Virtual Faculty Writing Retreat

Friday, May 7, 2021
9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Online
Faculty

Are you working on an article draft and need some extra focus to finish up? Are you just beginning a research project and need some quiet head space to design your study? Are you designing a course for a new format and need to think and talk about writing assignment sheets and lesson plans as we move into August? If so, please consider the upcoming virtual Faculty Writing Retreat.

This virtual retreat will run from Monday, May 3 through Friday, May 7 and will follow the traditional format, facilitated by virtual interaction and remote communication. The virtual retreat will consist of the following components:

1. Virtual meetings: Each day of the retreat will begin at 9am with a Zoom meeting in which participants come together to discuss their writing goals for each day, articulate challenges they are facing working from home or when writing in general, and share strategies for addressing these challenges. Each day will conclude with a Zoom meeting at around 3:30pm during which we will discuss what we accomplished, what is working for us, what is not, and ways for moving forward.

2. Accountability GoogleDoc : There will be a Googledoc shared by all participants on which each participant will have a section to document their progress as they see fit. You can post your writing onto the doc as it progresses in successive drafts. You can log how many words you wrote or how long you wrote. You can post the schedule you followed and where you took breaks. You can post what you are excited to have accomplished or an insight you developed. Or you can leave your Googledoc blank. Other participants will be able to see this doc so that you can feel the accountability or just the sense of working in a community that we might get from working in the same room on campus. Like that physical space, you will have other writers “there” with you in a sense.

3. Writing Resources and Support: During the retreat, SWS Director Jerry Stinnett and Writing Center Director Patrick Johnson will both be available by email (or Zoom if you wish) to be a sounding board for writing ideas, to discuss strategies for moving forward with composing, or to just listen while you talk something through. In addition, the Writing Center has a number of online resources which we will share with participants at the beginning of the retreat.

If you are interested in joining the virtual retreat, please contact Lisa Gullo ([email protected]) by Friday, April 30th with your name and preferred email address at which to receive Zoom links and links to support materials. Once we have your information and have you registered for the retreat, we will send out the links for the week's meetings on Sunday, May 2nd.

This will be a continuing experiment and will undoubtedly have hiccups. But we want to provide at least some space for interested faculty to make use of the benefits of writing in community that these retreats provide. And we will continue honing this approach to make it as effective as possible. We’re looking forward to "seeing" you "there."