UWP-About

Undergraduate Writing Programme

The Undergraduate Writing Programme at Ashoka University is one of the first writing and critical thinking programmes of its kind in the country. Our programme, developed bottom-up for the Indian context, is designed to cultivate rigorous writing practices in first-year students. It is our understanding that an education in the liberal arts is built upon the foundation of analytical thinking communicated through clear and persuasive writing across disciplines.

The Undergraduate Writing Programme was originally designed to offer one flagship course, Introduction to Critical Thinking, to all Ashoka undergraduates. To foster these critical competencies, our instructors give individual attention to each student’s communication skills, both written and oral, at the level of structure, sentence, and vocabulary. Our flagship course, Introduction to Critical Thinking, is taught through small, seminar-style classes, which employ the best writing pedagogy practices from across the world to nurture writing and critical thinking in the first year of undergraduate training.

In the past five years, the programme has evolved a robust, interdisciplinary practice that trains students to articulate their ideas. Our goal is to produce confident, mature communicators, who are at ease writing a research paper, reading an op-ed, or reciting spoken word poetry. We are mindful of student diversity in our classrooms, and ensure that non-native English speakers also find, and claim, their voices.

Over the past few years, the UWP has offered a range of writing courses that cater to a varied incoming student cohort:

• Introduction to Critical Thinking (ICT), our principal offering, which students must complete in their first year
• Advanced Academic Writing (AAW), an elective sequel to ICT, which further develops writing and research skills
• ELT Tutorials, which are capped at 5 students each, and are an immersion critical thinking course for non-native English speakers

Our instructors, who come from different disciplines, have also taught Critical Thinking Seminars in other departments, such as Sociology, Environmental Science, and Creative Writing.

 

We are hiring Instructors for our flagship course, ‘Introduction to Critical Thinking’, for the academic year 2024-2025. More information regarding the role, responsibilities, and application process can be found here.