The mission of the Program for Writing Across Campus is to offer discipline-linked writing courses that create small intellectual communities focused on students' development as writers. Through personalized instruction, including conferencing over writing in progress, we partner with our students to help them cultivate disciplinary and rhetorical knowledge, and confidence in their communication skills and practices. We celebrate the different communities and audiences that students want to engage with, and we respect their aims as composers. We see collaborative engagement over context-specific writing as an important means of fostering students' academic, professional, and personal success.
Technical and Professional Writing Courses
Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) courses aim to help you learn skills to communicate effectively and efficiently in your professional life. The course introduces you to the rhetorical principles and composing practices necessary for writing basic professional and technical documents, designing and analyzing technical research, and communicating about technical issues in common documents such as policies, processes, and reports.
| Course | Description | Sample Syllabus |
|---|---|---|
| English 288 | Engages in professional genres and communication practices in light of emerging technologies. Students produce texts that prepare them to enter professional spaces. | ENGL288 Syllabus |
| English 289 | Theory and practice of written, visual, and digital writing within business contexts. | ENGL289 Syllabus |
| English 390 | Covers how to successfully negotiate the job market in fields related to English, such as technical communication, user experience (UX), and publishing; prepare for careers by familiarizing students with the discursive practices of their professions; develop successful job application materials such as a portfolio website, resumes, cover letters, and social media profiles; and prepare for job interviews. | Syllabus TBA |
| English 391 | Studies the grant-writing process through analysis, research, and practice. Focuses on procuring money to fund ideas through understanding the parts of grant writing; generating ideas for funding; locating funding sources; knowing the parts of a grant proposal; and submitting completed grants. Provides students with foundations in persuasive writing by focusing on the rhetorical genre of the grant. | Syllabus TBA |
| English 392 | Editing technical, business, government, and scientific reports through the manipulation of documents, project management, and contemporary production processes. | Syllabus TBA |
| English 394 | Introduction to big data as an issue for technical communicators. Focuses on how big data, privacy, and surveillance have been studied in technical communication and rhetoric research, and how to make this academic knowledge publicly accessible through writing and design. Students learn frameworks for understanding big data issues, and how to develop and practice techniques for translating expert knowledge to broader public audiences. | Syllabus TBA |
| English 396 | Covers how to create, edit, and maintain technical documentation that supports software end-users and developers. Includes conceptual overviews, instructions and tutorials, code samples and comments, release notes, best practices, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and application programming interface (API) references. Builds digital literacy by working with tools and concepts used in the production of software documentation. | Syllabus TBA |
| English 482 | Introduces the context and use of language in scientific and medical disciplines. Focuses on understanding the rhetorical nature of scientific discourse. Primary topics include examining different forms of scientific and medical writing in traditional and digital contexts; the nature of communication within professional communities; and composing texts for general readers. | Syllabus TBA |
Linked Courses
Linked PWAC courses are connected with large lecture courses in all kinds of disciplines, ranging from Art History to Biology. Students enroll in both courses simultaneously. PWAC courses engage some of the concepts, texts, and methodologies from the linked lecture course as the basis for assignments that help students deepen their learning through writing.
| Course | Description | Sample Syllabus |
|---|---|---|
| English 197 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the humanities. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL197 Syllabus |
| English 198 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the social sciences. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL198 Syllabus |
| English 199 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the natural sciences. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL199 Syllabus |
| English 297 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the humanities. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL297 Syllabus |
| English 298 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the social sciences. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL298 Syllabus |
| English 299 | Offers writing opportunities based on material from an affiliated lecture course or discipline in the natural sciences. Students strengthen writing practices relevant to course or discipline through drafting, peer reviewing, conferencing, and revising. Concurrent registration in the affiliated lecture course is required, as appropriate. | ENGL299 Syllabus |
Unlinked Courses
Unlinked courses are not linked with specific lecture courses, but are still grounded within a disciplinary domain, such as the Humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences. Like the linked courses, unlinked courses offer students the opportunity to think about how knowledge is built in certain fields of study, and practice their writing in those disciplinary contexts. Since they are not tied to a particular lecture course, however, they may offer a bit more scheduling flexibility for students.
| Course | Description | Sample Syllabus |
|---|---|---|
| English 296 | Develops critical literacy in the diffuse but interlocking disciplines of the natural sciences. Through analysis and composition of various texts, students become authoritative participants in scientific discourse while also becoming familiar with ways that Western values are embedded and centered (often invisibly) in the sciences and its related institutions. | ENGL296 Syllabus |
| English 297 | Expository writing based on materials presented in a specified humanities course. Assignments include drafts of papers to be submitted in the specified course, and other pieces of analytical prose. Concurrent registration in the specified course required. | ENGL297 Syllabus |
| English 298 | Expository writing based on materials presented in a specified natural science course. Assignments include drafts of papers to be submitted in the specified course, and other pieces of analytical prose. Concurrent registration in the specified course required. | ENGL298 Syllabus |