Our concerns here were that the undergraduate curriculum at Iowa State University is front-loaded with foundation courses in writing and oral communication, with few courses in the middle. In an ideal curriculum, students should be able to practice the skills learned in foundation courses during every year of matriculation. Let me now say a few words about the second recommendation. All campuses that have such programs have someone who is its director. The program coordinator's job is to help faculty answer this and other questions as they redesign their courses.
Faculty meet regularly to exchange ideas and assignments, and consult with the program coordinator.
Such links are especially useful for making large lecture courses into communication-rich experiences. All students in the lecture class are assigned to linked communication classes, taught by faculty who work in tandem with the teacher of the lecture section and the program coordinator on complementary syllabi and common communication assignments. Learning communities are a variation of this model. The program coordinator trains peer tutors, usually juniors or seniors majoring in the discipline for which they are fellows. The fellows are not graders, but coaches.