Grant Writing Class Aids Nonprofits

Students from the WQ2013 course WRD 560: Grant Writing wrote grant proposals that resulted in three local non-profit organizations receiving $33,500 in awards. WRD 560, taught by Antonio Ceraso, Assistant Professor in WRD and Director of the MA in New Media Studies, focuses on the genre of the grant proposal—both the written documents themselves, and the genre as a particular response to the emergence of broader social forms of giving or contribution. As part of their coursework, students partner with local organizations to apply their grant writing skills and, ideally, to help these organizations to secure grants.

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Jeff Rice Brews “Craft Identity”

 On Monday, October 21, WRD students and faculty gathered to hear University of Kentucky Associate Professor Jeff Rice present “Craft Identity,” a wide-ranging lecture in which Rice used his experiences with craft beer to explore questions about meaning-making in the age of social networks. In attendance at the lecture were MA in WRD and MA in NMS students, including those in Assistant Professor Sarah Read’s WRD 500: Proseminar class. Read’s students had read Rice’s previous book, Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network, in this quarter’s proseminar.

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TESOL Coordinator On the Go in the Classroom and Abroad

It has been a busy autumn quarter for WRD visiting assistant professor Jason Schneider. After becoming the Coordinator for the TESOL Graduate Certificate in July 2013, Schneider has had a full schedule, including teaching first-year writing undergraduate and graduate students, helping students plan their class schedules, building a relationship with an international university, and organizing a faculty-led lecture workshop on multilingual writers. In his new role as TESOL coordinator, Schneider helps students plan their coursework around their teaching interests and post-graduation plans.

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WRD Students Profit from Nonprofit Event

On September 24, MA in WRD and MA in NMS students received valuable career insights from four communications professionals working in the nonprofit sector. “Profit from the Nonprofit Experience,” the first event in a series of WRD professional development events, brought four Chicago-area nonprofit professionals to DePaul to share their experiences

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News and Updates

Student, Alumni, and Faculty News

WRD students, alumni, and faculty share their recent professional and academic achievements. Students Katie Booth (MA in WRD) presented her paper “One Who, Two Who, Old Who, New Who: The Discourse of Identity in the Doctor Who Fan Community,” at the Midwest Popular Culture / American Culture Association Conference in St. Louis, MO, on October 12, 2013. Booth’s paper is an analysis of recorded interviews with fans of the cult television series, focusing on identity and authenticity as represented in language.

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Greetings from Professor Vandenberg in China

Professor Vandenberg, WRD Department Chair, is in Quanzhou (Fujan Province) China this week at DePaul’s sister school, Huaqaio University. His visit follows one that WRD’s Visiting Professor and Coordinator of WRD’s Graduate TESOL Coordinator, Jason Schneider, made to Huaqiao this summer. Professor Vandenberg gave a talk on writing instruction in US universities on Monday and is meeting with administrators to explore possible connections between WRD and Huaqiao’s English department, including student and faculty exchanges and opportunities for WRD alumni to teach in China.

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