By Lindsey Lewis
“There’s just so much change.”
It’s a phrase that UCSB Writing Program faculty member Craig Cotich kept encountering in both academia and the workplace beyond campus. These words lit a spark in the director of the professional editing track of the Professional Writing Minor, and he created a new course titled Writing for Change, that combines his experience in consulting and teaching.
Craig Cotich, a continuing lecturer in UCSB’s Writing Program, has created a new course “Writing for Change.”
The course teaches strategies to overcome resistance to change from the books “Switch” by Heath and Heath, and “The Human Element” by Nordgren and Schontal,” focusing on subconscious obstacles such as emotion and effort. Students apply these strategies to changing their choices across various coursework — including a personal change assignment and an organizational change assignment. The curriculum stresses innovation and creativity, allowing students to explore topics that range from addressing family challenges to navigating complex societal transformations.
“This class is for anybody who wants to make changes in their own lives or who wants to effect change at the organizational, societal, or global level,” Cotich said.
While the course material aims to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills, Cotich also employs a creative style of teaching, incorporating the use of storytelling, as well as his own hand-drawn illustrations to engage students.
Writing for Change is open to upper-division students and opened for enrollment for the first time this Spring. It is on track to be offered again in the 2024-25 school year. Cotich recently spoke in an interview about the new course.
1. What inspired you to create Writing for Change?
In the consulting I do with local companies and in my experience with friends in the workforce, I was struck by how often they talked about the amount of change they were experiencing at work. Anytime I asked somebody “How’s it going?” they would always say “It’s good, there’s just so much change.” So I was thinking, “How do I create some type of training for them?” That’s originally how it started, because I was thinking I could offer this at companies. But then I thought, you know, Writing for Change, that’s something I wish that we had at UCSB. That’s when I started developing it for UCSB instead.
2. In teaching these strategies to students, what did you hope they would take out of it for the future?
Hand-drawings by UCSB Writing Program faculty member Craig Cotich used in one of his lectures in the new course “Writing for Change.”
I want to give people the skills and concepts they can apply to their own life before they start thinking, “How do I apply it to an organization?” It’s great to hear important ideas but unless we actually do something about it, nothing changes. I’m sick of hearing about climate change and nothing happens. I’m tired of hearing about how broken our political system is but nothing happens. On and on, you watch the news and you ask, “Why can’t we do anything?” And yet, there are ways to increase the chances that people will act.
3. Why was it important to incorporate your own drawings into your lectures?
A few years ago, I did a small project with a “brand evangelist” for a software company, and his job was to present about the company at various events. He hand-drew all of his slides, and I was blown away. I felt such a stronger connection to the slides and to the content, given that he had designed each slide by tailoring it to the content. As a kid, I spent a lot of time drawing and painting and have always loved art. In all of my classes, I use visuals—mainly photographs—to represent the concepts I’m trying to speak to. But the drawback of the photograph is that you’re limited to what’s available. I knew that I could create much more tailored visuals for each concept. I could draw exactly what I wanted to convey, not an approximation of it from a photograph. The process was super time-intensive, but I actually found it really relaxing. I don’t even like to think about how many hours went into creating the hundreds of slides I drew, but I do hope that students experience the content in new ways based on the presentation of the content.
4. I’ve noticed that your teaching style emphasizes storytelling. Why have you chosen this approach, and have you found it is better for learning?
Absolutely. Early in my teaching, as students were presenting final projects at the end of the quarter, I noticed how ineffective the “traditional” method of presenting was, with students reading off bulleted Power Point slides. I looked around at a disengaged class, and I thought, “there’s got to be a better way.” I simply asked students in a business writing course to tell me the story of their business idea, from the idea they first pitched to the current version of it as written in their business plan. The presentations immediately got more interesting and entertaining when students thought about it as the “story of their business idea.” That led me to build out storytelling as a presentation method in my classes, and definitely in my own teaching. The power of a story is incredible.
5. What skills are you hoping for your students to develop through this course?
As with all writing courses, I hope students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. But beyond that, I hope they see that they have tools available to them to move beyond persuasion. Compelling people to action is the goal of civic engagement and success in the workplace. I want people to not only think, “How can I improve the chances that this will work?” but also “I’m going to create the conditions for this to work.” We're not taught how to deal with change, we're just expected to manage it. We’ll deal with it, instead of getting tools for how to do it well.
Lindsey Lewis is a third-year UCSB student majoring in political science. She conducted this interview for her Digital Journalism course.