2016 WRD Awards Party Recap

The Sixth Annual WRD Awards Party was a great success thanks to the participation of WRD majors and minors, MA in WRD graduate students, and MA in NMS graduate students! This year’s party was held on Friday, June 3 in the Lincoln Park Student Center. As always, it was a great evening to honor WRD and NMS graduates, enjoy food, listen to live music, and catch up with classmates, alumni, and faculty. Photos from the evening can be viewed below. The award winners and Pi Epsilon Pi inductees are listed below: Best Undergraduate Essay “Feliz Cumpleaños!” by Wendy Ramirez Best

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Faculty Spotlight: Jason Schneider

Professor Jason Schneider is the newest tenure-track member of the WRD faculty. Having taught at DePaul as a Visiting Assistant Professor since 2012, he moved into his current position of Assistant Professor in the department during fall quarter. With an MA in applied linguistics and a PhD in rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Schneider felt immediately at home in the WRD program. Today, Schneider wears many hats here at DePaul. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in teaching English as a Second Language and coordinates the graduate certificate program in TESOL. Over the summer, he oversaw the creation of WRD 111, a new course for

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Kate Vieira Brings Immigrant Stories to Life

Last Thursday the WRD Department welcomed Kate Vieira, who spoke with students and faculty about her research on “Money and Bodies: How They Matter for Writing.” Vieira has conducted a great deal of research on literacy in immigrant communities and the families left behind. More recently, her focus has been on writing from the body, and how writing can aid physical, mental, and emotional healing. Her argument in her presentation for the DePaul community? That there are more connections between these strands of research than we might think—and that the root of this connection lies in the materiality of writing. Writing is

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Conference on College Composition and Communication

WRD Faculty Share Their Research at CCCC

If you were on the third floor of DePaul’s Schmidt Academic Center during the first week of April, you might have noticed that the hallways were not quite as bustling as usual. From April 6-9, several WRD faculty members traveled to Houston, Texas to attend the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, or CCCC—the largest academic conference dedicated to writing and the teaching of writing. Curious about the work that WRD professors shared at CCCC? Here’s a peek: Julie Bokser, along with Sarah Brown, Michelle Navarre Cleary, and Kathryn Wozniak, presented on “Identifying and Eliciting Students’ Metacognitive Development” Sarah Read and WRD

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WRD Alumni Spotlight: Patrick Humpal

This week, the WRD Alumni Spotlight is on Patrick Humpal. Patrick graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in WRD and minors in Catholic Studies and Public Law & Political Thought. Outside of the classroom, Patrick participated in many service, faith, and social justice organizations at DePaul such as Catholic Campus Ministries, the Vincentian Community Service Office, and The Office of Mission and Values. He is currently serving with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Santiago, Chile. What have you been doing professionally since you earned your degree? In December I arrived in Santiago, Chile to begin my service with the

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WRD Student Spotlight: Maddy Johnson

WRD recently caught up with Maddy Johnson, a current student in the BA/MA in WRD program. She started working at Zacks Investment Research as an intern and is now a full-time content curator/stock news reporter. Her main work duties include covering the trendiest or high-profile financial news stories of the day as well as creating informational reports that range from upcoming IPOs to the current oil crisis. She also manages the intern team at Zacks, editing and revising their work throughout the day. In this article, Maddy shares more about her current position and how WRD has impacted her career.

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WRD Student Spotlight: Emily Power

Today’s student spotlight features current WRD major Emily Power. This past summer, Emily received a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant from DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences to work on a reading project connected to her interest in TESOL. Below, she tells about her research experience and discusses how the WRD program influenced her research process. Give us a brief overview of the project you were working on. I was working on a research project in which I explored different opinions on the spread of English. The four research questions I asked as I went into the project were as

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Interior of a chemistry lab at DePaul

Sarah Read Collaborates with DePaul’s Chemistry Department

This past Autumn Quarter, WRD Professor Sarah Read was granted the Collaborative Instruction Fellow Stipend issued by DePaul University’s Quality of Instruction Council, which is headed by Anne Bartlett of the Cross-College Collaboration (C3) Task Force. Professor Read will use this grant to design a new Master’s level Chemistry course in collaboration with Professor Timothy French of DePaul’s Chemistry Department. This new course, Science Writing & Communication, will be co-taught by Read and French with the goal of teaching students how to communicate like a scientist.

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WRD Alumni Spotlight: Maureen Clancy

This week, the WRD Alumni Spotlight is on Maureen Clancy, a 2013 graduate of the BA in WRD program. She currently works as a Project Manager at a global executive search firm. What have you been doing professionally since you earned your degree? After graduating, I worked as a paralegal at a boutique estate planning law firm for just over a year. My work dealt heavily with the composition and monitoring of very important legal documents, some that spanned back through generations of families!

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WRD Alumni Spotlight: Tim McElroy

This week, the WRD Alumni Spotlight features Tim McElroy, a 2015 graduate of the BA in WRD program. He currently works as a writer for a digital marketing firm in Chicago, Illinois. What have you been doing professionally since you earned your degree? I’ve been working at a digital marketing firm in Fulton Market, located in the West Loop. As a writer in this setting, I’ve been working a wide range of various jobs within my company . PR, press releases, ghostwriting, copywriting, editing – the list goes on and on.

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