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Sweetland-Rackham Workshops on Writing
Winter 2012 WORKSHOPS
Workshops are co-sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School as part of the PLAN program. Visit PLAN's website for more information.
Grants and Fellowship Workshop for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Alan Hogg
January 25, 10-11:30 AM, Rackham Assembly Hall
This workshop will provide an overview of writing grant and fellowship applications in the sciences. We will start with an overview of resources to identify funding opportunities, and move through meeting application requirements, how to develop and write components of a proposal, and how to avoid common errors in proposal writing, finishing with the reviewer’s perspective when evaluating proposals.
Alan Hogg has taught at the Sweetland Center for Writing since 2008 and specializes in writing in the sciences. His PhD is in atmospheric chemistry, and he has worked in neurobiology and archaeological conservation. He is also a freelance science writer.
Academic Writing in the Social Sciences & Humanities
Jamie L. Jones
January 27, 1-2:30 PM, Rackham West Conference Room
This workshop is designed to help graduate students identify and meet the challenges of academic writing in the Social Sciences and Humanities. This workshop will offer practical suggestions on how to:
- Contextualize, frame, and test an effective argument
- Strengthen the structure of an argument
- Identify writing conventions in your discipline
- Situate your work within the existing scholarship of your field
- Write with clarity and precision at the level of sentence, paragraph, and section
- Solicit and respond to feedback from advisers and peers
This workshop will be useful for Social Science and Humanities graduate students writing seminar papers, dissertations, conference papers and articles.
Jamie Jones teaches in the English Department, Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, and the Sweetland Center for Writing.
Writing Your Way Through the Dissertation
Louis Cicciarelli
February 3, 12-1:30 PM, Rackham West Conference Room
While the dissertation is the final achievement of your graduate education, writing the dissertation is a process few face without struggle. Little prepares graduate students for the enormity of writing these extended and original academic arguments. This workshop will consider how writers can better manage writing their dissertations, and in fact, use writing as a way through the whole process. The workshop will offer strategies that address writing practice, work routines, and divisions of labor. This workshop will also present approaches to writing issues that dissertators in particular encounter, including: clarifying dissertation expectations, audience and working with committees, and the expanded role of revision for dissertators. The workshop is intended for writers from all disciplines who are in the midst of writing their dissertations and in search of strategies and approaches that can help advance their writing practice.
Topics include:
- clarifying expectations of a successful dissertation
- audience and working with committees
- reflective mapping strategies
- best writing practices for dissertators
Louis Cicciarelli teaches writing in the English Department, Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, and the Sweetland Center for Writing, where he also serves as co-director of the Dissertation Writing Institute
Beyond Plagiarism: The Role of Citation Norms in Establishing Scholarly Credibility
Danielle LaVaque-Manty
February 13, 3-4:30 PM, Rackham West Conference Room
While proper citation of sources is required of any writer who wants to avoid plagiarism, academic norms regarding citation and source use are complex and extend beyond law and ethics. This workshop offers a quick overview of key ethical concerns, followed by a more in-depth exploration of the role of citation practices in establishing scholarly credibility. Distinctions between plagiarism and copyright violations will be noted, but the workshop focuses more on how to situate one’s own research in a broader rhetorical landscape (how to position one’s work in an academic field) than on how to avoid breaking laws. This workshop will be most useful for graduate students in any discipline who are beginning to think about disseminating original research, whether at conferences or for publication. It will not address technicalities of copyright law in science or engineering fields.
Topics addressed:
- Law vs. ethics vs. credibility
- Varieties of plagiarism
- Effective use of paraphrasing
- How to signal your own research contributions through strategic use and citation of sources
Danielle LaVaque-Manty teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing.
Writing Persuasive Personal Statements
Paul Barron
March 12, 12:30-2 PM, Rackham Assembly Hall
This session considers personal statements as a form of argument and focuses on their underlying rhetoric. The workshop will:
- Review examples of calls for proposals and decode their language to see more clearly how best to respond
- Construct general principles about audiences for statements of purpose and how to write to meet their needs
- Offer tips on easy ways of preparing to write and enrich the statement
- Share exercises on how to conceive of the statement as an argument
- Consider what UM statistics say about why proposals are rejected
- Review a list of things (and words) to avoid in statements of purpose
This workshop will be useful for any graduate student applying for fellowships, grants, or other opportunities whose applications require some form of statement of purpose. It will not address how to identify grant or fellowship opportunities.
Paul Barron teaches a variety of writing courses in the English Department, Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, and the Sweetland Center for Writing, where he also serves as co-director of the Dissertation Writing Institute.
Academic Writing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Disciplines
Alan Hogg
March 14, 10-11:30 AM, Johnson Room, Lurie Engineering Center (North Campus)
This workshop will provide an overview of writing at a professional level in the sciences. The information discussed will apply equally to journal papers, dissertations, and other graduate level writing. We will cover drafting and revising techniques, discuss how to best target your audience, go over the structure of scientific writing, and focus — at a sentence and paragraph level — on what your reader needs from your writing.
Alan Hogg has taught at the Sweetland Center for Writing since 2008 and specializes in writing in the sciences. His PhD is in atmospheric chemistry, and he has worked in neurobiology and archaeological conservation. He is also a freelance science writer.
