Course Spotlights – Page 8

Professor Kalin in seminar with students

October 16, 2017 Anthony Melville

Contemporary Rhetorics: Course Spotlight

Until the mid-20th century, our understanding of rhetoric was dominated by the foundational theory of Greek thinkers, and focused mainly on a speaker addressing an audience for persuasive purposes. Out of this tradition, we find descriptions of rhetoric as something discrete and narrowly defined: Cicero calls it “speech designed to persuade” and Quintilian says that rhetoric is “a good man speaking well.” However, during the cultural turn in the 1960s and 1970s rhetorical scholars took an interest in the work that rhetoric does in the everyday and in the world at large

February 28, 2017 Admin

Graduate Editing Course Provides MA Students with Organizational Knowledge

Community service is at the core of DePaul’s mission toward Vincentian values and social justice. In the MA WRD program, our courses can contribute to this service through the use of community partnerships in the classroom. In the Winter 2016 quarter, Professor Sarah Read is teaching WRD 523: Editing, and students are working with community organizations, giving back to the greater Chicago community while developing skills in editing, copywriting, and technical communication. Learning the Skills This is the third time that Prof. Read has taught this class at the graduate level, which she says focuses on “the immediate professionalization of

February 20, 2017 Admin

WRD 377: Writing & Social Engagement

This Winter Quarter, instructor Jen Finstrom is putting a twist on WRD 377: Writing and Social Engagement. WRD 377 courses always include an experiential learning component—typically, students will complete mandatory service-learning hours by going out of the classroom to serve and collaborate with communities and organizations in Chicago. What makes Finstrom’s course unique is that while it remains grounded in experiential learning and community service, students in this WRD 377 class are primarily collaborating and working with their Chicago community online rather than in person. How? Students in WRD 377 give written online feedback to sixth graders writing poetry at

February 17, 2017 Admin

New Graduate Course Preview | WRD 545: Teaching Writing Online

Why Learn to Teach Writing Online? In recent years, the convenience, accessibility, and pedagogical possibilities of online learning have drawn in students and teachers alike. As more students turn to online spaces for education, writing teachers must understand the pedagogical possibilities for these learning environments. To help students prepare to teach online, the MA in WRD will offer WRD 545: Teaching Writing Online in the upcoming Spring 2017 quarter. The course is an elective, of particular interest to students pursuing the concentration in teaching writing and language. On the course’s website, Prof. Michael Moore says that he aims to explore

January 27, 2017 Admin

Spring & Summer ’17 Courses Are Here!

The Course Cart for Spring and Summer 2017 classes opened this week, and registration begins February 5! If you’d like a comprehensive list of WRD’s course offerings, visit the Student Resources page at WRD’s website. There, you can plan your class schedule with detailed course descriptions at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Any questions about what classes to take? Email your program director or contact the department at wrd[at]depaul.edu.

January 15, 2017 Admin

Course Spotlight: Teaching ESL Writing Update

Overview of WRD 543 Students in Dr. Jason Schneider’s WRD 543: Teaching ESL Writing course learned to better understand the theoretical and practical issues connected to writing studies in an increasingly diverse world. WRD 543 is a graduate-level course, open to all MA in WRD students, and is offered every other year. It provides concentration credit for students in DePaul’s Teaching Writing and Language concentration of the MA in WRD and counts for Methods credit for those students pursuing the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certificate. Structured around readings and weekly discussion posts, the course helps students

October 14, 2016 depaulwrd

WRD 111: Transition DePaul

WRD 111 is designed specifically for international students and was taught this Autumn Quarter by Margaret Poncin and Douglas Sheldon. The course has two main goals—to introduce students to the city of Chicago and to help students transition into the academic culture of the United States. As a result, WRD 111 instructor Margaret Poncin says, “students visit museums, architectural landmarks, and neighborhoods as part of their research for class assignments.” How is exploring Chicago paired with an introduction to U.S. academic culture? One class project required students to do just that—get out in the city and utilize concepts learned in

October 6, 2016 Admin

Winter '17 Courses Are Here!

It’s time to start thinking about Winter. The Course Cart for Winter 2017 classes opened this week, and registration begins October 13! If you’d like a comprehensive list of WRD’s course offerings, visit the Student Resources page at WRD’s website. There, you can plan your class schedule with detailed course descriptions at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Any questions about what classes to take? Email your program director or contact the department at wrd[at]depaul.edu.

Students from NMS and 510 with their nonprofit partners

April 11, 2016 Admin

MA Students Partner with Local Nonprofits

This post was written by Meaghan Young-Stephens, a graduate assistant to the WRD program who was enrolled in Writing Digital Content. If you’re like me and spend a lot of time on Chicago trains and buses, you’ve probably seen DePaul’s marketing promise, “The city is your campus.” Of the classes I have taken so far, NMS 510 is the one where the slogan rings most true. NMS 510 “Writing Digital Content” (or WRD 525 for those of us in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse program) is structured around a service-learning component that sets it apart. Early in the quarter, each student

October 7, 2015 Admin

NMS 580: A New Way to Read Old Texts

In Winter Quarter 2016, the MA program in New Media Studies (NMS) will offer NMS 580: Markup and Text Encoding in the Humanities, a core course in the new certificate in Digital Humanities. Though the course has an NMS course number, the instructor, Prof. Antonio Ceraso, hopes it will also draw students from the MA in WRD and humanities disciplines such as English and history—all of whom can benefit from the new tools and perspectives the course offers.