ESSAI
Volume 10 (2012)
Created in 2002 by a cross-disciplinary faculty, ESSAI, The College of DuPage Anthology of Academic Writing Across the Curriculum is an annual academic journal that represents a unique but inclusive discourse community of student writers; it fosters student success through writing across the curriculum and in all levels of learning at College of DuPage. It rests on our belief that writing empowers and prepares our students for meaningful careers and advanced academic pursuits and that, to realize such goals, the entire college community is responsible for incorporating writing into their courses as a vital part of the academic experience at our college.
Like all the past volumes, this Volume X continues to harvest our belief in fertile cooperation with our cross-disciplinary faculty who implement writing to learn and promote discipline in their teaching. Some of the published essays, therefore, have resulted because our students made use of journals, logs, microthemes, and other informal writing assignments encouraged in the classroom. In this way, students wrote frequently and improved their writing skills enabling them to comprehend better and to retain information longer. Others – expository work such as reports, article reviews, criticisms, research papers – attest to students’ successful participation in academic discourse according to the conventions of language use and style expected in specific disciplines.
That we practice the philosophy of student success through good writing will become even more apparent in the journal’s name. It harkens back and pays homage to Michel de Montaigne whose seminal style of writing “essais” connoted one of trials and attempts. Thus ESSAI chronicles our students’ intellectual trials wherein they dialogically encounter diverse culturescapes, critically weigh various issues at hand and then engage in analytical exercises, while each evolving from a personal to a public writing self. The resulting published work is their expanded cultural and epistemological self endowed with talent, sophistication, and fresh scholarship, all expressed with clarity, eloquence, and grace.
We continue our editorial tradition in making the best selections for publication. The most exemplary of the year’s submissions are those that:
- Are completed according to assignments’ purposes
- Have mechanics, grammar, and other technical points in place
- Are imaginative, creative, logical, and risk-taking with respect to assignments’ purposes
- Exhibit clarity of writing with respect to purposes
- Follow the disciplinary format
- Include relevant literature reviews where required
- Demonstrate analytical abilities
- Generate interest
Join with us in honoring the exceptional talents of our student authors and our student artist whose graphic design adorns our cover. And watch for Volume XI of ESSAI which will be published in 2013. We appreciate your readership. Through your interest and support, our anthology will keep growing.
Prefatory Notes
Front Cover
Tanvi Gandhi, Matthew Schultz, Joe Siliquini, and Joseph Butera
Selections
Identification of Two Unknown Species of Bacteria
Anna Albrecht
Prejudice and Acceptance
Lynn Altman
Echoes of the South: Exploring Southern Dialect
Karen Arneson
From the desk of super food sleuth
Dan Barclay
Aipwa in Practice: Retracing the Pathways and Footsteps of the Inhabitants of Chuuk Lagoon
Matthew Brousil
Tracking in Public Schools: The Discussion Continues
Chris Burkett
Rebirth of Media: Online Journalism
Jordan Colbert
Renewable Raw Materials in the Industrial Chemical Industry
Christine Dahlson-Rutherford
Old Dogs and New Tricks: Analyzing Learning Within Shakespeare's 12th Night and Thomas Marlowe's Dr. Faustus
Samantha De Carlo
Backwards Benjamin
Christina Duski
Hemophilia
Charles Hall
A Difficult Path to a Rewarding Career in Surgery
Ian Haseltine
Dying to be Discovered: Miasma vs Germ Theory
Nina Kokayeff
Aphorism 257
Jeff Kort
Virtual Reality Exposure in Clinical Psychology
Patrick Noonan
Light and Dark: The Duality of Good and Evil
Kevin Prchal
Blacks on Broadway: A Trend on the Rise
Vicki Price
Redefining Relational Needs
Laura Romaine
Importance of Early Reading Intervention
Sana Shafiuddin
Hydrogen as a Renewable Energy Source from the Biophotolysis of Water Using Recombinant DNA
John Skarha
Testing Health of Baptisia alba Growing in a Reconstructed Tallgrass Prairie to Investigate How Lawn Watering Affects Plants
Jessica Steslow
Paving Our Own Future: Problems in Human Development
Marcus Tolson
Back Matter
Editorial Board
- Chemistry
- Richard Jarman
- Philosophy
- Keith Krasemann
- English
- Chikako D. Kumamoto
- Biology
- Chris Petersen
- Education
- Lois Stanciak
- History
- Ben Whisenhunt