After Search, Expos Awaits Changes

Nearly two years ago, writing scholar and long-time Director of Harvard’s expository writing program Nancy Sommers departed suddenly, leaving a program wrought with office politics and concerns about preceptor salaries and job security.

In the wake of Sommers’ departure, long-time Writing Program employee Thomas R. Jehn was named interim director of the Harvard College Writing Program—which includes the Expos program, the Harvard Writing Project, and the Writing Center—in August 2007 in anticipation of what the administration said would be a nationwide search to find a new program director.

The search, which was not advertised until November 2008, ultimately led to the recent announcement that Jehn would stay on as the Writing Program’s permanent director.

Jehn’s selection has prompted both praise and criticism as those with knowledge of the program consider how his selection will affect the direction the program will take in the future.

AN ADMINISTRATIVE FOCUS

A graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia, Jehn first came to Harvard in 1997 as an Expos preceptor. Jehn has since climbed the Writing Program’s administrative ladder: serving as the head preceptor of Expos, the director of the Extension School’s Writing Center, and then the assistant director of the Harvard Writing Project.

Yet despite his extensive teaching experience, Jehn differs from the program’s two most recent directors—Sommers and Richard Marius, both nationally renowned for their work in the field of writing composition—in that Jehn does not have as strong a record of published works.

Jehn was one of four finalists for the director position, along with writing program directors from comparable institutions.

Though the advertisement Harvard released for the job said that an applicant must be a “published author in a liberal arts discipline and/or on writing pedagogy in refereed journal,” one writing program director with knowledge of the search, who asked not to be named, said that Harvard administrators involved in the search did not ask applicants to provide information about their previously published works.

In contrast to previous directors, Jehn’s strength has been administrative, rather than scholarly, which Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris lauded but writing program directors at colleges with programs similar to Harvard’s critiqued.

“He’s not very well-known in the field,” said one writing program director, who asked not to be named. “He’s more of an administrator than an intellectual force in the field.”

An Expos preceptor at the Extension School who asked not to be named said that having a well-known director in charge of a writing program is essential for attracting strong preceptors to the program.

However, Harris said that the administration favored Jehn because of his previous experience with the program and vision for the future of the program.

“It’s very nice if someone is well-known in New York or California, but what matters in this job is running a great program in Cambridge,” Harris said.

A FORMALIZED VOICE?

The Crimson spoke with multiple writing program directors who questioned how much pull a director without a professorship could have in working with other faculty members and administrators.

Since its founding in 1872, the Harvard College Writing Program—the first program of its kind—has served as the model for writing instruction at a number of other schools, such as Princeton and Duke. While Harvard’s director has traditionally been a senior lecturer, many colleges with writing programs comparable to Harvard’s have placed a tenured professor at their program’s helm.

Bruce Beiderwell, director of the UCLA Writing Programs, said that his lack of a professorship has made it more difficult for him to advocate for his program, which has become increasingly important as colleges begin to make financial cutbacks as a result of the economic crisis.

“We have no formalized voice, so I often am in the position of trying to find someone to give me that voice,” Beiderwell said.

Though two of the other finalists for the Harvard position are currently professors at other institutions, Harris said that the administration had discussed making the position a professorship at Harvard, but that it was “simply impossible.”

“One cannot run a great writing program, which is a full-time job, and maintain a full research agenda, which is what gets one tenured at Harvard,” Harris said.

PENDING PROBLEMS

Jehn takes the helm of a program that still faces many of the challenges expressed by preceptors over the past few years, including the long-standing issue of low preceptor salaries.

“One complaint that is pretty genuine among preceptors is that preceptor salaries are too low,” said Expos preceptor Jason D’Cruz.

The average preceptor makes less than $50,000 a year, D’Cruz said, which he said is challenging to live off of in an expensive area and is a low figure considering that most preceptors hold Ph.Ds.

“Our preceptors definitely deserve better pay,” Jehn wrote in an e-mail. “I’m confident that [the administration] will continue to take seriously our program’s request for better preceptor pay that reflects our Expos faculty’s high qualifications, their importance to a core academic mission at Harvard, and their cost of living in one of the nation’s most expensive urban areas.”

In the past, Jehn has been an outspoken critic of the administration for underpaying its employees. In 2001, Jehn—then an Expos head preceptor—published an op-ed in the Boston Globe strongly criticizing the Harvard administration for not implementing a living wage for its workers. Jehn published a similar article in The Christian Science Monitor, and the administration’s announcement of Jehn’s selection cites both as part of his published work.

“I surmise that Harvard’s administrators likely spend much more time shaking the hands and sharing the confidences of the rich and powerful than they do finding out the names, fears, dreams, and wisdom of the janitors, cooks, and guards who, in that long-lived tradition of master-servant relations, labor invisibly each day,” Jehn wrote in the Globe article.

Preceptors also continue to voice objection to the current system of one-year contracts—which preceptors have protested denies them job security—and a five-year limit on working in the position.

“I know that there are lots of really competent preceptors going into their fourth and fifth years, and I know they are getting better and better,” D’Cruz said.

Harvard Writing Project Assistant Director James Herron echoed this sentiment, adding that many times, the preceptors who have been teaching the longest are the ones who earn the highest Q ratings.

“Expanding the term limits would enhance the stability of our program since our faculty could better focus on their teaching rather than have to become distracted with a job search just around the time when their teaching is attaining its most mature stage in our program,” Jehn wrote.

Harris said that the time cap on preceptor positions presents a difficult dilemma for administrators who are torn between holding on to strong preceptors and ensuring that preceptors make the most of their career options.

“I’m concerned that we make it impossible for this to be a career path,” Harris said. “Teaching writing is a noble calling. At the same time, it is a serious moral challenge to have people in these not-tenurable positions where it is difficult to imagine someone being great at it for 40 years.”

Harris said a committee is currently considering the time limit on preceptor positions and other non-tenure track positions at Harvard, which could potentially lead to changes to the hiring procedures.



OPTIMISM FOR THE FUTURE

Despite the challenges faced by the Expos program in recent years, many preceptors say that Jehn has led the program through the transition period with transparency and that they appreciate the base of knowledge of the program he has developed over time.

“He has navigated the changes in the department incredibly well as interim director, and has proven to be an effective, enthusiastic, innovative and wonderfully supportive colleague and director,” preceptor Licia L. Carlson wrote in an e-mailed statement.

While some have asserted that the Expos program has been isolated from departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, both Jehn and Harris have said that one of their major goals for the future of the Expos program is to make it so that students’ Expos experiences better prepare them for writing in their concentrations and other classes.

Unlike undergraduates at colleges such as Duke, Stanford, and Yale, students at Harvard are not required to take a writing course specific to a discipline.

Jehn wrote in an e-mail that he plans to work with departments to help preceptors learn more about what constitutes good writing in different disciplines. He also wrote that he plans to create a student advisory board comprised of undergraduates to advise preceptors and program administrators.

“I’m interested in a collaborative process, in hearing compelling ideas from my colleagues in the program and in departments, from the deans, and from the students whom I’ve invited to join the Writing Program’s Student Advisory Board,” he wrote. “So in terms of when changes are implemented, I would hope to use the coming academic year to pilot some initiatives and then assess their efficacy before codifying anything.”

Most preceptors The Crimson spoke to said they were hopeful that Jehn would be able to help the program overcome many of its long-standing struggles and expressed optimism about the future of the program.

“I came into the department with some trepidation about the department not being respected or there being internal drama, but by the time I got there I didn’t find any,” said D’Cruz, who began teaching Expos this year. “No one feels like they are being shortchanged or hurt, and I think [Dr. Jehn] has been a really even-handed, fair-minded administrator.”

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.