Professional Writing Certificate

Program Description

The Professional Writing Certificate offers students the opportunity to develop skills in preparation for a career in writing or to improve and enhance their writing skills in any professional career. Students will learn to design and write texts that meet professional needs, such as reports, proposals, social media, scripts, and user manuals. Given the importance of clear written and multimodal communication in nearly every profession, the Professional Writing Certificate is an ideal complement to any degree path and a helpful and timely credential for working professionals to add to their resume. The variety of courses will enable students to develop their writing interests and goals, whether in business writing, rhetoric, creative writing, editing and publishing, or any combination of these.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this certificate, student will be able to:

1. produce coherent texts within common professional forms for different audiences and contexts.
2. revise documents for rhetorical purposes to clarify and improve messaging.
3. employ careful sentence-level editing in final drafts with accuracy in syntax, grammar, semantics, and punctuation.
4. demonstrate strong critical thinking skills through writing for a variety of audiences, purposes, and situations.\\n
5. use technology ethically and effectively to produce professional texts for a variety of purposes.

Certificate Requirements

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enrollment in these courses is restricted to program majors