COMPOSITION

Composition courses emphasize the ways different writing processes lead to successful learning and communication. All address the conventions of expository writing, audience awareness, critical thinking, standard English usage, documentation, and preparation of portfolios for competency evaluation.

The Writing Center, a service of the Writing Excellence Program, supplements composition courses and provides assistance to students regarding any writing task.

CO 121: Writing Processes
Introduction to writing processes: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing. Development of a personal voice to express ideas and values. Journal, academic essays, proper use of resources, including documentation.

CO 122: Analytic and Persuasive Writing
Critical reading and analysis of texts, with attention to audience, organization, evidence, persuasion. Collegiate research report: research questions, writing from sources, presenting evidence logically.

CO 200E: Writing the Environment
Investigation and practice of some of the many ways that people write about the environment, including the personal essay, advocacy writing, environmental journalism, environmental history, and scientific writing.

CO 202: Writing for Social Change
Students will develop their ability to recognize and analyze examples of advocacy writing. Students will also work with a nonprofit organization throughout the semester and create effective, thoughtful, and useful pieces of advocacy writing for that nonprofit.

CO 321: Composition Theory and Learning
The role of writing in learning, theories of composition, analysis of writing processes, designing units of instruction. Group inquiry techniques and collaborative writing assignments. Practicum in tutoring. Prerequisite: Junior standing and completion of writing competency requirement.

CO 326: Environmental Rhetoric
Scientific, political, aesthetic, spiritual, ethical discourse, and media images have contributed to diverse understandings of the natural world. Examine the way different readings can create varied and contradictory values and beliefs about the environment.

CO 328: Research Writing and Technology
An advanced writing and research-intensive workshop. Students research their own field of study, refine documentation ability, explore web 2.0 technologies in the research process, utilize revision, create documents that meet scholarly composition standards. Prerequisite: Junior Standing.