WRTG 3030 Writing on Science and Society

Instructor Contact:

Christina Eisert, M.A.

Email: christina.eisert@colorado.edu

About the Course:

Through selected reading and writing assignments, students consider ethical and social ramifications of science policy and practice. Focuses on critical thinking, analytical writing, and oral presentation. Taught as a writing workshop, the course addresses communication with professional and non-technical audiences. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours. Approved for GT-C03. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: written communication.

Course Prerequisites: List course prereqs here: There are no prerequisites

Objectives:

As a future scientist, engineer, or researcher, you will be expected to write and speak clearly to people outside your field.  The purpose of this course is to teach you techniques for writing analytical and argumentative essays, to develop critical thinking skills, and to examine ethical issues in science and to conduct oral presentations.  To this end, the final project for this course is to create a document related to your field that can stand on its own in the real world. Students will pick a Research Topic to pursue throughout the semester. All assignments will relate back to the Research Topic.

Understanding the genre characteristics of your discipline’s discourse community will help you to communicate on a deeper level within your field of study, allowing for more productive critical and creative/divergent thought–and potentially providing access to the spontaneous bursts of sudden insight that lead to innovation within a discourse community.

Required Texts: N/A

Grading (out of 85 points):

Unit 1: Creativity and Innovation, 5 pts.

Unit 2: Ethics and STEM, 15 pts.

Unit 3: Writing for the Ages, 15 pts.

Unit 4: White Papers, 20 pts.

Unit 5: Research Grant Proposal, 30 pts.