Support for Faculty

The Faculty Seminar in Writing Instruction provides a small group of Cornell faculty an opportunity to explore the relationship between teaching and writing while developing or refining new or existing courses. In 2024, we are planning for an in-person seminar. Participants receive a $2000 stipend. The deadline for applications is April 8.

Facilitated by Dr. Elliot Shapiro, the 2024 Faculty Seminar will consist of an orientation tentatively scheduled for May 23; seminar meetings to be held on May 29 and 30; and workshop sessions held on June 4 and 6. (See tentative schedule below). The seminar sessions will focus on exploring frameworks for teaching writing in a range of courses. The workshop sessions will focus on collectively reviewing draft materials produced by seminar participants. The seminar will have no more than eight participants.

Participants are typically either working on a new course or revising an existing one. These courses may be designated writing courses but they need not be. We welcome applications from faculty of any rank; we particularly invite applications from faculty new to Cornell.

Since 1986, the Faculty Seminar in Writing Instruction has provided dozens of Cornell faculty members with a forum to reconsider teaching practices and to examine the role of writing at every level of the university curriculum. The seminar gives faculty an opportunity to discuss teaching and writing with colleagues from a range of disciplines. Departments represented among Faculty Seminar participants include:

Africana Studies	Anthropology	Art
Art History	Asian Studies	City and Regional Planning
Classics	Creative Writing	Communication
Comparative Literature	Development Sociology	Economics
Education	English	Entomology
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS)	Food Science	German Studies
Government	History	Horticulture
Jewish Studies	Landscape Architecture	Labor Relations, Law, and History (ILR)
Law	Materials Science and Engineering	Molecular Biology
Music	Near Eastern Studies	Neurobiology and Behavior
Nutritional Science	Performing and Media Arts	Philosophy
Physics	Psychology	Romance Studies
Science and Technology Studies	Sociology

2024 Faculty Seminar in Writing Instruction: Call for Applications
John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines

Stipend: Participants receive a $2000 stipend.

Responsibilities: All participants will:

• Participate in an orientation meeting tentatively scheduled for May 23; seminar meetings to be held on May 29 and 30; and workshop sessions held on June 4 and 6. (See tentative schedule below). Preparation for the seminar sessions will include preliminary reading and writing. In preparation for the workshop sessions, participants will produce (or substantially revise) course materials to be shared with and reviewed by other seminar members.
• Write an evaluation of the program after it is completed.
• Fulfill modest service expectations: this will include judging submissions for Knight Institute writing and teaching prizes submitted following the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 semesters. Committees to choose prize winners will likely meet several weeks after the respective semesters end.

Application deadline:           April 8

Application materials: Interested faculty should submit the following:

• Application letter. The application letter should describe your interest in the seminar and explain what you hope to accomplish during the seminar. For example, an instructor teaching a new course might describe the course; the role writing might play in it; and how the seminar might help prepare for it. Please indicate how you learned about the seminar.
• CV
• A brief sample or samples of professional writing. The writing sample (or samples) may take any form or genre: they may be published pieces or works in progress. (If you would prefer that writing samples not be shared please indicate this).
• An edited sample of teaching materials related to writing. Please do not submit all the materials for a given course. Provide some context for these supporting materials in the application letter or in a cover note that deals specifically with the teaching materials.

Application

If you have questions about the seminar, please contact Elliot Shapiro.

Send applications to:
Elliot Shapiro
John S. Knight Institute
McGraw Hall M101
elliot.shapiro@cornell.edu

First-Year Writing Seminar instructors interested in free, private consultation are invited to participate in the Essay Response Consultation program. In this program a writing specialist or tutor reads a set of papers on which an instructor has commented, and then meets with the instructor for a one-to-one consultation about questions and insights regarding response to student work.

Less formal, consultations on teaching are also available; when a brief, informal meeting in the midst of responding to a set of papers, or developing a lesson plan, or designing a writing assignment could clear up temporary confusion and restore a balanced perspective, you should schedule an appointment at the Graduate Writing Service.

If you hear of any other strategies that have worked particularly well, please share them with us so we can pass them along to others. And if you wish to arrange for either an Essay Response Consultation or for some special assistance for a student during the semester, please contact Dr. Tracy Hamler Carrick.

During the academic year, faculty members from the departments offering First-Year Writing Seminars act as course leaders for graduate students who are teaching seminars. Course leaders continue the support and training begun in "Teaching Writing" by holding regular staff meetings, visiting classes, reviewing papers comments, and so on.

An important mechanism for encouraging a heightened level of self-awareness surrounding questions of disciplinarity and the teaching of writing has been the "Peer Collaboration" program for graduate students, a program previously initiated by the current director as a course leader in Comparative Literature which has since been instituted across the Institute as a whole. The peer collaboration program has the pedagogical advantage of encouraging teachers from within each discipline to define and discuss their own terms for what constitutes successful writing in their chosen fields. Collaboration among peers from within the same field, as well as across fields, has the additional advantage of avoiding unhelpful disidentifications with authority figures from other fields (English in particular) which a writing-in-the-disciplines based approach must circumvent if it is to avoid unproductive forms of discipline-based resistance.

During the year, Teaching Assistants may collaborate with other, perhaps more experienced Teaching Assistants as part of a recently developed peer-collaboration program. Projects might include visiting each other's classes, team-teaching, or acting as guest instructor. Faculty act as consultants, approving the proposals for peer collaboration, attending one or more lunch meetings, and submitting the final reports from the collaboration to the Knight Institute Office.