The Davis Educational Foundation, established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis, has awarded the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center's Speaking, Arguing and Writing Program a $329,340 grant that will be paid over three years. The grant will support the speaking- and writing-related portion of a new curriculum designed to enhance the first-year experience at MHC. This initiative was recommended by the Committee on the First Two Years, a special committee made up of faculty, administrators and students, that began its work in 1999.

As part of the new curriculum, it is expected that all entering students will take small courses that are speaking- and writing-intensive. To support this initiative, the grant will provide funding for a new full-time position, a SAW program coordinator, the occupant of which will take on the administrative functions of hiring, assigning, and supervising student mentors and assistants; overseeing the SAW speaking and writing consultation program; and coordinating other regular functions of SAW. This will enable SAW director Tamara L. Burk, who currently provides these services, to spend more time working directly with faculty on curriculum development. "These types of innovative curricular changes demand a lot of time and energy to get started," says Burk. "The Davis grant will allow us to build new infrastructure into the SAW program at a time when we really need the flexibility to be creative and plan for the future."

The grant will support monthly seminars for faculty who are designing and teaching speaking- and writing-intensive courses as part of the first-year curriculum. The funding will also enable the College to provide annual workshops during January Term or the summer to allow faculty time to work creatively together over a more extended period, and to confer with outside specialists about new pedagogies and course design. The grant will support the selection and training of SAW student mentors to work with faculty teaching these courses. The mentor training will emphasize the unique demands of working with first-year students. Finally, the grant will provide funding for identifying student and faculty needs, and assessing the the College's success at integrating speaking, arguing, and writing into courses across the curriculum. "We're just thrilled by the Davis grant,” says Chris Benfey, codirector of the Weissman Center. "It will help us sustain the spirit of experimentation and creativity that has driven SAW from its beginnings."

The creation of the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership has been among the highest-profile results of the Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003. Education for citizenship and constructive engagement with the world constitute a cornerstone of Mount Holyoke, but these core values have achieved greater prominence as a result of the Plan's call for launching two major initiatives. The Center for Leadership and Public Interest Advocacy (CLPIA) and the Speaking, Arguing and Writing Program (SAW), programs intimately related from their inception, were established in the summer of 1997. Their mission was to promote engagement with pressing problems in today's society, strengthening Mount Holyoke students' possibilities for addressing these problems. In the spring of 1999, a $4-million gift from Harriet Levine Weissman '58 and her husband, Paul M. Weissman, provided for the merger of CLPIA and SAW under the umbrella of The Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership (WCL).

The Speaking, Arguing and Writing Program provides students with tools for engaging in the classroom and beyond the College gates as articulate, confident, critical, and creative thinkers. SAW includes a mentors program, training student mentors to work with faculty who are developing students' speaking and writing skills in mentored courses. In addition, SAW works with faculty across the disciplines to add to and strengthen writing and speaking elements in courses, providing resources and support and conducting workshops on issues as diverse as "Constructing Assignments That Will Produce Papers Worth Reading" and "Evaluating Oral Work." SAW was one of the first programs in the country to combine writing and speaking components for the integrated development of both skills and has become a model for other colleges and universities.