Welcome to the Writing Program's new Web site! In redesigning our site, we set ourselves the goal of creating a student-centered, content driven learning environment. That is, we wanted a site that was designed with the Rutgers undergraduate in mind as the primary user and we have done our best to build a site that provides Rutgers students with the information and the pedagogical support they require to do well in our courses. We have been guided by a commitment to getting our content to you in a format that loads quickly and is easy to read so, for the most part, we've avoided using jpegs, gifs, all manner of flapping and flashing images, marbleized backgrounds, etc.

For students, we've generated:

• detailed answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions about anything having to do with the Writing Program: Adding/Dropping our courses, understanding our grading policies, the graduation requirements for all the colleges, transferring credit, and a host of other areas.

• jump pages that link students to other important academic and administrative sites in the university such as Registration, Writing Centers and NewToRu, the Transfer Student Home Page.
  

• the Gradatorium, which provides extensive information about the grading criteria in Expos 101, including sample papers and evaluative comments from experienced teachers.
  

• The Tutorama, which provides self-guided exercises in the areas that tend to cause the most trouble for students in Expos 101: reading comprehension, appropriate use of evidence, and argumentation.
  

• extended Course Descriptions for all of the course offerings in the Writing Program: they're just two clicks away from our home page.

For teachers, we've put teaching resources online to assist with writing assignments, with finding relevant research materials, and with mastering the program's grading criteria. We've also created listservs for each course the Writing Program offers, so that, for instance, all 101 teachers can communicate with each other easily.

In the months to come, we will be expanding the Course pages for all courses other than 101; we will be introducing a site browser; and we will be finding ways to support online tutoring as funds and time become available. Watch this site for updates.

Acknowledgments:

This Web site was made possible by the ongoing support of Richard Foley, Former Dean of FAS, Barry Qualls and Michael Beals, Associate Deans of FAS, Ann Martin, Business Manager of FAS, Gary Gigliotti, Director of the Teaching Excellence Center, and Susan Forman, Vice President of Undergraduate Education.

The Comp WebCrew is entirely responsible for the design and the content of this Web site. Given the option of paying $50,000 to have the Writing Program's page built for us by professionals or figuring out how to do this ourselves, after much deliberation (and many shakes of the ever empty money jar), we elected to draw on the Writing Program's own talented personnel to build what we could and hope for the best. The results have exceeded my highest expectations.

The Comp WebCrew is:

Barclay Barrios, Project Manager
Michael Goeller, Content and Design Manager
Todd Reichart, Freelance Consultant

Anthony Lioi and Rachel McLaughlin, members of the original web design committee, put in many long hours producing content, proofing pages, and fact-checking.

Additional content, assistance, and advice was provided by: Beth Desmond, Katherine Lynes, Carol Bork, and Ann Jurecic.

My thanks go out to Barclay for talking me into this and to everyone else on the crew who, by working long and late, helped to put together a site that embodies the Writing Program's pedagogical commitment to a student-centered learning environment.

Now, back to the hive!

Richard E. Miller, Project Supervisor