What is the Purpose of the Writing Proficiency Requirement (WPR)?
It is important to understand the purpose of WPR and its relation to other parts of your University work and career. Passing the WPR is part of fulfilling General Education requirements. The General Education program helps to you prepare for academic work in advanced courses where you will be expected to use and apply those abilities of reading, reasoning, and writing explicitly taught in the Gen Ed program. The WPE is the only universal, graded exercise in CNHS, CLA, and CSM; the exams and portfolios are evaluated by faculty from all of the departments in the three colleges.
Many colleges and universities have some kind of writing requirement that each student must pass to qualify for a degree. Often the assessment is administered independently of courses in order to evaluate if students can perform without the structure of a classroom setting. Some institutions have an "exit exam" from Freshman English, graded not by the individual instructor but by the whole department; others require a comprehensive written examination in the major; still others demand a senior thesis. The WPE is not an exit examination that tests content knowledge, nor does it attempt to evaluate whether or not you are qualified for a degree. The WPE is not, as people sometimes assume, just "a grammar test" or a "reading comprehension" exercise.
Students often ask: why should I be obligated to pass a writing proficiency assessment, if I am passing my courses? The answer is that our university believes that critical thinking is often a process that includes the ability to reflect upon a problem and to independently organize your thinking around your own reasoned position. Your involvement in social, political, and intellectual issues will often be part of a broader social debates; the faculty at UMB believes that the reading sets provide an important demonstration of how to understand and interpret various points of view. Reading sets bring together the writing of people who are having a conversation, or thinking publicly about important problems. The WPE assesses your ability to enter this kind of social and intellectual conversation as a reader, thinker, and writer. It is important that you have the ability to work publicly and competently outside the framework of a particular course; it is important that you are able to engage in large social and intellectual conversations without the direct intervention and guidance of a teacher; and it is important that you are able to satisfy the expectations not only of an individual faculty member but of a larger community of informed readers. Since one important aim of a university degree is to equip you to function confidently and competently in the world outside the university, the WPE provides an important opportunity for you to demonstrate the kinds of self-sufficient critical capabilities that we believe are necessary to your future intellectual and professional life, as well as to your role as a an educated citizen who can inquire into the world around you.