Working with Faculty Writers

4. Talking about Writing: Critical Dialogues on Supporting Faculty Writers

DOI: 10.7330/9780874219029.c004 4 Ta l k i n g a b o u t W r i t i n g Critical Dialogues on Supporting Faculty Writers Gertrude Fraser and Deandra Little In this chapter we briefly describe the University of Virginia’s (UVa) Professors as Writers (PAW) program, established in 2005, and describe more fully our efforts to assess its impact on individual faculty and the institutional culture. We present this process as a critical dialogue between two complementary but distinct perspectives—that of an academic administrator and a faculty developer.1 We chose this format because it models our efforts to be reflective practitioners as we create faculty programs, as well as our belief that faculty writing itself is a reflective practice (Schön 1983; Hillocks 1995; Raelin 2002; Bolton 2010). Through this dialogic approach, we think critically about program building as well as the converging and diverging views on the program’s goals, focus, and measures of effectiveness that we found ourselves holding , based on our vantage points vis-à-vis the institution. The PAW program began in response to discussions about faculty writing coming from two different directions—from promotion and tenure committees discussing writing quality and productivity with the Vice Provost (the faculty administrator noted above) and from individual faculty members expressing their concerns about writing and managing various, competing professional demands to the faculty developer and her colleagues at UVa’s Teaching Resource Center (TRC). Responding to these concerns, the program has supported faculty writing in a number of ways, primarily through small grants, but also by connecting faculty interested in writing groups, providing web resources with 1. We gratefully acknowledge the essential work of Dawn Hunt, a colleague and former Professors as Writers (PAW) coach and editor, who served as an editor and coach for the piece, provided thoughtful and informed feedback, and nurtured our critical dialogue process. 74   Gertr u de Fraser and D eandra Litt le information on editorial or writing coaches, and sponsoring workshops on writing, publishing, and time management. The main focus of the program continues to be annual, one-time grants of $1,000 that faculty members can use to hire an editorial or writing coach for a manuscript or grant proposal or, more recently, $1,500 grants for a book manuscript conference to bring together a small group of scholars from inside and outside UVa. The grant process is competitive—we offer ten to fifteen annually—and open to all full time UVa faculty, both tenure-track and non-tenure track. Significantly, the focus of the grants is on writing and not research; the grants must be used to support some aspect of the writing process, and not for research assistance, conference travel, salary, or to pay for any of the technicalities of manuscript preparation, such as proofreading, subventions, or indexing. Over the last six years, we have seen the program evolve in both predictable and unexpected ways. In this chapter we focus on how this evolution unfolded, as we discuss the process of developing the program using a set of questions that guided our inquiry. Our conversation here mirrors in many ways our continuing discussions about the program—a dialogue that has focused on the interplay of practice and theory and our underlying assumptions about each, as much as it has on the evolving structure of the program. What we model here is in one sense reflective practice (Schön 1983; Mezirow 1991) and in another what Carew, et al. (2008, 53) call Elastic Practice, or “an organic, responsive way of designing and evolving specific approaches to Academic [Faculty] Development.” Reflection allows us to consider how and why we each bring alternately complementary and divergent perspectives, assumptions , and interpretations to the PAW program. Our shared conclusion is that successful faculty writers find a good balance between autonomy and interdependence. The PAW program intervenes at the individual and institutional levels so that diverse faculty members find the balance that works best for them. The Disc ussan ts How do our own backgrounds and experiences with academic writing influence our perspective on program design? Gertrude: Roberto Ibarra [2003], in his study of Latina/o graduate students , identifies the hidden cultural codes of the academy that privilege some forms of intellectual expression and inhibit others. He argues that modes of writing and argumentation are like the DNA through which these codes are communicated and expressed. Reflecting on my experi- Talking about Writing    75 ence as an African...