Acting Director of Expos while director Nancy Sommers was on leave this year, says Expos is designed to teach students how to write a college-level essay, complete with instruction in "the process of planning, drafting and revising that one needs to go through to write good essays."

But Harvey cautions that Expos does not cure all writing problems.

"Obviously our mission isn't to teach students everything they'll ever need to know about writing," Harvey says. "That, since writing is really just a particularly careful form of thinking, is the mission of all four years of undergraduate education, or maybe the mission of a whole life."

Administrators tend to agree with Harvey's formulation of the goals of Expos.

"The mission of Expos is what it has always been at Harvard," says L. Fred Jewett '57, who served as Dean of the College until 1995. "It really is an attempt to ensure and to develop students' ability to express themselves in written form."

Dean of FAS Jeremy R. Knowles says the main goal of Expos is to emphasize the primacy of writing.

"The mission is to raise the level of writing skill and to heighten everyone's awareness of the importance of writing at the College," Knowles says.