Virtual Workshops, Writing Retreats & Institutional Memberships

TAA can help your faculty move from writing to publication by sponsoring an expert-led, virtual academic writing workshop or writing retreat!

During fall 2020 and spring 2021 TAA will help sponsor a limited number of virtual writing workshops and virtual writing retreats for universities and colleges across the country.

All virtual writing workshops and writing retreats include:

• One Virtual Writing Workshop or Writing Retreat accessed via Zoom 
  * Workshops range between 90-minutes to two hours in length.
  * Writing retreats are 3 hours in length.
  
  
• Up to 65 One-year TAA faculty memberships that provide faculty access to TAA's extensive writing and publishing resources. These memberships are available to faculty whether or not they participate in the virtual event.

Hosting Fee: During spring 2021 TAA is offering a special hosting fee of $1,000 per event. This hosting fee includes 65 TAA faculty memberships.

Please click on the desired workshop for details. Workshop hosts must have an expectation of 15 or more participants. Email templates will be provided to the host institutions to promote the event. If you are interested in an in-person workshop for spring 2021, please contact [email protected] for workshop availability and hosting fees.

Academic Writing Workshops (Virtual)

Workshop offerings by Erin McTigue, President, The Positive Academic, Writing and Productivity Coach for Academics

Choose one of the following 2 hour workshops. (A 90-minute workshop can be arranged if desired.)

Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels

Fast-writing and “allowing messy drafts” is often recommended as a productivity strategy for academics.  But … how do we most efficiently transform the resulting messes into coherent and powerful prose? In this interactive workshop, participants will take a “messy draft” of their choice and try out 3 macro-level revision strategies to hone overall logic and organization of the manuscript. Next, participants, working at the micro-level, will apply 3 revision tools for coherence and writing style. Participants will leave with both a sequential approach and individual tools for transforming their future drafts with efficiency. ➤Full description

Moving from Pesky to Productive: Designing a Healthy, Sustainable Writing Habit

“Darn -- that pesky writing habit!” Wait, when have you heard a writer say that? While faculty are generally wanting good writing habits and research on productive faculty points to adopting such writing habits, these habits can be difficult to achieve. Meanwhile, complicating the situation further, myths about habit formation circulate. In this interactive workshop, mythology is dispelled and findings from recent psychology research are translated specifically to writing habits. Using personal insight, participants first analyze one of their own already strong habits (coffee drinking, toothbrushing, etc.). Then taking such analysis... 
➤Full description

Project Management for Writing: Gaining Power in the Process

It’s 3 AM.  Are you waking up to worry about a forgotten deadline to one of your grants or writing projects?  Or perhaps, you exhibit such chronic optimism about your ability to get writing done, that your calendar has begun to resemble a “wish list” instead of an accurate plan? And then, of course, … managing collaborators … despite seemingly endless meetings, you find yourself chasing them down to get their contributions. If these descriptions sound like your current status quo, consider: Would you prefer to have a planning approach that moves you to a state of better focus, clarity and calmness?  If yes, then join for an overview of applying project management principles to one’s academic writing life. 
➤Full description

Workshop offerings by Felicia Moore Mensah, Associate Professor of Science Education, Science and Technology, Teachers College, Columbia University

Choose from two different workshops designed to assist authors in their academic authoring efforts and in the process of obtaining tenure.

Academic Remaining Productive During COVID-19: Writing and Publishing Your Scholarly Journal Article (2 Hour Workshop)

This workshop will provide practical support for publishing in academic venues, especially during the current time where remaining productive is a challenge. Mensah will share her personal strategies, motivations, and insights about academic writing, specifically for journal publication as an author, a current journal editor, an editorial review board member, and a special guest reviewer for journals in the social sciences, including education. Participants will learn how to put a manuscript into "journal submission format" for publication.  
➤Full Description

Rethinking COVID's Impact on Tenure and Promotion: Developing the Tenure Binder(90-minute workshop)

This workshop targets junior faculty members in the preparation for tenure and promotion. The elusive "tenure binder" or "dossier" and the process of obtaining tenure will be explained and discussed, including the impact of COVID on the tenure-clock. Though institutions differ in their process of appointing tenure and promotion, this workshop will provide participants with information that will assist them in asking the appropriate questions to faculty, your dean or department chair at their home institution. 
➤Full Description

Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar 
(2 Hour Workshop)

Tara Gray, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, First Director, Teaching Academy, New Mexico State University 

Triple your productivity. Write prose that is clearer, better organized, and more compelling. Publish in better journals and get more grants.

Many scholarly writers are educated at the School of Hard Knocks, but it’s not the only school, or even the best. Even when you can’t work harder, there are important ways to work smarter. Much is known about how to become a better, more prolific scholar—and anybody can.

Ninety workshop participants who followed the steps in this program were studied and 95% reported that their writing improved. The average participant also increased the number of manuscripts submitted from two manuscripts per year to nearly six. And this by writing only 30 minutes per day, four days per week. You can too. These steps will show you how. 
➤Full description

Workshop offerings by Dannelle D. Stevens, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, Portland State University

Choose one of the following 2-hour workshop options. (A 90-minute workshop can be arranged if desired.)

Option 2:
Leveraging Your Experience: Write More, Publish More, Stress Less 

This workshop is designed to give participants an opportunity to practice a powerful set of research-based strategies. You will use powerful tools to boost your productivity including text-structure analysis, templates for making an academic argument, and methods for creating small faculty writing groups that can improve your writing accountability as well as your journal article production. 
➤Full description

Option 2:
Demystifying the Language of the 'Academic Tribe' and Join the Conversation

This workshop will focus on three key strategies designed to translate the “language of the academic tribe”, such as analyzing text structures and using academic writing templates. Insights from these translations lead to establishing a satisfying writing practice and a prolific publication profile. Participants will learn the habits of successful academic writers, how to analyze the unique language of academic writing, and how to increase productivity and confidence through strategic action. 
➤Full description

Option 3: Choose Two 60-Minute Mini-Workshops (Workshop is two hours total.)
(Click titles for descriptions of each mini-workshop)

Mini Workshop 1: The “not-so-obvious” infrastructure of academic writing: Powerful and engaging conceptual linkages across your text 

Mini Worshop 2: Crafting a clear and compelling purpose statement in academic writing

Mini Workshop 3: Keeping a journal in your professional life: Organization, reflection, and writing inspiration all in one place

Time Management for Academics: How to Increase Scholarly Productivity While Teaching Effectively and Efficiently 
(2 Hour Workshop)

Christine Tulley, Professor of English and Founder/Director of the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing, The University of Findlay 

Making time to write can be a struggle for faculty with heavy teaching loads. Writing for publication is often pushed off as faculty work to stay on top of student grading and responding to student emails. Yet many faculty publish regularly because they have developed a writing system that enables them to find time and use it productively.

In this interactive workshop, participants will be invited to identify specific teaching tasks that infringe on writing time. Next, participants will be taught to use a combination of “pattern teaching” and grading “templates” that efficiently shorten these tasks without sacrificing effectiveness in order to preserve more time for writing for publication. In addition, we will review academic writing moves that can level up scholarly writing and increase chances of publication. Using this combination of strategies, participants will create and leave with a weekly framework of a writing/teaching system that safeguards time for scholarly productivity and prioritizes scholarly writing. 
➤Full description

Academic Writing Retreats (Virtual)

Virtual Writing Retreats by Dannelle Stevens 
(Three hour retreat. Saturdays can be arranged.)

This three-hour retreat provides faculty the opportunity to focus on their writing projects while gaining inspiration and support from fellow academic authors. With guidance from academic writing coach Dannelle Stevens, participants will begin by setting realistic goals and warm up with a focused freewrite. Following that, Dannelle will facilitate group discussion, small group breakouts, and three dedicated writing sessions.  ➤Full description

These workshops are offered on a first-come first-serve basis until program funding has been exhausted. Especially in light of budget cuts at colleges and universities, TAA’s support of these events helps enable institutions to continue providing professional development workshops to faculty.
For more information about this program please contact [email protected]