In June of 2003, President Boren approved a student-researched proposal to create a new freshman composition program at the University of Oklahoma on the model of the widely respected Expository Writing Program at Harvard University. Five months later, and straight from an eight-year affiliation with Expos at Harvard, I arrived in Norman for the purpose of founding and developing Expos at OU. Since then I've seen firsthand how the OU community--administration, staff, faculty, students, alumni, and donors--can pull together in its commitment to academic excellence. The faculty who designed and taught the courses that we offered in 2004-2005 hold doctorates from Stanford, Penn, Texas at Austin, the University of Houston, and the University of California at Irvine, with expertise in American studies, folklore, anthropology, poetry, screenwriting, and, of course, writing instruction. They share my excitement about the launching of an interdisciplinary program of freshman writing seminars that promises to engage and inspire our youngest students for generations to come. The five-year plan is to grow the Expository Writing Program from six lecturers to twelve--and to have an increasingly significant impact on writing across the curriculum at OU.
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