Bok Zeroes In On Writing

Are Harvard College students today better writers than they were when they first passed through the gates of the Yard?

Interim President Derek C. Bok wants to find out, and he’s paying for an answer.

Bok announced yesterday a new study administered by the Institutional Research office that offers freshmen, sophomores, and juniors $50 to write a 90-minute essay and respond to a brief survey evaluating their own writing skills.

The essay will be compared to the students’ freshman fall writing placement exam in order to analyze their progress.

“I think [Bok] is asking an important question,” Sosland Director of Expository Writing Nancy Sommers, whom Bok consulted before launching the program, said. “He wants to know whether or not students progress as writers during their years at Harvard.”

Bok also invited seniors to participate in a separate study. For a reward of $50, seniors can take the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), developed by the Council for Aid to Education and the RAND Corporation. The 90-minute test focuses on three major areas: critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication, according to its Web site. The CLA was also administered to freshmen this fall.

Both of these initiatives are part of Bok’s ongoing efforts to study methods to improve undergraduate education, a subject about which he has written extensively. In his 2006 book “Our Underachieving Colleges,” Bok devotes a chapter to the subject of undergraduate writing, drawing from a four-year study conducted by Sommers between 1997 and 2001. The study tracked the writing of 400 students to “gain a better understanding of the role writing plays in a college education,” according to the Expos Web site.

Sommers explained that the new initiative is a continuation of the project to look at undergraduate writing.

Several students said last night that they would be willing to participate in the study.

“Why not? I would do it for 50 bucks,” Bianca M. Caban ’09 said, adding that she thought it would show a “huge improvement” in her writing.

Michael B. Chow ’07 said that the CLA would provide an opportunity to evaluate the quality of undergraduate education.

“The value of taking the test extends beyond just the 50 dollars that we get,” Chow said. “I think that [Bok’s] judgment on different ways of improving education is certainly going to be a lot better than anybody else’s.”

Chow added that it would be interesting to compare performances on the test across departments.

Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said that Bok deserves credit for these studies.

“[Bok] believes...that it’s much easier to improve something if you have data to tell you what you’re achieving (or not),” Knowles wrote in an e-mailed statement. “So this is a way to obtain some evidence about the consequence of all that we try to do...to improve the way that our students present arguments and positions in writing.”

Knowles could not be reached via telephone for comment.

Harvard spokesman John D. Longbrake said that the University expects about 300 seniors to take the CLA exam and between 200 and 300 undergraduates in each of the other classes to participate in the writing test. He said the initiative will be funded by the president’s office.

—Samuel P. Jacobs contributed to the reporting for this story.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.