Vincent Walsh has made it his mission to push the status quo in writing instruction at Lehigh University.
By Karen Kegel
For many college freshmen, writing is a task grudgingly completed for teachers, admissions staff, and essentially everyone in their lives but themselves. High school classes may have focused on commas over creativity and set strict topical parameters in order to prepare students for college. Yet for truly good authorship to materialize, the author must be personally invested in the process.
Vincent Walsh listens to a student discussion during their "Owning the Writing Process" class
Keenly aware of the problem, English doctoral student Vincent Walsh has made it his mission to address the status quo in writing instruction here at Lehigh. His research is peopled with the freshmen in his class, Owning the Writing Process. His laboratory is a cozy basement classroom in Drown Hall. And his research question is at once incredibly straightforward and incredibly important: by freeing students to pen what their hearts desire, is it possible to reignite the internal motivation for self-expression—and in turn boost writing proficiency?
Owning the Writing Process has but a few key structural elements. The one constant is that students are charged with producing 750 words per week for three consecutive weeks. Virtually no topic is off-limits, and the content ranges from cultural critiques to memoirs. Each fourth week the minimum requirement jumps to 1500 words. While these longer papers must conform to academic focus and format, students are still free to choose their own topics. Vincent’s intensive feedback fuels revisions that students use to compile portfolios at the end of the semester. In this way, freshmen can experiment with their unique voices while honing their compositional and syntactical skills.
Known simply as “Walsh” by his students, Vincent strives to even out the power differential in the classroom. Every week students take turns reading their work aloud to the group (“The Fam”) during class (“The Fam Jam”). The roundtable-style seating lends a sense of artistic safety while giving students the chance to cultivate connectedness with fellow freshmen. In addition to his own encouraging commentary, Vincent invites peer-to-peer dialogue that bridges themes, opinions, and writing styles shared over the previous weeks.
Vincent has toured the region to share his vision with other English educators. His paper “Writing as Exploration and Discovery” has been presented at the College English Association annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the Expanding Literacy conference at Ohio State, and the Writing by Degrees conference at Binghamton University during the past year. On March 27, he is scheduled to present a paper updating his research on a panel entitled “New Approaches to Freshman Composition” at the New Jersey College English Association conference at Seton Hall. He also plans to submit an article-length version of this writing pedagogy for publication within the next few weeks.
Vincent Walsh speaks to his students during class
Thus far, student evaluations of Vincent’s approach have been overwhelmingly positive. Nearly 250 Lehigh students have taken the course, and many continue to keep in touch with the professor, or even pay visits to successive freshman classes. Eventually—perhaps following his dissertation in contemporary postcolonial literature—Vincent hopes to prepare a book featuring samples of outstanding student work in support of his pedagogical position.
Vincent credits Dr. Ed Lotto, the director of Lehigh’s writing program, his advisor Dr. Dawn Keetley, and English department coordinator Vivien Steele with helping pave the way for a successful class rollout. As if that weren’t enough, none other than Noam Chomsky has offered his highly valued two cents from time to time, a professional contact Vincent has maintained since 1996. With this groundswell of interest within academic, student, and research circles, liberating freshmen writing experiences is on the fast track to becoming the standard rather than the exception.