This Advanced Writing course offers writing instruction for students preparing for a career in the health professions. English Writing courses emphasize drafting, revising, and editing as critical practices for developing thoughtful arguments and effective communication. Throughout the course, you will give and receive feedback and reflect on your growth as writers. Assignments place attention on rhetorical awareness in both written and oral communication, asking you to consider questions like these:
Who are your audiences and what are your purposes for writing? How do you use different genres or discourse conventions to make your writing effective? What can you do to make a research presentation interesting?
The course also provides the occasion for assessing many modes of writing, research and argumentation. This semester we will read and research the work of journalists, non-fiction writers, filmmakers, podcasters, and scholars from many disciplinary perspectives in the health professions. You will develop your media literacy skills for evaluating information found through online/digital sources. Studying all of these genres of writing will help you to expand your own repertoire of communication skills that will help you succeed in future courses and in various professional settings.
Community-engaged learning: since this is a “service-learning” course, all students will participate in volunteer and project activities throughout the semester to work with a non-profit or clinical site dedicated to supporting the healthcare needs of underserved communities. Through this dimension of the course, students will both heighten their understanding of course materials and use their composition and communication skills to support the mission of these exemplary local organizations.
To inform our community-engaged learning, we will also research and write about various topics to deepen your understanding of inequities in our healthcare systems related to social class, race, language, and immigrant identity. Topics that students have researched in a previous semester include: the challenges of end-of-life care for families and health professionals; food as medicine; the maternal mortality crisis for African American patients; racial disparities in healthcare more broadly; the opioid crisis; and healthcare barriers faced by incarcerated individuals. Based on materials recommended by previous students, we will decide together which topics to focus on this semester.