Professional Writing and Research Applications

Professional Writing and Research Application (Course)

Term: Fall only

Credits: 0-4

FTE: Fall only

MCC-GE 2174: As a culminating course for Master’s students in MCC, this course is meant to integrate skills and knowledge acquired during the program to achieve a professional level of competency in several areas of writing and oral presentations, for either academic or professional purposes. Academic writing projects may include, for example, refereed conference papers and presentations, journal submissions, book chapter publications, book reviews, etc. Professional writing projects may include long-form essays, business proposals, research reports, teaching portfolio, and the like.

Students ideally arrive in this course with a writing project already in development and the majority of their research completed. The course is organized as a writer’s workshop: everyone is expected to seriously engage in reading and responding to each other's work. This demands a high-level of self-discipline and time management, commitment, and labor-intensive rounds of sharing and feedback. Students will be asked to undertake and share various components of writing (abstracts, outlines, etc.) and oral presentations. The goal is for students to produce a polished project worthy of submission to an academic or popular journal, for presentation at an conference, submission to a forum for presenting academic-level media and cultural research and analysis.

See sample student presentation abstracts.

Application Process:

NOTE: Enrollment is determined via an application process. Submitting an application does not guarantee access to the course. Students applying for the Writing course should be prepared to select an alternate Culminating Experience in the event that their application is denied.

Submit a brief statement where you will need to explain:

- 1 paragraph about yourself: your general interests and intellectual trajectory; any previous experience in writing or publishing; your goals post-graduation and whether/how they include any professional writing;
- 1- 2 paragraphs about your project: the central argument or claim of your paper or project; your method of analysis (i.e. discourse analysis, semiotics, cultural flows, ethnography, etc.) and what theoretical concepts or concerns drive your approach to this topic; the significance of this research; your goals for the paper (academic paper, popular press article, or other)
- 1 page maximum annotated bibliography in which you identify the sources you will draw from to inform your research/paper
- You may be asked to submit a writing sample in follow-up to your application.

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