Meet Dr. Sarah Wright

Associate Professor–Epistemology, Cognitive Science, & Environmental Ethics

Undergraduate Advisor for Philosophy

Undergraduate Coordinator for Cognitive Science

When did you start teaching in the WIP?

SW: In the Spring of 2018. At the end of this school year, I will have taught 8 sections of WIP classes.

What WIP courses are you teaching/have you taught?

SW: I have taught multiple sections of ARTI/PHIL/PSYC 3550 Introduction to Cognitive Science.

Why did you join the WIP?

SW: I had heard good things about the WIP, but didn’t apply for it until I was assigned to teach two sections of Introduction to Cognitive Science in the same semester. This class already involved a number of writing assignments, but I knew that with 70 students all turning in substantial papers at the same time I would not be able to give them the level of feedback that I had in the past. And I realized that a WIP TA would be a great help in that regard. It is only after having a WIP TA that I realized the other ways that they can help students with writing.

What have you learned from your experiences as WIP faculty? About teaching? About writing? About your students?

SW: As a WIP faculty member, and particularly through my year as a Writing Fellow, I came to understand just how difficult a task we are asking our students to engage in when we ask them to write in the style of our discipline. In a given semester students might be writing in many completely different styles: persuasive argumentation in my class, lab reports in chemistry, articles in a journalism class, etc. Once I realized how difficult this task can be, it made me appreciate students’ success at the task more. And gave me a compelling reason to be very clear in articulating the standards of the style I ask them to use.

What is your WIP teaching philosophy?

SW: I see writing as a natural extension of framing arguments to oneself. In philosophy we are often asking students to write persuasively, arguing for a given position in the literature. However, I’ve noticed that students often take up a different stance in their writing than in class. They might find it easy to throw out different arguments in a conversation, but when it comes to sitting down and writing that argument out, they often convince themselves of an alternative view in the process. We normally think of writing as aimed at an external audience, and it often is. But I love to see how students learn and develop by writing down their thoughts and arguments and simply struggling with themselves sometimes.

How do you put that philosophy into practice in the classroom?

SW: Students take the first steps in class when I ask them to present the arguments from our authors to other students. To make sure that they are being really critical of the arguments, I ask them to work with a student who has a different view from their own, and I ask that student to give criticism of the argument as it is presented.

What are the biggest challenges you face in your WIP class?

SW: My class is cross-listed under three different areas, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Psychology, and this means that I get students from a range of majors and with very divergent background preparation. I aim to teach at a level that engages all the students, but also at a level that is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background. 

I have found that having student write commentaries on the readings helps with this. They write these commentaries the night before we meet and I read them before class. So when I walk into class, I know what they understood and what they had difficulties with. Their commentaries also often have wonderful examples of connections to ideas or research from their other classes.

How do you help students learn how to write in your discipline?

SW: I try to start from the very beginning and articulate clearly what I am looking for in their writing. I’ve also changed the assignments in this class over time to ease the transition into writing in this style. The students start writing with a simple summary of one of our author’s views before I ask them to take up and defend a position of their own. I have also added pre-writing for the major paper assignments, asking them to turn in an outline before the first persuasive paper and a draft before their final paper. This gives them an opportunity to write down their own views and get feedback on them from the WIP TA. But even the activity of writing their own view helps the students to take a critical eye to their own stance and arguments for it.

What do you hope students take away from your WIP class?

SW: A skill. I actually admit to my students that I anticipate that many of them will forget the material in the class (and some more quickly than others). But even when they forget the particular arguments and distinctions in this literature, I want them to retain the skill of writing clearly and persuasively.

Why is it important that students write in your class?

SW: While we normally think of writing as an exercise in communication, I find that students also learn what they think about an issue when they are asked to write about it. This is not just self-discovery but also grappling with the arguments that they have read in class. I want them to be able to use writing to persuade others, but also to figure out the best arguments for themselves.