ABSTRACT

This edited collection positions writing at the center of interdisciplinary higher education, and explores how writing instruction, writing scholarship, and writing program administration bring STEM and the humanities together in meaningful, creative, and beneficial ways.

Writing professionals are at the forefront of a cross-pollination between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and the arts and humanities. In their work as educators, scholars, and administrators, they collaborate with colleagues in engineering, scientific, technical, and health disciplines, offer new degree programs that allow students to bring the humanities to bear on design experiments, and build an academic culture that promotes a vision of the humanities in the twenty-first century, as well as a vision of technology that is decidedly human. This collection surveys and promotes that work through chapters focused on writing instruction, writing scholarship, and writing program administration, covering topics that include data-driven writing courses, public science communication, non-traditional college students, creative writing, gamification, skills transfer, and Writing Across the Curriculum programs. 

Writing STEAM will be essential reading for scholars, instructors, and administrators in writing studies, rhetoric and composition, STEM, and a variety of interdisciplinary programs; it will aid in teacher training for both humanities and STEM courses focused on writing and communication.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

part Section I|66 pages

Teaching

chapter 1|13 pages

Gaining STEAM

The Integral Role of Composition in an Increasingly STEM World

chapter 2|16 pages

Building Socioscientific Trust Is a Post-secondary Obligation

Preparing STEM Students to Communicate and Engage with Public Audiences

chapter 3|18 pages

STEAM Storytime

Fusing Artistic Expression with Scientific Discourse through Picture Books

part Section II|83 pages

Research and Scholarship

chapter 5|16 pages

“STEAM”-ING Up Composition

Inquiry-Based Learning and the Nontraditional Student

chapter 6|15 pages

Knowledge in the Making

How STEAM can Transform Notions of Expertise

chapter 9|18 pages

Creative Writing across the Curriculum

Defining and Illustrating a Method for STEM/Humanities Integration

part Section III|67 pages

Writing Program Administration

chapter 10|15 pages

“Some of the Rooms Are Occupied by Squirrels”

Communication and the New Polytechnic

chapter 11|16 pages

All Aboard

Gaining STEAM in Health Sciences Education

chapter 12|17 pages

“To Feel, With Amazement, Their Minds”

Science, Humanism, Inquiry, and the Rhetorical Work of Wonder

chapter 13|17 pages

Local Exigencies in a World of Expectations

STEM Writing Programs and the Great Balancing Act