Courses and Topics

Writing 010 - Effective Thinking

This course introduces students to a variety of active reading, thinking, writing, and reflective strategies. Emphasis will be given to thinking through writing—and especially approaches for invention, drafting, and revision—and to understanding organizational structures and thinking patterns used in academic writing. Students learn their individual writing processes while composing a series of essays that build toward those in WRIT 101.

Writing 009 - Effective Thinking Lab

This course is designed to meet student needs as they arise, providing skills-centered support for WRIT 010. In this lab, WRIT 010’s academic essays are scaffolded, as instructors aid students in the development of their individual writing processes. In-class time is allotted for essay drafting and revision, as well as for grammar, style, peer workshops, writing lessons, critical thinking and rhetorical exercises, reflective practice, and skills transfer.

Writing 011- Writing Lab

This course is a flexibly-designed support lab for WRIT 101. Students receive supplemental skills instruction and further practice with professional-level composition as they invent, draft, and revise WRIT 101’s academic essays. Writing lab reinforces strategies for active reading, thinking through writing, and ethical engagement with sources, allotting in-class time for student needs as they arise, and emphasizing skills transfer and reflective practice.

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the MMC academic community, while
practicing the critical thinking, reading, writing, and oral presentation skills necessary for their academic and professional lives. Students will explore a selected topic from several disciplinary perspectives in an intimate classroom environment. Through a series of written essays and presentation assignments, students will engage in the recursive process of professional level composition, including invention, drafting, revision, peer-feedback, and editing. 

This course is the second of the two writing courses requirement of students. We strongly encourage students to enroll in Writing 102 immediately following the successful completion of Writing Seminar I. This course emphasizes the development of research skills through exercises in the selection of research topics, the use of a variety of library resources, and the evaluation of research materials, leading to the development of an extensive academic argument. In preparation for this major project, students will explore a selected topic from several disciplinary perspectives through a series of written essays and oral presentation assignments. Throughout the term, instructor-student conferences facilitate individualized criticism of research procedures and the development of the final paper.

Advanced Writing Seminar introduces students to the MMC academic community while continuing to strengthen the critical reading, writing, research, and oral presentation skills necessary for both their scholarly and professional lives. Students explore a topic from several disciplinary perspectives, conduct extensive research, and learn to appreciate the advantages of interdisciplinary study. Through a series of advanced written assignments, students engage in the recursive process of professional-level composition, including invention, drafting, revision, peer feedback, and editing. Students learn how to propose, formulate, develop and present an original academic project, based on extensive independent research. This course is enrollment-through-placement only.

Professional Writing Across Disciplines explores intersections and distinctions between disciplinary conventions of professional communication, using students’ majors to embark on conversations about writing, listening, and speaking in professional contexts. This course treats questions of genre, audience, purpose, language, and tone, and emphasizes the importance of rhetorical situation. Genre models and student texts are both central to the course: students workshop their own career materials while closely reading and analyzing effective model emails, resumes, cover letters, grants, proposals, abstracts, memos, dialogues, conflict resolutions, and interviews. In a project that requires choosing a work site to observe, students report on the complexity of workplace communication, mapping networks of people, written forms, problems, and solutions, and examining the interpersonal, ethical, and cultural dimensions of these spaces. Across disciplines, students learn that principles of successful workplace communication are informed by creative critical thinking and transferrable inquiries, rather than by formulas. What principles do public writing, writing for nonprofits, and writing for digital media share or not share, for example? Professional Writing Across Disciplines is in service of MMC’s goal to “graduate creative changemakers: students who develop collaborative, entrepreneurial, and problem-solving skills to bridge theory and practice and effect positive change.”