Building Your Niche

Stairs in Knobview Hall, IU Southeast

This is a work in progress.

Not the post. You're reading the post, so that's finished.

Over the past year, I have been trying to find my niche on my campus. Actually, that's inaccurate. Finding implies that it already exists and that I either stumble upon it or I just discover something that is already there. I've been trying to build my niche. (That metaphor probably doesn't hold up, but it's an important distinction to me, so I'll do what I want.)

In March 2014, I started working as a writing program coordinator on my campus. This position, commonly known among colleagues in my field as a WPA (writing program administrator) position, focuses on maintaining, supporting, and developing IU Southeast's undergraduate writing courses, specifically those that are associated with our general education program. I have spent many years training for this kind of position, and I am thrilled to be doing the work. It's a significant component of my professional identity.

But being a WPA is not the niche I am trying to build on campus. Since I first arrived on campus, unpacking books, working on writing for publication, and planning new courses that I had never taught and was excited to design, I noted that there wasn't much support for faculty writers.

In a way, that isn't surprising. IU Southeast is primarily a teaching institution; we are supposed to dedicate more of our time to teaching classes and working with our undergraduates (and a few graduates) closely. We have a strong culture of professional development for teaching on campus, and it is clear that the faculty take their roles as teachers very seriously. But we are also academics, and many of us--especially the early tenure-track folks like myself, but certainly many others as well--want and need to conduct research and produce scholarship. Because we are a regional campus of Indiana University, we have access to lots of advantageous resources--internal grant opportunities, financial support for summer research, a culture of support among colleagues from multiple campuses, and so forth. But what was missing was a significant amount of local and active support for those of us who were actually sitting down to write.

Some time in my first year, a colleague in the Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence (ILTE) asked me if I would be interested in facilitating a faculty learning community (FLC), the focus of which would be building a writing group for faculty members. Perfect.

Maria Accardi, an associate librarian and participant in that inaugural FLC, wrote about her experience on this blog last month, so I won't go into that experience much more than to say this was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had as a faculty member so far. With the generous financial support of ILTE and administration, we extended the FLC's timeline an additional three months, with participants who wanted to continue with the group meeting during the summer to talk about their writing goals, their achievements, and their challenges. There are already plans to run a new FLC in Spring 2016. (IU Southeast faculty: When you see the invitation, apply!) And I have already talked with administrators who are favorably inclined to support a week-long Writers' Retreat next summer. This is very, very exciting.

Okay, so that's the niche building. I want to help my campus build a culture of support for faculty writers, and I am lucky both to have people on campus who are willing to support this endeavor and faculty who are willing to participate.

But the purpose of this blog isn't to toot horns or to act as a booster for what I am clearly stating is my agenda. It's a reflective tool. It's a space to consider the possibilities and ramifications of what I choose to take on as a new faculty member. So here are some reflections:

• This kind of work allows me to tap back into what I have done in the past, whether as a writing center consultant, an assistant director of a writing center, or a facilitator for groups of graduate students who were working to produce their theses and dissertations. I have always found this kind of work with writers immensely rewarding.
• I had a brief conversation with my dean recently about leadership. She remarked that leadership isn't about telling people what to do or trying to control people. It's about encouraging others to follow you because they think it is the right thing to do. I want to lead the effort to enlarge this aspect of faculty development, but I can't just make it happen by fiat. Others have to buy into the concept. Such an initiative as this requires multiple leaders among faculty and administration--or, in terms my literacy friends will identify with, sponsors--who foster the growth of faculty writing. Such leaders/sponsors already existed before I arrived, and others will come. This is good.
• When I say I want to lead, I don't mean I want to be "the face" of faculty writing on campus. Nothing so bold or vain as that. It is my hope that those faculty members who participate in the FLC and perhaps the retreat (assuming it happens--fingers crossed) would go back to their schools and departments to build their own writing groups, or to build interdisciplinary writing groups across campus. The goal over time would be to have lots of faculty members talking about their writing with other faculty, with other faculty members leading workshops and giving presentations.
• Although this effort focuses on faculty writers, I hope this will ultimately be beneficial for our students. Faculty in other disciplines, as they will often freely admit, don't feel comfortable talking about writing with their students. Talking with other faculty members--seeing the struggles most writers face, considering the challenges that slow us down or sometimes stop us in our tracks, discovering solutions to those struggles and challenges, seeing the benefits of collaboration--may make teachers feel more comfortable talking with their students about writing.

These are lofty goals, but as I said in the beginning, this niche is a work in progress. It'll require a significant amount of time, energy, and resources. Other faculty members will have to participate, to dedicate their already strained time to yet another commitment. Administrators will have to continue to see value in cultivating faculty writing and allotting resources to supporting such endeavors. I will need allies across the university, some of whom I think I have already found.

And here's the last reflection for the moment: More than anything, this kind of effort requires the one thing I know I need to work on the most as a scholar, a teacher, and a WPA: Patience. Change comes incrementally.

What are you trying to build for yourself on your campus? How does it connect with the rest of your professional goals? 

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If you're interested in reading more about faculty writing, take a look at Paul Silva's How to Write a Lot, which provides a road map and philosophy for building writing groups (or agraphia groups, as he calls them) and Anne Ellen Geller and Michelle Eodice's Working with Faculty Writers, a collection of essays from scholars who already have much more experience in this work than me. ("Inventing the Professor" guest blogger Will Duffy, with co-author John Pell, contributed an excellent chapter on collaboration to that collection.)

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