Future of ENAM Comps undecided

Author: Tamara Hilmes

On Jan. 19, Chair of the English and American Literatures (ENAM) Department Brett Millier sent out an e-mail to all ENAM and English (ENGL) majors outlining changes that the department has already voted to set into motion next year. According to the e-mail, the ENAM/ENGL Senior Comprehensive Exam program (Comps) will not continue, and all ENAM majors, beginning with the class of 2013, will be required to write either a senior essay or thesis in order to graduate.

The e-mail arrived in majors' inboxes shortly after students had begun to buzz about the decision toward the end of last week. According to Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures Daniel Brayton, however, these changes have been a long time coming. He said that the department voted down the Comprehensive Exam program last spring.

"I have been telling students for a year now," Brayton said, explaining that he had shared information with anyone who had asked. Brayton also went on to explain that the department had voted to eliminate the program by an overwhelming majority, although three members of the department remained partial to keeping the current program intact.

Despite the results of the vote that, according to Brayton, the department is "bound by," nothing has yet been decided. Brayton stressed that due to the "flighty" tendencies of his department, things could very well change in the coming months.

C. A. Dana Professor of English and American Literatures David Price also emphasized how up in the air the decisions continue to be. Price said that although the vote was already taken, there has been an "impulsive reconsideration," and that the department is continuing to discuss whether or not the program will continue in its present form.

"It's a developing story, as they like to say," said Price. "Nothing has been decided yet."

In Monday's e-mail, though, Millier stated that these two decisions have already been made and that the department is now focusing on "designing a coherent and workable set of course requirements that will prepare students to do independent senior work."

ENAM major Max Sinsheimer '09 expressed his discontent upon receiving the department message.

"I'm a bit upset that the senior English majors weren't brought into the process until the decisions were already - I wish we had been brought in earlier," he said.

The e-mail included an invitation to all ENAM majors as well as any other interested parties to a meeting, to be held on Jan. 22 at 3:00 p.m. in Munroe Lecture Hall. Millier asked those interested to attend and "offer your thoughts and hear the details" about the "intensive discussions" that the department has been having regarding curriculum and senior work for the major.

Price said that they are hoping to have others "weigh in" and to "reopen a kind of discussion. Nominally, the meeting is about curriculum changes," Price explained, though he went on to say that the discussion will also provide an opportunity for "seniors to add a voice."

"I believe that Professor Millier is prepared to listen to what they have to say," he said.

Though several professors within the department declined to comment on the possible changes as they currently stand, Professor Brayton described what he saw as a probable transformation from the traditional Comps program to "more intensified studies of narrower topics" for senior ENAM majors.

Brayton, though originally opposed to eliminating Comps, said that he has come around to the wisdom that the decision encompasses. He explained that the current program creates serious staffing issues each Winter Term because four or five professors are always needed to lead the Comps classes. Without the existing program, these same professors would be free to offer additional senior seminar-type courses that would offer "depth, rather than breadth," he said.

This leads into the second issue Brayton noted regarding Comps - the fact that many of his colleagues have found the program to be too focused on a comprehensive review of the entirety of English literature, a tradition that is rapidly falling out of favor in the world of higher education.

"[Comps] have really gone by the wayside," said Brayton. He went on to explain that Middlebury is one of the last institutions, if not the last, to continue to utilize the Comprehensive program for seniors.

"I've always enjoyed it," he said. "I see it as a tradition, a rite of passage and a form of community building."

Many seniors currently going through the Comps program this month share this nostalgic viewpoint, and are reluctant to see it go.

"I like, as an English major, that we start freshman year with an intense writing seminar, and that we return in senior year to another intense, discussion-based format," Sinsheimer said. To him, the idea of the additional senior seminar-type courses that Brayton mentioned as a possibility seems a bit "redundant."

Others, however, look at the change in a bit of a different light.

"It's a truly rigorous experience," said senior English major Daniel Roberts '09, "and I guess I'm a little jealous of the current junior English majors, since all of a sudden they won't have to take Comps."