Category: Faculty Writing

Supporting Faculty Writers: Mason Faculty Writing Retreats – A Comprehensive Review

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date February 26, 2015

by: Caitlin Holmes

Caitlin Holmes is the Assistant Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at George Mason University. She blogs regularly about teaching here at thewritingcampus.com. You can reach her via email at wac@gmu.edu.

With the support of Mason’s Provost Office and Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence, the Writing Across the Curriculum Program hosted two Faculty Writing Retreats in the past 12 months: one in May 2014 and the other in January 2015. Such retreats had occurred in the past under the supervision of the Northern Virginia Writing Project, but not for quite some time. This blog post will review the different structures of the May 2014 and January 2015 retreats, give summaries of evaluation results for both retreats, and provide a few concluding thoughts about what we may try in the future at Mason.

Tags Collaborative Teaching, digital writing, education, faculty, faculty writing, faculty writing support, higher education, Mason WAC, research, Writing, Writing in the Disciplines, writing pedagogy

Faculty Writing

Supporting Faculty Writers: The Writing Retreat—Take Two

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date February 18, 2015

by Erica Jacobs

Erica Jacobs teaches writing at George Mason University. She has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia University and has published numerous articles in local newspapers, newsletters, and magazines.

When I received an invitation to apply to the Faculty Writing Retreat to take place during the 2014-2015 winter break, I recognized I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. It was a similar retreat sponsored by the English Department in 1978 that permanently changed my writing and teaching. That was near the beginning of my career, and 37 years later—near the end—it was time to take the body of work I’d written over the years for local newspapers and see if it would be publishable as a collection.

Tags composition, education, faculty, faculty writing, faculty writing support, Higher Ed, higher education, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

Faculty Writing

New Series: Supporting Faculty Writers – “The Weekend Retreat”

Post author By caitlincholmes
Post date January 22, 2015

Erica Jacobs teaches English at Oakton High School and writing at George Mason University. She had a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia University and has published numerous articles in local newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. This article is a reprint from her 1997 publication, “The Weekend Retreat.” Be on the look-out for her follow-up piece this February on her most recent participation in the WAC-sponsored Winter Faculty Writing Retreat that took place on January 7-8, 2015.

As a non-tenure track teacher at George Mason University, I was pleased to discover I was eligible to participate in a “Writing Retreat” sponsored by the English department and the Northern Virginia Writing Project in the fall of 1978. Don Gallehr had completed the first two summers of the Writing Institute with local high school teachers, and their success on the secondary level seemed to promise equal success on the University level.

Tags education, faculty, faculty retreat, faculty writing, faculty writing support, Higher Ed, higher education, Mason WAC, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing education, writing feedback, Writing in the Disciplines

Faculty Writing

Holiday Hiatus

Post author By caitedungan
Post date December 12, 2014

Faculty Writing Interviews Teaching Writing Technology

Blast From the Past – Revisiting WAC Concepts Twelve Years Later

Post author By caitedungan
Post date October 16, 2014

As the conversations about Writing Across the Curriculum continue to evolve and march forward, it is always helpful to look back and see how far the program has come, both nationally and close to home. Today, we are linking back to a Mason WAC Newsletter from Fall of 2002 that highlights the strengths and challenges of digital writing. Lesley Smith and James Young offer insights into the benefits of digital writing in e-portfolios, and Ruth Fischer shares the credentials she and her colleagues created for the necessary IT skills of first-year composition students. The methods for implementing digital writing in the classroom have certainly progressed in the last twelve years, but the core pedagogical concepts remain the same.

“In an electronic space,” Smith and Young write, “those who perhaps struggle with words but excel with images might combine the two, and access a richness of perception previously denied both to them as writers and to their faculty members as assessors.”

WAC Newsletter – Fall 2002

Tags digital writing, e-portfolios, higher education, Online writing, pedagogy, Teaching, technical writing, WAC, WID, Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines