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.

Continue reading

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.”

Continue reading

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

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

Event Review: Stuart Selber on “Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age”

On October 21, Dr. Stuart Selber presented “Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age: Agents, Infrastructures, Pedagogies” to WRD students and faculty. In attendance at the event were students from both the WRD Proseminar and the NMS Proseminar, who have been reading Selber’s monograph Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. In his talk, Selber explored the ways current technologies set the social scene for teaching writing, rhetoric, and discourse to students at colleges and universities. Selber began by discussing commonly accepted characteristics of today’s students and the technologies and infrastructures that inform their reading and writing practices. He emphasized that procedural

Continue reading

New Course for Autumn 2014, NMS 509: Social Media Content Strategy

This quarter, the New Media Studies Master’s program is offering a new special topics course, Social Media Content Strategy. The course, taught by adjunct professor Brent Waugh, investigates a range of social media and content strategy topics, including how to integrate digital and traditional forms of marketing, best practices for social media use, how to use social analytics, and how to maintain a personal brand. Students in the class have read timely books on social media, including Jonah Berger’s Contagious: Why Things Catch On and Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Class

Continue reading

Faculty Research Profile: Professor Bowden Studies Students’ Responses to Instructor Feedback

Composition studies has a rich tradition of research that aims to better understand the types of comments that instructors write on their students’ papers. But what—if anything—do students do with those comments? WRD Professor Darsie Bowden aims to find out. Since January 2014, Bowden has been interviewing students in first-year writing classes at DePaul to learn more about how they respond to their instructors’ feedback. Her interviews are divided into two parts: she meets with students after they have received feedback on a paper and again after they turn in their final drafts. Bowden’s goal is to find out what

Continue reading