News and Updates

News and Updates from MA Alumni and Faculty

Here’s an update on what some of our MA in NMS and MA in WRD students, graduates, and faculty members have been up to in the last six months!   NMS Students and Alumni Yasmin Alesia (2016) switched careers from the advertising to the tech industry. With the help of her NMS degree, she has started a new job as a UX/UI Designer for Rand McNally. Yasmin is the main designer for OverDryve, Rand McNally’s biggest and upcoming consumer electronic device for the connected car industry. Laura Collins (2013) shared her artwork in the exhibit The Olsen Twins Hiding From The Paparazzi at the THINK1994 Museum in New York City.

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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 Week is here!

To pep things up a bit as we near the end of the academic year WRD is planning a series of events April 19-21st called WRD Week to celebrate students in the WRD program! Throughout the day on Tuesday, April 19th and Wednesday April 20th at 11am, 12:45pm, and 2:15pm WRD will feature events in the WRD student lounge on the third floor of SAC. Stop by tables set up in the lounge to pick up free SWAG, meet a WRD celebrity, grab some treats, take part in a social media scavenger hunt (for a prize!), and chat with your

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Students from NMS and 510 with their nonprofit partners

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

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Spring Quarter Visiting Speaker: Kate Vieira

Kate Vieira from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be our visiting speaker for Spring Quarter.  Her research investigates issues of writing and literacy within the lives of transnational migrants.   Her talk, “Money and Bodies: How They Matter for Writing,” will take place on Wed., May 4 in McGowan South 105 from 5:00-6:00pm, with a pre-lecture reception from 4:30-5:00pm.

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News and Updates

WoRDing It Your Way with Kevin Lyons and Bridget Wagner

We recently spoke with Kevin Lyon and Bridget Wagner, both alumni of the MA in WRD program who now work in Faculty Instructional Technology Services (or “FITS”) at DePaul. Kevin and Bridget are two of several MA in WRD alum who are now putting their degrees into practice at FITS! FITS isn’t the only DePaul experience Kevin and Bridget share: Both worked as peer tutors in the University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) and currently teach classes in DePaul’s First-Year Writing program. In FITS, Kevin works as an Instructional Technology Consultant to the College of Computing and Digital Media and College of Communication, and Bridget

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Canavor Workshop Brings Together Professional Writing Faculty

This is a first-person account written by one of the MA in WRD graduate assistants, Allison Pelletier.  On March 4, DePaul faculty members who teach professional, business, and technical writing for WRD attended an on-campus workshop, hosted by WRD and led by Natalie Canavor, author of Business Writing Today: A Practical Guide. As a graduate student in WRD, I am both excited by and intimidated by the prospect of teaching at the college level. I am equally enthusiastic about any opportunities that will help prepare me to teach. So although I’ve had little experience with professional writing, I was glad

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