Halmos Faculty’s Book Prepares Future Professors
Writing faculty in the Halmos College of and Arts and Sciences are demystifying the professoriate and bringing to light the invisible, behind-the-scenes work done by new faculty with their new book “Stories of Becoming.”Authors Claire Lutkewitte, Ph.D., Juliette Kitchens, Ph.D., and Molly Scanlon, Ph.D., associate professors of writing for the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts, are providing graduate students — and those who train them — with specific strategies for preparing for a career in the professoriate using findings from a multiyear, nationwide study of new faculty in the field of rhetoric and composition.
“We wanted to provide future colleagues with a text offering the kinds of insight we had wanted as we transitioned into the profession — a text informed by the various, and often wildly diverse, experiences of those who had most recently gone through it,” Kitchens said. “What we found inspired us to recommend strategies that we hope future colleagues will find helpful.”
Through the use of stories, the authors also share their collaborative research processes of conducting a nationwide survey, qualitative interviews, and textual analysis of professional documents.
The book, published by Utah State University Press, will be released this fall.