2017-18 Projects

[WORKSHOP] Writing for the Public

Gabi Kirk

Public or community-engaged scholarship have grown in popularity across many disciplines, yet many of us still do not know how to effectively communicate research themes or findings to a broader audience. In this workshop on April 30, we worked through questions like: why do you want to write for a public audience? What are the benefits and challenges of splitting off “public” writing from “academic” writing and how can we better define public scholarly communication to avoid this? What are the different types of writing for a public audience, what are the norms of the genre, and how does one choose what type of medium is best? Over a dozen participants worked through a framework in partners to help them choose an audience to write for, a topic, and discuss publication and outlet options as well as challenges in public writing (such as language choice). 

 

[WORKSHOP] Framing Spanish as Academic Language: Considerations for Research and Identity

Lina Reznicek-Parrado 

This bilingual panel discussion makes Spanish relevant as an academic language at UC Davis. Specifically, it is conceived for bi/multilingual faculty and students interested in exploring how their bilingual literacies are relevant beyond the personal and into the professional, and how Spanish can serve as bridge between research, writing and practice. Faculty with various experiences as Spanish-speakers and writers who directly draw from their own bilingual literacy skills to contribute to their own research will share observations that together contextualize bilingualism as a direct benefit of academic practice. 

 

[DEVELOPMENT] Trends in Writing Consultation Data

Mitch Simon

I compiled and analyzed Grad Writing Fellow data for the 2017-2018 academic year. We do this to understand how our services are being used and to identify areas for improvement. For example, there has been a higher demand for consultations during fall quarter over the past few years. This year we made changes to our availability which likely contributed to the largest number of 30-minute consultations we’ve had in an academic year. Grad groups across the major disciplines were well-represented and the majority of students who scheduled consultations returned one or more times.

My favorite finding was that we have identical return rates for consultations with both native and non-native English-speaking students. This implies that graduate students find consultations useful regardless of their first language. The responses we receive from post-consultation surveys is overwhelmingly positive as are the comments included therein. Thus, both quantitative and qualitative data strongly indicate the value of the Grad Writing Fellows program.