Arts Studies in Research and Writing
The mandate of Arts Studies in Research and Writing is to support undergraduate students’ participation in the research culture of our UBC community . At a research-intensive university like UBC, students have the opportunity to learn how new knowledge is being produced, disseminated, and applied across the many disciplines that constitute our community. But if UBC graduates are to become agents of positive change themselves as knowledge brokers and knowledge makers, then they must first learn to feel at home in our research community by participating actively in its social practices.
As newcomers to communities can attest, feeling at home is strongly associated with being comfortable using the language of the new community.. You cannot join in the conversation if you do not have the right language, the right literacy. Whether English is the first or fourth language of a student, all our students must acquire the language of their majors and learn how to use it in both speech and writing. Our goal, therefore, is to facilitate students’ development of academic literacy over the course of their studies. We do so by introducing students to disciplinary discourses through courses such as ASTU 150, by assisting and supporting faculty in mounting Research and Writing Intensive courses in Arts and Science disciplines, and by fostering undergraduate participation in a variety of student-led scholarly activities.