This past spring the National Commission on Writing’s "The Neglected ‘R’: The Need for a Writing Revolution" reported that "the extended research paper, once a rite of passage in the senior year, is rarely required any more because teachers do not have time to deal with it" (20). For this issue of the Stairwell, we asked respondents to answer the following questions: Is the first-year college research paper similarly obsolete? If so, what other genres or activities have been more successful for your first-year writers and how so? If you do still assign a traditional research paper, what are you doing in your writing classroom to engage students in the research and writing process?

Opening a Narrow Window: Teaching the Research Paper as One Part of First-year Writing
Emily A. Bernhard Jackson, Ph.D. Candidate, Brandeis University

Rethinking Research for the Children Who Were Left Behind
Chris Barnes, Assistant Professor, Middle Georgia College

The First-year Research Essay: Alive and Kicking, For Now
Nick Capo, Visiting Assistant Professor and Interim Director of the Writing Center, Illinois College

Teaching First-year Research Writing in a Humanitarian Context
Henry Laufenberg, Lecturer, University of Washington-Seattle

Teaching Grandparents Academic Research
Mark Sutton, Assistant Professor, Kean University

The Research Project: Focusing on Inquiry
Joan Atlas, Adjunct Faculty, Bentley College

Teaching Writing from a Different Perspective
Thomas Ipri, Media Services Librarian, Connelly Library, LaSalle University

To Be or Not to Be: Research Papers Should Certainly Be
Alaina Lett, Adjunct Faculty, Snead State Community College, Jefferson State Community College, and Jacksonville State University