Category: Faculty Writing

“Naming What We Know About Writing” by Barbara Fister

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date May 5, 2016

Barbara Fister reviews Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, in light of new threshold concepts that reframe the way we think about what we know. Fister also writes to warn against the undue haste she believes some librarians have with this new Framework. Instead of checklists and learning skills, she would have librarians and faculty think about sharing these Framework ideas in full, fleshed out form. Foster recommends this collection of essays to librarians and those across the disciplines.

Most interesting for WI course faculty is the focus of the book Fister reviews.

Faculty Writing

Welcoming our new Assistant Director, Tom Polk

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date December 10, 2015

Tom Polk will be the Assistant Director for the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at George Mason University, beginning Spring semester 2016.

Tom’s Bio:
Before coming to George Mason University, Tom coordinated the writing center at Bowie State University in Maryland where his work focused on developing the campus’ writing culture. He previously had taught Composition at Howard Community College in Maryland and Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina. His favorite part of being an educator is working with his students and tutors and helping them to grow personally and professionally. Tom earned an M.A. from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and an M.S. from Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly interests include writing centers, assessment, and noncognitive aspects of writing. He has also conducted research on the relationships between music and composition.

Faculty Writing

George Mason’s OSCAR program wins national award

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date October 30, 2015

Congratulations to George Mason’s Office of Student Research, Creative Activities, and Scholarship program, OSCAR, on its recognition by the Council on Undergraduate Research as a national model for high-quality student research programs. OSCAR provides mentors, grants, and travel funding to students. Many departments at GMU have incorporated research into their curriculum to support “sophisticated and independent” undergraduate research projects and activities. In fact, the campus-wide support for research set GMU’s program apart, according to the Council. Writing Across the Curriculum is proud to partner with OSCAR in support of faculty who teach writing and offers congratulations for this national recognition.

Read the full article here.

Faculty Writing Teaching Writing Technology

Inspiring Faculty Community at George Mason University

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date May 7, 2015

Cameron Carter is the Communications & Marketing Specialist for the Office of Distance Education at George Mason University. She earned her MA in English (Professional Writing & Rhetoric) from Mason in 2013, and she is currently a graduate student in the Higher Education Administration certificate program. You can reach her at ccarte17@gmu.edu.

Over the past five years, Mason’s Office of Distance Education (DE) has supported a number of faculty and programs transitioning their courses from face-to-face to fully online. From partnering each faculty member with an Instructional Designer in Learning Support Services (LSS) to connecting them to the accessibility experts with the Assistive Technology Initiative, highlighting the research and copyright expertise of the University Librarians to emphasizing the resources available through the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence (CTFE), our role has focused largely on how best to connect Mason’s online faculty with the services and resources available across our campus.

As the DE Office, along with online education at Mason, continues to grow and take shape, we’ve asked ourselves – is this enough? This question has sparked a new effort for faculty support from the DE Office, mainly via an upsurge of faculty development opportunities. We don’t only want to support online program development and link to specific resources. We want to promote a sense of faculty community and a culture of shared knowledge and practice. Through a string of faculty development events hosted in collaboration with CTFE and LSS, we are making a push to inspire this shared place for faculty at Mason. Here’s the kicker – we aren’t focusing on online faculty alone.

Tags best practices, Collaborative Teaching, distance education, education, faculty development, George Mason University, Mason, multidisciplinary, Office of Distance Education, online teaching, pedagogy, WAC, WID, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

Faculty Writing

Supporting Faculty Writers: Book Proposal Workshop

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date April 30, 2015

by Caitlin Holmes and Caitlin Dungan

On Friday, April 24th, Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum invited three experts on academic publishing to present on crucial information for writing and submitting book proposals. Our panelists, Dr. John Farina, Dr. Peter Stearns, and John Warren (click here for full biographies), provided thoughtful and supportive advice to attendees before workshopping proposals. Here, we will summarize a few key points that our presenters discussed, our tweets of the event (see the full Twitter feed here), and one presenter’s handout at the end of this piece.

Tags book manuscripts, book proposals, book publication, faculty, faculty writing, faculty writing support, How to publish, Mason WAC, WAC, Writing Across the Curriculum