Course Orientation
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The Course
ENG 260 – Applied Communications is a course in business and technical communications that will build on skills developed in your composition courses of ENG 121 and 122.  Unlike these two previous courses, ENG 260 addresses the patterns, formats, and conventions of writing expected of employees in the workforce.

Course Assignments
You will write a wide range of business compositions.  Each of these addresses skills and principles found in the chapters of your textbook.  Exercises are found at the end of textbook chapters as well as online in this course website.

Development of Assignments
Each exercise must be completed in type/word processed text and must reflect the organizational, stylistic, and design templates appropriate to both the audience and purpose of the communication.  Your textbook and this website includes examples for each exercise.

For specific details about each activity, see the instructions for each assignment provided in this website.

Due Dates
Each exercise is due no later than Saturday of the assigned week.  See the Communications Guide that contains specific instructions for sending me your learning work.

Work late for any reason will be graded for “C” credit only.

Course Meetings
We will meet on three evenings during the course of the semester.  The first meeting is the posted first day class meeting for the semester.  We will meet once before the mid-term and once in the last week to review your work and to discuss any questions or topics related to the course and the learning work.

ENG 260 and Northwood University
Dedicated to the principles of American democracy and the free enterprise economic system, Northwood University has long recognized the importance of effective communication in both the workplace and community.  Like other composition courses in the comprehensive writing program of the University, ENG 260 is an integral element in your training.  Additionally, this course emphasizes the integrity of the communication process and the value of disciplined, insightful, and forthright expression of ideas in each of the four general modes of communication: to inform, to persuade, to entertain, and to express.

About Your Instructor
Dr. Geoffrey Grimes, your instructor for this course, is a veteran of more than 35 years of college teaching with posts over the period at Texas Tech University, Mountain View College of the Dallas County Community College District, Navarro College, Tarrant County College, Amberton University, Paul Quinn University, the University of Texas at Arlington, Dallas TeleCollege, the Virtual College of Texas, and Northwood University.  He holds a B.A. Degree in English from Austin College (Sherman, Texas), and a Master of Arts Degree in English and a Ph.D. in English, both from Texas Tech University.  He continues today as a full-time Professor of English at Mountain View College where he has taught since 1971.  Dr. Grimes is the developer of more than a dozen online courses taught for colleges and universities throughout the United States.

In addition to his various teaching duties, Dr. Grimes has been a consultant and/or visiting lecturer at Xerox University in Virginia, The University of Texas at Austin, St. Mary’s School of Law, The University of Colorado, Grayson County College, Tomball College, the University of Houston.  Additionally, he has provided consulting services for the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Latin American Studies – The University of Texas at Austin, the United States Information Agency, the United States Immigration Courts, and the United States Immigration Service.

Dr. Grimes holds numerous awards and honors as an educator, both in the United States and internationally.  In 1983, he was knighted by the Ministry of Education of Guatemala for his service to the schools and teachers in that Central American nation.  In 1991, he was selected as one of five top community college instructors in North America by the American Association of Community College Trustees.  In 1996 he was awarded an “Outstanding Alumnus Award” from Austin College, his undergraduate alma mater.  Additionally, he is the recipient of a “National Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service” from the National Institute for Public Service in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Grimes is widely published in the fields of folklore, literature, art, anthropology, ethnography, and pedagogy, and has served as a consulting web author for major college textbooks published by Pearson Company, Prentice Hall, and McGraw-Hill.

Dr. Grimes is a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Texas Cultural Alliance with international educational programming in more than 70 countries; a co-founder of the Gloria Yaroslava Brunschede Foundation with the University of Texas Southwest Medical School; a co-founder of the Center for Survivors of Torture in Dallas; and a founding member of the Oak Cliff Center for Community Studies, a research institute and social services organization addressing educational issues facing immigrant populations in the greater Dallas area.

As an area businessman, Dr. Grimes is a partner in Learning College Associates, LLT., the developer of customized multimedia and web-based interactive learning materials.  As a free-lance video producer, Dr. Grimes is the author and creator of more twenty educational video programs and provides all of the video components for the Dallas World Aquarium.

This page was last modified on November 29, 2005,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey A. Grimes.