M.S. in Written Communication: Information for Prospective Students
Enrolling
Admission to the program involves the standard NLU graduate school requirements: one of the standard graduate entrance exams, letters of recommendation, etc. (Enrollment counselors can help.) However it is possible to take up to three courses as a student at large-before formal admission to the program. Students enrolling 'at large' should first contact the director of the program to discuss their writing abilities and background.
Getting Started
A basic course, "Advanced Expository Writing," is taught in the fall, and most students begin then, although it is possible to start the program any term during the year. Working with the program director, students usually plan and select courses for the first few terms, but stay uncommitted and flexible beyond that to see how their interests (or needs) develop and what specialty courses might be added from time to time.
What It's Like
Classes meet one evening a week. Usually a new assignment is given each week, and the student submits it by e-mail to the instructor during the week. (Some instructors have students submit to each other at the same time; others wait until class night.) Instructors usually work with the students individually-either by e-mail or phone or both-after the results arrive each week. Then during class, students discuss and react to the set of papers. Each of these steps provides an essential part of the process. The goals include first learning what to do, what works (this happens fairly quickly and easily); and then learning to do it instinctively, without prompting (this takes much longer).
The Whole Package
The degree requires 33 semester hours including the thesis. Credits may be accepted from other programs or accredited institutions, shortening the time to the degree. Occasionally, a student may have past professional experience which exactly duplicates a course in the program, and be eligible for "Credit by Proficiency." In general, we encourage students to go slowly, one course at a time, allowing techniques to become habits and making the best possible use of "cross training" as skills from one course improve the performance in the next.
Summer Specialties
Our fall, winter and spring courses are described in the catalog and a projected schedule of offerings is available along with our other printed materials. In summers (optional) we offer specialty courses, often based on a genre of writing that is selling well. Some recent summer offerings have been: Reading and Writing the Romance; Reading and Writing Fantasy Literature; Writing from Oral History (ala Studs Terkel), The Biggest of the Best Sellers, and From Fiction to Film.
Other Specialties
A popular one-credit seminar during the year is What's Selling and Why-which examines a current runaway best seller in order to use it as a model. Some recent selections have been: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, the Harry Potter books, and A Child Called It. Specialty courses like these often focus on how to write for a certain target market-a useful talent in all kinds of writing.
Classes and Classmates
Students currently range in age from 25-65, some with writing experience, some without. Most work outside the home; some do not. Some have taken early retirement and want to write. Some have left the work environment only temporarily in order to build new skills or change careers.
Classes are lively because students in a writing program are typically very energetic intellectually-observant, and quick to understand. They are eager to learn and to help others learn. (Friendships develop which often last long after degrees are completed.) The instructors, being writers, share these personality characteristics; they are, moreover, strongly committed to spending considerable time and energy on each individual, and on the classroom experience as a whole. One of the most-often-repeated remarks, as students near graduation, is how much they enjoyed the classes and how sad they are to leave.
Master of Science in Written Communication Program
Some Alumni and Student Accomplishments
Here are a few of the numerous achievements and publications by students and alumni of the MSWC program. Since we haven’t had a systematic gathering of this information, some of the details are incomplete and many accomplishments are going unnoticed by NLU. In the future we will try to have a better system for gathering this material.
Alumni Accomplishments
William Troller is the Vice President in charge of Public Affairs at College of DuPage.
Brian Kleeman is in charge of Media Relations at College of DuPage. His articles have been widely published in Sun Publications and other newspapers.
Shannon K. Pieper is managing editor of FireRescue and Wildland Firefighter. She has conducted interviews of all our Pulitzer Prize speakers, several of them published in Mosaic.
Bill Funchion, alum, teaches various writing courses at Waubansee Community College. He is active in the Toastmasters’ International organization and in 2006 was the coach of the man who won the Toastmasters’ International Prize for a short, motivational speech.
Sheila Peters, alum, is a public relations executive at Ace Hardware. She wrote and self-published You Don’t Have To Be A Bag Lady. The success of her publication led to many speaking offers. Sheila has conducted seminars in self-publishing at various community colleges.
Michael Sullivan, alum, is a high school teacher who writes on the side. He was a finalist in the 2006 Golden Apple Award.
Kim Brown, alum, published one of her articles that was an assignment for her first MSWC graduate class. Her articles have appeared in Today’s Chicago Woman and Chicago Tribune. She is an adjunct at colleges in the Naperville area.
Traci Cornick, alum, went on from getting her MSWC degree to working in the IIT public relations department.
Stephanie Obey, alum, recently wrote and published her first children’s book titled My Favorite Food with sister Sara Loeffelholze who created the vibrant illustrations. The book was issued by Overdue Books, a publishing company Stephanie established in 2006.
Jim Szepaniak, alum, heads the department of communications for a large Illinois school district. His writing has been published in NorthShoremagazine. He was the first in our MSWC community college internship program, interning at College of DuPage.
Jennifer Djordjevic, alum, spearheaded the first Mosaic publication. She is the public affairs director of an organization that assists victims of domestic violence, Wings, and has been published in local magazines.
Sara Stephens, alum, came to the MSWC program with many public relations campaigns under her belt but wanting to move in the teaching direction. Since graduating she has taught for College of Lake County, Oakton Community College and National-Louis University.
Current MSWC Students
Kate Hutchinson contributed a major article to the recently published book
A Cup of Comfort: for Parents of Children with Autism. She teaches English and is Coordinator of Fine and Performing Arts at Buffalo Grove High School.
Kathleen Scott writes a biweekly column for Pioneer Press’ EdisonNorwood Times Review. She writes book and movie reviews for Chicago Parent and is also a featured blogger with her “Single Parent Perspective” on their new website: www.chicagoparent.com
Juan C. Ayllon, a teacher and testing administrator at Waukegan High School, writes freelance articles and continues to serve as news editor and staff writer at the Cyber Boxing Zone. Several of his articles on boxing have been published in Chicago area newspapers. He is working on a new article for the Chicago Reader.
Ann Lichter has her master’s in biochemistry but left her research career to raise her three children and is now focused on her writing. The promising fiction she produced at NLU yielded the Friends of American Writers fiction fellowship in 2007.
Tracy Ruppman edited the 2007 issue of Mosaic. She was a librarian at NLU and is now a librarian at Loyola University.
Kay Severinsen is a journalist and educator who has a number of published articles to her credit and has also taught in the MSWC community college internship program. She has just completed her degree and will be teaching on an adjunct basis for College of DuPage and NLU. Her young adult novel, completed as her master’s thesis in our program, is under consideration at a major publisher.
Pamela Gomilla, who works at the Social Security Administration, will have her first collection of poetry published next year.
Cathy Milianta write and assists in editing her company newsletter. She will have articles published next year in National View and In-Fishing.
Kristina Schramm is the artistic director of the Village Players in the Lincoln Square community. One of the poems she wrote at our NLU Writers’ Week last year was used in an original play she wrote and directed at the Village Players in 2006.
Instructors in the MSWC Program
Joanne Koch, director of the program and instructor for courses in screenwriting, short nonfiction and adapting fiction into plays, has had 14 plays produced around the country, won an Emmy award for a television series and had other teleplays broadcast on NBC, CBS and Fox, authored or co-authored ten nonfiction books and edited a new anthology of plays to be published this Fall called Shared Stages which includes Driving Miss Daisy, Fires in the Mirror, Medal of Honor Rag, I'm Not Rappaport and a musical she co-authored which has toured the country, Soul Sisters. Dr. Koch has been a syndicated columnist and magazine writer, contributing editor to Chicagomagazine and co-author of college textbooks.
Bruce Boyer who teaches fiction and promotional writing has been the Creative Director of Hammacher and Schlemmer and advertising consultant for J. Walter Thompson. He has written books and promotional materials for the Art Institute and the FieldMuseum, as well as authoring two published mystery novels.
Steve Masello who teaches rhetorical theory in the MSWC program is also English Department Chair. He has written scholarly articles on the Renaissance and, wearing another hat, writes on hunting, fishing and other aspects of outdoor sportsmanship.
Paul McComas who teaches a course called Advanced Expository Writing in short nonfiction has had three novels and one short story collection published.
Laurie Lawlor who teaches writing children's books has written 34 books for children of all ages.
Bob Smietana who teaches editing is the co-author of two biographies and the editor of a monthly magazine, Covenant Companion..
Kevin Williams who teaches journalism is the editor of the Friday "On the Town" section of the Chicago Tribune.
Tom Brennan, instructor of our Short Fiction course, has had numerous short stories published in literary magazines here and in Australia and New Zealand. He just won the Daily Herald Short Story Competition. He teaches high school.
Bill Buczinsky is the author of Pied Poetry, a collection of poetry for children, and founder of A Child’s Voice which produces CDs and books of poetry for children. Bill has gone to hundreds of Chicago area schools giving workshops on poetry. He’s been a featured speaker at our Writers’ Week Workshops and is now instructing a new course in the program, Writing and Teaching Poetry.
Pulitzer Prize winners who have visited NLU so far include: Cornelia Grumman, Leon Dash, Ronald Kotulak, Julia Keller, Lois Wille and Ira Berkow.
Writers’ Week Workshop Leaders include Robert Kurson, Tim Kazurinsky, Bill Buczinsky, Rick Pearlstein, Laurie Lawlor, Franny Billingsley, Amy Dickinson, Deborah Ellis and Paul McComas.
