This is the first part in a two-part series about Penn’s Critical Writing Seminar. 

As the only required class for all undergraduates, the Critical Writing Seminar is widely considered a rite of passage for Penn’s undergraduate students.

According to Penn’s writing center, the primary goal of the Writing Seminar is to equip students with writing skills that “transfer easily” to the “many new writing situations they will encounter at Penn and beyond.” However, a survey by The Daily Pennsylvanian of around 300 students found that only 16% found the course useful for outside work, with students in interviews expressing frustration over the disconnect between seminar assignments and the writing demands of other academic courses.

While each Writing Seminar section explores a distinct topic — ranging from ‘Star Wars Music’ to ‘The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm’ — the course follows a standard curriculum. Students complete two major writing assignments: a 1,500-word white paper and a 750-word op-ed, along with a logical outline of a book related to the course topic. Midterm and final exams take place in the form of writing portfolios.

“No matter whether you’re history, physics, or nursing, questions of genre, rhetoric, and invention matter,” Interim Critical Writing Program Director Matthew Osborn explained.

Osborn stepped in as interim director after Valerie Ross — who founded the CWP — retired in 2023. CWP Faculty Director Kathy Brown said the program is in a “moment of transition,” and told the DP that a new director will be announced “imminently.”

“Part of the challenge of being in an interim role is that your job isn’t to rock the boat,” Brown said. “Even if you have ideas for radical change, your responsibility is to keep everything running smoothly until the transition is complete.”

In contrast to the DP’s survey findings, internal curriculum evaluations shared by Osborn suggest that students leave their Writing Seminar feeling they have gained skills applicable to other areas of their studies. In a survey completed by nearly 1,000 first-year students at the end of the fall 2024 semester, major assignments received average usefulness ratings above 4 on a 5-point scale.

The DP’s survey, however, suggests that as students progress through their college careers, their sense of the seminar’s usefulness may shift.

While the curriculum was designed for transferability across disciplines, many students say it fails to prepare them for the actual writing they encounter in college.

On a five-point scale — where 1 means “not useful at all” and 5 means “extremely useful” — only 5% of students surveyed by the DP rated the Writing Seminar a 5, while 61% rated it a 1 or 2.

“The work we’ve done so far feels really basic,” a College first year, who requested anonymity because she is currently taking a writing seminar, said. “It’s too systematic to be useful anywhere else; it’s not looking at writing as an art.”

A common critique among students interviewed was the sense that the course demands large amounts of “busywork” that don’t significantly contribute to their academic growth.

2024 College Graduate Lucas Schrier criticized the midterm and final portfolios, describing them as “busywork.” He said the hours-long process of combining and formatting his work to meet the “ultra-specific rules” laid out in the instructions was “stressful” and “time-consuming.”

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Students are required to submit multiple drafts of their assignments, revising them based on feedback from both professors and peers. Some students found the feedback — structured around the CWP’s transferable knowledge domains — to be overly mechanical.

“The rubric they use feels like they’re just trying to check off certain boxes,” Schrier added. “The most successful writing instruction I received in college was when professors would mark up the margins and leave specific comments.”

Wharton senior Luke Castellini appreciated the chance to receive feedback from his peers but described the written feedback from his professors as “brief” and “vague,” explaining that he wishes the program had a greater emphasis on professor-student writing conferences.

“I value the chance to have a conversation,” Castellini said. “It helps me make sure I’m interpreting the feedback right and makes the revision process feel less isolating.”

Engineering first-year student Allie Whittle identified the frequent Canvas discussion posts as assignments that she and many of her peers consider “busywork.” However, she also noted that her professor often transformed these assignments into class discussions, an approach that “encourages collaboration” and enhanced her learning experience.

Students interviewed also mentioned that the Writing Seminar provides a valuable introduction to the research resources available at Penn. Whittle, in particular, highlighted the overview of “reliable resources” offered through Penn Libraries and online, which has made her feel “more confident” in knowing where to find sources for her other classes.

Schrier also said he wished that the Writing Seminar focused less on professional development and more on preparing them for their time at Penn.

“It’s bizarre that a course mostly taken by freshmen and sophomores is a course that tries to prepare them not for the moment that they’re in but for something far in the future, which is jobs,” he added. 

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Brown highlighted several challenges faced by the program that could affect future efforts to improve the curriculum.

In her role as Faculty Director, Brown acts as a “direct line” to the College Dean, according to Osborn. She also chairs the Critical Writing Committee, tasked by College Dean Peter Struck with overseeing CWP faculty promotions — and leading the search for a new director. 

In speaking with committee members, Brown said she has observed differing views on the writing challenges students face, and the skills they need to succeed. 

Brown also pointed to budget constraints as a limiting factor. Despite being the only required course for all undergraduates, she said the CWP receives insufficient funding for the “2,400 diverse students” it serves each year.

Brown said that one of her goals as faculty director is to improve the “baton handoff” between CWP instructors and faculty in other departments. Many faculty, she noted, don’t know what students learn in the Writing Seminar, making it hard to build on those skills. With curriculum details stored on Canvas, there’s currently no publicly available syllabus for external faculty to reference.

“Departments can build upon the foundation by teaching students specialized writing that helps them make use of what they learn in the first year more effectively,” Brown said.

Much of the current curriculum was shaped by Ross, who began developing the curriculum over 20 years ago to address inconsistencies in the first-year writing program, which was previously housed in the English department. 

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Students had been frustrated by the lack of uniformity in workload and expectations for their writing seminars. In response, Ross standardized the curriculum, drawing on feedback from students, faculty, and research in the field of writing studies. 

To assess its effectiveness, Ross conducted two studies to examine what students knew before the course, what they learned during it, and how they applied that knowledge afterward. A key challenge she identified was the varying definitions of “successful writing” across disciplines.

Brown similarly shared that reconciling these differences is difficult because many Penn students enroll in the writing seminar before choosing a major.

To address these challenges, Ross worked with the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education and other student groups to add the white paper component of the curriculum, which deviates from the analytical papers assigned to most students in high school.

“Students arrive at Penn knowing how to argue a stance, but not how to explain things,” Ross explained. “The white paper requires students to identify a problem, define it, and explore solutions without offering an opinion.”

Ross noted that the white paper has broad applications beyond the classroom, particularly in internships, jobs and political spheres. She added that the op-ed builds on the white paper by challenging students to shift tone and perspective.

Despite its intended purpose, 55% of surveyed students disagreed that the writing skills developed through the white paper were transferable to other classes and contexts. Another 22% were neutral.

College senior Tanner Kissler described his experience writing the white paper as “confusing,” explaining that he did not understand its purpose even after his professor explained it. 

“The blend of subjective and objective voices felt strange,” Kissler said. “I’ve never had to write a white paper again and never see writing that takes a similar approach in class or daily life, so I’m still unsure why they assign it.”

Nursing Senior Lucy Crosthwait told the DP that a “liberal arts-style” analytical essay would be a more useful major writing assignment for students, particularly those who are not in writing-heavy majors. Although Crosthwait does not write many papers for her nursing courses, she has taken classes in the College and reported that the white paper left her feeling unprepared for them.

“The first time I had to write multiple five-page essays for a communications course, I remember feeling really overwhelmed,” Crosthwait explained. “I didn’t really know how to approach the structure or build my argument, and I would have benefitted from practice in Writing Sem.”

Castellini agreed, highlighting the analytical essays he’s written for history and communications classes as the writing assignments that have fostered his growth as an academic writer.

“There are some style differences, but in my experience most professors, regardless of the subject they teach, want the same structure of an essay where you clearly back up a thesis with evidence and analysis,” Castellini said.

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Students expressed similarly mixed feelings about the op-ed: 50% disagreed that the skills developed through the assignment carried over to other classes and contexts in contrast to only 26% who felt they did.

While Schrier noted that he preferred the op-ed to the white paper, he criticized the approach to teaching it as failing to give students the space to “focus merely on the writing itself.”

“Instead, a long and oversaturated Canvas page on spacing, fonts, images, colors creates additional and undesirable time demands for what could be a straightforward assignment,” Schrier explained. 

However, despite doubts over the op-ed’s applicability, several students interviewed by the DP said that they appreciated the chance to write for a broader audience.

“I had never before done writing where I’m able to integrate my opinion and say what I think,” Whittle said. “It came really naturally to me, and was a lot more enjoyable than the white paper or the kinds of writing I did in high school.”

Kissler described the op-ed as more “interesting and versatile” than the analytical papers most students write in high school.

“I also think the op-ed helped to improve my own media literacy,” Kissler added. “Writing an opinion piece teaches you to recognize opinion or bias in other things you’re reading.”

According to the DP survey, students find the research text outline to be the least applicable assignment completed in the Writing Seminar. Three-quarters of students surveyed disagreed that the logical outline was a transferable skill — with half of all respondents disagreeing strongly. 

The logical outline is introduced to students at the beginning of the semester as they read a book related to their course topic. The outlining strategy — also used in preparing the white paper and op-ed — focuses on identifying clear propositions, supporting reasons, and evidence. 

The Writing Seminar Canvas page, authored by Ross, says that the logical outline skills “strengthen critical reading and writing” and help students “organize [their] thinking, writing, and speaking” to be more coherent and persuasive.

However, several students criticized the assignment as overly formulaic and disconnected from how they read and write in other settings.

Kissler described the outlining assignments as reminiscent of a “book summary you’d have to write in fifth grade.”

“The view of reading and writing was so overly structured that it made the book more confusing than it had to be,” Kissler added. “It was a headache, trying to fit the book into these tight boxes, and I don’t think it really deepened my understanding.”

The College first year felt similarly, explaining that rather than transferring the skills for the outline into other classes, she did the opposite, “relying on the linear, rigid mindset [she] uses in STEM classes to read the text.” 

Nursing junior Fiona Larsson also criticized the focus on a single research text, saying she wanted exposure to a broader range of academic writing.

“Reading many shorter texts and different types of texts would help make sure students don’t end up comfortable with only one style of writing and can understand the ideas present, regardless of the style or subject,” Larsson said.

Kissler ultimately described the class as a “unifying tradition in a school that is often divided,” giving first years a chance to meet peers “they probably wouldn’t take classes with otherwise.”

“I hope the University keeps investing in and improving the humanities education for all students, regardless of major,” Kissler added. “No matter what you’re doing in life, you need to be able to write.”