Winter 2002

…On Writing at St. Lawrence

Over a number of years, faculty members in the English department have been building a dynamic, popular and increasingly well-known writing program within the department major. Called “the writing track,” it has been established, according to the Catalog, for those English majors “interested in pursuing he study of language and literature through writing.”
This “writing track” is far from the only way in which there is an intense focus on writing at St. Lawrence. All students must meet a writing competency requirement; faculty members along with student mentors assist students in developing their writing in our three writing centers; improving student writing is a key component of our First-Year-Program; special efforts are made by the faculty to identify the least able student writers early and to help them meet our minimum writing standard. IN addition, our annual Young Writers Conference at Camp Canaras and North Country Public Radio’s regular on-the-air interviews of major writers reach out to the wider community to promote and celebrate good writing. But it is our “writing track” that I want to discuss here.
My first awareness of this program came shortly after Ann and I arrived in 1996 and saw the outstanding list of writers who would come to campus as part of St. Lawrence’s Visiting Writers Series. Writers like Jay Wright, Paule Marshall and Diane DiPrima came that year, followed in subsequent years by the likes of Russell Banks, Time O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Joy Harjo. We are now able to have eight such visitors each year. In addition to a public reading of their work, attracting often as many as 300 in the audience, each writer meets with students in workshops and other settings. Every spare minute of their time is organized so as to engage students and faculty in some way. These visits are intense, and hugely productive, inspiring students and faculty alike.
Students invariably learn from these visitors the hard lesson that good writing is not just about craft – the techniques of writing – but about having something to say. That is why our English department has embedded this program within its major, and not allowed it to spin off into a separate major. At least half of the English courses students in the writing track take are in literature for, as the Catalog states, “a background in literary study is…essential to the development of good writers.” Good writers must also be discerning and deeply appreciative readers.
That is also why liberal arts college require that its students, regardless of their major field, study a broad range of disciplines, and why a liberal arts college is such a good place for a writing program like ours to flourish. One of the most important goals is to inspire our students to be life-long learners, life-long inquirers, people who will have something to say whether or not writing becomes their vocation. Studying the craft of writing is important, but far from enough.
I continue to be struck by the diversity in the kinds of writing our students can learn. There are course sequences in fiction writing, poetry writing, journalism, creative nonfiction and screenwriting, as well as single courses in playwriting and expository writing. Over time St. Lawrence has attracted a superb group of faculty who find the University a stimulating and hospitable environment in which to teach and in which to write. You can see their books on display the next time you visit Brewer Bookstore.
Our new writer-in-residence endowment, made possible by an anonymous gift in honor of Al Viebranz ’42, chairman of the Board of Trustees emeritus, has already had a major impact on students. Last year’s Viebranz Writer in Residence was Robin Hemley, author of The Last Studebaker, Nola, All You Can Eat, The Big Ear and Turning Life into Fiction, and this spring Heather Sellers, author of Georgia Under Water and Your Whole Life, begins a year-long residency. She will be the first visitor to live in a newly renovated house just off campus that two generous gifts enabled us to acquire and renovate to suit a visiting writer who may want to do some teaching in the home. Now we not only can assure visiting writer candidates that we have a desirable placed for them to live while in Canton, but we also have a wonderful symbol for the vitality of our writing program. These extended visitors work very closely with our students while they are on campus as they continue their own writing as well.
The most exciting thing about all of this, from the president’s point of view, is that the energy, thoughtfulness and vision for writing at St. Lawrence continue to some from a group of terrific faculty and staff. It is a case where leading is really just following and facilitating the smart ideas of good faculty and staff – trying, actually, just not to get in the way!
Our writing program is a work in progress. I fully expect it to continue to evolve in exciting ways. And as with everything we try to do here, the focus is on students and how we can help them do wonderful things with better education. It doesn’t get any better.