WRD Helps Reframe Traditional Liberal Arts Education

The WRD Department and department chair, Peter Vandenberg, were recently featured in a DePaul Insights article. In it, author Melissa Smith writes about how WRD focuses on the importance of critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills–all of which are vital in the professional world. To read more about how WRD is reframing the liberal arts, click here to access the article on page 9 of DePaul’s Insights.

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WRD Professor Sarah Read Receives CCCC Research Grant

This quarter, WRD Professor Sarah Read was granted a competitive Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Research Initiative grant. Beginning in March, Read along with her colleague Michael Michaud at Rhode Island College, will begin a national survey research project called “Surveying the Status of the Multi-major Professional Writing Course in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education.” As the title of the project suggests, the main goal of this research project is to gather vital data about introductory professional writing courses taught at colleges and universities across the country.

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MA in WRD Course Profile: Feminist Rhetorical Practices

A new course offered in the autumn quarter of 2014 gave MA in WRD students the opportunity to recover and reinscribe women rhetors in the rhetorical canon. According to Professor Nicole Khoury, the special topics course, WRD 511: Feminist Rhetorical Practices, provides a necessary balance to more traditional classes in the rhetorical tradition. Of the course’s benefit to MA in WRD students, Professor Khoury says, the focus on gender discourse within rhetorical studies is an important one, particularly because women’s voices are often silenced and their contributions are overlooked in conventional courses on rhetoric studies.

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WRD 540 in action

WRD 540 Prepares Future Writing Teachers for the Classroom

How do people learn to write? And how can teachers best facilitate this learning? This quarter, MA students in Professor Darsie Bowden’s course, WRD 540: Teaching Writing, have been exploring the answers to these questions. Bowden explains that the course aims to bring together teaching practices and the theories that inform them. Her students have had the opportunity to design their own activities and assignments, often collaboratively, and then to “teach” these lessons to their classmates.

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Social Justice and Writing: Angela M. Haas to Visit DePaul

Join us on Tuesday, March 10 at 6pm (reception at 5:30pm) in McGowan South 104 as WRD welcomes Professor Angela M. Haas from Illinois State University. An Associate Professor of rhetoric and technical communication, her research and teaching focus on working toward social justice in diverse local and global work places and learning spaces. Haas is also an affiliate faculty member in ethnic, Native American, and women’s and gender studies. The focus of her talk will be “Social Justice Writing Practices & Pedagogies.”

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WRD Professor Michael Raleigh’s Mystery Series Reissued

Today, Diversion Books reissued 5 mystery novels written by WRD faculty member Michael Raleigh. Originally written in the 1990s, these novels are traditional private eye stories following a detective who focuses on missing persons cases. Set in 1980s Chicago, Raleigh provides readers with images of Chicago in the not-so-distant past. To effectively communicate the look and feel of a Chicago from days gone by, Raleigh’s novels are full of visually interesting street scenes featuring Uptown and Argyle Street, the Maxwell Street Market, and the now closed Riverview Park—an amusement park which operated from 1904 to 1967 near Belmont and Western

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What’s So Important About Liberal Arts?

What’s so important about Liberal Arts? John W. Rowe, serving most recently as the chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corporation, will answer this question when he visits DePaul on Tuesday, February 24th. Join us at 4:30pm in Cortelyou Commons to hear Rowe discuss Liberal Arts in the 21st century and why this form of education remains relevant now as well as in the future.

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Pick a Class! Spring ’15 Course Descriptions Are Here

The Winter Quarter has just begun, but the Course Cart for Spring and Summer classes will be open soon! The Spring Quarter Course Cart opens on January 27, and registration begins on February 10. Any questions? Email your program director or contact the department at wrd[at]depaul.edu. 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.

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Intern Beat: Russell Wojcik, BA in WRD

We recently spoke with Russell Wojcik, a 2014 BA in WRD graduate who participated in two internships during his time at DePaul. He worked as an editorial intern at Wagstaff Worldwide PR and as a blog writer for Newman Realty, receiving  academic credit for both through his enrollment in WRD 398, part of WRD’s professional internship program. Since graduation, Russell has relocated to Phoenix and now works for an online travel company as a Content Strategist and PR Coordinator, a position that he says uses many of the skills he developed and honed as an intern.

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Portfolio Workshop This Thursday!

Do you need to build an online portfolio? Whether you’re applying for jobs, polishing your resume, or simply completing a portfolio class assignment, the WRD and NMS Grad Assistants are here to make your job a little bit easier. Stop by the WRD Invention Lab (SAC 302) this Thursday, November 13, from 5:00-5:50 pm to learn more about portfolio platforms and best practices. The workshop will also review sample portfolios of recent graduates to see how they best highlighted their skills and abilities.

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