ENGL199C - Interdisciplinary Writing: Natural Sciences
Spring 2016
Course Information:
Class Time: Mon. & Wed. 11:30-12:50pm and Canvas
Classroom: Mary Gates Hall (MGH) 082 – Computer Lab
Instructor: Megan Callow
Office Hours: Mon. & Wed. 10:30-11:20, and by appointment
My Office: A-18 Padelford
E-mail: [email protected]
Additional Required meetings: Three major essay conferences with the instructor and
classmates (by appointment)
Description: ENGL199C: Intermediate Interdisciplinary Writing for the Natural
Sciences (Instructor: Dr. Megan Callow) is linked with BIOL180: Introductory Biology
(Instructor: Dr. Jon Herron). Although the two courses complement each other, they have
distinct goals, activities, and assessments. Our focus in ENGL199C is on the creation of
knowledge in science through writing: (1) how does writing contribute to our
understanding of the natural world, and (2) how can we write effectively in the sciences,
as well as in other disciplines? We address these questions as we read, carefully reread and discuss bioscience writing and commit our responses to writing. We use a
process of annotation, paraphrase, and outlining of research questions, experimental
methods, and findings to examine the significance of the science writing we read. As we
compose and revise our own draft responses, we place special emphasis on the purposes
different types of science writing serve in framing scientific questions, and in reporting
new science knowledge and debate. Namely, through our writing we seek to understand
the way any one scientific study enters into conversation with other studies in an area of
research.
Learning Goals:
 Read texts by academic and professional participants in the discipline, identifying
such writers' purposes and recognizing rhetorical principles that underlie genres in
the field.
 Analyze writing tasks assigned in a disciplinary context.
 Generate material relevant to discipline-based paper assignments; draft and revise
arguments as a participant in your disciplinary context; and respond to arguments
by other participants.
 Use critical comments on your work, and writing activity itself, to extend and
refine your thinking.
 Grasp, employ, or pursue implications of new learning in the discipline to the
BIOL 200 lecture course.
 Relate the writing you have done in this course to your past writing in other
relevant contexts, and anticipate new kinds of writing expectations you are likely
to confront, whether for fellow science students and professionals, or for a
scientifically interested general public.
ENGL199C
Course Syllabus
Spring 2016
Expectations:
 Attend each class session and participate fully in course activities. This includes
logging into Canvas daily, preparing for class, asking questions, contributing to
group work and class discussion, while completing assignments on time and with
your best efforts.
 Email is a professional tool, and you are expected to use and check your UW
email everyday. Also, double check that Canvas notifications will be sent to your
UW email. Canvas and email are how your instructors (and future employers!)
communicate with you, and “I didn’t check my email” is not a legitimate excuse
for missing an important update.
 Show respect for all individuals and demonstrate responsibility in groups. Many
activities in science inquiry and science writing are collaborative in nature and
success depends on the contributions and insights generated in group work.
 Take advantage of opportunities to incorporate feedback and to grow as a scientist
and writer; debate and feedback are fundamental to the development and testing
of scientific questions.
 Share your questions, concerns and insights clearly and regularly with both peers
and instructors. If you are struggling academically or personally, get help from the
great many campus resources available to you (see more below).
 Conduct yourself with academic honesty by completing your own work and
acknowledging any contributions of others. Do not deprive yourself of
opportunities to challenge yourself and learn.
 What other expectations do you have of yourself? Of the instructor?
Canvas course site:
Check the course site in Canvas and your UW email regularly for announcements and
assignments. You will submit assignments in Canvas in multiple ways: electronically in
MS Word format directly to Canvas, or will write (or copy and paste) written responses
onto Wiki pages in Canvas. Additional instructions will be provided by the instructor,
and online assistance is available from the associated help centers
(http://www.washington.edu/itconnect/learn/tools/canvas/canvas-help-for-students/). Inclass activities may also be legibly hand-written and later scanned and posted to the
Canvas drop-box.
Assignments:
We will do lots of informal and collaborative writing in this course, but the three main
assignments are as follows. More detailed prompts will be provided in class.
 Major Essay 1: Article Analysis. To develop our skills in close reading of
scientific research articles, we will conduct a written analysis of one such article.
 Major Essay 2: Lab Research Cover Letter & Resume. To develop our
identities as professional scientists, we will develop applications for a real
laboratory research position.
 Major Essay 3: Literature Review. To expand our knowledge of our chosen
biological concept, and to become better researchers, we will write a literature
review on the same or similar topic from ME1.
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ENGL199C
Course Syllabus
Spring 2016
I encourage you to explore and refine the same topic for Major Essays 1 and 3.
Committing to one topic has pros and cons. On the one hand, you will learn a ton about
your topic, and will learn to read the literature on this topic more and more proficiently as
the quarter progresses (which will make writing each paper progressively easier). On the
other hand, it can get tiresome to write about the same topic three times. You can deal
with this by planning ways to focus on different elements of the topic for each paper.
We’ll talk more about how to do this.
Grading:
 Homework will account for 20% of your grade. Homework assignments will be
graded on a 5-point scale (If you turn in a thoughtfully completed assignment on
time, then you will get full credit).
 Course participation will count for 20% of your grade. At the end of the semester
I will award your participation grade on a 10-point scale. To determine your score
I will consider class attendance, class participation, general effort, and
participation in peer conferences.
 The three papers will account for 60% of your final grade (8% for each rough
draft, 12% for each final draft). Each paper will be graded on a 6-point scale
through a peer-based holistic scoring process, which you can read more about
below, and which we will practice extensively in class. The 6-point grading scale
can be converted to a 4.0 scale thusly:
Score
6
5/6
5
4/5
4
3/4
3
2/3
2
1/2
1
Conversion to 4.0 Scale
4.0
3.9
3.7
3.5
3.3
3.0
2.7
2.4
2.0
1.7
1.4
Peer-Based Scoring: In this class we will use specific criteria to assess your writing
throughout the course and to help you develop your writing in the sciences. These
analytic criteria describe important traits of successful writing in the field, and they will
guide peer review. The criteria will help you see specific strengths as well as areas to
focus on revising in your writing. At the end of each writing sequence, I will give you a
scoring rubric for the assignment you have been working on. That rubric will enable you
to assess final drafts holistically. A holistic assessment evaluates the draft as a whole, just
as teachers do when they give a paper a single grade for the whole.
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ENGL199C
Course Syllabus
Spring 2016
We will function as a scholarly community in this class, and you will assess your peers’
writing based on our communal norms. Each of your final drafts will be read
anonymously (with your secret pen name) and scored by two of your classmates using the
holistic rubric. I will then read all the final drafts and correct any scoring errors if
necessary.
The Writing Criteria: We will use the following criteria to assess ME1 and ME3 (your
own writing, and your peers’; rough drafts and final drafts). Think of this as a kind of
checklist of traits that all scientific academic writing should embody:

Thesis: Does your essay clearly communicate a specific thesis? Is the thesis
complex? Is it an argument? That is, does it make a claim that is arguable (or is
it simply an obvious statement that no one would dispute)? Does this thesis
make a claim that your audience might find worthwhile? Is your thesis one that
can be supported primarily through close reading the literary text?

Organization: Do the opening sentences of each body paragraph clearly convey
and explain (“unpack”) that paragraph’s central claim? Is each body paragraph
unified around that claim, and coherent? Is the relationship among paragraphs
easily apparent to readers?

Explanation and Definition: Each of your essays and the articles upon which
they are based will contain complex scientific terms and concepts. Do you
provide sufficiently clear and concise explanations of these concepts so that nonspecialists can easily follow the line of argument?

Evidence: Do you closely reference the primary research article that is the
object of your analysis? Do you quote from it frequently? Is the evidence you
select relevant to your thesis? Do you closely reference/quote secondary texts, if
relevant to the assignment? Important: Do you do something with the evidence
you provide? Do you explain how your analysis of the evidence connects back to
the argument of your paper?

Stakes: The “stakes” of an essay are its claim(s) for significance. The stakes of
your essay should be implicit throughout the essay, but they should be explicitly
clear in the introduction and conclusion. It is very challenging to come up with
good stakes when one is a relative newcomer to an academic discipline, so you
will not be penalized for failing to come up with the “right” answer. However, in
all your essays, you should make a reasonable attempt at answering the “so
what” question, even if this means doing some supplementary research.
Peer Conferences: For each of the three major papers we will conduct a peer conference.
You will be placed in peer conference groups at the start of the quarter, and you will
remain in these groups for the duration. You will read, assess, and offer extensive
feedback on your group’s drafts, and each group will meet with me during the week prior
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ENGL199C
Course Syllabus
Spring 2016
to your final draft due date (these conferences will take the place of normally scheduled
class time). You will sign up for these peer conference appointments in Canvas.
Supplementary Materials:
 I recommend a writing guide for matters of style and mechanics, such as A Pocket
Style Manual (7th Edition) by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers, particularly if
you have struggled with mechanics and other surface-level writing errors.
 Biology 200 textbook, lecture, and lab manual content.
 Research databases for scientific literature. These are available at the UW
Libraries web site, and are individually linked in Canvas.
 Bookmark the Purdue Online Writing Lab’s reference guide to the APA style!
You will be using this site a lot:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Participation: In-class activities cannot be completed at another time. If you are unable
to participate in class due to illness, family emergency, or UW-recognized event, email
the instructor before class or as soon as possible. An excused absence from participation
requires appropriate documentation.
Communication: Email is the best way to communicate with me outside of class time.
Except for some weekends, I usually respond within 24 hours or so. If I don’t, please feel
free to send a gentle reminder that I have not responded to your question. Because we
have a professional relationship, I expect all your emails to me (and to all your
colleagues) will be professional and polite. This means all your emails will contain a
salutation (e.g., “Dear Megan” or “Hi Megan”) and a closing (e.g., “From, Hannah Jones
in 299A”), and will be complete and polite in tone. I will not reply to emails that simply
say, “when is our first essay due.”
It is my policy NOT to discuss grades over email. There is simply too much room for
miscommunication, and it takes up too much time. Please come to office hours or make
an appointment (phone appointment is fine) to discuss grades.
Course Schedule:
I will distribute an assignment schedule for each of our three assignment sequences. The
schedule is subject to instructor-announced changes. Check the course website and your
email regularly for announcements and assignments. Please follow the Modules section in
Canvas to see all relevant assignment requirements and materials.
I’m looking forward to a challenging and rewarding quarter!
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