Information for Faculty
The general education curriculum in Dietrich College (launched in Fall 2021) asks students to think deeply and critically about our shared history and common humanity as it prepares them to tackle complex problems in work and in life. Courses aligned with this new GenEd program ask students to grapple with foundational questions of society and to seek solutions for social, political, and global challenges such as inequality and injustice, climate change and voting. To honor the important work produced within these courses, the Dietrich College General Education and Department of English Writing & Communication Programs are inviting nominations from faculty for outstanding student work produced in Dietrich College GenEd courses for the next issue of WOVEN: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Dietrich College.
To support the variety of communication projects within these courses, WOVEN will take the form of a web-based landing page, rather than a traditional paper journal or static PDF file. Thus, WOVEN provides the opportunity for students to publish multimodal works while gaining valuable experience with the author-editor relationships that scholars and researchers rely on in academia.
Through the faculty nomination process, we are looking for your help and expertise in identifying the student works from your courses that evince “excellence.” We are seeking particularly innovative, creative, or visionary works--projects that represent the rigor and merit of our college’s general education curriculum and serve as exemplars for future submissions.
Nominations from any Dietrich College General Education course are invited in the following categories:
Essays, research papers, proposals, short films/media, podcasts, presentations/slides, data stories, memos, lit reviews, websites/apps, reports and letters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I nominate student work from a previous semester?
Yes! As long as the student you are nominating is a current student at CMU, any writing or communication project produced in a Dietrich College GenEd course aligned with the new curriculum is eligible for submission.
Do I need permission from the student to nominate their work?
No. Please feel free to reach out to the student to obtain preliminary permission via email if you would like to do so, but it isn’t necessary (and there is space on your nomination form to indicate whether or not you’ve done so). The editorial team at WOVEN will reach out to the students, and if/when the work is accepted for publication, we will formally obtain the required permissions from the student via Consent to Publish documentation.
Can I nominate group projects?
Yes! Collaborative research is the norm in many academic fields and models the types of collaboration we see in other academic journals. All collaborators involved in a group project would need to consent to the nomination, but this will be handled by the editorial team at WOVEN if a nominee pursues publication.
What kind of work should I nominate?
Work within–and beyond–any of the genres from the list above is acceptable, as long as it is a broadly defined as a writing or communication project that demonstrates a critical engagement with existing scholarship, creative works, and/or social issues.
What is considered a "work of excellence”?
We are looking for work in your courses that:
- is particularly innovative, creative or visionary,
- is exceptional when compared with similar work produced by their peers (e.g. A+ work or work that is in the top 2-3% of submissions for a particular project or assignment),
- is a "polished work" (defined as work that has been reviewed by you and/or peers and revised in response to given feedback. Typically, "polished works" are those that are produced for major assignments or significant components of major assignments),
- is representative of the rigor and merit of our college's general education curriculum, and
- can serve as an exemplar for future journal submissions.