News Features / Events

Jennifer Burke Reifman Publishes Article in Assessing Writing

WRaCS DE student Jennifer Burke Reifman's article "Reading the Reader Through Raciolinguistic Ideologies: An Investigation of the Evidence Students Present in Self-Placement" appears in the January 2024 volume of Assessing Writing. The article examines a student-centered placement process, applying a raciolinguistic lens to understand how students’ perceptions of language appropriateness mediate their self-assessments.
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Kendon Kurzer Publishes Article in Writing Center Journal

Kendon Kurzer's co-authored article "Embedded vs. Drop-in Tutors in Developmental Writing Contexts: Course/Tutoring Perceptions and Impact on Student Writing Efficacy" has been published in volume 41.2 of the Writing Center Journal. The article reports on the results of a quasi-experimental study comparing 100 students in basic/developmental courses that featured embedded peer tutors with 78 students who experienced tutoring via a walk-in writing center.

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Current WRaCS DE student Mikenna Leigh Modesto publishes article in Assessing Writing

Mikenna Leigh Modesto (neé Sims), a third-year WRaCS Ph.D. student, published the article “Shifting Perceptions of Socially Just Writing Assessment: Labor-based Contract Grading and Multilingual Writing Instruction” in the July 2023 issue of Assessing Writing. Her study presents cases of two instructors to learn more about how labor-based grading contracts are used in sheltered multilingual first-year writing (FYW) courses, as well as how these instructors perceive labor-based contract grading.

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Neha Gondra, a second year double major in NPB and Managerial Economics, won 3rd Place in the 2023 Norma J. Lang Award for Undergraduate Information Research from the UC Davis Library

Neha Gondra, a second year double major in NPB and Managerial Economics, won 3rd Place in the 2023 Norma J. Lang Award for Undergraduate Information Research from the UC Davis Library. Her essay, “Evaluating the Influence of the Mediterranean Diet on Reducing Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Obese Individuals,” was awarded a monetary prize in the category of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. Her review of literature was a revision of a research project that emerged from a UWP 104F class taught by Brendan Johnston.

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Former Graduate Writing Fellow Sarah Reed and Melissa Bender publish an article in Social Work Education.

Sarah Reed, Melissa Bender, and co-author Julia Berrett-Abebe's "Narrative discussions to support social work competence" was published in March 2023 in Social Work EducationTo enhance the integration of field and practice class, and support the development of core social work competencies, the authors developed and tested a novel teaching method using nonfiction health narratives.
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WRaCS Alumna Mary Stewart Publishes Article in CCC

WRaCS Alumna Mary K Stewart has published the article "How and What Students Learn in Hybrid and Online FYC" in the June 2022 volume of College Composition and Communication. Mary and three co-authors conducted a multi-institutional study to examine the difference between students' perceptions of student-teacher relationships in fully online and hybrid first-year composition courses.

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WRaCS Alumna Michal Reznizki Publishes Article in College Composition and Communication

WRaCS Alumna Michal Reznizki has published the article "What Can We Learn from the Online Representation of Our Graduate Programs’ Curricula? A Comprehensive Online Survey of PhD Programs in Rhetoric and Composition" in the December 2021 volume of College Composition and Communication. Michal examined the online representation of the ninety existing PhD programs in rhetoric and composition in the United States and collected information on the courses offered in the programs, their home departments, and the programs’ mission statements.

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Trish Serviss Publishes Article in Writing Program Administration Journal

Trish Serviss's article co-authored with Julia Voss and Meghan Sweeney, "A Heuristic to Promote Inclusive and Equitable Teaching in Writing Programs," was published in the Spring 2021 edition of the journal Writing Program Administration. The article presents a heuristic WPAs can use to engage their faculty in collaborative, peer-based analysis, dialogue, and revision of writing course design (embodied in syllabi) to study and strengthen the programs’ inclusivity and equity related to literacy standards, assessment, and accessibility.

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Dan Melzer Coauthors 3rd Edition of Engaging Ideas with John Bean

Dan Melzer has joined John Bean as the coauthor of a new edition of Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, by Jossey-Bass. New to the 3rd edition is a chapter on alternatives to traditional grading, a chapter on student self-assessment and peer response, and increased attention to multilingual student writers.

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Kathie Gossett Publishes Chapter in the Book Shaping the Dissertation

Kathie Gossett has a co-authored book chapter in a new collection entitled, “Shaping the Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities.” The chapter is "#DigiDiss: A Project Exploring Digital Dissertation Policies, Practices and Archiving,” and it covers a 4 year long project funded in large part by the NEH Office of Digital Humanities to develop an archiving system for born-digital dissertations.

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UWP1 Student Natasong Yuan Wins Lang Prize

Natasong Yuan, a student from Jason Hockaday's UWP1 course, won first place in the 2021 UC Davis Library's Lang Prize for student research writing in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Natasong's research project is a discourse community analysis of the American Society of Botanical Artists. You can find her analysis at https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/lang-prize/winners/natasong-yuan/.  

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Brit Kelly Publishes Book Loving Fanfiction

Brit Kelly has published the book Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms with Routledge. Loving Fanfiction explores emotion within the context of fandoms, specifically online fanfiction. Through exploring fans’ narratives about themselves and the fanwork they produce and consume, Brit theorizes how identity, cognition, emotion, the body, and embodiment come together in literacy development and practices.

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Writing Across the Curriculum Seminar for Faculty

Join us for the inaugural Writing Across the Curriculum Seminar & Workshop. The seminar will cover topics such as how and why to include more informal and formal writing in courses, as well as discussion about how to manage feedback and other challenges that can arise from more writing intensive courses. The workshop will give you an opportunity to work with writing experts across academic fields on things such as rubric development, writing prompts, incorporating sources, academic genres in STEM contexts, etc.
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Steve Thompson Publishes Book on Law and Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Steve Thompson's third edited reference book on emerging tech, Machine Law, Ethics, and Morality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, has been published by IGI Global. The book is a collection of innovative research that presents holistic and transdisciplinary approaches to the field of machine ethics and morality and offers up-to-date and state-of-the-art perspectives on the advancement of definitions, terms, policies, philosophies, and relevant determinants related to human-machine ethics.

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Chris Thaiss and James Murphy Co-Edit New Edition of A Short History of Writing Instruction

Routledge has just published the new 4th edition of A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to the Modern United States, co-edited by UWP emeritus professor Chris Thaiss and emeritus professor James J. Murphy, formerly of the English Department and the Department of Communication and Rhetoric.

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Michael P. Montgomery Wins First Place in the Norma J. Lang Prize for Undergraduate Information Research

Michael P. Montgomery, a fourth-year marine and coastal science major (oceans and the Earth system emphasis) minoring in professional writing and history, received first place in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences category of this year’s Norma J. Lang Prize. The prize, named after and funded by the late UC Davis Professor Emerita of Botany, Norma J. Lang, is for undergraduate students whose research projects make extensive use of library resources and advance their understanding of the academic research process. 

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Minor in Professional Writing at UC Davis!

Hear from recent graduates who completed the minor in professional writing at UC Davis! In this video, Anjali Bhat, former peer advisor for the minor, shares her experiences with UWP courses, UWP faculty, and professional writing internships. Special thanks to our video producers Joseph Nunez and Melanie Zelaya, interns for the Professional Writing Program, for coordinating the series and for their vision of featuring the good work of our amazing UC Davis students.

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Dana Ferris and Amy Lombardi Publish Article in Journal of Writing Assessment

UWP Director Dana Ferris and DE PhD student Amy Lombardi published the article "Collaborative Placement of Multilingual Writers: Combining Formal Assessment and Self-Evaluation" in volume 13.1 of The Journal of Writing Assessment. They examines the results of a collaborative placement study involving students in UWP EMS courses. 

 
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UWP Lectures Teach 10% of all First-Year Seminars in 2019

UWP Lecturers play a major role in UC Davis’s First-Year Seminar program. In Spring 2019, just over 10% of all first-year seminars offered at UC Davis were taught by UWP Unit 18 Lecturers. People who taught First-Year Seminars in 2019 include Sarah Faye, Erika I-Tremblay, Amy Clarke, Karma Waltonen, Andrea Ross, Bill Sewell, Andy Jones, Elisabeth Lore, Theresa Walsh, Jillian Azevedo, Pam Demory, Kathie Gossett, Lisa Sperber, Alison Bright, Katie Rodger, Ken Anderson, Heather Milton, Sophia Jin, Katie Arosteguy, and Agnes Stark.

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Amy Clarke Receives an Excellence in the Teaching of Study Abroad Award

Amy Clarke has received an Excellence in the Teaching of Study Abroad Award for 2020. A reception for Amy and other award winners will be held at the UC Davis International Center Multipurpose Room on Thursday, March 5th from 4:00-6:00pm. More information about the reception can be found at https://globalaffairs.ucdavis.edu/international-connections

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Carl Whithaus publishes in Written Communication.

Carl Whithaus, along with co-authors Jonathan Alexander (UC Irvine) and Karen Lunsford (UC Santa Barbara), has published "Toward Wayfinding: A Metaphor for Understanding Writing Experiences" in Written Communication. The article maps out four major approaches to the study of writing experiences: (a) worlds apart, (b) literacy in the wild, (c) ecologies and networks, and (d) transfer. Building on these approaches, Alexander, Lunsford, and Whithaus propose the concept of wayfinding as an approach that resonates with recent work on lifelong learning and meaningful writing.

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Marit MacArthur Publishes in The Paris Review

Marit MacArthur published the essay "John Ashbery's Reading Voice" in the Paris Review on October 29, 2019. The essay is part of the series "75 on 75," a special project from the 92nd Street Y in celebration of the Unterberg Poetry Center's seventy-fifth anniversary. The project invites contemporary authors to listen to a recording from the Poetry Center's archive and write a personal response. The essay can be found at https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/10/29/john-ashberys-reading-voi...

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Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran to Present on Working with Multilingual Writers

Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran, Writing Program Director at the University of Arizona, will be giving the talk "Working with Multilingual Writers from First-Year to Upper Division" on Friday, December 6th from 10:00-11:15 in VH 126. The talk is presented by the University Writing Program's Conversations with Writers series. The talk is free and open to students and faculty both inside and outside of the UWP, and no RSVP is necessary.

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UWP Staff, Student, and Faculty Present at the 2019 Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference

Trish Serviss, Stacy Wittstock, Beth Pearsall, Kayla Chao, and Kendon Kurzer presented the panel, "Leveraging Programmatic Tension for Action: A Case Study and Heuristic for WPAs" at the 2019 Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference. The panel examined WPA threshold concepts/practices of community formation as both a problem and heuristic for the UWP and shared a WPA heuristic focused on stakeholder relationships to assess writing communities, identify productive tensions to leverage, and prioritize resulting needed actions/opportunities.

 

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Karma Waltonen Publishes Book on the Simpsons

Karma Waltonen, along with her co-editor Denise Du Verney, has published the edited collection The Simpsons' Beloved Springfield: Essays on the TV Series and Town That Are Part of Us All with McFarland & Company.  This collection of new essays explores the many ways in which The Simpsons reflects everyday life through its exploration of gender roles, music, death, food politics, science and religion, anxiety, friendship and more.

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Chris Thaiss Publishes Textbook on Science Writing

Broadview Press has published (August 2019) Professor Emeritus Chris Thaiss's new textbook, Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century. Based on his years of teaching science writing to STEM majors at UC Davis, the book, along with its companion website, is directed both to STEM students in courses like those taught in the UWP and to students, undergraduate and graduate, fulfilling writing assignments in STEM courses across disciplines.

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Sarah Perrault Elected to the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Associate Professor Sarah Perrault has been elected to the Council of the Pacfiic Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). As a council member, she is responsible for helping shape the division's policies, develop activities, and organize and promote the annual conference. She was nominated and elected on the basis of her scholarly and pedagogical work on science writing, especially public science writing.

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Dan Melzer publishes article in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal

Dan Melzer's article "Exploring White Privilege in Tutor Education” was published in volume 16 (2019) of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. The article reports on action research on the influence of white privilege on tutors' attitudes in a writing center tutor education course. The article is published online at www.praxisuwc.com/162-melzer

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Prized Writing Celebrates 30 Years of Student Writing

A news article about Prized Writing's 30th anniversary can be found on the Arts and Letters website at https://lettersandscience.ucdavis.edu/news/30-years-student-writing-cele.... A celebration event, open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. in AGR Hall at the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center. Chancellor Gary S. May will speak along with faculty and students. The most recent issue will be for sale ($17.72) at the event and at the campus bookstore.

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Melissa Bender Publishes an Edited Collection in Routledge's Global Public History Series

 Melissa Bender has published the edited collection Contested Commemoration in U.S. History: Diverging Public Interpretations in Routledge's new Global Perspectives on Public History series. Against the backdrop of two recent socio-political developments—the shift from the Obama to the Trump administration and the surge in nationalist and populist sentiment that ushered in the current administration—Contested Commemoration in U.S.
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Student from Kathie Gossett's Technical Writing Course Featured in UC Davis Dateline

Cameron Fitzpatrick, a student in Kathie Gossett's Winter 2019 104T: Technical Writing, was featured in UC Davis' Dateline on June 11. Fitzpatrick used an assignment in Gossett's course to collect and visually present data on the health of his newborn child, who was losing weight. Based on the data, Fitzpatrick's doctor changed the treatment plan and the child returned to a healthy weight. In the Dateline article Fitzpatrick says about Gossett's assignment, "Looking back at the work I've done at Davis, it's the most important project I've done."  

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Sarah Perrault Publishes Article in Canadian Journal of Bioethics

In May of 2018 Sarah Perrault was an invited participant in a working group at the University of Alberta (Edmonton AB). The working group was on "Mapping the Emerging Issues in the Public Representation of Bioscience and Health Issues" and other working group members were specialists in law, applied ethics, psychiatry, applied linguistics, journalism, communication, and public policy.

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Sarah Perrault Publishes Article in the Journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Sarah Perrault published the article "New Metaphors for New Understandings of Genomes" with co-author Meaghan O'Keefe in the Winter 2019 edition of the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Perrault and O'Keefe offer a conceptual framework for developing, analyzing, critiquing, and choosing new metaphors of how genomes and bodies work that will help improve communication about genomes and genomic research.

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Pamela Demory's book Queer/Adaptation Published by Palgrave

Pamela Demory's edited collection of essays on the intersection of Queer theory and Adaptation theory, Queer/Adaptation, has been published as part of the Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture series. The authors of the essays in Queer/Adaptation theorize about the queerness of adaptation and use a variety of approaches, such as textual analysis, authorship, reception, genre analysis, performance, history, nationality, and production.

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Questions I Dare Ask: Andrea Ross Interviews Author Amy Irvine

Amy Irvine wrote Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness for the 50th anniversary of Edward Abbey's iconic conservationist book, Desert Solitaire. In it, Irvine conducts a posthumous conversation with Abbey about issues of climate disruption, white privilege,  sexism, racism, and some possible solutions to the tribalism of our current political situation.

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Katie Arosteguy, Alison Bright, and Brenda Rinard's book will be published by Teachers College Press this Spring

This guide helps educators write for the rhetorical situations they will face as students of education, and as pre-service and practicing teachers. It provides clear and helpful advice for responding to the varying contexts, audiences, and purposes that arise in four major written categories in education: classroom, research, credential, and stakeholder writing.

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The World According to Sound Lecture and Performance

tour photo

Marit MacArthur has organized a lecture and performance by Sam Harnett from KQED and Chris Hoff from KALW that includes a live radio show and experiment in the art and science of sound, "The World According to Sound." Sam and Chris will talk about how they conceived the show at 12:10 in Hart 3201 and give a performance at 5:00 in Wright 120A on the UC Davis campus. The events are free and open to the public. For more information about the performance and podcast, visit theworldaccordingtosound.org/live

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Chris Thaiss Leads WAC/WID Workshops in Argentine and Chilean Universities

UC Davis emeritus professor and former UWP director Chris Thaiss spent three weeks in August as visiting professor in Argentina to lead workshops for faculty and graduate students. A consortium of universities (RAILEES) had received a grant from the Fulbright Commission and the U.S. State Department to bring in Thaiss to work with them in three areas of writing studies: writing program development, teaching writing across the curriculum and in disciplines (WAC/WID), and development of writing research projects. 

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Cassie Hemstrom Publishes Chapter in Teaching Information Literacy and Writing Studies

Cassie Hemstrom has published a co-authored chapter in Volume 1 of Teaching Information Literacy and Writing Studies, published by Purdue. The chapter draws on Cassie's experiences teaching UWP1. Cassie co-authored the article with Dr. Kathy Anders, a librarian at Texas A&M University, and the title of the chapter is "Communities of Information: Information Literacy and Discourse Community Instruction in First-Year Writing Courses." 

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Sasha Abramsky to Appear on C-SPAN Debate

Sasha Abramsky will be one of two Nation debaters in a C-Span televised debate on immigration. from Georgetown University on November 29th. Sasha is also writing a twice-a-month Sunday column for the Sac Bee, and recently his articles have appeared in The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and other venues. His latest article for The Nation can be found at https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-latest-assault-on-immigrants-sh...

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Chris Thaiss Leads WAC/WID Workshops in Argentine and Chilean Universities

Chris Thaiss leads workshop on teaching writing across disciplines for faculty and graduate students at the University of Córdoba.

UC Davis emeritus professor and former UWP director Chris Thaiss spent three weeks in August as visiting professor in Argentina to lead workshops for faculty and graduate students. A consortium of universities (RAILEES) had received a grant from the Fulbright Commission and the U.S. State Department to bring in Thaiss to work with them in three areas of writing studies: writing program development, teaching writing across the curriculum and in disciplines (WAC/WID), and development of writing research projects.

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Rebekka Andersen Receives $5,000 Grant to Study Professional Writing Internships Abroad

UWP Professor Rebekka Andersen received a $5,000 grant from the C.R. Anderson Foundation, an affiliate of the Association for Business Communication, to fund a study of professional writing internships abroad. The foundation supports innovative business communication research that explores how people communicate effectively within and outside business organizations to get work done.
 
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Karma Waltonen Elected President of the Margaret Atwood Society

Karma Waltonen has been elected President of the Margaret Atwood Society. The Margaret Atwood Society is an international association of scholars, teachers, and students who share an interest in Atwood’s work. The main goal of the Society is to promote scholarly exchange of Atwood’s works and cultural contributions by providing opportunities for scholars to exchange information. 

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National Writing Project Releases Civically Engaged Writing Analysis Continuum

Through a grant from the Spencer Foundation, the National Writing Project and its partners have worked to develop the Civically Engaged Writing Analysis Continuum (CEWAC) at http://cewac.nwp.org. Carl Whithaus was a member of the Working Group that developed the CEWAC.This writing rubric and supporting materials are designed to assess youth’s ability to engage in public arguments, rooted in evidence and reasoning, enter productive civic conversations, and take action both in and out of school.
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UWP1 Students Present at UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference

The 2018 UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference poster sessions featured five students from UWP1: Rachel Nicole Yee, "Rhetorical Analysis of the Nutrition Discourse Community"; Sharani Ramesh, "Amtrack Travel Research Podcast"; Jihan Eter, "Automated Machine Grading of Writing"; Meyhaa Buvanesh, "Addressing Health Communication in Nutrition," and Ratnapala Gamage, "Different Cultural Styles of Writing Organization vs. the American Style of Organization." 

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Dana Ferris and Kendon Kurzer Published in TESOL Quarterly

Dana Ferris and Kendon Kurzer have articles published in the most recent issue of TESOL Quarterly. Dana's article, co-authored with former DE Education graduate student Grant Eckstein, is titled "Comparing L1 and L2 Texts and Writers in First-Year Composition." Kendon's article, which is based on research done in the UWP ESL program in 2014-15, is titled "Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback in Developmental Multilingual Writing Classes.

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Students in Cassie Hemstrom's Class Save the Puppies, Save the World Create Footage for the Yolo County Animal Services Shelter

Image of Students in Cassie Hemstron's class Save the Puppies, Save the World

Students in Cassie Hemstrom's first-year seminar, Save the Puppies, Save the World: Composition Strategies for Non-Profit Promotion on Social Media, created footage for the Facebook page of the Yolo County Animal Services Shelter (https://www.facebook.com/YCAS.Shelter/). In Save the Puppies, Save the World, students study how to create effective branding and promotional posts, then compose and revise and visuals, bios, videos, which are then posted on the shelter or rescue's socia

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Trish Serviss' Book Points of Departure Published by Utah State University Press

Points of Departure encourages a return to empirical research about writing, presenting a wealth of transparent, reproducible studies of student sources. The volume shows how to develop methods for coding and characterizing student texts, their choice of source material, and the resources used to teach information literacy. Chapters report on research projects at different stages and across institution types—from pilot to multi-site, from community college to research university—focusing on the methods and artifacts employed.
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Scott Herring's Essay Published in the Journal Western American Literature

            Scott Herring’s essay, “When the Water Meets the Road: The Return of the Westslope Cutthroat,” was published in the Fall 2017 issue of Western American Literature. The essay tells the story of Herring’s hunt for a rare and extraordinarily elusive fish hidden in the backcountry in Yellowstone National Park. The photograph of the fish on the University Writing Program website is a photo of the very same fish described in the journal, a westslope cutthroat trout, just before it swam away.

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Marit MacArthur Receives NEH Grant for Sound Recordings Archives

Marit MacArthur is a co-leader of a sound recordings archiving project that has received a $75,000 NEH grant. The project focuses on developing open-source tools for scholars to mine new knowledge from archives of sound recordings, including Orson Welles' radio plays, the Talking Book collection for the blind, and thousands of hours of poets reading their works.  

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Jillian Azevedo Publishes Tastes of the Empire: Foreign Foods in Seventeenth Century England

Jillian Azevedo has published the book Tastes of the Empire: Foreign Foods in Seventeenth Century EnglandTastes of the Empire examines "body and mind" consumerism of the early British Empire through the exotic presentations of foreign foods in popular culture in 17th Century England. The McFarland link to the book is http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-1-4766-6862-8
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WOE published collected interviews with rhet-comp scholars

Teachers on the Edge: The WOE Interviews, 1989–2017 collects the voices of 39 significant figures in modern writing studies, forming an accessible survey of the modern history of rhetoric and composition. This remarkable group of teachers and scholars tell the stories of their influences and interests, with scholarly introductions that trace their varied contributions to the field.  Invaluable for writing students, writing teachers, and scholars of writing studies. http://bit.ly/toerout

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Rebekka Andersen Chairs SIGDOC 2017 and Presents Workshops on State of Education in Technical Communication

Image of Banner for SIGDOC 2017 Website

In August, Rebekka Andersen chaired SIGDOC 2017, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication Conference, held in Halifax, Nova Scotia. SIGDOC 2017 featured keynotes by Dr. Karel Vredenburg, lead designer at IBM, and Rigo award winner Dr. Karen Schriver, President of KSA Communication Design & Research, and author of the foundational text Dynamics in Document Design.

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