Carnegie Mellon University ... In a study at George Washington University (2007), first-year undergraduates reported that the most frequently assigned high school writing tasks required them to offer and support opinions, with a secondary emphasis on summarizing and synthesizing information. ... Writing Checklist to Assess Pre-Course Writing Skills
The course location is included in CMU's Schedule of Classes and will be included in your schedule. If any location changes need to occur your TA will notify you of the location. Early Access answer only : There are no weekly recitations during Early Access sections; however, if you do not complete the course during Early Access, you are expecting to attend weekly …
How do Carnegie Mellon’s first-year writing courses prepare students for academic writing?. Currently the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon has two courses that introduce students to writing at the college level. As one might expect, these courses cannot provide students instruction and practice in all genres of writing, so it is imperative that we understand what we …
Teach Your Course First Day of Class Instructional Strategies Lectures Discussions Case Studies Writing What is the value Why are students poorly prepared First-year writing courses Gauge writing proficiency Help students become better writers Design effective writing assignments
CMU has many courses that run for an entire semester, and you will see these on the Schedule of Classes as 12‐unit (or occasionally 9‐unit) classes. You will also see 3 or 6‐unit mini‐classes listed under section (SEC) as either an A1, A2, A3, or A4‐mini. A mini course runs only half a semester.
Carnegie Mellon University defines a quality point as a point value times units for a given course. QPAs are calculated according to the following formula: Semester QPA: quality points divided by factorable units. Undergraduate courses are not factorable into the QPA for graduate students.
Although the University encourages the exploration of other disciplines, access to courses outside a student's primary major (including those courses that fulfill requirements for an additional major, minor, etc.) is on a space-available basis and is not guaranteed.
Students must have a total of 360 units to graduate with a minimum Q.P.A. of 2.0.
A student must submit a Grade Option Request Form to Enrollment Services indicating the course they are electing as pass/fail before the end of the university's withdraw period. This decision is irreversible thereafter. No information regarding the student's decision will be passed on to the instructor.Apr 3, 2018
Students' quality point average (QPA) is the same as a GPA. The QPA is calculated by dividing the total number of credit hours attempted in classes with A–F letter grades into the total number of quality points earned.
Non-SCS students: CMU students in majors outside of SCS can apply for transfer into the Computer Science major or a dual degree in Computer Science using this online form.
The transfer acceptance rate for Carnegie Mellon is 7.26%. This clearly indicates how difficult the transfer process is. Well, the students must fulfil certain important requisites for completing the transfer process.Apr 7, 2021
Students who complete an additional major will earn a single degree in two areas. Generally, it is possible to fulfill the requirements of both majors in four years by taking the course requirements of the second major in the elective spaces allowed by the first major.
Request that your secondary school counselor submit all secondary school transcripts, including senior year courses and a school profile, to the Office of Admission as close to January 3 as possible, but no later than January 7. Mid-year grades should be submitted as soon as possible after they become available.
36 unitsFull-time is defined by a minimum of 36 units. Permission to drop below the 36 unit minimum must be granted by the student's Associate Dean. Undergraduates who are registered as part-time are also subject to the above deadlines to drop or withdraw from a course.
17.3% (2020)Carnegie Mellon University / Acceptance rateCarnegie Mellon University admissions is most selective with an acceptance rate of 17%. Half the applicants admitted to Carnegie Mellon University have an SAT score between 1460 and 1560 or an ACT score of 33 and 35.
The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Since the success of Iron Man in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has expanded to include 20 films, including Avengers: Infinity War, the highest-grossing film of 2018. This extensive commercial success has spawned media discussion of the artistic and generic merits of the films, but also varied and rich scholarly and popular debate on the films’ relationships to ideological issues as democracy, surveillance, heroism and authoritarianism, and representations of racial minorities and gender. Building on theoretical work in rhetoric, pop culture studies, and political science, we will examine the role of the superhero film in contemporary society. Why are Marvel films so popular and what does this popularity say about 21st century America? What is the relationship between pop culture and cultural values and ideals, especially those that are politically or intellectually-driven? Students are not required to have any prior knowledge or experience in this area, although the course assignments will include some film watching outside of class in order to highlight and deepen topics from the readings.
76108 courses focus upon teaching skills for communicating a need for change in practice or policy, interacting with stakeholders with professional consideration, and for producing oral, written, and visual communication to make a nonacademic proposal for change. The skills you’ll encounter in this course are highlighted below.
76-100 is a portfolio-based, academic reading and writing course for multilingual students, particularly those who are not native speakers of English or who consider English to be their weaker language . In the course, students develop a rhetorical and linguistic toolkit of resources for accommodating the needs of readers within a North American university context. Students read and write short arguments and then revise those arguments throughout the semester for their portfolios. By the end of the course, students should be able to articulate a stronger understanding of themselves as writers of academic English, which should include identifying particular areas of strength and areas that they need to develop further. Students who take this course qualify through an online placement test that is administered through the university prior to the fall semester.
Race, American Identity, and Public Policy In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois claimed that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” In the 21st Century, suggestions that America is entering a post-racial era have been answered by controversies, social movements, and demographic trends that reveal the persistent relevance of "race" to notions of identity and to questions of public policy. In this course you will have the opportunity to investigate how ideas about “race” relate to processes of establishing and maintaining cultural, economic, political, and social boundaries; individual and national identity; or contemporary policy debates. To support your investigation, you will learn and practice strategies for critically analyzing arguments in a range of academic and popular genres, prepare group and individual presentations, and write three major papers, with the third developing a contribution to a specific, ongoing discussion in a particular community of inquiry.
The Sociology of Video Games In 2014, a series of events now referred to as Gamergate revealed widespread misogyny throughout the larger male-dominated gaming community. Initially debating the ethics of video game journalists, the conversation became loaded with violent threats and the defamation of female video game developers. While the outcome of Gamergate is still hotly debated in relation to the parties involved, one thing was made clear: video games are no longer a niche interest. With over half of the American population reported to play video games, they now outsell the global box office, making video games a new dominant form of media. The virtual societies of video games enable us to participate in experiences difficult to capture through other means, while also paralleling real world power structures and prejudices. How can we understand video games as tools for social change? How does a post-Gamergate gaming community move forward without abandoning the work of the past? How do we define video games? In terms of goals, interaction, or technology? The goal of this class is to investigate these questions surrounding video games, while also considering issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation in relation to the history of video games. The course requires no previous knowledge of or experience with video games, and some assignments will include playing relevant games that highlight the issues we'll be discussing in our readings. We will read various articles addressing the sociological issues of games, and students will be asked to write their own papers analyzing, critiquing, and synthesizing these perspectives, leading to a final paper where they will craft their own contribution on how we can understand video games as tools for sociological reflection and progress.
The philosopher of art Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in his essay “Eye and Mind,” “There is clearly no one master key of the visible.” This course uses two- and three-dimensional art objects (painting, sculpture, and possibly architecture or photography) to introduce a variety of academic reading and writing practices that enable students to discuss artworks and visual evidence from multiple perspectives. First, we will examine how art historians describe visual art and practice this skill. The class will analyze how writers make claims about art, provide reasoning, and use visual support to argue for ways of seeing art objects in an academic context. We will then encounter a series of approaches to thesis-driven writing on art, focusing on the “lenses” of personal and period style, biography, and iconographic analysis. At this stage, you’ll compare one of our academic texts to a piece of art writing for the public to reflect on how genre, purpose and audience shape a writer’s rhetorical strategies. These reflections will help us to consider how such strategies vary based on context, and thus to reflect on how the work of this class carries beyond our classroom. Finally, having developed strategies for deep analysis and clear argumentation, you will apply a lens to produce your own academic argument about the significance of a chosen art object or set of objects.
Virtue or Violence: Choosing a Response to Conflict Are virtues such as kindness, honesty, compassion, and a shared sense of responsibility a viable response to conflict? An automatic reply for most people would be, “yes ”; however, even a quick news or social media investigation of national and local response to current conflicts suggests that coercion, manipulation, and violence are at least common first reactions. Arguments have been made that specific acts of violence can lessen future acts of violence, perhaps the most extreme being the use of the atomic bomb in World War II. Despite the prevalence of violence as a response to situations, there is ample evidence that people who choose nonviolent, enacted virtue can make a significant difference in social policy and behavior in the public sphere (e.g., Gandhi, King, Mother Teresa, Nightingale, E. Roosevelt, Chief Joseph, Schindler, Parks, Carter, Mandela, Thoreau). This course will explore the efficacy of virtue as a viable, nonviolent response to conflict and the value in considering an alternative to violence and selfish individualism when dealing with conflict and disagreement. We will consider questions about shared responsibility in communities, historical perspectives on virtue in civic life, and the influence of virtue outside social relations in fields such as economics, science, and technology. The class is not about praising virtue per se but about investigating where it is valued and what are its effects in outcomes in different fields while still engaging respectfully with others in our community who believe that violent ways of meeting conflict are more efficacious or perhaps simply inevitable.
A student who wants to take a course as pass/fail is required to register for the course and submit the Pass/Fail Approval Form to the INI Academic Affairs Office (AAO) for approval from the student's Academic Advisor and the Director of the INI.
Typically, INI students are waitlisted for courses due to either the popularity of the subject matter or so departments can ensure that the students who need the courses to graduate have priority. This is common in all departments (including the INI) during the registration period, and it does not mean that you will not be enrolled in the course.
The purpose of the INI Independent Study course is to allow students to expand and enhance their educational experience and professional preparation beyond the scope of existing courses, projects and experiences at Carnegie Mellon University.
You may take a maximum of 48 units per semester. Students generally take 36-48 units per semester. If you would like to take more than the maximum units, you must submit a petition to the INI Academic Affairs Office, who will then forward it to the advisor committee for review.
In addition, if the student's petition is about a class, they must include the course syllabus.