Thursday, September 19, 2013

Summer Writers Retreat



The College of Liberal Arts' first Faculty Writers Retreat took place this past summer, running from July 22-26. Mary Katherine Duncan, Steve Hales, Jennifer Johnson, Ted Roggenbuck, Nancy Giles, Danny Robinson, Megumi Omori, Christina Francis, and Claire Lawrence participated in the retreat. The group gathered daily for the duration of the week to work on their individual writing projects and to discuss the joys and frustrations of the writing process, share their tips, and generally gain insight, motivation, and support from peers. All report that it was an extremely productive experience.



“The retreat came about when Dr. Julie Vandivere told me about a similar retreat that they were running at Bucknell University.  We began to wonder if our faculty would benefit from one,” said organizer Heather Feldhaus.

“The College of Liberal Arts agreed to fund the event so I convened a small planning group composed of myself, Dr. Ted Roggenbuck from the English Department and Dr. Lisa Stallbaumer from the Department of History and TALE Director. After much discussion, we chose some dates and opted to begin by hosting a fairly unstructured event to see what faculty prefer,” said Feldhaus.

It was a productive week. with all participants making significant progress on one or more substantial scholarly projects. Additionally, at least one idea for an interdisciplinary collaborative project was conceived. 

The College of Liberal Arts will host another retreat January 13-17.  We have also set up a BU COLA Faculty writers group on Facebook and any member of the COLA faculty can join.

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