Concerns about understaffing, pay, and faculty workload have surfaced amid the University’s ongoing overhaul of its undergraduate writing curriculum.
The University launched its new stand-alone Core writing course, Inquiry, Conversation, and Argument (ICA) this fall, which is being piloted in all Human Being and Citizen (HBC) classes and taught by eight newly hired instructional professors (IPs). ICA is designed to replace the existing writing seminar model, which runs concurrently with the humanities Core sequence.
This rollout has already led to the layoffs of seven writing specialists this July and left some humanities Core courses without dedicated writing specialists to teach their writing seminars, according to humanities Core instructor Stephen Todd.
Todd explained that several non-HBC humanities Core instructors—himself included—were asked to “volunteer to teach without a writing specialist” this fall. Instead, humanities Core instructors could work with one of the new writing IPs to “develop alternate forms of curricular support” so that their students could still fulfill their Core writing requirement. But this arrangement, Todd said, excluded many of the traditional responsibilities of writing specialists—such as grading assistance and leading the actual writing seminars—without offering additional compensation to humanities Core instructors. The Maroon could not confirm what writing instruction would look like in sections with this arrangement.
In a September 3 email to its members, viewed by the Maroon, the executive committee of Faculty Forward, UChicago’s non-tenure-track faculty union, speculated that “the University has laid off too many members [of the writing staff], leaving the rest to pick up the slack” and urged humanities Core instructors to refuse requests to forgo writing specialists.
Todd was one of several who declined to volunteer and will continue working with a dedicated writing specialist this year. Had he agreed, he said, it would have meant a “significant increase in [his] workload.”
“A [humanities Core] instructor could keep their syllabus unchanged but would then have to do double the amount of grading because they would not have the grading labor of the writing specialists,” Todd said. If an instructor chose to modify the syllabus, “there would be significant labor involved in retooling the syllabus to be workable without a writing specialist.”
Poetry and the Human Core Chair Sarah Nooter wrote in an email to the Maroon that her sequence had conveyed a “collective refusal” to the administration.
“[We] felt that allowing some of our students to go without the support of writing seminars and [dedicated] specialists would be wrong, because some students then would have had no writing course and no writing seminars—i.e., no formal pedagogy in writing at all,” she wrote.
When asked about the possibility of understaffing, Executive Director of the Writing Program Abigail Reardon told the Maroon in an October 3 email: “The Writing Program is appropriately staffed to support the instructional needs of this academic year.”
“Every instructor teaching a section of HUMA Core is partnered with a full-time instructional staff member from the Writing Program to support the students in, and specific curricular writing goals for, their section(s),” Reardon continued.
According to Todd and Sarah Osment, the writing instructor representative on the executive board of Faculty Forward, there are some humanities instructors who agreed to forgo writing specialists this quarter, but the structure of writing instruction in their sections remains unclear.
In a September 12 interview with the Maroon, Osment, said that University administration had not directly communicated the situation to writing specialists, leaving them to find out by word of mouth from humanities Core instructors. She also noted that “communication has not been the healthiest” between the administration and writing specialists during the restructuring process.
Osment said at the time that she had not yet received her assigned humanities Core sections or even been told which sequences she would be teaching. “Typically we would get provisional assignments in late August, and then by around Labor Day or so, those assignments are confirmed,” she said. “I use this time to try to update my materials and read up if it’s a new-to-me sequence, to try to understand how that Core works and to read the key texts to be as prepared as possible. But we’ve received no information.”
In a later email to the Maroon, Osment confirmed that she received her teaching assignment on September 22, and that “most if not all” writing specialists had theirs confirmed by September 23—roughly a week before the start of the quarter.
Osment also explained that writing specialists were not meaningfully consulted during the actual restructuring process. Although they were asked to complete a survey “early on,” Osment said, the administration did not clearly indicate that their answers might be used to justify a complete overhaul of the Writing Program.
The results from this survey were later used by 11 faculty members to draft the “Report of the Committee to Review the Writing Program” in December 2022. The survey was distributed to writing specialists who had taught in humanities Core courses between 2020 and 2022. Reardon said that this report was the most recent entry in a long-term review process involving “multiple internal UChicago committees” that contributed to the administration’s decision to ultimately pursue restructuring.
Osment acknowledged that the report “could be correct in some ways about the current efficacy of the Writing Program” but questioned its “objectivity and authority,” noting that “only a few of [her] colleagues actually filled out the survey” because of how long ago
“There were a lot of inaccuracies in that report, and… some of the claims that were being made in the report lacked evidence or did not match the experience of the people who were actually doing the work of the teaching [and] writing,” she said.
Fellow Writing Specialist Elizabeth Fiedler echoed Osment’s concerns, explaining that she and others completed the survey under the impression that it was a standard pilot program review.
“[I thought], ‘This is the first time that we’ve had full-time staff teaching the writing seminars. They want to know how to improve it,’” Fiedler told the Maroon in a September 12 interview. “If I had known [what the committee was for], I would have filled out the survey very differently. I’m not the only one who has said that.”
Humanities sequence and Core chairs were likewise not given the opportunity to provide input, according to Nooter. “I wish that there had been a true consultation program when actual decisions about the restructuring were being made—with faculty, and with those who… [run and work] in the hum[anities] Core,” Nooter wrote. “I believe that [humanities Core faculty] should have a say in this process, as we have historically had a voice in the hiring of instructors and the course of pedagogy at the university.”
Osment and Fiedler emphasized that their frustrations were with the transition process itself, not the University’s broader goal to deepen Core writing instruction.
“I do think it’s important to have a dedicated writing course for students, because—especially in our increasingly AI-driven age—I think writing is a lost art, and I think writing is essential to critical thinking,” Osment said. “[But] I don’t know about the grounds for [the restructuring].”
“From my perspective, as a writing specialist, our job of teaching writing to undergrads needed some structural changes to begin with,” Fiedler said. “It’s always been really complicated to schedule our classes. The registrar won’t do it for us—we have to do it ourselves. So those are the kind of changes that I’ve been wanting to see for a long time.”
Osment stressed that she views how the University views the writing specialists as a deeper issue.
“I think one of the biggest hurdles is that the administration fought us for two years about whether or not writing specialists were even teachers,” Osment said. “The people who were actually doing the work of teaching writing are still formally considered staff, but we fought really hard… to get recognition from the University that we are teachers, so that we could join the Faculty Forward union.”
Writing specialists’ employment conditions fall under the protections of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between the University and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 on behalf of Faculty Forward and ratified in November 2024. Faculty Forward’s CBA negotiations were open to all union members, and representatives from both SEIU Local 73—which includes several other groups of UChicago employees—and Faculty Forward were involved in bargaining.
In an email to the Maroon, Reardon said that the CBA negotiated between the University and SEIU Local 73 established a wide range of provisions and benefits for writing specialists in anticipation of the upcoming changes.
“These include severance pay, a stipend for health insurance, and guaranteed finalist-round consideration for any current writing staff member who meets the minimum qualifications and applies for one of the new instructional professor positions,” she wrote.
Despite this provision, of an estimated 11 writing specialists who applied for the IP position, only two were ultimately hired. Of the 17 remaining specialists on staff this fall, seven hold Ph.D.s—a requirement for the IP position—according to Osment.
“I wish they had made an exception for people with master’s degrees who are already teaching in the program,” Fiedler said. “I understand the reasoning behind it from the administrator’s point of view, but they don’t know what phenomenal teachers they are and what they could really add. As someone who has been here and has been teaching UChicago students for a while, they’re missing out on a large pool of very experienced, wonderful teachers.”
Fiedler added that the University left open the possibility that additional positions might be created within the Writing Program in the future, including ones that might accommodate specialists with master’s degrees only.
Still, for both her and Osment, the unanswered question remains how students will experience writing instruction during these years of transition and staffing uncertainty.
“While I think it’s good that the University is transitioning to a model where writing is given its own focus, I am worried about the students this year that will not be given support in the form of a writing instructor or a dedicated writing specialist,” Osment said. “I wonder about the foundation that they’ll miss because of this administrative shift.”
Editor’s note, 2:37 p.m. Oct. 9: The Maroon received an internal document containing new information about how writing instruction works in non-HBC humanities Core courses that partner with writing IPs rather than writing specialists that was not available in time to be reflected in the print version of this article.
These sections may still include formal writing support, such as assistance with curricular development, occasional workshops for up to 20 students across multiple sections, and optional writing or peer feedback opportunities.
However, they do not include the traditional small writing seminars attached to each humanities Core section. IPs will not regularly attend classes, run ongoing peer feedback seminars for individual sections, or provide grading support for individual sections—though instructors can request a Grader.
