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Writing Certificate

The Graduate Professional Development Team’s new Writing Certificate offers all masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral scholars an opportunity to develop essential writing skills for their academic program and professional career.

writing certificate student

Based on feedback from participants in past iterations of the certificate program, we have redesigned the certificate structure around foundational workshops cover essential skills for clear, concise, audience-centered writing and elective workshops on a variety of academic and professional genres, along with experiences that support productive writing habits and deliverables such as journal articles, dissertations, and theses.

Trainees who earn the new Writing Certificate will:

  • Develop productivity and goal setting strategies for writing
  • Practice strategies for organizing common academic and workplace genres
  • Adapt strategies and genres to writing for their own discipline, professional interests, or goals, such as writing for experts in their disciplines and communicating the value of their research to lay audiences
  • Implement effective writing stylistic strategies from the texts that they read into their own writing, thus strengthening their critical reading skills
  • Demonstrate effective writing strategies in one public-facing deliverable such as an article publication
  • Earn a notation on their transcript

Writing Certificate Requirements

Four (4) workshops are required for the Writing Certificate:

  • Writer’s Toolkit/Engineering Cafes: Writer’s Toolkit
  • User-Friendly Writing/Engineering Cafes: User-Friendly Writing
  • Concise Writing/Engineering Cafes: Concise Writing
  • Professional Emails/Engineering Cafes: Professional Emails

Four (4) electives are to be chosen from these options:

  • Writing Abstracts & Introductions
  • Lit Reviews (non-engineering)
  • Engineering Cafes: Lit Reviews
  • Results & Discussion Sections
  • How to Plan a Journal Article
  • How to Respond to Reviewer Feedback
  • How to Write a Cover Letter
  • How to Write CV
  • How to Write Resume
  • Any Summer Grants & Fellowships Writing Workshops
  • Check our workshops page to see what writing workshops are offered this semester

One (1) of the following is required for the Writing Certificate:

One (1) of the following is required for the Writing Certificate:

  • Published Journal Article, Review Paper, or Book Review
  • White paper or report
  • Thesis, dissertation, or capstone project
  • Statements for teaching, research, and inclusivity
  • Professional Portfolio

Contact Dr. Katie Homar with questions.