ETHICS IN WRITING, Dawn Colley
This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to research and engage with the contemporary ethical issues which are related to engineering and scientific advances. The class will be workshop-based and will emphasize the importance of arrangement, audience awareness, clarity, and elegance in writing. To this end, students will write three essays about a topic of their choosing: an analytical essay about the issue, a longer research paper, and a letter to an organization associated with their topic. In addition, students will give two presentations.
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EXPLORING SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION, Dr. Rebecca de Wind Mattingly
In this course, we will investigate what constitutes disciplinary writing in science and engineering for both specialist and ordinary audiences as we compose researched review arguments in our fields of study. We will pay attention to the role science or engineering has played in each of our own lived experiences, and we will examine cultural artifacts to understand how people outside our disciplines view us. We will cap our experience with spoken presentations of our major projects, practicing giving talks that make sense to both specialists and non-specialists. We will also engage with rhetorical theory and our identities as emerging authors of our disciplines through readings, quizzes and reflective arguments, and we will use a peer-reviewed, workshop approach to composing arguments for a variety of audiences. Expectations for coursework include three major written arguments, each approximately 3-7 pages in length; at least one formal spoken argument of approximately 8 minutes in length; and a plethora of shorter and less-formal spoken and written arguments.
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ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Charles Doersch
This course is designed to improve the critical reading and writing skills of students in the fields of science and technology. The class will be conducted as both seminar and workshop, further developing skills in textual analysis, rhetorical analysis, and cultural (or paradigm) analysis of a variety of texts pertaining to or deriving from issues in science. Coursework will entail written responses to essays concerning a variety of social and ethical issues, with special attention to the analysis of differing values, perspectives, and audiences. Coursework will include a minimum of three major papers.
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ESL TOPICS IN WRITING, Dr. Andrea Feldman
ESL Topics is a section of WRTG 3020, 3030, and 3040 that is intended for non-native speakers of English who wish to enroll in an upper-division writing course. The course is taught as a rigorous writing workshop using advanced readings and materials, emphasizing critical thinking, analysis, and argumentative writing. Course readings focus on cross-cultural communication in the arts, business, and scientific fields. Assignments will be tailored to meet the needs and interests of individual students.
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ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Lynn Gingrass
This course is designed to improve the reading and writing skills of students in the science and technology fields. The class will be conducted in both lecture and workshop formats, and we will place particular emphasis on clarity, organization, focused revision, proofreading, and the basics of grammar and mechanics. Coursework will entail written responses to essays concerning a variety of social and ethical issues, with special attention to the analysis of differing values, perspectives, and audiences. Many students majoring in engineering or the sciences think their writing inadequate; this course will demonstrate that the task of framing an issue and developing a position based on evidence and sound reasoning is not only well within their abilities, but that the effort can in fact be pleasurable. Coursework will include a minimum of three papers, and an oral presentation.
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EXPLORING SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION, Sally Green
As a future scientist, engineer, or researcher, you will be expected to write and speak clearly to audiences both within and outside of your field. The purpose of this course is to teach you techniques for communicating analytically and argumentatively, to further develop your creative and critical thinking skills, to give you the opportunity to examine social and ethical issues in science, and to consider the relation of your field to other fields and the public at large. As a way of tangibly pursuing all of these objectives, class members will participate in a service learning project in which they will tutor Boulder at-risk high school students in mathematics for a total of 15 hours during the course of the semester. We will use this experience as a way to examine approaches to such subjects as the relationship between “doing” a field and teaching in it; sociological, political, and institutional factors shaping youth access to science education; and concepts surrounding numeracy and innumeracy. This service experience will be used as one of our resources for the major assignments in the course, which include a 3-4 page rhetorical analysis of a scientific text, a 2-3 page visual analysis, a 5-7 page persuasive essay, and a 15 minute persuasive oral presentation. In addition, you will write a number of shorter documents of various styles during the semester and we will analyze the characteristics of persuasive writing about science for a variety of audiences, through written and verbal examination of a broad spectrum of texts. The course will also familiarize you with career documents used in your field and rhetorical strategies for professional oral presentations. Distinguishing features of this class include the relative latitude students are given in topic choice for their assignments and its regular, high-intensity interaction, through textual workshop and class discussion.
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WRITING IN SCIENTIFIC GENRES, Nathan Pieplow
In this section of WRTG 3030 we will focus on joining a scientific discourse community by learning to write in the genres that people employed in scientific fields most often produce during their careers: research peer reviews, conference paper presentations, and proposals. We will look at scientific writing rhetorically, analyzing and then employing the strategies that scientists use to convince each other (and the lay public) of their claims. We will learn advanced secondary research skills and work with the visual and digital rhetoric of Powerpoint, Wordpress, and other technologies. Students with outside research projects in mind will be encouraged to pursue them via the course's culminating proposal.
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ELEMENTS OF EXPOSITION IN ARGUMENT (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ORGANIC AGRICULTURE), Dr. Matthew Wilsey-Cleveland
Via the thematic foci of Artificial Intelligence and Organic Agriculture, this course will explore the connections between exposition and argumentation. Exposition involves writing that explains, analyzes, describes, and/or informs. Argumentative writing explores differences in perspective (multiple viewpoints) in order to persuasively substantiate a claim or position. It is almost always the case that argumentative writing relies upon elements of exposition. In order to improve fluency and rhetorical awareness, students will learn to identify, evaluate, and employ specific elements of exposition in relation to above-mentioned science and technology topics. Grammar, mechanics, research, and rhetorical context will be covered; key emphases will be placed upon critical analysis and revision/editing skills. Class sessions will be highly interactive and will comprise lectures, seminar discussions, debates, and sundry group activities. Students should expect to carry out reading and writing assignments for every class session. Students should also (emotionally) prepare themselves to perform multiple revisions of their written work. Aside from the shorter weekly written assignments, students will complete two longer essays.
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WRITING PROPOSALS FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Rosalyn Zigmond
This course focuses on the research, writing, and critical thought comprising the process of writing proposals in various scientific fields and rhetorical situations. We will read and discuss a number of articles and critique samples proposals before writing our own proposals in class. Coursework includes short analytical papers of scientific articles and an emphasis on the documents that comprise a winning proposal, including an annotated bibliography, literature review, and capstone proposal. This course will sharpen your research, writing, analytical, evaluative, argumentative, and oral presentation skills in project topics of your choice.
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