- Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects?
Hi! I’m Mary Gryctko. I got my PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020, and this is my first semester teaching at Baruch. I teach in the English department, in the First-year Writing program. I’m currently teaching ENG2100, Writing I, and next semester I will be teaching ENG2150, Writing II. Right now, my classes are hybrid–one class in person each week, one asynchronous assignment online. My class next semester was just switched to being fully in person. My classes are fairly small, which is good–this semester, I have a class of sixteen, and one of twenty-four. I try to focus my classes around student interests and have students participate in creating assignments as much as possible, but I feel like that’s been more difficult with the hybrid formula this semester. I’m looking forward to learning new ways to engage students in this seminar. My research focuses on death, gender, and childhood in Victorian literature and culture. Currently, I’m working on an article about “comfort books,” which were (often very weird) texts written by and for bereaved Victorian parents.
- Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar?
During this seminar, I plan to work on retooling the final research assignment for my 2100 course to use in the 2150 course that I’ll be teaching next semester. I want to give students more freedom to complete these projects in ways that are interesting to them next semester–I’m hoping to give them the option to present their research in different media than the standard written essay, if they want to, but I also really don’t want to force anyone to do that (I, personally, would always prefer to write an essay), and so I’m hoping to figure out a way to allow for creative responses to the prompt while also allowing traditional research papers.
- What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).
After completing ENG 2150 students should be able to:
- Critically analyze texts in a variety of genres: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, tropes, genre, audience and purpose.
- Use a variety of media to compose in multiple rhetorical situations: Apply rhetorical knowledge in your own composing using the means of persuasion appropriate for each rhetorical context (alphabetic text, still and moving images, and sound), including academic writing and composing for a broader, public audience using digital platforms.
- Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing: Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your own writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.
- Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.
- Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.
- What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?
I’m hoping to use this seminar to develop a final research assignment that allows students more freedom in how they present their research, and other, low-stakes assignment that will scaffold to the final.