Presenters: Kristin Terrill, Dr. Lily Compton, Dr. Elena Cotos, and Dr. Sarah Huffman

Abstract: Students often have limited time between initially submitting their Electronic Thesis Dissertation (ETD) and making final revisions following the ETD administrative review. Students face pressure and frustration near the finish line when their documents are returned with request for formatting changes. At Iowa State University, the Graduate College’s Center for Communication Excellence (CCE) has developed a Thesis / Dissertation Writing Program that hosts a suite of programmatic supports tailored to every phase of ETD preparation, from rough draft through final submission. Thispresentation will highlight various types of support offered through this program.

We will first feature the CCE’s individual consulting sessions focusing on discipline-specific and interdisciplinary research writing, as well as English writing for students who speak English as a second language. CCE also offers thesis / dissertation format check sessions to review and provide feedback on formatting requirements. Students are assisted with identifying common mistakes and using the functions of digital authoring tools to correct them. We will describe the CCE’s synchronous and face-to-face events: seminar series, hands-on workshops, formatting boot camps, and writing retreats. Seminars cover ETD topics including Graduate College requirements and deadlines, the ETD submission and review process, and writing support. Bootcamps highlight required formatting guidelines and demonstrate the use of digital authoring tools to format ETDs. Writing retreats devote an extended block of time to writing, encouraging accountability. In all these events, trained CCE staff respond to individual students’ concerns in a just-in-time fashion. Finally, we provide an overview of the CCE’s multimodal resources. These include thesis / dissertation templates in both Microsoft Word and LaTeX that allow students to adhere to formatting conventions, and a set of annotated ETD samples that help students visualize key formatting details. Resources such as comprehensive checklists for students, CCE staff, and the ETD administrator facilitate a mutual understanding needed to for accurate ETD revisions. Particularly popular are the multimodal resources for on-demand support available on the CCE’s YouTube Channel where students can access playlists for formatting and writing topics. Overall, our presentation will provide effective models for potential implementation by other institutions.

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Presenters: Dr. Lily Compton, Dr. Elena Cotos, Dr. Sarah Huffman, and Kristin Terrill

Abstract: Graduate students need strong communication skills to write and defend their thesis or dissertation. Advisors and committee members work closely to guide them in their disciplinary research. However, graduate education nationwide tends to ignore the fact that a large fraction of students reach an advanced stage in their graduate program without being fully equipped with the skills they need to effectively communicate their scholarly work. The neglect to provide students with longitudinal opportunities to develop such skills can lead to a crisis at the time of graduation.

To address this problem at Iowa State University, the Center for Communication Excellence (CCE) of the Graduate College (GC) launched a strategic initiative called AcComP (Academic Communication Practices) Track. The AcComP Track is a longitudinal professional development and certification program focused on continually supporting graduate students’ written, oral, and digital communication needs to help them build capacity in the area of preparing a high quality thesis or dissertation, and disseminating their scholarship to broader audiences. Tailored to the type of graduate degree sought (master’s or doctoral), this longitudinal support track aligns with the stages of students’ progression toward their degree, mapping the CCE’s specialized services with the requirements specified by the Graduate College.

The AcComP Track unfolds in several phases. This presentation will report on the first, Onboarding phase, which was piloted in fall 2020 with incoming graduate students from eight departments and interdepartmental programs. Specifically, we will describe the Onboarding procedure implemented during an online live event, as well as the outcomes that motivated students to enroll in the AcComP Track. We will also share two planning tools designed for this initial phase: an individual Thesis / Dissertation Planning Tool aligning students’ graduate program milestones with GC deadlines, and a Graduate Success Trajectory Tool connecting their milestones with CCE communication support services. Additionally, as Onboarding included the elicitation of a writing sample for a preliminary assessment of students’ writing ability, we will describe how students received individualized feedback from trained CCE consultants, along with a recommendation for seeking specific forms of writing support appropriate for their needs.

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