WRTG 3030

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Justin Atwell

This course aims to help us better understand what happens when communities with different beliefs and values regarding science and other cultural issues come into contact with one another. Grounded in rhetorical and sociological theory, the course is structured as a discussion-based interdisciplinary exploration of writing and communicating STEM-based information for various audiences and purposes. Students will complete analyses of the communication that happens in their own disciplinary discourses, draft proposal documents, and collaborate to complete research that explores social issues in their respective disciplines. Through multimodal means of writing production, this course will interrogate the possibilities of what it can mean to write in the sciences.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Christina Eisert, M.A.

As a future scientist, engineer, or researcher, you will be expected to write and speak clearly to people outside your field.  The purpose of this course is to teach you techniques for writing analytical and argumentative essays, to develop critical thinking skills, and to examine ethical issues in science and to conduct oral presentations.  To this end, the final project for this course is to create a document related to your field that can stand on its own in the real world. 

Understanding the genre characteristics of your discipline’s discourse community will help you to communicate on a deeper level within your field of study, allowing for more productive critical and creative/divergent thought--and potentially providing access to the spontaneous bursts of sudden insight that lead to innovation within a discourse community.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Jared Krywicki

Our course will immerse you in the study and practice of writing scientific arguments for expert and non-expert audiences. You will learn to recognize and analyze the rhetorical dimensions of scientific and science-related texts, and you will use this knowledge to hone your own writing and communication skills. We will read foundational scientific articles and papers, journalistic writing, and texts that foreground, clarify, and investigate the rhetorical dimensions of science writing genres. We’ll also explore scientific rhetoric in other forms of media, from the video and webcast to the meme. A considerable portion of our science-focused reading concerns sustainability issues. These readings will provide common ground for our discussions, and compelling subjects for our rhetorical inquiries. Sustainability also matters to our collective and individual futures. Being conversant in sustainability initiatives has potential professional advantages, and actively participating in such initiatives might just help you to “save the world.”

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Christine Macdonald

In this course we will examine the rhetoric of science and how it circulates in the general news media.  Students will produce a variety of assignments aimed at different audiences as we examine and practice strategies for conveying specialized knowledge to non-specialized audiences. We will focus on communication strategies in a variety of formats, including multimodal work.  The course includes a unit on visual rhetoric and how to communicate your professional autobiography to potential employers.

RADICAL SCIENCE WRITING, Danny Long, M.A

As a future professional in the sciences or engineering, you will be expected to write and speak clearly and convincingly to audiences not only in but also, and especially, outside your field. The purpose of this course is to provide you the opportunity to practice techniques for communicating analytically and persuasively, to further develop your creative- and critical thinking skills, and to consider how your field relates to other fields and to the civic arena. One way you will pursue these objectives is through a service-learning project, for which you will tutor local high school students for a total of eight hours in math, the sciences, or a variety of other subjects. You will use this experience to examine the relationship among doing, teaching, and learning a field; the sociological, political, and institutional factors shaping education in math and the sciences; and the various rhetorical norms involved in scientific pedagogy and practice. Of course, you will do more than the service-learning project this semester. Most of the material you will work with in class will be produced by you, discipuliextraordinaria. You will collaborate with one another, write with one another, teach one another. Count on staying busy each and every class period. Together, we will analyze the characteristics of persuasive writing about and in the sciences and education. The course will include brief units on logic and visual rhetoric. At various points in the semester we will discuss the craft of writing—e.g., writing strong, beautiful sentences that capture audiences, filling them with awe and admiration and wonder. You will complete a number of informal writing assignments. You will write two professional career documents: a personal statement and an exit message, both addressed to your service-learning partners. In groups you will write children’s books for local first graders, fallacious dialogues, and posters that teach the CU campus community about Shakespearean-era science. And you will put together an annotated bibliography that will prepare you for your final project: a piece of writing that uses book arts to share research in math or the sciences with a
public audience.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Lonni Pearce 

Flexible. Responsive. Agile. These are words often used in academic and business articles that describe the type of communication skills employers are seeking. Why? We know that we have many more options now for how we communicate than we did two decades ago—how does this change the way we think about writing? How does the expansion of formats, modes, and technologies make effective communication both easier and more difficult? What are the questions and concepts you can use to adapt your message for specific purposes and a broad range of audiences? How can you better understand how power operates through both the medium and the message? 
We’ll explore these questions in this course, using an innovative hybrid structure to help you identify, practice, and critique communication.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Petger Schaberg, M.A.

This course is a rhetorically informed introduction to science writing that hones communication skills as we examine the relationships among science, engineering, and society, and the manner in which scientific and technical information moves across different rhetorical contexts and becomes relevant to a variety of audiences. The course is intended for upper-division students in Engineering and for students in Arts and Sciences majoring in the sciences. Taught as a writing seminar emphasizing critical thinking, revision, and oral presentation skills, the course focuses on helping students draw on their technical expertise while engaging audiences beyond their own disciplines. The course draws on broad rhetorical principles for cogent writing and speaking and applies them to the demands of communicating in the fields of science and engineering and in the work environments of organizations.

SCIENCE'S PATHWAY TO POPULAR AWARENESS, Dr. Kurtis Hessel

Since the seventeenth century, modern science has refined humanity's powers of perception by teaching us to methodically consider empirical phenomena to better understand how the world works. Over time, scientific disciplines have proliferated, each taking up particular objects of scrutiny and developing field-specific practices, protocols, and terminology. Science is a collaborative undertaking on a planetary scale, and scientists communicate their findings with each other in writing. In our own time, science writing has become highly specialized, and to participate in the sciences students must master the unique conventions that structure each scientific discipline. One the one hand, these compositional strategies allow scientists to communicate very precise ideas to each other. At the same time, the complexity of this language often alienates non-scientists, who are not trained to use these special languages. Because scientific findings inform public policy, though, a supplemental industry of science-writers and translators has developed to make scientific discoveries more accessible for common people.

In this course, we will examine how scientists communicate with each other and how they adapt their writing for the public. We will treat science writing in all forms as rhetorical: scientists write for various audiences; they make claims; they adopt conventions to make those claims persuasive; they organize evidence and analysis to augment its effectiveness. To place articles in prestigious journals like Science or Nature, scientists must convince editors of the value of their research and its capacity to make an impact on society. To convince politicians and the public to devote limited resources to the sciences, they must reconstitute their research in a more accessible idiom for public consumption. Over the semester, we'll journey from the specialized pages of peer-reviewed periodicals to the wider world of public controversy so we can understand the many dimensions of science writing.

COMMUNICATING SCIENCE TO PEERS AND TO THE PUBLIC, Dr. Rebecca Dickson

The United States has some of the lowest general scientific literacy numbers in the developed world, and many Americans reject clearly proven scientific facts. Yet American scientists, engineers, universities, and institutes are among the most respected by the global academic community. Given that American scientists and engineers bring us the Internet, clean energy sources, vaccines, antibiotics, and many other modern-day essentials, it matters immensely that Americans understand what scientists do. In this course, we’ll look at the ways scientists communicate, both as a means to improve our own communication skills and better understand how STEM majors can effectively convey their research and findings to their colleagues and to the general public. Students will write four papers and do two presentations while reading weekly articles—peer-reviewed and popular press—on scientific concerns. We’ll be using Joshua Schimel’s textbook Writing Science as a guide.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Justin Atwell

This course aims to help us better understand what happens when communities with different beliefs and values regarding science and other cultural issues come into contact with one another. Grounded in rhetorical and sociological theory, the course is structured as a discussion-based interdisciplinary exploration of writing and communicating STEM-based information for various audiences and purposes. Students will complete analyses of the communication that happens in their own disciplinary discourses, draft proposal documents, and collaborate to complete research that explores social issues in their respective disciplines. Through multimodal means of writing production, this course will interrogate the possibilities of what it can mean to write in the sciences.

COMMUNICATING SCIENCE TO PEERS AND TO THE PUBLIC, Dr. Rebecca Dickson

The United States has some of the lowest general scientific literacy numbers in the developed world, and many Americans reject clearly proven scientific facts. Yet American scientists, engineers, universities, and institutes are among the most respected by the global academic community. Given that American scientists and engineers bring us the Internet, clean energy sources, vaccines, antibiotics, and many other modern-day essentials, it matters immensely that Americans understand what scientists do. In this course, we’ll look at the ways scientists communicate, both as a means to improve our own communication skills and better understand how STEM majors can effectively convey their research and findings to their colleagues and to the general public. Students will write four papers and do two presentations while reading weekly articles—peer-reviewed and popular press—on scientific concerns. We’ll be using Joshua Schimel’s textbook Writing Science as a guide.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Matthew Henningsen, Ph.D

As science-based majors, and especially as future engineers, you are required to build things: bridges, roads, robots, etcetera. However, at times crucial, essential thoughts regarding the ethics regarding engineering are cast aside. We reach a point where we build and construct without really thinking through the issue – do we need these things? Is it in fact ethical to construct them? Even though we can construct them, should we? Are some things just off limits? Etc. During our time together, we will apply these types of questions specifically to social engineering projects. We will mores specifically investigate the rhetoric of these projects, analyzing and thinking through not just the practicality of such places, but also how they are presented to us as the readers. Do our authors present a strong rhetorical case for making us want to join their worlds? This is a true test of rhetorical skill, since a well-engineered society can only succeed if it is well described, and so can only attract people to actually live there. The success of the society, you could say, depends on the rhetoric!

With PWR goals for this course, our investigations with coincide with our production of a wide variety of professional and scientific genres. You will write a report on a specific social engineering text, and present this report to the class, craft an argumentative essay, and a memo, be responsible for maintaining a “Blue Print Journal,” where you compile notes on the societies we study, until ultimately fashioning an exhaustive National Science Foundation (NSF) grant proposal for a social engineering project. This final project will be your chance to actually build a society, and you will present your findings to the class at the very end of the semester. Your ultimate goal: Persuade us that this society can in fact succeed, and that you deserve the NSF money to put it into action.

SCIENCE'S PATHWAY TO POPULAR AWARENESS, Dr. Kurtis Hessel

Since the seventeenth century, modern science has refined humanity's powers of perception by teaching us to methodically consider empirical phenomena to better understand how the world works. Over time, scientific disciplines have proliferated, each taking up particular objects of scrutiny and developing field-specific practices, protocols, and terminology. Science is a collaborative undertaking on a planetary scale, and scientists communicate their findings with each other in writing. In our own time, science writing has become highly specialized, and to participate in the sciences students must master the unique conventions that structure each scientific discipline. One the one hand, these compositional strategies allow scientists to communicate very precise ideas to each other. At the same time, the complexity of this language often alienates non-scientists, who are not trained to use these special languages. Because scientific findings inform public policy, though, a supplemental industry of science-writers and translators has developed to make scientific discoveries more accessible for common people.

In this course, we will examine how scientists communicate with each other and how they adapt their writing for the public. We will treat science writing in all forms as rhetorical: scientists write for various audiences; they make claims; they adopt conventions to make those claims persuasive; they organize evidence and analysis to augment its effectiveness. To place articles in prestigious journals like Science or Nature, scientists must convince editors of the value of their research and its capacity to make an impact on society. To convince politicians and the public to devote limited resources to the sciences, they must reconstitute their research in a more accessible idiom for public consumption. Over the semester, we'll journey from the specialized pages of peer-reviewed periodicals to the wider world of public controversy so we can understand the many dimensions of science writing.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Jared Krywicki

Our course will immerse you in the study and practice of writing scientific arguments for expert and non-expert audiences. You will learn to recognize and analyze the rhetorical dimensions of scientific and science-related texts, and you will use this knowledge to hone your own writing and communication skills. We will read foundational scientific articles and papers, journalistic writing, and texts that foreground, clarify, and investigate the rhetorical dimensions of science writing genres. We’ll also explore scientific rhetoric in other forms of media, from the video and webcast to the meme. A considerable portion of our science-focused reading concerns sustainability issues. These readings will provide common ground for our discussions, and compelling subjects for our rhetorical inquiries. Sustainability also matters to our collective and individual futures. Being conversant in sustainability initiatives has potential professional advantages, and actively participating in such initiatives might just help you to “save the world.”

RADICAL SCIENCE WRITING, Danny Long, M.A

As a future professional in the sciences or engineering, you will be expected to write and speak clearly and convincingly to audiences not only in but also, and especially, outside your field. The purpose of this course is to provide you the opportunity to practice techniques for communicating analytically and persuasively, to further develop your creative- and critical thinking skills, and to consider how your field relates to other fields and to the civic arena. One way you will pursue these objectives is through a service-learning project, for which you will tutor local high school students for a total of eight hours in math, the sciences, or a variety of other subjects. You will use this experience to examine the relationship among doing, teaching, and learning a field; the sociological, political, and institutional factors shaping education in math and the sciences; and the various rhetorical norms involved in scientific pedagogy and practice. Of course, you will do more than the service-learning project this semester. Most of the material you will work with in class will be produced by you, discipuliextraordinaria. You will collaborate with one another, write with one another, teach one another. Count on staying busy each and every class period. Together, we will analyze the characteristics of persuasive writing about and in the sciences and education. The course will include brief units on logic and visual rhetoric. At various points in the semester we will discuss the craft of writing—e.g., writing strong, beautiful sentences that capture audiences, filling them with awe and admiration and wonder. You will complete a number of informal writing assignments. You will write two professional career documents: a personal statement and an exit message, both addressed to your service-learning partners. In groups you will write children’s books for local first graders, fallacious dialogues, and posters that teach the CU campus community about Shakespearean-era science. And you will put together an annotated bibliography that will prepare you for your final project: a piece of writing that uses book arts to share research in math or the sciences with a
public audience.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Christine Macdonald

In this course we will examine the rhetoric of science and how it circulates in the general news media.  Students will produce a variety of assignments aimed at different audiences as we examine and practice strategies for conveying specialized knowledge to non-specialized audiences. We will focus on communication strategies in a variety of formats, including multimodal work.  The course includes a unit on visual rhetoric and how to communicate your professional autobiography to potential employers.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Rolf Norgaard

WRTG 3030 “Writing on Science and Society” is a rhetorically informed introduction to science writing that hones communication skills as we examine the relationships among science, engineering, and society, and the manner in which scientific and technical information moves across different rhetorical contexts and becomes relevant to a variety of audiences.  The course is intended for upper-division students in Engineering and for students in Arts and Sciences majoring in the sciences.  Taught as a writing seminar emphasizing critical thinking, revision, and oral presentation skills, the course focuses on helping students draw on their technical expertise while engaging audiences beyond their own disciplines. The course draws on broad rhetorical principles for cogent writing and speaking, and applies them to the demands of communicating in the fields of science and engineering and in the work environments of organizations.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Lonni Pearce 

Flexible. Responsive. Agile. These are words often used in academic and business articles that describe the type of communication skills employers are seeking. Why? We know that we have many more options now for how we communicate than we did two decades ago—how does this change the way we think about writing? How does the expansion of formats, modes, and technologies make effective communication both easier and more difficult? What are the questions and concepts you can use to adapt your message for specific purposes and a broad range of audiences? How can you better understand how power operates through both the medium and the message? 
We’ll explore these questions in this course, using an innovative hybrid structure to help you identify, practice, and critique communication.