Students taking MASLOW modules for credit and who are in Stony Brook can learn about resources available on campus from the module grids on Blackboard. Here are some resources that students can virtually access, both from Stony Brook websites and from elsewhere on the web.
This page on the Writing Program blog contains a video, blog posts, contact information, and academic articles relevant for graduate students (and those supporting them). If you want to learn more about the broader context and related initiatives for graduate student writing support by our home department, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, here is the Program’s WRC Initiatives page. The Writing, Research, and Communication skills program is launching a number of initiatives to make visible existing resources around campus and to add new opportunities for graduate students across the university. Some of those initiatives are: Trained graduate writing tutors (at the Writing Center), Writing fellows program (being developed), Writing workshops for graduate students (in collaboration with the MIC), Writing groups, Dissertation writing support, and the Graduate writing course. The WRC page linked above has more information about each of these support initiatives.
As some of you may know, the Purdue University’s famous Online Writing Lab (OWL) website is a go-to place for information about writing. Whether you need to check the correctness of your APA, MLA, or other type of citation or want to learn more about other aspects of writing. All graduate students can find a lot of useful resources on the site, so you might want to browse through with the navigation panel to see what’s there for you. In addition, for international graduate students, the site now has a substantive section for ESL students (though we must add here that we don’t define international students as ESL students, because you are a lot more than that, both in your needs and what you bring into US academe). The resources on the site are mainly designed for undergraduate ESL students but you may find it worth a quick browse (we might also add that the advice given often takes a somewhat negative overtone by focusing on what you may not know or mistakes you may make). If you can find an hour or so for this resource, however, we are confident that you can review some of the basics that may enhance your understanding and help you develop your own perspectives about language, writing, and academic work as a graduate student in the US.
Writing and communication skills support for graduate students, both international and domestic, is quickly expanding in American universities. So, you can learn about the different kinds of resources that graduate students can use by browsing through the programs’ websites and then find out if your university provides similar resources. Here is a list of graduate writing and communication support websites from universities around the United States:
- Cornell University Writing Support for graduate students
- Yale University’s Graduate Writing Lab
- University of Maryland Graduate Writing Center
- Duke University Writing Support
- UCLA Graduate Writing Center
- University of Arizona Graduate Center
- University of Western Canada Graduate Writing Resources
- University of Rochester Graduate Writing Support
- UC Berkeley Graduate Division
- University of Connecticut Writing Center
- Columbia University Graduate Writing Center
- University of Minnesota information for graduate writers; teaching assistants may find this linked page useful
- University of Notre Dame Graduate Student Services
- University of Toronto Writing Advice
Here is a list of books from which you may want to pick what you need.
- Bolker, Joan. Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis (1998) (For great tips on time management and overcoming writer’s block)
- Feak, Christine, Swales, John M. Academic Writing for Graduate School: Essential Tasks and Skills (Michigan Series in English for Academic & Professional Purposes, 2012) (Provides great input on style and grammar, and offers some good writing exercises)
- Glasman-Deal, Hilary. Science Research Writing for Non-Native Speakers of English (2010) (A must-read for any international graduate student in the sciences)
- Hacker, Diana, Marcy Carbajal Van Horn, and Nancy I. Sommers. A Writer’s Reference with Resources for Multilingual Writers and ESL (2011) (Great chapter on ESL grammar issues – indispensable for editing your documents)
And, finally, if you’d like us to anything else to this page for benefiting you or fellow students, let us know by using this form.
