The Eli Review team congratulates the Science Writing and Rhetorical Training Program at the University of Rhode Island (or SciWrite@URI for short) for the best affirmation of a helpful feedback environment from a student evaluation that we have ever read. In their newly published article for Technical Communication Quarterly, they report:
One student described Graduate Writing in the Life Sciences as “a nightmare that I needed,” thanks to her initial terror about the class’s emphasis on habitual writing (writing daily in class and out), frequent peer review (at least two peer workshops for each of the four major writing projects), and multiple genres (submitting a piece of public writing to an actual venue). (21)
When high-achieving students at critical moments in their science careers relax into productive writing routines, a lot is going right in and out of class.
Through a faculty fellows initiative and extensive support for science graduate students in workshops and thrice-weekly boot camps, SciWrite@URI has infused curricula and extra-curricula with rhetorically-grounded, community-building writing opportunities.
We are delighted to be partners in their ambitious endeavor to use “rhetorical training. . . to create current and future scientists who can envision their scientific practice as discursive, social, communal, and consequential” (27). We commend Nedra Reynolds, our long-time partner and colleague, and the whole SciWrite@URI team for bringing the pedagogy of frequent feedback and revision cycles to bear as cultural shift for teachers and students. Thumbs up!
Reference
Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Nedra Reynolds, Jenna Morton-Aiken, Ingrid E. Lofgren, Nancy E. Karraker & Scott R. McWilliams (2018): Better science through rhetoric: a new model and pilot program for training graduate student science writers, Technical Communication Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/10572252.2018.1425735
