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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Alumni Spotlight: Chris Jones

Chris Jones graduated with a BS in advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He earned his M.A. in New Media Studies in Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse at DePaul in 2011.  He presented “Hip-Hop in Second Life” at the 2011 WRD graduate conference, for which he won Best Presentation in the New Media Studies category.  Chris began working in communications for Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago after taking his degree.

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