Welcome to FASE’s Graduate Communication Initiative, a partnership with the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) to bring engineering-specific communication training to graduate students. The GCAC offers advanced cross-disciplinary training in academic speaking and writing for native and non-native speakers of English through non-credit courses, workshops, writing-intensive programs, and individual writing consultations. FASE's Graduate Communication Initiative builds on the GCAC's offerings by providing further communication training that focuses on the conventions and particular requirements of communication in engineering disciplines.
Here, you'll find information about programs and initiatives available to support your graduate-level writing.
Please contact Dr. Fiona Coll, Assistant Professor of Graduate Communication in Engineering at ISTEP and at the GCAC with questions, comments, or ideas for new programs.
Winter 2023 Courses and Workshops
Curious about how to write persuasively about complex engineering topics? Wondering how to frame your fascinating research for different audiences? Interested in improving your writing process? This winter, FASE's Graduate Communication Initiative is offering several courses and workshops for everyone who’d like to learn more about writing clearly and effectively. Join the FASE Graduate Writing Community Quercus site for updates and announcements.
Winter Dissertation Writing Groups
In person
These small groups will meet in person once every two weeks to discuss writing strategies, share structured feedback on draft writing for the dissertation, and track progress through the dissertation-writing process. This term, the groups will be organized by writing stage.
Graduate Writing for Engineers 1: Foundational Strategies
Offered both In-person and Online (synchronous)
This four-week, in-person and online course will offer an overview of foundational strategies for writing clearly and concisely about engineering topics at the graduate level. Participants will complete weekly exercises and receive feedback on their work.
Processing Feedback on Your Writing
Online workshop
Feedback is a vital component of your graduate-level academic writing development. Receiving feedback, however, can be a complicated psychological, organizational, and interpersonal experience. This workshop introduces strategies that will enable you to build a routine for accepting, prioritizing, implementing, and responding to revision-oriented feedback on your writing. While these strategies will be useful for processing feedback on many kinds of scholarly writing, this workshop will focus on the complexities of working with feedback on longer genres, such as drafts for theses, dissertations, and research articles.
Building a Better Relationship with Your Writing
Online workshop
Are you struggling with the challenges of graduate-level writing but not sure how to address them? Are you finding it difficult to implement the writing advice you’ve received? Are you feeling stuck at a particular stage of your writing practice? This workshop will offer an opportunity to calibrate your relationship with process-related, psychological, and normative aspects of academic writing in the unique context of graduate study. We will work through a reflective writing audit designed to help you recognize your areas of writing strength, identify areas of your writing that would benefit from further training, and take ownership of writing approaches that work for you.
Graduate Writing for Engineers 2: Troubleshooting Tips
Offered as In-person and Online course
This four-week, in-person and online course builds on foundational writing strategies by introducing protocols for troubleshooting writing-related issues that emerge during the drafting process. Participants will complete weekly writing exercises and receive feedback on their work.