Fall 2017 Writing and Research Workshops

The Graduate Writing Center offers a wide variety of writing workshops, ranging from general to more specialized topics, such as academic genres, writing in certain disciplinary areas, or writing English as a Second Language. We also provide information on workshops and services from selected campus offices that provide assistance with research, data management, and data analysis. Special thanks to our campus programming partners: the UCLA Library, Writing Programs, the Institute for Digital Research and Education, Counseling and Psychological Services, and the Career Center.

Past Workshops

Summer Boot Camps

General Workshops

Strategic Reading
Alexandra Verini, English, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Allison Collins, Comparative Literature, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Feeling overwhelmed by your reading lists? Concerned that you are missing the point of what you have just read? Are you taking pages of notes for every article you read? This workshop will cover effective reading and note-taking strategies so that you read more efficiently, assess your reading with a critical eye, and annotate each work so that important concepts are easily accessible. Note: This workshop does not teach speed-reading techniques.
1) Wednesday, October 4th, 3:30-5:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )
2) Thursday, October 5th, 3:30-5:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Writing a Literature Review
Marilyn Gray, Director, Graduate Writing Center
Kathryn Renton, History, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will cover strategies and best practices for writing a literature review, including note-taking strategies, writing process issues, and common organizational patterns. The workshop focus will be on literature reviews for original research projects but will be generally helpful for all literature reviews.
Thursday, October 19th, 5:10-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Policy Writing: Best Practices in White Paper and Memo Writing
Drew Westmoreland, Epidemiology, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop provides an overview of best practices in memo and white paper writing as seen in policy-related fields (e.g., urban planning, public policy, public health, business and education). We will discuss the purpose, organization, and style of this genre of writing. Then we will apply this knowledge through an in-depth analysis of exemplar papers. This workshop is designed to enable you to write effective memos and white papers for graduate and professional settings.
Thursday, October 26th, 5:10-6:45 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Writing the Personal Statement
Allison Collins, Comparative Literature, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will cover strategies for writing personal statements for fellowship applications, internships, and Ph.D. programs. Among other topics, we will discuss organization, introductions and conclusions, and use of examples. Students from all schools and departments are welcome to attend. If you are currently working on a personal statement, we encourage you to bring your draft to the workshop.
Friday, October 27th, 12:00-1:30 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Getting Started on the Master's Thesis
Tahseen Shams, Sociology, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Bobby Smith, English, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will give an overview of how to write a master's thesis. It will include writing activities and discussion to help participants develop their thesis topics. We will also present strategies for organizing research and literature reviews, as well as tips for drafting and revision.
Tuesday, November 7th, 5:10-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )
Master's Thesis Writing Program: Would you be interested in a writing consultant mentor while working on your master's thesis or qualifying paper? If so, please fill out the questionnaire linked here.

Workshops on Writing Grants and Fellowships

Applying for the NIH Training Fellowship
Alexander Sun, NIH Fellowship Recipient, Graduate Writing Center, Consultant
This workshop will cover the application process and required components of an NIH NRSA application.. We will discuss preparation, documents needed, and writing strategies. The workshop will mainly focus on NIH Grant F31, but F30 and F32 are very similar. The workshop will also address how to find appropriate materials/resources for a complete application.
Friday, September 29th, 12:00-1:30 PM
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Writing Successful Grant and Fellowship Applications (Humanities and Social Science focus)
Eric Newman, Mellon Grant Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will first briefly review funding opportunities for graduate students in humanities, social sciences, and related fields. The workshop will then focus on strategies for writing effective applications for grants and fellowships to support graduate study and research, especially for students seeking doctorates and research MAs. The workshop will also cover tips for organizing the application process.
Wednesday, October 4th, 5:15-7:15 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Jenna Cummings, NSF GRF Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Ariella Machness, NSF GRF Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Tahseen Shams, NSF GRF Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Estevan Hernandez, Graduate Division Fellowship Services
This workshop will discuss strategies for applying for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Open to US citizens in the Social, Physical, and Biological Sciences, this highly competitive fellowship provides three years of fellowship funding to successful applicants. The workshop will focus on the intellectual merit and broader impacts criteria for NSF grants, the structure of the research proposal and personal statement, suggestions for writing style, and tips for Fastlane submission.
Thursday, October 5th, 5:15-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Writing Successful Grant and Fellowship Applications (Science and Engineering Focus)
Jonathan Chang, NSF DIG Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Ariella Machness, NSF GRF Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will first briefly review funding opportunities for graduate students in sciences and engineering. The workshop will then focus on strategies for writing effective applications for grants and fellowships to support graduate study and research, especially for students seeking doctorates and research MAs. The workshop will also cover tips for organizing the application process.
Friday, October 6th, 2:00-4:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Writing Successful Fellowships in the Humanities and Arts
Eric Newman, English, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop offers a comprehensive overview of successful strategies for writing winning grant and fellowship proposals to support your graduate research and writing. Focusing on the most common application components — the research proposal and the personal statement —the workshop will guide students in how to stage their work, its scholarly intervention and plans for research in ways that will best appeal to grant and fellowship review committees. We will also discuss time management and scheduling strategies that will help students develop an effective plan for writing application materials, securing letters of recommendation and producing polishing applications against a deadline.
Friday, October 20th, 2:00-4:00 PM
Location: Royce Hall 334C

Humanities Writing Workshops

Writing Effectively in the Humanities
Eric Newman, English, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will cover strategies for effective and efficient graduate-level writing in the humanities and arts. Grappling with the bread and butter genres of the Humanities — the seminar paper, the conference presentation and the peer-reviewed journal article — the workshop will address how to discover and stage your argument, engage with critics in your field(s), identify your contribution to scholarship and improve the structure of graduate student writing. The workshop will also review time management strategies that help produce strong, impactful writing on a deadline.
Thursday, November 2nd, 5:10-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) (map)

Social Sciences Writing Workshops

Writing Effectively in the Social Sciences
Drew Westmoreland, Epidemiology, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will cover strategies for writing and revising graduate-level course papers in the social sciences. In this workshop we will discuss ways to develop papers for graduate courses, including how to develop a more complex thesis and how to write a literature review. A few pointers on the differences between qualitative and quantitative papers will be covered as well.
Thursday, October 12th, 5:10-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Science and Engineering Writing Workshops

Practical Tips for Writing a Scientific Paper
Ariella Machness, Material Science Engineering, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
This workshop will cover the basics of how to plan for, prepare, and organize science-specific writing, including term papers, manuscripts and abstracts. We will also cover style, common structure, active versus passive voice, and first pronoun versus third pronoun usage. We will offer tips for avoiding problems such as excess jargon and ambiguously stated hypotheses.
Thursday, November 9th, 5:10-6:45 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

ESL Workshops

Academic Writing Skills Workshop for ESL Graduate Students
Adrienne Lynett, Applied Linguistics, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
In this interactive workshop, ESL graduate students will learn skills and strategies to build their fluency, accuracy, and comprehensibility in English academic writing. In addition, we will discuss useful on-campus, online, and print resources that will help students to work independently to improve their writing. There will also be time for questions and answers about ESL writing issues and concerns.
Tuesday, October 3rd, 5:15-7:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Email Etiquette at the University
Alexandra Verini, English, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
A graduate student will write hundreds of emails while getting his or her degree—emails that invite professors to serve on thesis/dissertation committees, emails that ask for extensions on papers, emails in which graduate students introduce themselves to potential mentors or advisors. Designed for graduate students who speak English as a second or foreign language, this workshop breaks down the language necessary to make polite requests over email. It also covers basic email etiquette and includes opportunities to edit real example emails written by graduate students.
Friday, October 6th, 12:00-2:00 PM
Location: Conference Room 3, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Statistical Software Workshops and Consultation

Current and former workshops: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/seminars/default.htm

Introduction to Stata
Monday, October 2 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon in CLICC Classroom B Stata is a powerful and yet easy-to-use statistical package that runs on Windows, Macintosh and Unix platforms. This class is designed for people who are just getting started using Stata. The students in the class will have a hands-on experience using Stata for statistics, graphics and data management. The class notes can be found at https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/stata/seminars/notes/ . Sign up at https://idre.ucla.edu/calendar-event/introduction-to-stata-3 .

Introduction to SAS
Monday, October 9, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon in CLICC Classroom B SAS is a powerful statistical package that runs on many platforms, including Windows and Unix. This class is designed for people who are just getting started using SAS. The students in the class will have a hands-on experience using SAS for statistics, graphics and data management. The class notes can be found at https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/sas/seminars/notes/. Sign up at https://idre.ucla.edu/calendar-event/introduction-to-spss-3 .

Introduction to SPSS
Monday, October 16, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon in CLICC Classroom B SPSS is a very easy-to-use statistical package that runs on Windows, Macintosh and UNIX platforms. This class is designed for people who are just starting to use SPSS. The students in the class will have a hands-on experience using SPSS for doing statistics, graphics and data management. The class notes are the scripts for the class. The class notes can be found at https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/spss/seminars/notes/ . Sign up here https://idre.ucla.edu/calendar-event/introduction-to-spss-4 .

For walk-in consulting information, Stat books for loan, and the most up-to-date listing of seminars, please see the Statistical Consulting Services web page of the Institute for Digital Research and Education. The Statistical Consulting Services also keep an extensive archive of past workshops.

Research Workshops at the Library

Citation Management: Overview
An introduction to citation management software, including a comparison of EndNote and Zotero to help you choose the program best for you.
Wednesday, November 1st, 2:00-3:30 PM
Location: Research Library (Charles E. Young) Research Commons (RC) Classroom

Citation Management: Zotero
An introduction to Zotero citation management software.
Wednesday, November 8th, 2:00-3:30 PM
Location: Research Library (Charles E. Young) Research Commons (RC) Classroom

Citation Management: EndNote
This hands-on session offers an overview of the EndNote citation management software program, which helps researchers manage and organize their references and automatically create and format citations and bibliographies. Wednesday, November 15th, 2:00-3:30 PM
Location: Research Library (Charles E. Young) Research Commons (RC) Classroom

To see the most complete, current schedule of UCLA Library workshops, consult the UCLA Library research workshop page.

Click the link below for more information about the research and teaching support offered by the UCLA Library: http://www.library.ucla.edu/support

Research Guides
Online research guides link to key resources and reference books for certain courses and disciplines. Subject guides, course guides, and general research guides are available.

Research Appointments
Graduate students are encouraged to contact the Library's subject specialists for more specialized and personalized assistance with research, library resources, and subject databases; find a complete list of all subject specialists here.

Copyright Questions
Contact the Library's copyright experts for assistance with copyright, publishing, intellectual property, and other related issues at copyright@library.ucla.edu.