Faculty Writing Support: Emerging Research from Rhetoric and Composition Studies

This edited collection offers 11 studies that illustrate the different ways writing studies researchers can use their training to study how faculty write. Moving beyond the lore that often dominates conversations about faculty writers, Faculty Writing Support explores how our discipline can expand its understanding of how faculty write and how they can be supported. The contributors raise questions about how graduate students transition to faculty writers, what types of support faculty writers want at different stages of their careers, and how and why faculty write together. Drawing on research methods including surveys, interviews, case studies, and audio recordings of writing groups, the contributors to Faculty Writing Support offer a first look at grounded research interventions with faculty and advanced graduate student writers. The collection acts as a call for writing studies to turn its disciplinary attention to faculty writing within higher education.

Jaclyn Wells is Associate Professor of English and Writing Center Director at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where her research focuses on scholarly publishing in rhetoric and writing, writing center studies, composition pedagogy, and community literacy. Her work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, the Writing Center Journal, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, Pedagogy, and Community Literacy Journal, among other journals and edited collections. With Allen Brizee, she is author of Partners in Literacy: A Writing Center Model for Civic Engagement.

Lars Söderlund is a UX Research Analyst and Writer at Baymard Institute, a Denmark-based research company, where he conducts and writes articles about large-scale usability testing of ecommerce sites. He previously published academic research at Western Oregon University, where his articles on composition and technical writing were published in College Composition and Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications, and the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, informing graduate students, UX professionals, and fellow professors about the mechanics of academic publishing and non-standard models of usability.

Christine Tulley is owner of Defend, Publish & Lead, LLC and founder of the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing at The University of Findlay, where she directs faculty writing support initiatives. Her research examines scholarly writing habits, academic time management, and faculty development in How Writing Faculty Write and Parenting, Professionalism and Productivity. A frequent Inside Higher Education contributor, Tulley provides guidance on academic writing productivity and career advancement.