Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse

WRD faculty at the 2019 Academic Convocation 

Explore career options

As a WRD major or Professional Writing minor use this handout to plan what WRD courses to take in order to pursue a career in fields like law, technical writing, editing/publishing, and more.

The WRD department’s Minor in Professional Writing is currently available to all students from any major in the university, and is now able to be completed entirely online. Read more at the WRD Blog.

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The development and expression of ideas in writing is the foundation of a liberal education, and more broadly, contemporary democratic culture. In government, education, and all manner of professions, it is through writing that we determine our values, define norms of appropriate behavior, and pursue our goals. Our lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies that use writing to organize sound and image in interactive spaces like the World Wide Web, and through text messaging and email, individual identity and interpersonal relationships are progressively bound up with writing. At the same time, we face growing demands for communicating across national, cultural, and linguistic borders, requiring us to rethink many assumptions we may have about written communication and expression. The Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse engages various writing practices and genres to prepare students to excel in the range of contexts in which they will go on to write.

If you have questions related to any of the department's undergraduate or graduate curricular programs, please see the Contact page.

Alumni Spotlight

Cynthia Medrano, is currently an Associate Technical Writer at Relativity and will pursue her master’s in Library and Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana this fall.

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Student Spotlight

Nicole Mattea, a current student in the BA program, shares how WRD is helping her build a future career in politics. She's currently an intern in the Chicago office of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin.

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