This semester, faculty members from departments across almost all of the academic colleges came together for 12 weeks with the common goal of supporting one another to publish scholarly papers.

Gene Deerman, an assistant professor of sociology, taught the “Supporting Scholarly Writing” faculty-publishing course, which promotes pre-tenure faculty members to revise and submit papers to academic journals.

During the last class session Tuesday, Deerman said the variety of disciplines of those in the course gives the faculty members perspectives and company that they may not have otherwise come in contact with.

Yoshie Lord, an assistant professor of accountancy, said writing can sometimes be lonely and depressing, and the course provides them with a community where they can share ideas, provide feedback and learn how to improve together.

“I think the course helped me to plan better because writing is not so easy with teaching and other obligations and being able to write at a frequent pace,” Lord said.

Danelle Larson, an assistant professor of music education, said she was more motivated to write because of having scheduled deadlines to be held accountable to.

The course revolved around the textbook “Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success” by Wendy Belcher, a professor at Princeton University.

They explored aspects such as structure strengthening, presenting evidence, advancing one’s argument, managing feedback and editing sentences.

The School of Continuing Education and the Faculty Development Office collaborated to support the course, and the School of Continuing Education covered the cost for the textbooks.

Janice Collins, an assistant professor of journalism, said even though they came from different disciplines, they shared the commonality of identifying effective ways to structure a paper.

“Even though I may not be familiar with something like music theories, I could still look at the structure and see if I could follow the argument,” Collins said.

Vernon Woodley, an assistant professor of sociology/anthropology, said publishing scholarly literature serves as an essential part of academic life, and the process proves difficult because it could be several years before a professor becomes published.

“This also is good for our students because we assign them papers, and they can see that faculty are going through the same thing with writing, working and making revisions,” he said.

Dagni Bredesen, the interim director of the Faculty Development Office and an English professor, said the course promotes one of the university’s key components of integrated learning, which is interdisciplinary conversation.

“It is really exciting to see this value of interdisciplinary conversation enacted in a practical, fun and interesting way,” Bredesen said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].