As a part of the rapid expansion of Wesleyan’s writing program, the University approved the third year of the Koeppel Journalism program at Wesleyan last Monday.

The program, co-sponsored by the Writing Certificate and the Center for the Study of Public Life, brings two Koeppel Journalism fellows to the University to teach writing classes for a semester. This spring, the program will bring three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Roberts and ABC News Foreign Correspondent Martha Raddatz to teach journalism at Wesleyan.

Director of Writing Programs Anne Greene said she believes the addition of these classes represents a positive new direction for the Writing Certificate.

“We are developing courses that are interesting to students and are central to the curriculum,” Greene said.

Chair of the Wesleyan Student Assembly Academic Affairs Committee Mari Jarris ’14 suggested that the addition of these classes is also an important step in providing students better access to writing classes, which have been in particularly high demand since the introduction of the Writing Certificate two years ago.

“Because of the hundred-person larger freshman class, class access is at the top of our agenda,” Jarris said. “But because of financial restrictions, the University isn’t able to hire new professors or do a huge amount of adjustment to accommodate the larger student population.”

In the meantime, many are giving up on pursuing the recently-developed Writing Certificate due to an inability to enroll in writing classes.

“I’m trying to do the Certificate, but I’m not sure if I will be able to because I don’t know if I can get into the classes next semester,” said Dina Moussa ’12. “I have to get into two more to be eligible. It’s just up in the air.”

Successful completion of the Writing Certificate requires at least five full-credit courses. One must be a level one course, one must be a senior seminar, and three must be electives, one of which must be a Permission of Instructor course.

By adding two courses that would fall under the “electives” category, Jarris hopes that pursuing the Writing Certificate will be a more tangible goal.

However, while adding writing courses may make it more reasonable to pursue the Writing Certificate, students hoping to obtain the Creative Writing concentration within the English major believe that it may not solve their problems.

Lizzy Steiner ’14, an English major hoping to pursue a concentration in Creative Writing, said that access to intermediate and advanced writing workshops, which are requirements for the concentration, is the more pressing issue.

“So far, I’ve applied to intermediate and advanced workshops twice and I didn’t get into either,” Steiner said. “I think the problem is that we have far too many people who want to do the Creative Writing concentration. It’s not for a lack of talented writers that people can’t complete the concentration. It’s because there’s not enough courses to go around.”

Steiner said that getting turned down for both courses has lessened her desire to pursue the concentration.

“Most people I know who wanted to do the Creative Writing concentration have given up,” Steiner said. “I’ve given up. It’s kind of sad. Applying to all these classes felt like the college process all over again.”

Greene, however, said that the University’s writing program has expanded significantly over the past several years. She said this growth and the excitement surrounding it have attracted even more students to the program.

“The reason we need the new courses is that at the moment, we don’t have enough courses to accommodate the many, many new people who want to be participating,” Greene said. “But it’s the excellence of the existing courses that drives the whole thing and makes the program more appealing. It’s really exciting.”

Greene also said that as the writing program becomes increasingly successful, more prospective students are drawn to the University.

“When I ask groups of freshmen, three out of four people in any group will say that they want to take a writing class,” Greene said.