2004-05 Selected Essays & Greetings from the Co-Chairs

2004-05 Winners

Reality vs. Actuality: A Construction of the Truth
Carly Cannell

The Capitalization of Intelligence: How Spellbound Transforms Education into a Commodity Through Metaphor
Scott Hanes

Mother Teresa and Media Mayhem
Chris Klontz

Understanding the Science Gender Gap
Matt Olson

Chief Seattleā€™s Real Message
David Wu

Greetings from the Co-Chairs

We are pleased to see another year of exciting student writing showcased in e.g.!

Since it’s inception in 2002, e.g. has undergone a number of changes. Originally, e.g. was known as the 100-level Writing Contest, which allowed for instructors to nominate the best essays to be selected for this newly created writing award, similar to that offered to writers in 200-level writing courses.

In the last two years, e.g. has evolved from the 100-level Writing Contest to an online journal of student writing that showcases essays that exemplify the type of writing that is stressed in UW’s 100-level writing courses.

This year’s essays were selected by the e.g. committee, which is made up of two co-chairs and several readers, all of whom are experienced 100-level writing instructors. First, essays were nominated by the instructors of English 105, 111, 121, and 131; secondly, the essays were reviewed by the committee in two eliminating rounds; finally, the final 5 essays were selected by the committee for their various strengths.

The final essays all came from English 131 courses this year, though the committee was hoping to be able to select essays that were more representative of student writing in a variety of 100-level courses. The lack of submissions from other courses, made it difficult to achieve this goal for the 2004-2005 year. It is our hope that in the coming years, submissions from Eng 105, 111, and 121 will be more plentiful.

You will notice that the essays selected display an outstanding command of specific aspects of academic writing, though they are by no means “perfect” and without room for further revision and improvement. We hope that you will enjoy reading the essays in this year’s e.g..

If you are an instructor, we hope you that you will use them in your classes as a catalyst for discussions about writing. Please see the instructor pages for ideas on how to integrate essays into your teaching.

We would like to congratulate the authors of these excellent essays for their hard work. We would also like to thank all the instructors who nominated student essays for their participation. Special thanks go out to the 2004-2005 reading committee who volunteered their time and energy to reading the submitted essays and putting together pedagogical strategies for the instructor pages. This year’s e.g. committee included Steven Corbett, Stephen M. Dekovich, Rachel Goldberg, Jasmine Moir, Raymond Oenbring, and Steve Tobias.

Lastly, we invite those of you interested in keeping the journal vital and growing to participate in the coming years!

Sincerely,
Riki Thompson & Melanie Kill
September 2005

changed
This entry was posted in News, Selected Essays and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply