Workshops for Fall 2016 -Spring 2017
Faculty Writing, Research, and Publication
A Brown Bag Lunch Series
The Faculty Writing, Research, and Publication program seeks to support the scholarly endeavors of faculty. There are two components to the program, allowing faculty to choose their level of participation. First, there is an opportunity for interested faculty to form weekly Planning, Writing, and Support (PWS) groups. Second, there is a year-long, monthly workshop series. While some workshops are specifically for the PWS groups, most workshops are open to all faculty who are interested in developing strategies for increasing their productivity, creating a more efficient research process, winning grants, and getting published.
Each month, you will receive an email invitation to the upcoming workshop and a link to a Doodle poll where you can RSVP. All workshops will take place in Althouse 207 except the November 9th workshop, which will be in Stern 11.
Joining a Faculty Planning, Writing, and Support Group while Maintaining Work-Life Balance
Thursday, August 25 from 12:30-1:30
Location: Althouse 207
Facilitators: Noreen Lape, Associate Provost of Academic Affairs/ Director of the Writing Program; and Steve Riccio, Lecturer in International Business and Management
This workshop is for faculty who are interested in joining a weekly Planning, Writing, and Support Group. The purpose of the PWS group is to create a safe space that supports faculty as they make progress toward their scholarship goals, which may range from planning to drafting to revising projects. If you prefer to work with specialists in your field, you may choose to create your own group prior to this meeting. If you wish to join a group and the members need not be specialists, you can form a group at the meeting.
There will be three parts to this session. 1.) Participants will form groups (or announce their formation) and discuss the rules of engagement. 2.) Steve Riccio will discuss work-life balance and introduce participants to Cal Newport's "Deep Work" scheduling model - a model meant to address the problem, as Newport describes it, of spending too much of time on "autopilot" and allowing distractions to undermine deep work. The goal of this discussion is for participants to create their own scheduling model that will yield greater efficiency and work/life balance. 3.) Participants will also learn about the characteristics of effective peer groups - how working with a peer group differs from working with an editor's peer feedback.
What Editors Want: Top Tips from Journal Editors
Wednesday, September 14 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitators: David Jackson, Associate Professor of Physics; Eleanor Mitchell, Director of Library Services; Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Associate Professor of Italian & Film Studies;Dave Richeson, Professor of Mathematics
Dickinson faculty who are also journal editors will offer tips on working with journals to get published. For the past five years, David Jackson has edited The American Journal of Physics, a highly-selective international journal that focuses on the needs and intellectual interests of college and university physics educators. He will address the entire editorial process, from submission to publication (including rejections and appeals), with special emphasis on topics likely to be of interest to science faculty, such as the preparation of figures and graphs. Nicoletta Marini-Maio has been the principal editor of gender/sexuality/italy (g/s/i), an international journal that publishes articles in English and Italian. Before that, she coedited an Italian printed journal, Quaderni del '900 from 2011-2012. She will give advice on topics such as the preliminary selection or rejection of received contributions, criteria to assign selected articles to external readers, the editor's role as a mediator between readers and authors, and the editor's expectations about quality of revisions, including linguistic, stylistic, and editorial norms in an international environment. Eleanor Mitchell has served for eight years as editor of RSR, an international journal published in Great Britain for library and information studies professionals. She will discuss submitting to the appropriate journal by considering editorial statement of aims and scope, editorial board members, readership, previous authors, publishing schedule, types of articles included, journal impact factor, open access policy, and timeline for reviews, revisions, publication. For almost three years, Dave Richeson has been editor of Math Horizons. A non-traditional venue, Math Horizons is a magazine published by the Mathematical Association of America that is aimed at an undergraduate readership. Most articles are written by mathematics faculty, but some are authored or co-authored by students. Dave will discuss the homework an author should do before should do before submitting an article to a journal. He will give advice for faculty who have students who have done publishable-quality work. He will also discuss the benefits and costs of being an editor on his own career.
What Granting Agencies Want: Tips for Writing Effective Research Grants
Wednesday, October 12 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitators: Alyssa DeBlasio, Associate Professor of Russian; John Henson, Senior Associate Provost and Professor of Biology; Glen Peterman, Director of Sponsored Research
Alyssa DeBlasio has been awarded an NEH summer stipend and an ACLS yearlong fellowship, as well as assorted other grants from Humanities Centers and the Department of State. She will discuss cultivating habits that not only make grant writing less tedious but also contribute to a scholar's productivity. John Henson has generated over $2.5 million dollars in external funds from grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Research Corporation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as from fellowships from the Luckey P. Markey Foundation, the Marine Biological Laboratory and the US Department of State. He has also served on numerous grant proposal review panels for the NSF and the NIH and will be discussing the criteria that these panels use in ranking proposals." Glen Peterman of the Sponsored Projects Office assists faculty members with all facets of the grant seeking process for support of scholarly research, sabbaticals and fellowships. He will present some tips for preparing successful proposals.
The Habits of Highly Successful Researchers
Wednesday, November 9 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitator: Chris Bombaro, Associate Director for Information Literacy and Research Services
Research resources are constantly changing and becoming ever more complicated. In this interactive session, Christine Bombaro, author of Research Methods and Resources for Students and Scholars (Scarecrow, 2012), will consider how to make the best use of the vast array of databases and other services available through the library. Topics include advanced search techniques using discovery services such as JumpStart, selecting resources in a multi-disciplinary environment, citation searching, setting automatic search updates, and keeping track of your research. She will also respond to questions about research and library products and services from participants.
From Idea/Dissertation to Book
Wednesday, February 15 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitator: Amy Farrell, Professor of American Studies; Sarah McGaughey, Associate Professor of German; Wendy Moffat, Professor of English
This workshop is for writers who are seeking tips on how to develop an idea or dissertations into a book-length manuscript, and craft a proposal to an academic press. Amy Farrell will discuss the process by which she turned her dissertation into Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) and a general idea about fat and dieting into her book Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (NYU Press, 2011). Sarah McGaughey, author of Ornament as Crisis: Architecture, Design, and Modernity in Hermann Broch's "The Sleepwalkers" (Northwestern UP, 2016) will discuss transforming a dissertation into a full-length book, staying on task, and choosing a publisher. Wendy Moffat is author of A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2010), which was named a Top Ten Book of 2010 by Janet Maslin of the New York Times. She will talk about the mid-process of discerning if an idea is really a book, and if so, what kind of book: deciding on audience, finding an agent, and preparing the pitch.
Publishing in Scholarly Journals: From Selecting a Venue to Retaining Rights to Your Work
Wednesday, March 22 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitator: Jessica Howard, Electronic Resources and Web Services Librarian
You've written an article and are excited to get it published. But how do you identify which journal(s) to submit to? What do you do if a publisher wants you to pay to publish the work? What publishing options or access models might the journal present, and how do you choose between them? How can you maintain key rights to your published work, including sharing it with your colleagues or posting it on your website? Electronic resource specialist Jessica Howard will help you anticipate and understand the decisions you will make as you publish your work.
Transferring Lessons Learned in the PWS Group to the Writing Classroom
Wednesday April 19 from 12:30-1:30
Facilitator: Noreen Lape, Associate Provost of Academic Affairs/Director of the Writing Program
The goal of the workshop is to come up with a list of specific writing-related classroom practices that derive from insights gleaned from work with the writing groups. Given the connection between reflection on faculty writing group experiences and effectiveness as a writing teacher, this workshop will ask writing group participants to discuss how they will transfer newly acquired insights about the writing process to the writing classroom.
- What new writing strategies did you try that you could use with your students?
- What did you learn from your group about the variety of writing processes? How could you share these insights with your students?
- What did you learn about helpful feedback that you would like to emulate with your students and teach them to do in peer review?
Sustaining the PWS Group Momentum over the Summer
Wednesday, May 10 from 12:30-1:30
Stern Great Room
Facilitator: Noreen Lape, Associate Provost of Academic Affairs/Director of the Writing Program
We will celebrate the accomplishments of the PWS Groups with a luncheon. Groups will set goals and create a summer research agenda and timeline. Participants will also assess the effectiveness of the Planning, Writing, and Support Groups.
Nancy Sommers delivers a workshop to faculty in Fall 2010.