Soslands Give $3 Million to Expository Writing Program

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Expository Writing Program will expand its initiatives to improve undergraduate writing thanks to the generosity of the Sosland family of Kansas City.

The Sosland Family Foundation has given Harvard $3 million to support an assistant director of the Harvard Writing Project (HWP) and an Innovation Fund for Expository Writing for activities related to enhancing writing education across the curriculum.

"We all know how important it is to express our thoughts with compelling clarity," said Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles. "The Soslands have -- with this splendid new gift -- allowed us to take another step in improving the writing skills of our students. Lucidity and graceful writing serve us well whatever we do, and I'm most grateful to Morton and Neil for their thoughtfulness and their support of writing instruction at Harvard."

"My brother Neil and I are committed to helping students improve their writing skills," said Morton I. Sosland '46. "By facilitiating the spread of what Expos teaches across the curriculum, we hope to make communication by writing an essential part of a Harvard education."

Morton Sosland is president of the Sosland Family Foundation; Neil N. Sosland '52 is its vice president. The brothers also lead their family business, the Sosland Publishing Co., whose global food trade publications include Milling & Baking News and World Grain.

Early in The University Campaign, the Soslands gave Harvard $2 million to endow the Expository Writing Program's directorship, now held by Nancy Sommers, and to establish a prize for an outstanding essay by a freshman.

"The Sosland Family has established an enduring association with writing education at Harvard," said Sommers. "This wonderful gift from the Soslands will enable us to work with more concentrations, reaching more courses and students, and having an even greater influence on the writing education of Harvard undergraduates."

The Harvard Writing Project, an initiative of the Expository Writing Program, was created in spring 1995 to extend intensive writing instruction beyond the freshman year. The HWP has already collaborated with faculty teaching nine Core courses and three sophomore tutorials in disciplines ranging from history to music.

Professor of the History of Religion and Islamic Studies William A. Graham Jr. said: "It is in the development and honing of writing skills that we best develop and sharpen our thinking and ability to communicate our ideas effectively and clearly. The kind of support the Writing Project is able to give to a large course in particular is crucial to the effectiveness of the course, whatever its subject matter; such support helps the diverse members of a teaching staff respond to student writing in positive ways, and in doing so, it helps the staff members develop their skills as teachers."

In addition to collaborations with faculty who want to increase writing proficiency among their students, the Innovation Fund will support and expand Harvard Writing Project initiatives including placing residential writing tutors in the Houses, sponsoring a Dissertation Writers' Seminar and faculty lectures on the craft of writing, training graduate students as teachers of writing, and publishing an annual newsletter.

With income from the Sosland Innovation Fund for Expository Writing, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences anticipates increasing these activities and developing initiatives to make writing an even more vigorous part of Harvard's undergraduate education.