The Muir College Writing Program is a sequence of courses in critical thinking and the writing of expository prose. During these courses, students must advance beyond the basic competency expected at entrance to understand and write discourse acceptable at the university level. To achieve these ends, the courses focus on principles of analysis and reasoned argumentation. Through close reading of texts, students learn both to identify underlying issues, assumptions, and values, and to identify rhetorical strategies by which these are conveyed or revealed.
Students also learn to monitor and adapt their own writing processes.
Since the ability to evaluate one's own writing and carry out appropriate revision strategies is particularly crucial to effective writing, all students are required to revise their papers several times. Attention is devoted to developing skill in evaluation and revision in discussion sections and in individual conferences with instructors. Sections of MCWP 50 vary in theme and content, giving students the opportunity to write in areas that interest them or that may be relevant to their major fields. Students entering fall quarter 1985 and after are required to take both MCWP 40 and MCWP 50 for a letter grade in their first year of residence at the college. Beginning fall quarter 1987 all transfer students, upon satisfaction of Subject A, must take MCWP 40 and MCWP 50 in their first year of residence.