Welcome!

ear students, instructors, and honored guests:

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Undergraduate Writing Program’s inaugural University Writing Conference.

This semester, University Writing became the required writing course for all incoming Columbia undergraduates. With its emphases on critical analysis, argument, revision, and the writing process, the course endeavors to help students develop skills and habits important to their future academic success. Yet like all of the courses that make up the core curricula of Columbia’s three undergraduate schools, it has a more general purpose as well: to contribute to the unique sense of intellectual community that is a hallmark of the Columbia undergraduate experience.

To this end, the students in this semester’s seventy-two sections of University Writing have been pursuing collaborative class projects on topics ranging from Oscar Wilde to the New York City subway system. Working in small groups, they have been exploring different aspects of their sections’ topics and discussing their findings with their classmates. They are currently completing individual essays on questions emerging out of this collective process of discovery and debate.

As an institution, Columbia has long held that liberal education requires the active exchange of ideas and opinions. By coming together to share the exciting work they have been doing in their sections with a still wider audience, the students participating in this semester’s conference are doing their part to realize this ideal in practice.

With best wishes,

Joseph Bizup
Director