Re: 1 or 2 semesters of FYE?

[Richard Haswell <rhaswell@falcon.tamucc.edu>]

I was at a university which, years ago, changed the two-course
first-year writing sequence to one course, largely so that the English
faculty could move from a 4/4 course load to a 3/3 course load.  Not a
good reason.  But the change had an unexpected benefit.  It gradually
prompted other departments to add a second writing-course requirement to
their majors, which almost always took the form of an upper-division,
specialized course--technical writing, for example.  

I like splitting a six-hour writing core requirement into first-year and
junior-year courses, where you can and where it fits the kind of
students you get.  Students come back to writing, as juniors, with a
different attitude--especially if it is somehow attached to their (often
new) notion of themselves as with a real major and on the direct road to
some professional work after college.

Rich Haswell