Alumni Spotlight: Brooke Becker

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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Alumni Spotlight: Sarah Brown

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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Alumni Spotlight: Aaron Samardzich

Aaron Samardzich graduated from DePaul in 2010 with a BA in English and minors in Interactive Media and Professional Writing. WRD’s Professional Writing minor allows students in any major to take courses in writing, editing, style, rhetoric, and more to prepare for writing in a range of professional settings. In May 2012, Aaron also earned an MS in Technical Communication and Information Design from Illinois Institute of Technology. Since June 2009, Aaron has been working as a technical writing contractor for Thomson Reuters in Chicago.

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MAWRD Student Shares Her Internship Experience

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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Alumni Spotlight: Badriyyah Al-Islam

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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Moore’s Students Published in New York Times

In the winter and spring quarters of 2012, First-Year Writing students Maddie Jones and David Kummerer published their course assignments in the New York Times. As part of instructor Michael Moore’s WRD 104 class, students must write letters to the editor to learn how to write content for a non-academic audience—an audience Moore says consists of “smart, educated, skeptical, engaged readers.” Moore uses the Times’ own submission rules as the rubric for the assignment. These rules suggest submitters “write quickly, concisely and engagingly” and “respond in a timely way to a contemporary topic.”

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Alumni Spotlight: Chris Jones

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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