Introduction to Volume 2

Michael J. Cripps
Cynthia Haller

It was only last year that we published the inaugural volume of The York Scholar, an annual collection of student writing from the College-Wide Writing Program. In Volume 1, a principal aim was to share with the College community the quality of student writing at the College. We distributed nearly 500 copies of The York Scholar to faculty, students, and administrators at York College, and published an electronic version of the journal. As we revisited the contributions to Volume 1 while preparing this volume, we found ourselves impressed by the consistently high caliber of the research and writing of our juniors and seniors. Volume 2 continues this emerging tradition by presenting six new research papers written by students over 2004-2005. At the same time, the process behind Volume 2 marks a significant shift in our thinking about the journal, and actually improves the journal in important ways.

In Volume 1, we handled the entire process, reading the submissions, selecting the finalists, and editing the print and electronic versions of the journal. This year, a committee of six faculty reviewers working in pairs read and discussed over 60 submissions, narrowing the field to just over two-dozen papers before coming together as a group to select the six papers that appear in Volume 2. This review team of Phebe Kirkham, Mallika Henry, Phyllis Kahan, and Sian Killingsworth, who joined us in the review process, undoubtedly helped ensure that the published papers represent a wide range of outstanding student writing in the Writing Program. We firmly believe that the volume you hold in your hands is better due to their insightful discussion of the student work submitted for consideration.

The York Scholar is a collection of outstanding papers written by students enrolled in the College-Wide Writing Program, an independent program, which offers three different versions of the College’s required, upper-division introduction to college-level research and academic writing. Generally known as “Writing 300,” the Writing Program’s course offerings are tailored to the research, documentation, and rhetorical demands and conventions of specific groups of majors. Writing 301 (Research and Writing for the Major) is designed for students enrolled in the Humanities and Social Sciences; Writing 302 (Research and Writing for the Sciences) is the course for students in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics; and Writing 303 (Research and Writing for Professional Programs) is the course for all other majors and programs.

All three courses provide students with a hands-on introduction to the research process. Students locate and narrow a research question connected in some way to their own disciplines and/or career goals. The rigorous curriculum requires students to bring the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills they have developed in their general education courses to their own research agendas. They learn to locate and selectively read materials from relevant online and print sources, selecting from a range of books, peer-reviewed journals, and web-based publications. Students learn to analyze and synthesize source material to develop their own arguments as they produce drafts of their papers, and they revise their work based on feedback from both their professors and their peers. As their research projects take shape, they determine an organization for their papers that appropriately addresses their questions, and ultimately produce a final paper that conforms to the style conventions of their particular fields. The range of research projects pursued by students in the College-Wide Writing Program is restricted only by the imagination and career goals of the students themselves.

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