• Academic Writing
• Creative Writing
• Literature
• Humanities
• Linguistics
• Languages
• Research and Information Studies

Academic Writing

The Academic Writing Program at Metro State University supports students in developing writing competencies that prepare them to communicate effectively and responsibly with diverse audiences in academic and professional communities. The program offers introductory and intermediate writing courses that satisfy general education writing requirements at Metro. The introductory writing courses help students understand how writing functions within rhetorical situations and develop frameworks through which to analyze the audiences, purposes, genres, and contexts in which they write.  Students also learn how to engage in effective writing processes, including planning, drafting, revising, editing, and reflecting—steps that recur throughout the writing experience. The intermediate writing course builds on these foundations, focusing on how they shape the inquiry of a topic, the development of research questions, and the development of well-constructed arguments. The course helps students develop research and information literacy skills such as conducting research, finding and evaluating sources, and effectively integrating them into academic texts. The program also offers writing courses for students who have completed their general education writing requirement and seek further, discipline-focused instruction in how writing and research are shaped by their academic disciplines. These courses help students enhance their writing, research, and analytical skills by applying them to the genres, audiences, and rhetorical situations of their fields. Students are encouraged to complete their academic writing courses early in their college journey as the skills and experiences they gain in our classrooms transfer to writing in the wider university and professional worlds, helping them succeed in college and in their careers.

Creative Writing

The Creative Writing Program develops empowered writerly voices and imaginations. By studying and implementing creative writing skills in a workshop setting, students develop their literary art, as well as active listening and critical thinking through consistent interactive dialogue and revision. Students read and write imaginatively in the core courses, and are assigned novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, essays, poems, and books on writing in a wide diversity of cultural contexts across many genres, including: literary, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, historical, memoir, poetry, humor, young adult, children's literature, etc. Students are encouraged to participate in Metro's literary arts journal, Haute Dish, to gain editorial and publishing experience. Open mics and live readings are also regularly offered. Graduates with a Creative Writing major find work in publishing, editing, web design, freelance writing, copy writing, advertising, business, non-profit arts administration, teaching, authorship, etc. Many majors choose to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing or Master of Liberal Arts (and various other graduate degrees).

Literature

Literature courses provide opportunities to study classic and contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry, as well as to explore literature’s historical development and its links to the society that produces it. Today, literary study involves understanding literature as a venue where thoughtful people discuss the urgent public and personal issues of our time. Students consider not only venerated literary classics but also more recent ethnic literature, literature by women, working-class literature, children’s and adolescent literature, and literature produced in specific regions or historical eras. Classes are reading and writing intensive, and instructors emphasize discussion and interactive learning. Besides becoming familiar with famous works of literature, students learn to analyze written texts, to develop and support valid interpretations, and to present their ideas orally and in writing.

Humanities

Humanities courses reflect a broader approach to literary study. Humanities courses offer multi-disciplinary explorations of particular eras and topics. These courses bring together the thought, art, music, architecture, literature, and learning of the past in order to study texts in their historical and cultural settings. Current approaches to the humanities explore ways in which different kinds of artistic and intellectual works from different eras address some of the same social, political, cultural, and personal issues that are important to everyday people in today’s world. Linguistics is the study of the history and structure of language and its links to society, culture, and individual life. Because language is central to being human, an understanding of language teaches people important things about what people are like and about how society works.

Linguistics

Linguists examine both the historical and theoretical aspects of language and its actual use in day-to-day situations. Traditionally, a liberal arts education has always included the study of at least one world language. Mastering another language provides a valuable, even an essential, communication tool that enables one to function effectively, whether for business or pleasure, in an internationalized community. At the same time, it also teaches new ways of perceiving and organizing reality. 

Languages

We offer beginning and intermediate level courses in Spanish and sometimes introductory courses in the Ojibwe and Dakota languages.

Writing, Literature, and Language does not give credit for prior learning in world languages.