Alumni Spotlight: Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown (MAWRD 2010) currently works as a technology administrator at DePaul’s Center for Educational Technology in the College of Education. Prior to coming to DePaul in 2008, Sarah taught for two years at a career technical high school in Dayton, OH. After refining her career goals, moving to Chicago, and graduating from the MAWRD program, she continued to work for DePaul in Faculty Instructional Technology Services, where she had been a graduate assistant.

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Alumni Spotlight: Aaron Samardzich

Aaron Samardzich graduated from DePaul in 2010 with a BA in English and minors in Interactive Media and Professional Writing. WRD’s Professional Writing minor allows students in any major to take courses in writing, editing, style, rhetoric, and more to prepare for writing in a range of professional settings. In May 2012, Aaron also earned an MS in Technical Communication and Information Design from Illinois Institute of Technology. Since June 2009, Aaron has been working as a technical writing contractor for Thomson Reuters in Chicago.

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LAS Scholarships for Undergraduates

DePaul’s online scholarship platform is now accepting applications for LAS-specific scholarships. You will be automatically considered for several of these scholarships by completing a general application; however, some require an additional application (see notes below). *Undergraduate students ONLY.* The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2013.

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MAWRD Student Shares Her Internship Experience

As MAWRD student Kristen Geil enters the homestretch of the masters program, she reflects on the internships she completed and leaves WRD students with some good advice. Q: What is your major/concentration?  A: MA in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse with a concentration in Professional/Technical Writing. Q: When did you complete your internship? A: I’ve completed two internships: one during the Spring Quarter of my first year and a second during the summer between my first and second years of grad school.

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WRD 361: Chicago Women Rhetors

Chicago is known as the Windy City for our boisterous speakers, but what is the history of women’s speaking in Chicago? How have women rhetors made their mark on our city? WRD 361, Topics in Alternative Rhetorics: Chicago Women Rhetors, will examine how Chicago women have made their voices heard, and how these women have been remembered by the publics they spoke to. We’ll read primary and secondary texts, and examine museum exhibits, sculpture, memorials, architecture, organizations, language and cultural practice to learn about the past and about how this past has been remembered and interpreted.

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Vandenberg featured in ePortfolio Community Profiles

WRD Department Chair Peter Vandenberg is excited to be among the faculty featured in the ePortfolio Community Profiles found on DePaul’s Teaching Commons’ website. In his interview, Professor Vandenberg talks about using ePortfolios in his undergraduate capstone course (WRD 390) for the Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse major. Vandenberg says, “”The key thing about technology is that it always follows the learning outcomes… we don’t want technology to lead; we want technology to follow effectively.”

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Alumni Spotlight: Badriyyah Al-Islam

Badriyyah Al-Islam (MAWRD 2011) currently works as an independent writer with a focus on servicing small businesses and nonprofit organizations in Chicago. After investigating local businesses in the area, she quickly learned that many sole proprietors, partnerships, and nonprofit agencies have neither the means to hire nor the initiative to search for a full-time staff writer who can serve their business needs. As an independent writer, she works with such organizations on a range of professional writing projects.

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News and Updates

Johnston Publishes New Poetry Collection

WRD instructor Allan Johnston’s new poetry collection, Departures, is being published by Finishing Line Press. Departures shares the richness of Johnston’s life growing up in Southern California. Gary Snyder says, “Johnston’s intimate knowledge of Pacific Coast L.A. suburb lifeways comes alive in an old language…even as the ever-present ocean washes over it all.” Whitney Scott, editor of the Black-and-White anthology series, says, “With its rippled tidal waters, dragonflies and cattails, Departures recalls a past that resonates powerfully, part of the present.”

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Seifert Inducted into the 25-Year Club

Twenty-five years, or a quarter of a century, that is the amount of time Eileen Seifert, WRD Associate Director of First-Year Writing, has dedicated to DePaul.  Seifert and other new members of the 25-Year Club were recently recognized for their service by the Office of Mission and Values. Seifert started at DePaul as a part-time first-year writing teacher in 1985, before she began working full-time as an instructor in 1987.

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Moore’s Students Published in New York Times

In the winter and spring quarters of 2012, First-Year Writing students Maddie Jones and David Kummerer published their course assignments in the New York Times. As part of instructor Michael Moore’s WRD 104 class, students must write letters to the editor to learn how to write content for a non-academic audience—an audience Moore says consists of “smart, educated, skeptical, engaged readers.” Moore uses the Times’ own submission rules as the rubric for the assignment. These rules suggest submitters “write quickly, concisely and engagingly” and “respond in a timely way to a contemporary topic.”

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