- Book Review: Elizabeth Rankin, The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals
- ACTION ALERT! TAA joins fight against online piracy
- Notable Author: Kenneth Henson
- Transcripts of TAA Audio Conference podcasts now available
- Busy TAA People: Matt Stevens
- New TAA-sponsored workshop: ‘The New Digital Scholarship’
- Fresco Fine Art Publications donates book to 2011 TAA Award winners
- Call for nominations to TAA’s Council of Fellows
- Please thank our 2011 TAA Conference Sponsors
Elizabeth Rankin
The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals
Reviewed by LeKita Scott Dawkins
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In The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals, Elizabeth Rankin focuses on intellectual aspects and issues of writing that both academic and professional writers encounter. She organizes the text into four commonthemes - contributing to the professional conversation; meeting readers' needs and expectations; finding your professional voice; and seeing the project through. To address each theme Rankin provides real-life scenarios, then couches her tips and recommendations in terms of receiving feedback from writing groups, as well as writing on your own. Writing is the livelihood of many academicians and professionals, so it is imperative that individuals understand their own writing styles and learn how to collaborate with others to create their best work. This text guides writers through that process.
The title - The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals - is very appropriate because for many academic and professional writers, the act of writing in and of itself is certainly 'work'. Rankin points out early onthat while extremely rewarding, writing can also be challenging, frustrating, and complex. Throughout the text, she discusses in very clear terms the myriad situations that face writers, and clearly covers the 'who, what, where, when, why and how' of academic and professional writing. The four common themes on which she focuses – contributing to the professional conversation, meeting readers' needs and expectations, finding your professional voice, and seeing the project through –are certainly aligned with what faculty and other writers experience. Rankin utilizes various methods to develop the text – her narration provides useful vignettes based on actual experiences within writing groups. She includes expositions that might steer the reader through challenging situations during the writing process, and the transferability of the information provided is infinite.
For ultimate productivity, academic and professional writers must identify ways to maintain or increase efficiency. Rankin discusses this subject, as well as various aspects of the writing process in thorough detail. She also delivers usefulconsiderations related to writing with and for purpose, audience, genre, and voice. For example, in terms of contributing to the professional conversation, Rankin discusses defining your contribution and maintaining your vision. As it relates to finding your professional voice, the author uses details related to "exorcising the grad student within", "making it personal", and "keeping it under control". All of these areas and the many others that are provided are extremely useful in compiling and completing quality work.
One of the greatest strengths of this book is the examination of writing from the perspective of working with an academic group and the perspective of working as an individual. Elaborate analyses and consideration of both are given, providing information that is easily applicable to the various situations academic and professional writers might encounter. The writing group tips provide an impressive framework and point of view from which to critically seek feedback and examine the work of others. The tips provided for writing on your own are excellent in theory, and would greatly benefit the writer who is deliberate and conscientious in their work.
Rankin provides useful information in the appendix on determining how to structure writing group tasks and set goals. The appendix also offers sample book proposal guidelines and a list of additional reference books for writing.
As a grant writer, trade book author, researcher, writing group member, and adjunct faculty member/tutor for a college writing course, I found this book easy to read and appreciated the concrete situations with which to identify. As I continue in my career, I will definitely suggest this text to graduate students, faculty, and others; I will use this book as a guide when I need a writing refresher; and I will refer to these tips for guidance from project to project.
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Reviewed by LeKita Scott Dawkins
A native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Dr. LeKita Scott Dawkins currently serves as the Director of Foundation Relations for Syracuse University and is an adjunct instructor of writing at the State University of New York's Empire State College (ESC). She received her BS in Elementary Education from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, her MEd in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University, and her PhD in Educational Leadership from Florida State University. Dr. Scott Dawkins is co-editor of Journey to the PhD: How to Navigate the Process as African Americans, which is a timely guide and source of information for men and women of color considering the journey towards a terminal degree. She is also a founding member and the current treasurer of Sisters of the Academy (SOTA) Institute (www.sistersoftheacademy.org), an organization committed to the success of Black women in the Academy.
ACTION ALERT! TAA joins fight against online piracy
TAA has joined other author groups in supporting a bill that would fight online piracy of intellectual property, including textbooks.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (S. 3804), or “rogue site” bill, would empower the U.S. Attorney General to initiate a proceeding in U.S. District Court to disable the domain name of an Internet website that offers downloads of pirated books. It would also bar domestic ISPs and ad service providers from processing transactions from piracy websites registered overseas.
“Online piracy of copyrighted works is a violation of the interests of textbook and academic authors,” said Richard Hull, TAA’s executive director. “It undermines the economic value of intellectual property, discourages creativity and innovation, costs jobs, and damages the U.S. export of intellectual property created by its citizens.”
The existing notice and takedown regimen is ineffectual and leaves the owners of intellectual property defenseless, he said.
TAA is calling on its members and other authors to support S. 3804 by contacting their Senators and Representatives and urging them to support the bill. See Action Issues for more information.
Notable Author: Kenneth Henson
A scholar and master grant writer dances up the academic ladder
By Leanne Silverman
Kenneth Henson:
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Kenneth Henson’s career reads like a textbook ascension of the academic ladder, from the assistant professor to college dean. Along the way, he has developed a winning ability to write grant proposals, strategies for being a productive scholar and a willingness to share his expertise.
Raised in Alabama, Henson earned his B.S. in secondary education from Auburn University in 1963. Then he married and moved out of his parents’ house. “All of a sudden I had expenses I never had before,” he said. “I went from feeling very wealthy (because I had no financial needs) to being very poor in a very short time. So I started writing grants.” A National Science Foundation grant paid for his M.Ed from the University of Florida. Shortly after receiving his Ed.D. in curriculum and research from the University ofAlabama (1969), another grant landed Henson one year in England as a Fulbright Scholar.
By writing successful grants, Henson has been able to both fund his education and achieve his professional goals. “When I moved to Indiana, I knew I’d need to write some grants and articles to get tenure,” he said. “I wrote a grant and it won a national award to develop a new program that they didn’t have. I thought, ‘This is my key, this is my ticket to anything that I want.’ So everywhere I’ve ever worked, whatever I wanted I just wrote a grant for it.” Henson has brought in over $2 million for projects on which he is the principal investigator; overall, he has raised more than $100 million.
Henson earned tenure at the University of Indiana in 1972 and was hired by Delta State University as a full professor in 1981. He has helped establish several new academic programs over the years. “I developed a performance-based program in Indiana and a new doctoral program in education at Delta State. When you’re trying to do a lot of new things,” he said, “being Dean just makes it easier.” So Henson took the Dean of Education job at Eastern KentuckyUniversity in 1988 and stayed for 11 years—the longest of any education dean in the state at that time. Henson is currently professor of education at The Citadel in South Carolina; he served as their Dean of Education from 2001-2004.
He has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications and 40 books, earning his reputation as a writer with valuable advice to share. Said Henson: “I was giving a workshop on writing for professional publication at the University of Alabama when the person in charge of continuing education said, ‘We want you to go on the road for us. We also want to give out a book on the topic.’” That conversation led, in 1991, to the first of five books Henson has penned about writing for publication, Writing for Successful Publication.
His other four books are: The Art of Writing for Publication, Writing for Professional Publication: Keys to Academic and Business Success, Writing for Publication: Road to Academic Advancement, and Writing for Professional Publications. He has also published Grant Writing in Higher Education and is finalizing a second book on grant writing for K-12 educational leaders.
At the same time, Henson began offering workshops on writing successful grant proposals. He currently presents two TAA-sponsored workshops, “Writing Grant Proposals” and “Writing for Publication.”
Drawing on his own long experience as an author and grant writer, Henson shared some key bits of advice.
On deciding whether to write a book or articles: “As a junior professor, I’d choose articles. They’re going to get you tenure and get you promoted faster than books will. You can write several articles in the time that it takes you to write a book and the article is the coin of the realm.”
On publishing books: “I make sure there’s a market before I write anything now,” he said. He does so by talking to publishers about his book ideas early on. “If there’s not market for it, there’s no use writing it. That’s sometimes hard for academics to grasp. Publishing is a commercial business with a dollar face to it. Regardless how valuable your book would be [from a scholarly perspective], publishers won’t publish it if they think they’re going to lose money.”
On selecting a publisher: “I want to be clear: For many years, I signed with anybody willing to publish my books. I felt like I hadsucceeded if I found anybody that wanted to publish me!” He goes about it differently now. “I’m very interested in what the publisher’s going to do once the book is published. I go with the one that I think is going to do the most marketing of my books.” He added, “Some of the smaller publishers will do a better job than the larger publishers will. We tend to think of the really big publishers as the best way to go if you get that opportunity, but it might not be.”
On writing itself: “A common mistake people make is writing to impress the editor. But you should write to serve the readers. If you have something of quality that readers want, the editor is going to be pleased.” Henson also said, “There’s no scholarship in being complex and using big, unfamiliar words. Try to speak as clearly and as simply as you can.”
On deadlines: “Professors are notorious for missing deadlines. My intention is always to finish a project with months to spare. I’m not writing to meet the deadlines, I’m writing to beat the deadlines by a hefty margin.”
On seeking funding: “Getting money is never a good reason to write a grant. It’s got to be about more than that. To be a successful grant writer, you have to cease thinking about your needs and start focusing on the funders’ needs. They have a job to be done, and they’ll fund you when you convince them that you’ll do a better job than anybody else will. I think of it as working together and helping people do whatever it is they’re doing.”
A busy workshop schedule often keeps Henson on the road, but he always makes time for himself. “I’ll work for you in the daytime, but when the sun goes down, the evening is my time.” And for more than 40 years, a good deal of Henson’s free time has been spent ballroom dancing with his wife. “We dance one or two nights a week whenever we can.”
Leanne Silverman hung her shingle as a freelance writer and editor in Denver, CO after leaving a 12-year career in academic publishing.
Transcripts of TAA Audio Conference podcasts now available
Transcripts of TAA Audio Conference podcasts are now available for download on the TAA Audio Conferences/Podcasts page on the TAA website. Click on the podcast and download the transcript from the session page. This is a members-only service. Members will need their username and password to access transcripts: Click here
Busy TAA People: Matt Stevens
TAA member Matt Stevens, author of Managing a Construction Firm on Just 24 Hours a Day, is serving as a one of ten judges for the national “Best of Best” construction project awards, sponsored by McGraw-Hill/ENR.
New TAA-sponsored workshop: ‘The New Digital Scholarship’
 Kate Wittenberg |
TAA is sponsoring a new workshop entitled, “How Technology Is Affecting Academic Writing and Publishing and What It Means for You”.
The workshop will be presented by Kate Wittenberg, project director of client and partnership development in the strategy and research group at Ithaka (www.ithaka.org), where she focuses on building partnerships among scholars, publishers, libraries, technology providers, and foundations with an interest in promoting the development and sustainability of digital scholarship and teaching or service.
“Digital technologies have taken on new importance in the scholarly writing and publication process,” said Wittenberg. “Increasingly, textbooks and scholarly books and journals will be discovered and read in digital form, and multi-media will become a central part of scholarly communication.”
As ebooks, online journals, and multimedia-enhanced scholarship become realities, academic authors need to understand how these developments will affect their research, writing, and publishing. Participants of this workshop will explore important new questions such as:
- How is digital technology affecting the business of textbook and academic book and journal publishing?
- What are effective strategies for including multimedia sources in your research and writing process?
- Must your narrative necessarily be presented in linear form?
- Are there ways to present an “authorial voice” while allowing readers to explore an interactive digital work?
- Can digitized primary sources become central organizing structures of a publication?
- Are there new kinds of scholarly arguments that are made possible through the presentation of images and data alongside textual narrative?
- How are rights clearance issues different in a digital environment?
- Where can one find technical help with the use of digital technology in writing and publishing?
- What are the issues relating to peer review and credentialing of digital publications?
- This workshop will explore these issues, offer an overview of current developments in the field, provide the background and information needed to understand the digital environment for writing and publishing, and help participants determine whether, when, and how to utilize these developments in their own work.
Before joining Ithaka, Kate directed the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), a collaboration of the libraries, academic computing division, and university press, where she developed digital publications in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. At EPIC, Kate’s projects included Columbia International Affairs Online, The Amistad Resource for Teaching African American History, Jazz Studies Online, and The Gutenberg-e Online History Project. Kate speaks and writes frequently about scholarly communication and electronic publishing.
TAA sponsors these workshops by covering the domestic travel and lodging costs of bringing a presenter to your institution, including air, ground transportation, lodging and food. The host institution pays the speaker's fee. The speaker's fee will depend on the length of the workshop, the content and the number of participants of each workshop.
To learn more about this workshop or to bring this workshop to your institution: Click Here
Fresco Fine Art Publications donates book to 2011 TAA Award winners
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Fresco Fine Art Publications (www.frescobooks.com) donated a book of fine art from their nationally acclaimed Southwest artist series to be given to each 2011 TAA Textbook Excellence Award and McGuffey Longevity Award winner and TAA Council of Fellow inductee.
TAA Texty Award Information
TAA McGuffey Award Information
Call for nominations to TAA's Council of Fellows
Call for nominations to TAA’s Council of Fellows
TAA invites you to apply or nominate a candidate for membership in its prestigious Council of Fellows.
TAA’s Council of Fellows members are distinguished authors who have a long record of successful and diverse publication as a textbook author, an academic author, or both. Candidates should be authors whose textbooks or academic articles or books have established their presence in their field.
Council of Fellows members are chosen by a TAA Selection Committee based on a set of criteria which includes their level of participation in TAA activities; teaching excellence; quality and quantity of textbooks (if textbook authors); and quality and quantity of professional journal articles, monographs and edited books (if academic authors).
New Council of Fellows members will be inducted at the 2011 TAA Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 24-25, at which time they will receive an embossed leather journal and lifetime membership in TAA.
TAA’s current Council of Fellows are Michael Sullivan, Lee Mountain, Everette E. Dennis, Mike Keedy, Franklin H. Silverman and Karl J. Smith, inducted in 1999; Thomas L. Wheelen and William R. Pasewark, inducted in 2000; Karen Hess, D. Stanley Eitzen and J. David Hunger, inducted in 2001; Charles D. Holland, inducted in 2002; Patrick G. McKeown, inducted in 2003; and Karen C. Timberlake and Marilyn T. "Winkie" Fordney, inducted in 2005, Robert Christopherson and Fred Kleiner, inducted in 2009 and Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, inducted in 2010.
The deadline for application to the TAA Council of Fellows is November 30, 2010. Applications must include documentation in support of the Council of Fellows Criteria. Send your application and documentation to TAA, Council of Fellows, P.O. Box 56359, St. Petersburg, FL 33732-6359.
View TAA Council of Fellows Criteria
Learn more about the TAA Council of Fellows
Please thank our 2011 TAA Conference Sponsors
The following companies have shown their support for textbook and academic authors by sponsoring TAA’s 2011 Conference in Albuquerque, NM, June 24-25. Please take a moment to send them an e-mail and thank them for their support of authors.
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) — Sponsor of the Friday Welcome Breakfast
Christopher Kenneally
New Forums Press, Inc. — Donated 30 copies of It Works for Me: Becoming a Scholar/Researcher
Douglas Dollar
Atlantic Path Publishing — Donated 30 copies of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook
Mary Ellen Lepionka
iKlear — Donated a travel cleaning kit for laptops and mobile devices for all conference attendees
Monica Younghein
Fresco Fine Art Publications — Donated a book of fine art from their nationally acclaimed Southwest artist series for each 2011 TAA Texty and McGuffey winner and TAA Council of Fellow inductee
Kay Fowler & Nancy Stem
Lennie Literary Agency & Author’s Attorney
Michael Lennie
Merlyn’s Pen, The New Library of Young Adult Writing
Jim Stahl
Pearson Education
Roth Wilkofsky
Words & Numbers
Phyllis Hillwig
FlatWorld Knowledge
Jeff Shelstad
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