Completing A Scholarly Project Productivity 2019-2020

Completing A Scholarly Project (Castronovo)

Peer support and the mutual accountability of a writing community provide a structure that encourages faculty scholarly productivity. This Faculty Learning Community will create the physical and intellectual space to work on projects with a view to developing a publishable result. Meetings will include discussions of writing practices and suggestions to help writers with those practices, and the opportunity for peer response, in addition to space and time for writing.

Number of Meetings and Participants

11 Meetings. 12 Participating Faculty:

1. Albert Mendoza
2. Amara Miller
3. Eve Higby
4. Lana Wood
5. Lee Adams
6. Meaghan McCollow
7. Michelle Gravier
8. Negin Toosi
9. Pascale Guiton
10. Pradeep Ramanathan
11. Sahar Nouredini
12. Stephanie Seitz
13. Summer Jackson

Participants’ Output

• “I completed revisions for 2 manuscripts (that were both accepted and are in press - yay!). AT the beginning of the semester, I collaborated with other FLC members and on an NSF equipment grant. We have not heard back about whether it will be funded, but expect a decision to be forthcoming soon. I plan to revise and resubmit that application in the coming semester if it was not awarded.”
• “My original goal was to complete data analysis on a current project, and begin preparing the attendant manuscript. We had completed recruiting and running 40 out of the 48 research participants when the university was shutdown mid-March. Therefore, I was only able to complete a partial data analysis. But that was enough to submit a poster to present the research to the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association annual meeting this coming November. Then, from late March onward, I have been working on the background and literature review portions of the manuscript.”
• “During this FLC I was able to finalize edits on an article I've been working on with a co-author and submit to a journal, contact/arrange beta readers for my manuscript draft I'm working on, and have begun revisions on the manuscript draft (based on my dissertation). I believe I am on track to finalize the draft this summer to submit it to the academic press I've been in touch with, which is exciting! I will be continuing to work on manuscript revisions in the coming months with this goal in mind.”
• "I've made headway in data analysis on the project I put as my main focus for the FLC on scholarly productivity. I also submitted a faculty research grant when I might not have had the time without the specific carved-out time for this FLC."
• "My goal was to write and submit an NSF grant and write 1 journal article. I wrote and submitted a commentary paper, submitted my NSF grant, and am in the final stages with a journal article, which should be submitted within the next 2 weeks. Considering all my other commitments and new course preps, this is a huge win!"
• "I was able to complete 1 journal paper and 3 conference papers"
• "I made so much progress during each of those two-hour chunks that I was very happy. I hope to keep up the practice of reserving two-hour chunks regularly to do research, although the accountability of having other people working at the same time was an extra pressure that I don't know how to replace."
• "The experience of scheduling time for scholarship was amazing. I will continue to do this even if there is no FLC to help facilitate it. This is not something that I have really done before."

Faculty Feedback

• "Actually, I think Fadi has this down to an art. He has facilitated this (several times?) before, and it has improved with each iteration to the point where I think the only way it could be improved is if we could do it twice per week, ever single week! :-)"
• “It was encouraging to be a part of a group who was focused on similar goals throughout the semester.”
• "Writing and publishing my research is key to my success as a teacher-scholar and this was the main focus of the FLC. Furthermore, the FLC's focus on peer feedback and deadlines provided the kind of "gentle" peer pressure needed. Accountability is a good incentive to get work done.”
• “I thought it was perfect! I maybe would have spread the meeting dates out more throughout the semester. It felt like we met more frequently at the start of the term, which is the busiest time for me, so I would have preferred less meetings early, and more frequent ones later."
• "The time requirement was fine, and I think we could actually increase it to one 2-hour slot *every* week. And if someone had to skip one or a few, due to conferences, or whatever, it would be okay. I don't think the time requirement was at all excessive."
• "I do think I will be using some of the approaches to productivity we used in our FLC, including the pomodoro method and some other resources like zotero which we discussed. It's also been helpful to have an accountability writing group and I plan on asking some friends to participate in something similar across the summer, even if it's not a formal FLC.”
• "I thought it was a balanced expectation--it was substantial enough to really dig into some work and feel motivated, but not so much that I felt overwhelmed."
• "Good amount of commitment given the rest of my commitments. Friday afternoons were perfect for being able to concentrate on writing projects without feeling pressure about needing to teach a class same day/next day."

Writer’s ToolKit

The Faculty Learning Community for the Completing a Scholarly Project During the Academic Year has developed the following writer’s toolkit.

The purpose of this toolkit is to support faculty in planning, managing, executing, and focusing on the completion of a scholarly project.

Tools and Strategies Covered:

• Pomodoro Technique
• From Stress to Writing Success
• Predatory Journals
• Slack
• Unpaywall
• Mendeley
• Getting Thing Done
• Zotero