Professional Development, Summer Style

[mimmoore]

What are your scholarship and professional development plans for the summer? Like many colleagues, I relish the opportunity to focus on research projects, reading, and course development during the summer “downtime,” when I am teaching only one course. Such summer work informs our pedagogy for the academic year to come, whether we are full-time, part-time, tenured/tenure-track, or contingent—and whether or not our institutions and the legislatures and governing boards that fund them recognize the value of this particular academic labor.

Perhaps our summer efforts do not always appear as work to those outside academia because these activities can be so varied. Just consider the possibilities. I’ve got colleagues who have done or will do the following: 

1. Plan and conduct research
2. Travel as part of research work
3. Finish writing an article or book chapter
4. Attend a conference (perhaps a regional CCCC event?)
5. Read a book (Paul Hanstedt’s Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World was recommended to me recently, for example.)
6. Create a virtual or F2F reading group (I’m in a group reading John Warner’s Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.)
7. Participate in a syllabus or assignment swap
8. Catch up on reading journal articles
9. Actually write one or more of the essays they typically assign students (Have you brushed up your own literacy narrative lately?)
10. Participate in a webinar
11. Revamp an online course or participate in a course review
12. Take a course in a field outside their own discipline
13. Participate in departmental assessment or course redesign efforts
14. Review textbooks for publishers or the department
15. Revise or develop a new edition of a textbook (which is on my agenda this summer)
16. Serve as an abstract reader for conferences or peer reviewer for a journal
17. Join a writing group
18. Take training in technology, course accessibility/design, etc.
19. Learn how to create video content (or another use any other technology that is new to them)
20. Get involved in a cross-disciplinary SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) group
21. Plan an undergraduate research experience for students
22. Become a mentor
23. Apply for a grant
24. Host a summit or roundtable session to support adjunct faculty
25. Join or create a composition teaching circle with faculty from high schools, two-year schools, or four-year schools (or participate in a National Writing Project event)

What are your summer plans? Is there a book you would like to recommend, a conference that you’re planning to attend, or a virtual group that others could join?  Share your recommendations with us.