Sobre Escrituro
Sobre Escrituro is an interview study that will present the perspectives of various professionals and community members about their writing and literacy development, as we seek to bridge potential gaps between what/how our university thinks people will write after they graduate and what/how they actually write.
In the UCF WAC Program, we seek to support students and faculty con excelencia. As such, we aim to identify, understand, and include the experiences of writers who are often minoritized or underrepresented in our understanding of writing across the curriculum. Because our university is an HSI–a designation indicating that over 25% of the undergraduate student population identifies as Hispanic–our WAC program would like to launch this study with a thread specifically focused on the writing practices of members of our local community who identify as Hispanic.
We plan to interview fifteen Hispanic professionals in our community from different domains and disciplines (ideally mapping at least one individual onto a field represented by each of the 13 different colleges at our university and also some interdisciplinary areas) to learn about their writing practices not only in their workplaces but also in their civic and personal lives.
By better understanding the experiences of writers across domains, we can support WAC scholars and teachers across disciplines on how to prepare our Hispanic students for writing after graduation. Further, this will give our local Hispanic community an opportunity to share their stories of writing across disciplines and domains with the public and the field of writing studies/ writing across the curriculum.
On Writing
“On Writing” is the Writing Across the Curriculum’s interview series on how people in various fields use writing in their careers. Through these interviews, we have gained insight on how individuals use writing in their respective fields so we can better prepare UCF students for the types of writing they will do in these various fields after they graduate.
Check out the audio file below to hear from two seniors—one in Computer Science and one in Biotechnology—as they talk about their writing experiences in their disciplines and their everyday lives.
When asked who influenced him to go into a STEM field, Jean J. Jerome stated:
“The first one would be my elementary school librarian. When I was younger, I used to read a lot of books, but they were mostly just fiction books on action, adventure, and fantasy. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the library one day, when she came over to me and she said, ‘How would you like to look at some of these books?’ And she took me over to the nonfiction section where I was reading books on science and biology and chemistry and whatnot. Pretty young and early in my youth, so I was super confused about a lot, but it piqued my curiosity. And I would say that’s what initiated my interest in the STEM fields.”
“I do have one friend that I actually write a physical letter to every month, which is a bit of what they consider an archaic practice. But I think it’s kind of fun to handwrite a letter ,put it in an envelope then put a stamp on it, and just send it off. . . . I know I prefer to actually write pen to paper versus on technology all the time. There’s just something about that feeling of actually like putting it on paper that’s so fascinating and fantastic.”
“So, I feel like the most important thing I ever wrote was actually the essay I wrote when I applied to MIT. I think it was the strongest essay ever wrote. And you know I may get in, I may not get in—whatever. It’s just that, I feel like that essay properly captures my journey to this point where I am now. I’m far from perfect; I will never be perfect. But I’m definitely a lot better than I was. So that essay definitely captures that—I just feel very proud of myself honestly because it was hard—getting here was very hard, and I’m just so happy that I made it, and that essay just captured that very well.”
“Writing isn’t just for those who call themselves a writer. It’s not just a thing we do in composition class or the college of arts and humanities alone. It’s an imperative across fields and an essential component of research impact.”