At MIT in the 1990's, data from two sources, a study of the writing ability of a small group of randomly selected MIT juniors correlated to their overall academic performance and a survey of alumni from various years provided the major motivation for the development by MIT faculty and administration of a very ambitious Communications-in-the-Disciplines Program. The study of random juniors demonstrated that student writing ability had no effect on overall student grade-point-average, thereby giving students no immediate incentive to work on improving their writing skills within the context of an extremely intensive MIT undergraduate curriculum. The alumni survey displayed a significant disparity between the importance alumni attached to communication and leadership skills and the alumni's low estimation of MIT's contribution to the development of these skills. Once the new curriculum was in place, however, assessing its effectiveness became much more complex. The end result was an assessment that, given all the cross currents, was successful primarily in raising consciousness and acceptance levels for integrating instruction and practice in writing and speaking throughout the undergraduate curriculum.