Requirements || Spring 2008 Course Offerings || Projected Course Offerings for 2007-2010

Contact Information

Dr. Joseph Little is the chair of the Writing Studies minor. You can find Dr. Little in Dunleavy Hall 351, call him at (716) 286-8187, or e-mail him at jlittle@niagara.edu. Brochures about the Writing Studies program are also available in the College of Arts and Sciences and Admissions offices.

To get information about events and topics of interest to Writing Studies minors, please join the Writing Studies at NU Facebook group. (Requires Facebook account for membership.)

Description

The Writing Studies Minor focuses on giving students advanced instruction in writing in professional and creative contexts. Drawing from courses in English, Communications Studies, Theatre, French and Spanish, the minor helps students in any discipline translate their degrees to workplace settings. In other words, it helps students gain skills they can use to get a job!

Objectives of Writing Studies Minor

The Writing Studies minor:

1. Fosters students' development as writers and leads to recognition of excellent writing ability.
2. Strengthens writing instruction across the disciplines.
3. Prepares students for the steadily increasing number of specialized professional, technical, and medical writing positions in governmental agencies, industry, and nonprofit organizations.
4. Helps students gain experience writing in technologically intensive and collaborative settings.

The minor emphasizes the use of computer technologies to produce professional texts: memos, letters, reports, oral presentations, Web sites, and multimedia documents. Students are also strongly encouraged to complete a writing internship. Most writing classes also contain a service learning component where students put their writing skills to work for local organizations.

Requirements

• You must take three core courses (CMS 120; CMS 222; ENG 231) and three elective courses (see the list later on this page) to complete a minor in Writing Studies.
  
  
• You must take at least three courses outside of your major department.
  For example, if you're an English major, you have to take at least three courses which aren't ENG courses (such as CMS courses or THR courses). If you're a CMS major, you have to take at least three courses which aren't CMS courses (such as ENG courses or THR courses).
  
  
• You must file a minor application form with the College of Arts and Sciences so that the minor will appear on your transcript.

Core Courses
You have to take all of these.

Elective courses
You can take any three (3) of these.

Writing 100 is a pre-requisite for all upper-level writing courses offered by the Department of English; CMS 120 is a pre-requisite for most of the upper-level courses offered by Communication Studies.

Courses not on this list can be approved by coordinator of the writing minor; please see him before you register.

Spring 2008 Course Offerings

These Spring 2008 course offerings will satisfy writing studies minor requirements. You can also see a list of projected course offerings in English from Fall 2007 to Spring 2010 (or download a printable version).