COIL Duluth and Quito (Spring 2026)

 Hello, everyone. Some students from USF Quito have volunteered to help us review the submissions (in art and literature) from an Ecuadorian student in the United States, written in Spanish.  We are thrilled at this collaboration. Here is what the students in Duluth are hoping for from the students in Quito: 1.  How would you evaluate the submissions technically?  Would you call the art well-executed?  Would you call the poetry well-written?   2.  How well do the submissions fit the theme of "distance."  When you read or view them, do you feel emotions or experiences that evoke distance as a theme? 3.  Which would you publish in our book?  Consider each submission, one at a time. 3.  Most importantly, for the ones you would publish, what order would you publish them in?  Would you publish them together or would you publish one, then one by another author, so they don't appear side by side?  Or are they better if read ...

I want to talk a little bit about why issues that divide urban and rural are important to me. I'm a first-generation college student.  In fact, if you trace my family back to 1900, I am only the sixth person to graduate middle school and the fourth person to graduate college.  My dad was a soldier,  my grandpa was a custodian, and my great-grandfather was a longshoreman.  Education and the professional life was not what my family understood.  (When I was accepted into graduate school, my great-grandfather asked "Wasn't it time to quit this school foolishness and get a job?) I was brainy and I had no mechanical aptitude.  By their reckoning, I was supposed to be a priest. So I care a lot about what divides people, and a lot of the things that divided me from my family divide rural from urban.  Education level is an easy one -- urban people tend to have higher education levels because higher education is easier to seek.  Income follows education, to...

  First, UMD students talk about your understandings of the urban-rural spectrum in Minnesota -- (300 words, cite the class readings). USFQ students, then, respond with your own experience and expertise.

  First, UMD students talk about your understandings of the urban-rural spectrum in Ecuador -- (300 words, cite the class readings). USFQ students, then, respond with your own experience and expertise.

  Use your favorite research tool to find a reputable and meaningful distinction between rural and urban areas.  Cite and summarize your understanding of those distinctions (100 words).   Then, using that definition, talk about the difference between urban and rural in your experience.  Sometimes, we have lived in both.  Sometimes, we have lived in one and visited the other.  And sometimes, we might think, we have lived or visited some third spaces (suburban? exurban? ) that are not quite either one.  If that has been your experience, too, let us know. (200 words) Finally, write about some dimensions of the urban-rural spectrum that you think might be left out in your researched definitions. (200 words)

 I thought it would be fun to talk, for a little bit, about why we do all of this rhetoric stuff. Dr. Newman and I both have degrees in "rhetoric, scientific, and technical communication."  What that means is that we have studied the ways that people deploy rhetoric to communicate about technical and scientific issues.   Rhetoric, is, then, from one perspective, how people get things done in the world.  It's a set of strategies and tactics and even tricks to help people do things, accomplish goals.  Rhetoric is how a politician convinces people that their positions are worth a vote.  Rhetoric is how a preacher convinces a congregation that they should donate to charity.  (The rhetoric of preaching even has its own name, "homiletics." Rhetoric is also a tool for analysis -- it's a tool that helps us explain why or how a communication strategy might have contributed to human history.  We can't guarantee that a politician's rhetoric explains why...

  Read Jay Heinrichs, Chapters 18-19.   Describe a moment when you saw "the identity strategy" (or "identification") in action.  You could describe a moment you deployed the identity strategy in attempting to communicate with someone else or a moment you felt it being used on you.  You can describe the way you saw it working in a televised speech, a written essay, or a dialogue in a television show, movie, or drama. You can use political examples, as a politician tries to win your vote, or you can talk about the moment you tried to convince your teacher that you deserved a better grade.  Big stakes or small, personal or public, choose an example that really lets you explain what the identity strategy is and how it works.   To complete this, you will need to summarize the communication interaction you are talking about. (50 words) You will need to define the tools of the identity strategy you saw at work.  Support your definition using quotati...