Campus Learning & Writing Centers
Writing Center Workshops
Our workshops aren’t just about writing. They’re about curiosity and imagination, about using sources and expressing ideas, about being creative and thinking critically.
Listed below are our current workshop topics, which are designed specifically for graduate students. Check in later for additional workshop offerings.
All workshops will be held in Hibbs room B16. No registration is required.
Taking Control: Strategies for Strengthening Organization in Graduate Level Writing
Tuesday, November 17, 9:30 - 11 am
No registration is required.
Many of the graduate students we see in the Writing Center say they feel challenged by the increased expectations for graduate level work. These comments are the foundation of this workshop, which, we hope, will help graduate students negotiate this challenge. Since graduate students are asked to write much longer papers that wrestle with progressively complex ideas, managing organization and structure becomes more difficult. This workshop focuses on helping graduate students improve the structure of their writing. We will review essential principles of organization, provide a framework students can use to visualize structure, and discuss strategies for improving organization in the revision process.
Selling Your Work: Strategies for Writing Successful Proposals, Abstracts, and Introductions
Thursday, November 19th, 2:30 - 4 pm
No registration is required.
A research proposal. An abstract. An effective introduction. Though these are very different written products, all share a common goal – namely to establish a sense of relevance and urgency for your project. But what does this mean? Well, it often means the difference between an accepted proposal or a rejection, an A paper or a B. Unfortunately, the common advice is simply to “grab your reader’s attention,” which underestimates the complexity of the task and offers no real help for writers. Instead of recycling the same old advice, this workshop will focus on the real task for the writer: to immediately show your reader the value of what you have to offer. By identifying the underlying psychology of these writing situations and providing a framework for successfully negotiating them, this workshop will help graduate students confront their upcoming writing challenges with confidence.
