McCormick Writing Standards Project  

May 2005

During the 2004-05 academic year, MEAS faculty and students were asked, "What constitutes effective writing?" This website presents the results of the study, and provides information and resources to help improve writing instruction in McCormick courses.

From this page you can:

Background

• McCormick students and faculty have asked whether writing standards are consistent or similar from one course to another.
  • Students ask: is faculty grading of writing idiosyncratic?
  • Alumni ask: can MEAS students receive more writing instruction?
  • Faculty wonder: what are good ways to integrate writing instruction into existing classes?
• Winter 2004: the McCormick School asked a committee to
• investigate this issue about writing standards
• post results and/or shared standards for the McCormick community to share

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the funding we have received from the Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-9876363 (the VaNTH-ERC) to partially support this project and also for a Walter P. Murphy grant for undergraduate education from Northwestern University. We also wish to thank Dean Stephen Carr of the McCormick School Administration for his generous support.

Committee Members

• John Troy, MEAS Biomedical Engineering
• Gulnur Birol, MEAS Biomedical Engineering
• Penny Hirsch, WCAS Writing Program
• Jeanine Casler, WCAS Writing Program
• H. David Smith, WCAS Psychology
• Bugrahan Yalvac, VaNTH
• John Anderson, WCAS Writing Program