The following Professional Writing courses are available for Spring 2004. Please contact the course instructor or the Director if you have questions.

English 3104: Introduction to Professional Writing - Rude

Professional writing helps people solve problems, complete tasks, make decisions, negotiate policy, and plan for the future. This course introduces you to the theory, functions, and practice of professional writing. By reading and writing the kinds of texts that professionals use daily (letters, reports, abstracts, instructions, and proposals), you will learn conventions and procedures for understanding users and their needs and for developing the information to meet these needs. You will also learn to design documents that are understandable and usable. As a result of our service-learning project, you’ll learn strategies for adapting these conventions and procedures to a real task for a client.

English 3754: Advanced Composition - Hagedorn (Instructor's homepage)

This course provides advanced training and extensive practice in writing analytical, critical, and informative essays to meet the writing tasks that will be expected of a professional writer in the field. It seeks to develop studentsabilities to adapt intermediate-level rhetorical modes and strategies to a broader range of writing situations. It encourages the development of an individual voice within conventional contexts, and close attention is given to the finer points of writing style. This course also emphasizes practice in addressing a range of audiences and in using varied styles and organizational patterns. Students will typically write (and rewrite) at least three essays, each with a carefully defined rhetorical stance and a highly developed sense of style. The writing will be supplemented by assigned readings in advanced level rhetoric/readers and in handouts and links to appropriate web pages. This course provides writing instruction and practice for students with an interest in professional writing as well as technical and extension students or students in the arts and humanities who wish to address non-specialized audiences and to practice forms outside their own fields. Studentsgrades will be based on the following areas: a writing portfolio (which includes the product and process for three essays), frequent informal writing assignments in response to specific questions related to the readings for the course, an in-class group presentation, and a final exam.

(Meets a Writing Intensive Requirement)

English 3804: Technical Editing & Style - Rude

This course explores the art of editing from the initial writing task to the final delivery of the document. In addition to learning document management, students study and practice the roles, responsibilities, and tasks that editors perform. The course also covers the rules that govern the fundamentals of style (correctness, clarity, and propriety) and the principles needed to match the tone and formality to the aim, audience, and occasion of the work. For their final project, students will edit a document for a client in the university or in the community.

English 3824: Designing Documents for Print- Brumberger (instructor's home page)

This course is intended to help students make the transition from verbal to visual thinking, from privileging verbal communication to balancing verbal and visual communication. In this course, we will treat design as functional, not merely aesthetic, and we will avoid treating the verbal text as the "default" form of communication. We will read about and discuss design concepts, and we will apply those concepts to hands-on projects. In this class, you will work on both individual and collaborative projects intended to sharpen your design, audience-awareness, and teamwork skills, as well as your peer critique and editing abilities. You will be evaluated on how effectively your documents communicate, on how likely the documents are to produce their desired effects for a specific audience, and, of course, on how well written they are.

English 4804: Grant Proposal and Report Writing - Dubinsky (instructor's home page)

In today’s tight economy, knowing where and how to obtain money can mean the difference between remaining viable or fading into obscurity. Scientists need grant money to solve problems, and nonprofit organizations are always in need of operating capital. English 4804 will introduce you to this world of writing for dollars. You’ll learn to write effective grant proposals, reports, and informational articles. Along the way, you’ll practice writing problem statements, program objectives, plans of action, evaluation plans, budget presentations, and summaries. In addition, you’ll sharpen their teamwork, editing, and design skills as you engage in collaborative projects with campus and/or non-profit organizations in the community.

English 4824: Science Writing- Collier (instructor's home page)

This course addresses writing in and about the natural and social sciences. Students will write documents such as abstracts, research proposals, and ethnographies, will analyze the development of disciplinary writing practices, and will study non-fiction science writing for general audiences. Graduate students will be required to complete additional readings and assignments.

English 4874: Issues in Professional and Public Discourse- Hatfield (instructor's home page)

This seminar will explore the ways that contemporary cultural theory is modeling the impact of digital technology upon professional and technical discourse. We'll read works that trace the interconnections among models of information, technology, textual theory, and culture as these models work themselves out in contemporary discourse. In general terms, our goal will be to build an understanding of the emerging transformations being wrought in and by digital discourse, so that we can effectively analyze that discourse and those changes. More specifically, we'll be looking at the historical emergence of digital culture in the context of the "history of the book," learning to grasp the ways that print technology has framed professional discourse, and how technological discourse and its new possibilities are changing that framing. The goal of our interwoven readings will be to uncover the rhetorical, social, ethical, and epistemological structures of professional digital culture, as well as how to read the various texts against each other. Your work will include regular electronic discussions (sometimes including experts in the field), a collaborative hypertextual midterm project, extensive work with electronic media for research, and a term project bringing some model we have studied to bear upon an example website. Specific readings will be announced on the course website (http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/cl/4874), but will be drawn from works by thinkers such as Stuart Moulthrop, Sven Birkerts, J. David Bolter, Jeremy Campbell, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles, Martin Heidegger, Michael Heim, Michael Joyce, George Landow, Richard Lanham, Heinz Pagels, Mark Poster, Sherry Turkle, and Gregory Ulmer. Please direct any questions to Len.Hatfield@vt.edu.