Winter 2016 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.

General Writing Workshops

Strategic Reading
Alexandra Verini, English
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. Nota Bene: This workshop does not teach speed-reading techniques.
Friday, January 8th, 12:00-1:30pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Dissertation Writing Groups, Support Groups, and Resources for Dissertators
Dr. Tanya Brown, Counseling and Psychological Services
Marilyn Gray, Graduate Writing Center Director
Alexandra Verini, English
The workshop will provide information about resources for dissertators and thesis-writers. It will present information on writing groups and support groups, including how to run your own dissertation writing group or writing partnership. Finally, at the end of the workshop, graduate students who are interested in being placed in a writing group will stay in order to form groups and discuss scheduling. If you are interested in being in a group, fill out the writing group questionnaire and bring it to the workshop.
Tuesday, January 12th, 5:10-6:45pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

The Art of Writing the Literature Review
Stacey Meeker, Information Studies
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, January 21st, 5:10-6:50pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Email Etiquette at the University
Alexandra Verini, English
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, but open to everyone, 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, January 22nd , 12:00-1:50pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Teaching and Writing: What Teachers & TAs Need to Know
Bruce Beiderwell, Director, UCLA Writing Programs
Marilyn Gray, Director, Graduate Writing Center
This workshop, which is designed for TAs in the humanities and social sciences, will cover how to help students improve their writing and review how to teach writing concepts, such as thesis statements, organization, and summary versus analysis. The workshop will also cover appropriate ways to respond to student writing, including etiquette for commenting on student papers and best practices for one-on-one meetings with students. The workshop will also offer a few resources for writing paper prompts and integrating writing assignments into a course's design.
Tuesday, February 9th, 5:10-7:00pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Workshops on Writing Grants and Fellowships

Writing the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship Application
Marilyn Gray, Graduate Writing Center Director
Estevan Hernandez, Graduate Division Fellowship Services
This workshop will cover strategies for writing the Fulbright Hays fellowship application. We will discuss the structure and content of key documents using examples. We will cover writing tips for fellowship applications as well as specific advice for the Fulbright Hays.
Tuesday, February 2nd, 4:00-5:50pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Applying for the NIH Training Fellowship
Katelyn Caslavka, NIH Fellowship Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Diane Goldenberg, NIH Fellowship Recipient, Graduate Writing Center, Consultant
This workshop will cover the basics of an NIH NRSA application including the application process and components. We will discuss preparation, documents needed, and writing strategies. The workshop will mainly focus on NIH grant F31. The workshop will also focus on how to find appropriate materials/resources for a complete application.
Friday, February 5th, 12:00pm-1:30pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Humanities Writing Workshops

Strategies for Writing the Humanities Dissertation Prospectus
Eric Newman, English
This workshop is geared towards giving incipient prospectus writers the tools to write their prospectus over the course of two months. We will discuss literature review and argument development as well as how to turn the many different pieces of a prospectus into a coherent document. Nota bene: this is meant to be an addition to--not a substitution for--serious discussions with your advisor about what is expected of you in your home department.
Tuesday, January 26th, 5:30-7:30pm
Location: Bunche Hall, Room 6275

Social Sciences Writing Workshops

Strategies for Writing the Social Sciences Dissertation Proposal
Stacey Meeker, Information Studies
This workshop will give an overview of the main components of a dissertation proposal in the social sciences and cover strategies for writing the introduction, literature review, methods, and significance sections. These strategies should be adapted to your department's and advisor's expectations about the structure and content of your proposal. If you have preliminary drafts of an abstract or research questions, please bring them.
Thursday, February 4th, 5:30-7:30pm
Location: Bunche Hall, Room 6275

Preparing a Conference Poster in the Social Sciences
Anne Blackstock-Bernstein, Education
This workshop will cover strategies for designing and presenting conference posters. We will examine various template styles, discuss expected content, and review tips for orally presenting your poster. We will also identify various campus resources for printing posters.
Thursday, February 25th, 5:10-6:15pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Conference Proposals and Presentations in the Social Sciences
Anne Blackstock-Bernstein, Education
This workshop will cover strategies for preparing conference proposals/abstracts and for presenting papers orally at conferences. We will address the expected content of a submission as well as the structure and aesthetics of typical 10-20 minute presentations. We will specifically focus on using PowerPoint as a platform.
Tuesday, March 1st, 5:10-7:00pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Science and Engineering Writing Workshops

Applying for the NIH Training Fellowship
Katelyn Caslavka, NIH Fellowship Recipient, Graduate Writing Center Consultant
Diane Goldenberg, NIH Fellowship Awardee, Graduate Writing Center, Consultant
This workshop will cover the basics of an NIH NRSA application including the application process and components. We will discuss preparation, documents needed, and writing strategies. The workshop will mainly focus on NIH grant F31. The workshop will also focus on how to find appropriate materials/resources for a complete application.
Friday, February 5th, 12:00pm-1:30pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Preparing a Conference Poster in the Sciences
Katelyn Caslavka, Biochemistry
This workshop will cover strategies for preparing and presenting a poster at conferences. We will address how to write an abstract for a poster presentation and general content and structure of presented posters. We will also discuss how to use PowerPoint to format a poster.
Friday, February 19th, 12:00-1:00pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

ESL Workshops

Academic Writing Skills Workshop for ESL Graduate Students
Alexandra Verini, English
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.
Friday, January 15th , 12:00-1:50pm
Location: Conference Room 4, Student Activities Center (basement level) ( map )

Statistical Software Workshops and Consultation

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

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

Research Workshops

The Research Library periodically offers workshops designed to give students a jump start on working with library resources, as well as sessions on citation management applications (that make collecting and citing sources easy), Social Explorer (a powerful tool for combining census data with maps), and teaching techniques (geared toward TA’s in the humanities and social sciences, but open to all).

For more details about workshops, please contact Margarita Nafpaktitis ( nafpaktitis@library.ucla.edu ). And see our website for the most complete and current list of Library workshop offerings.

Footnote Fridays: Drop-In Help with Formatting Citations in Zotero or EndNote
Fridays, Feb 12 – Mar 4, 2016 - 11:00am to 12:00pm
Research Library (Charles E. Young)
Drop-in Research Help
Stop in for help with formatting footnotes and bibliographies using Zotero or EndNote citation management apps.

Intro to Maps and GIS at UCLA
Wednesday, Feb 17, 2016 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Research Library (Charles E. Young)
East Classroom
This workshop offers an overview of the print map collection and GIS data/software that UCLA Library provides. We begin by a reading a map and going over the basic elements that make one up. Next we talk about how to discover print maps within UCLA Library. Lastly, we do a very brief overview of various GIS resources, including "GIS light" databases (PolicyMap, SimplyMap, Social Explorer) and more advanced software like ArcGIS. If you think you might end up doing a map related project this quarter or one coming then this workshop is for you.
No previous GIS experience needed. This will be conversational. Bring questions! During the workshop we will take a brief tour of the Henry J. Bruman Map Collection
Taught by Andy Rutkowski, Geospatial Librarian.

Introduction to Zotero
Tuesday, Feb 23, 2016 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Research Library (Charles E. Young)
Research Commons Classroom
Find out about the purpose, uses, and features of Zotero, a free, open-source application that helps researchers manage references and notes and create formatted bibliographies.
Taught by Margarita Nafpaktitis, librarian, Charles E. Young Research Library.

EndNote for the Social Sciences and Humanities
Wednesday, Feb 24, 2016 - 2:00pm to 3:15pm
Research Library (Charles E. Young)
East Classroom
This hands-on session offers an overview of EndNote, a citation management software program that helps researchers manage and organize their references, and automatically create and format citations and bibliographies.
Taught by Gabriella Gray, librarian, Charles E. Young Research Library.
Discovering Data and Making Maps
Research Library (Charles E. Young)
East Classroom
February 16th 6:00-7:15pm
February 18th 6:00-7:15pm

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.

To see the most current schedule of UCLA Library workshops, consult the UCLA Library seminar page.