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English 101 historyThe history of English 101 lives in scattered documents and collective memories. What appears here is not a complete history; it's nothing more than a beginning. Joining the English Department in 1941, Henry Zylstra was a long-time instructor of freshman composition. When student demand for freshman composition created opportunities for others to teach the course, Zylstra created a common syllabus so that all sections of freshman composition would cover the same material at the same time. From Zylstra's first section of freshman composition until 1968, students took two semesters of writing. In the first semester they wrote ten essays complete with outlines and precis. In the second semester, students practiced diction, wrote a research paper, and began to study literature. Students were required to pass a 100-item grammar exam to complete the freshman composition requirement. The English Department offered the exam five or six times during the semester, and Directors worked feverishly preparing these exams as well as a final exam on course readings for all sections of freshman composition. Steve Van Der Weele remembers that Henry Zylstra kept a watchful eye on those teaching freshman composition. As Van Der Weele remembers, "Henry would come by the office and ask, 'Did you assign ten themes this past semester?'" Dick Tiemersma directed the freshman composition program for ten years, beginning in 1958. He, too, kept careful watch to ensure that the various sections of the courses offered similar content. Tiemersma called frequent meetings for composition instructors, many of whom were students at the Calvin Theological Seminary. At these meetings, instructors would comment on and grade sample student essays and then discuss their comments and grading with the group. In 1968 Steve Van Der Weele coordinated the freshman writing courses, and he turned these responsibilities to Irvin Kroese in 1970. 1968 was also the year that Calvin College's core curriculum was revised. As a part of this revision, the freshman composition requirement was reduced to one semester, and the course was numbered English 100. In the early 1970s Clarence Walhout, Irvin Kroese, and Harmon Hook began a bold experiment with English 100: using packets of materials, they taught much of the course on an individualized basis, meeting students in class once a week and working with them one-on-one for the rest of the week. Henry Baron coordinated English 100 for several years, beginning in 1972, and he passed on these responsibilities to Linda Spoelman, a part-time instructor. During Baron's tenure, the Director of English 100 was responsible for grammar testing, exemption exams, instructional sessions for composition instructors, and text selection. In 1975 Baron instituted the Rhetoric Center, a peer-tutoring writing center. In 1976, the English Department established a standing committee to assist and advise the director of English 100. In 1978, the English 100 Committee began a writing across the curriculum program then called the Expanded Writing Program. Sometime before 1980, Linda Spoelman passed on responsibility for English 100 to John Snapper who coordinated English 100 until William Vande Kopple took over in 1983. Vande Kopple recalls those years as placid, with high faculty interest in English 100 seminars. During that time, Vande Kopple and Ken Kuiper instituted a system of review for part-time instructors that is the foundation of the review system currently in place. In 1986, Donald Hettinga became Director of English 100 and worked to develop a computer-equipped classroom for the teaching of writing. He passed the duties of the Director of English 100 to Dean Ward in 1989. During Ward's tenure, the college adopted the college-wide Academic Writing Program. That created two primary consequences for 100 and the 100 Director: (1) a clearer connection between 100 and the rest of college writing and thus a clearer sense of the purpose of 100 as the core of the Academic Writing Program; (2) the separation of the Rhetoric Center from duties of the English 100 Director and, literally, from the English Department, to indicate that the Rhetoric Center serves the entire writing program. Don Hettinga once again assumed the duties of Director of English 100 in 1995, and in the 1997 revision of the English Department curriculum, English 100 was renumbered to English 101. In 1998, Elizabeth Vander Lei became the Director of English 101. At this time, English 101 was a four-credit-hour course that met in class three hours a week and included a lab component. In 1999, the Calvin College faculty approved a revision of the core course requirements. One change in the new core was the creation of a Research, Information, and Technology course to be completed by all first-year students. This RIT course assumed much of the content of the English 101 labs, and the English 101 labs were eliminated. In the process of translating the vision of a new core to the practicalities of course descriptions and student schedules, the Educational Policy Committee studied the amount of work students did for English 101 and other courses that students typically take during their first year at Calvin. Based on this research as well as a commonly applied correlation between semester hours and weekly class meeting time, EPC concluded that English 101 should become a three-hour course. This proposal was passed by Calvin faculty in the fall of 2000. During the 2000-2001 academic year, the English 101 committee reviewed the research on grammar and the teaching of writing. It proposed to the English Department that the topics on the English 101 Grammar Exam address the grammatical issues that challenge English 101 students most, that the English 101 Grammar Exam be offered as a part of the English 101 final exam, and that the median score on the grammar exam mirror the median grade in English 101. The English Department approved these changes, and they went into effect in the Fall 2001 semester. |
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