News from DePaul University's Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse
Recent graduate, Chad Seader, MAWRD 2013, shared with us how he customized the MAWRD program to help him achieve his academic goals and what he’ll be doing as a post-graduate. Q: What was your academic and professional background prior to entering WRD? Directly before entering MAWRD, I had completed my BA in Philosophy for Northeastern Illinois University, but in my last year at NEIU I decided to switch over to rhetoric and composition for my graduate education.
Continue readingCongratulations to the winners of the Third Annual WRD Student Project Awards Competition! This year’s winners were honored earlier this week at WRD Fest.
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Performing research in a WRD course takes on a whole new layer of meaning when there are real stakes in the outcome of the research. Students in WRD 530: Workplace Ethnography, taught by Assistant Professor Sarah Read during AQ12, had the opportunity to do qualitative research for stakeholders at Josephinum Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Read’s course partnered with Josephinum with the assistance of Jean Vipond at DePaul’s Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning.
Continue readingRay Salazar’s education blog, The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher, tied for second place in the Best Blog category of the Education Writers Association (EWA) contest: the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting. A judge from the contest had this to say about White Rhino: “White Rhino offers an interesting point of view on Latino issues at a moment of their emergence as a political and cultural force. He also has an endearing approach of a crusader, asking hard questions of the union chief and criticizing the mayor.”
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WRD graduate assistant Amy Hubbard’s project, A Ghostly Rendering, was recently featured on the Zeega blog. Zeega is a web publishing tool designed to enable interactive storytelling. “I know that [Zeega] can create complicated documentaries, but I really think the rhetorical power here is in the simple ability to re-envision narratives. Simply put, I’m really excited about this and am eager to see where this technology goes in the future.” Amy was first introduced to Zeega in an NMS digital storytelling course taught by Assistant Professor Lisa Dush.
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Brooke Becker graduated from the New Media Studies master’s program in 2012. She currently works as an interactive web and marketing designer for SpringCM. We caught up with her recently to ask her some questions about her journey before, during and after her time in the MANMS program.
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Sarah Brown (MAWRD 2010) currently works as a technology administrator at DePaul’s Center for Educational Technology in the College of Education. Prior to coming to DePaul in 2008, Sarah taught for two years at a career technical high school in Dayton, OH. After refining her career goals, moving to Chicago, and graduating from the MAWRD program, she continued to work for DePaul in Faculty Instructional Technology Services, where she had been a graduate assistant.
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As MAWRD student Kristen Geil enters the homestretch of the masters program, she reflects on the internships she completed and leaves WRD students with some good advice. Q: What is your major/concentration? A: MA in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse with a concentration in Professional/Technical Writing. Q: When did you complete your internship? A: I’ve completed two internships: one during the Spring Quarter of my first year and a second during the summer between my first and second years of grad school.
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Badriyyah Al-Islam (MAWRD 2011) currently works as an independent writer with a focus on servicing small businesses and nonprofit organizations in Chicago. After investigating local businesses in the area, she quickly learned that many sole proprietors, partnerships, and nonprofit agencies have neither the means to hire nor the initiative to search for a full-time staff writer who can serve their business needs. As an independent writer, she works with such organizations on a range of professional writing projects.
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Chris Jones graduated with a BS in advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He earned his M.A. in New Media Studies in Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse at DePaul in 2011. He presented “Hip-Hop in Second Life” at the 2011 WRD graduate conference, for which he won Best Presentation in the New Media Studies category. Chris began working in communications for Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago after taking his degree.
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