Chris Thaiss, Ph.D. - Professor Emeritus of Writing and Rhetoric, UC Davis
Learning to Write and Writing to Learn in STEM
Spring 2023
Dr. Thaiss described strategies for:
- improving students’ reading of scientific articles
- making peer review an essential part of students’ writing process
- helping STEM students learn to write for specialist readers and for more popular audiences
Chris Thaiss is Professor Emeritus of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of California, Davis, where he directed the cross-disciplinary University Writing Program and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He came to Davis from George Mason University (VA), where he founded the Writing Across the Curriculum Program, directed the Writing Center, and chaired the Department of English. From 2005 to 2015, he coordinated the International Network of Writing across the Curriculum Programs. From 2016 to 2022, he participated in sensory descriptive analysis panels in Davis’s Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. His fourteen books include Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century (2019), A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to the Modern United States (2020, with James Murphy), Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life (2006, with Terry Myers Zawacki), and Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places (2012, lead editor). His work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Across the Disciplines, The WAC Journal, and Cell Biology, Life Sciences Education. His teaching has included undergraduate courses in writing in science and business/technical writing, as well as graduate courses in the teaching of writing and writing program administration.
