CLA: Department of Writing Studies

Krista Kennedy was recently selected to receive the Kairos Graduate Student and Adjunct Scholarship Award for 2008.

As noted on the Kairos web site, "The Scholarship Award is given to a person whose research and scholarship is already excellent and/or also shows future promise for having an impact on our field. Three $500 awards will be given to graduate students and/or adjuncts in the field of computers and writing. These awards are based upon the three areas that guide our professional lives: Service, Scholarship, and Teaching."

Congratulations, Krista!

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy
(http://www.technorhetoric.net/awards/gradadjunctnom.html)

Posted by Shannon at 8:57 AM | Permalink

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
SUMMER 2009 FUNDING FOR RSTC STUDENTS

April 10, 2009

Dear RSTC Students:

Through a combination of block grant money from the Graduate School, our James I. Brown and Industrial Affiliates Program foundation accounts, and CLA's Graduate Research Partnership Program, we are able to offer the following opportunities for summer funding to RSTC graduate students in good standing.

1. Competitive fellowships to support summer research and travel. Students may apply for any amount up to $2,000. (Download application materials and selection criteria.) Deadline is 10:00 a.m., Monday, April 20, 2009

2. CLA Graduate Research Partnership Program (GRPP) awarding two $4000 research fellowships (Download attachment and see this site http://cla.umn.edu/intranet/grad/grpp_gdlns.php.) Deadline is 10:00 a.m., Monday, April 20, 2009

3. Writing Studies $500 Graduate Student Teaching Award (Download attachment.) Deadline is 10:00 a.m., Monday, April 20, 2009

4. The two Industrial Affiliate Program (IAP) research fellowships ($2,000 each) are with Medtronic and US Bank. These fellowships are for the 2009-10 school year and are open to all current MS and RSTC students as well as the newly admitted students. Call for Applications is attached. The new IAP application deadline is April 24, 2009.

Details for each award are included in the attachments, however, don't hesitate to contact me or Mary Wrobel if you have questions.

Bernadette Longo, Ph.D.

Director of Graduate Studies
RSTC Program
Dept. of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota

Posted by Shannon at 4:02 PM | Permalink

Congratulations to Greg Schneider, winner of the COGS Leadership Award Honorable Mention! Greg is honored for his leadership on behalf of the graduate students in the Department of Writing Studies. Greg has served as a graduate student representative to the DGS Advisory Committee, instituted a graduate student assembly, worked to redesign and expand the Writing Studies Parlors, ensured that graduate students’ perspective is represented well in the curriculum, and helped redesign the way the department conducts preliminary doctoral examinations.

Thank you Greg, for your leadership and service to the department!

Posted by Shannon at 10:19 AM | Permalink

"Darwin's Polysemy: Survival of the Fittest Meaning"
Tom Wright
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Nicholson 12 @12-1:15

"Audience as Auditors in Greek Rhetoric"
Richard Graff
Friday, April 10, 2009
Nicholson 325 @ 3:00

Title TBA
Brett Werner
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Nicholson 12 @11:30-12:45

Posted by Shannon at 8:50 AM | Permalink

Medtronic and US Bank, as part of their affiliations with the University of Minnesota, Writing Studies Department, Programs in Scientific and Technical Communication, have established fellowships in the amount of $2,000 each for graduate students in our program. One fellowship per company will be awarded for the 2009-10 academic year. The fellowship may be used by a student to support his or her graduate research. The following describes the criteria of the fellowships and the application procedures. In the past, fellowship winners have used this opportunity to work on part of their thesis or dissertation and have published papers and given presentations as a result of their collaborations with our industry partners. These Fellowships are an exciting opportunity to do research in a “live” setting and to see how the exigencies of workplace technical communication relate to the theories you learn in class.

The funds are a result of a gift to the Department. You may use these funds in any manner that is in support of your graduate work.

For more information, please read the Call for Applications.

Posted by Shannon at 11:26 AM | Permalink

Bernadette Longo, was recently interviewed for a story in the Daily about how University faculty are using Facebook, a social networking site.

Faculty frequently use Facebook for networking, but not many have brought the site into the classroom. Associate Professor Bernadette Longo, who teaches in the Department of Writing Studies, is an exception. This semester, she integrated a Facebook group into her Information Design class and asked her students to join.
The group, called “First Step Initiative,” is centered around an organization by the same name, which works with women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group has 109 members globally. Longo’s students are able to share information with people around the world via Facebook, but the site’s other opportunities are still unknown, Longo said. Since Facebook is still relatively young, teachers are still figuring out how it can be used to educate students, Longo said. “Who doesn’t love Facebook?” she said. “We don’t exactly know yet the full potential. It seems like it has a good structure for working with people in the whole world.”

Read the full article: http://www.mndaily.com/print/50589

Posted by Shannon at 10:13 AM | Permalink

Award: To provide a $2,000 scholarship award to undergraduate student(s) who are majoring in the field of Scientific and Technical Communication (S&TC). The award may be given to a freshman and may be continued for four years if the student makes satisfactory progress toward a B. S. degree. (Sophomores and juniors may apply as well and seniors with at least two semesters of full-time coursework remaining.)

More information

Download flyer

Posted by Shannon at 2:36 PM | Permalink

Professor and Chair, Laura Gurak, was recently interviewed for a story in the Star Tribune about words that haven't kept up with evolving technology.

"We press buttons to make a phone call, yet we still call it "dialing" a number.... It's similar to a concept called "semantic bleaching" in the linguistic world.

"What they mean is that the original concept gets bleached out from its original meaning.... The word is rooted in a literal meaning, and that's the way we become used to describing it. So when the technology changes and automates some of that or takes it away from some of the hands-on experience, those phrases or words become metaphoric."

Read the full article: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/38828717.html

Posted by Shannon at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Professional Portfolios: Communicate what you can do
February 28, 2009
1:00-4:30PM
St. Paul Campus

* Presentation by Fred Carpenter will provide a survey of what electronic and hard copy portfolios are, their purposes, and what makes them effective
* Workshops detailing the “how to�? elements of building a portfolio
* Attendees who bring their portfolios will have the opportunity to receive comments on how to make them better, and those who do not have portfolios will learn how to get one started

More information and online registration at www.stcchapter.umn.edu

Students $5 early registration by February 16
$8 after February 16 or at the door
Professionals $20 early registration
$25 after February or at the door

About the speaker: Fred Carpenter is presently graduate program coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences, Metropolitan State University. She has worked in academic, government and corporate environments including the Public Guardian's Office for the State of Alaska and Sybase Inc. Her interest in portfolios emerged as a result of being a coordinator and guiding applicants through the reasoning, design and execution of portfolios for the program.

Download flyer

Posted by Shannon at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Monday, February 9, 2009
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Minneapolis Convention Center

Come to the biggest student career fair in Minnesota! More than 250 organizations will be there recruiting for hundreds of jobs and internships. The Job and Internship Fair is free and open to all U of M undergraduates, graduate students, and recent alumni. This event was created just for you!

For more information, visit: http://www.cclc.umn.edu/umjobfair/

Posted by Shannon at 11:10 AM | Permalink

Find out more about the Medtronic Technical Communication Scholarship for technical communication majors. The deadline is February 1, for the 2009-2010 school year. This $2,000 scholarship is renewable. Details can be found at http://www.writ.umn.edu/ugrad/scholarships.html.

Posted by Shannon at 2:47 PM | Permalink

The Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota is pleased to announce the James I. Brown Graduate Fellowship for enhanced funding during the first year in its graduate program in Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication (RSTC). This fellowship is made possible thanks to the generosity of the James I. Brown family. It will provide full first-year, non-teaching support for one doctoral student entering the program in Fall 2009 (currently over $13k annually in 9-mnth salary), plus tuition waiver and full benefit package. After the first year of fellowship funding, fellows will receive 4 additional years of support (salary, tuition waiver, and benefits) through a teaching assistantship of one course per semester.

In their application materials, interested applicants should suggest a research topic, which is compatible with the intellectual focus of the graduate program. When applying, please indicate if you are only interested in this fellowship, or if you also wish to be considered as an applicant to the program with the regular 5-year teaching assistantship support as described above. To apply for the RSTC program, see http://www.grad.umn.edu/prospective_students/apply_online.html. For information on the Department and the RSTC program, see http://writingstudies.umn.edu/grad/ . For further information on the graduate program, and this fellowship, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies, blongo@umn.edu. Deadline for applications is January 5, 2009.

Posted by Bernadette Longo at 2:16 PM | Permalink

"Making Life Easy"

The Office of Information Technology and the Digital Technology Center are sponsoring a free program of events on Thursday November 13th for World Usability Day. The purpose of the program is to promote awareness of the benefits of usability engineering and user-centered design. World Usability Day was started in 2005 by the Usability Professionals Association and involves 36 hours of usability-related activities around the world in 41 countries.

You are invited to join us for a program including speakers and discussions on usability and accessibility topics, an Adaptive Technology Fair, a participatory activity on signage and way-finding, and an Open House at the Usability Services Laboratory.

All students, staff, faculty, and the general public are invited to the World Usability Day events. Events will take place in Walter Library on the East Bank of the Minneapolis campus. All events are free of charge and no registration is necessary.

For more detailed information and directions to the World Usability Day events, please see http://www.dmc.umn.edu/usability/world_usability_day/.

We hope you can join us for these great events! Please pass this invitation along to anyone else who might be interested.

Cordially,

Alice de la Cova
Usability Services Manager
Office of Information Technology's Digital Media Center
University of Minnesota
(612) 624-9365
a-dela@umn.edu

Posted by Shannon at 1:59 PM | Permalink

Do you need to learn tools such as Dreamweaver & Photoshop? There are a number of resources at the University you can take advantage of:

1.) Free courses--CLA's "Get Wired!" program
The CLA Infotech Fees Committee and the University Technology Training Center (UTTC) offer non-credit computer training to currently enrolled undergraduates in CLA. Free courses are offered at the beginning of the semester and cover tools such as Dreamweaver, XHTML/HTML, Photoshop, and MS Office.

2.) Fee courses--UTTC Short Courses
UTTC also offers the above short courses, and several others, for a fee.

3.) For credit--UC 3201 & 3202: Web Designer Introduction I & II
3201--Web design process: plan, design, launch, and publish. Design principles, business practices, site analysis. Students use industry standard Web design software, including Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and Flash, to build Web site. HTML, CSS. Lectures, exercises, lab.
3202--Designing with Adobe Photoshop vector tools, using batch processing. Macromedia Flash as an animation tool. Developing an environment through ActionScripts. DHTML Layers, HTML frames, form processing. Internet service providers, hosting, search engines, Web site marketing.

Writing Studies staff member Shannon Klug has taken a lot of these courses. If you have any questions, she'd be happy to talk with you.

Posted by Shannon at 9:02 AM | Permalink

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)
The goal of UROP is to help you become involved in research and creative activity to stimulate your mind, broaden your perspectives, expand your intellectual and social networking and strengthen your connections to the University of Minnesota community, as well as the research and creative communities nationally and throughout the world.
UROP provides stipends of up to $1400 and research expenses of up to $300 for undergraduate students working with a University of Minnesota Faculty Mentor. Full-time (enrolled for ≥6 credits) undergraduates enrolled in any college on any campus are eligible to apply.

Posted by Shannon at 8:50 AM | Permalink