All first-year students, except those in the university's
Honors Program, take at least two first-year writing courses offered by the
Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse (WRD). Some students begin with
WRD 102, which prepares students for college writing. All students take
WRD 103, a course about the forms, methods, expectations, and conventions of writing at the university level, and
WRD 104, a course about conducting academic research and writing papers that make defensible arguments and incorporate material from a variety of sources.
Students in the Honors Program take
HON 100 Rhetoric and Critical Inquiry.