While graduate students' struggles with isolation, self-doubt, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, anxiety, depression, and burnout are well-documented (Morrison-Saunders et al.; Stachl and Barranger), few writing programs directly address their emotional wellbeing (Russell-Pinson and Harris). Drawing on our backgrounds as a therapist and a…

Seeking to support graduate student writers, writing centers at research universities have developed highly successful dissertation camps over the past 15 years. Previous research from North American dissertation camps has demonstrated significant benefits from these camps, as dissertation writers developed new writing habits and increased their…

Over the past few decades, the number of people enrolled in doctoral study has increased dramatically across the world. In practical terms, this has meant that universities now receive increasingly diverse students with regard to ethnicity, age, language, culture, and background preparedness for higher degree study. Students can, and often do,…

Background: Data commentary, in-text comments on the visual presentation of data, is acknowledged as a central aspect of academic writing in many engineering disciplines. At the same time, it is a feature that has been shown to be challenging for students. One of the genres in which data commentary plays a significant role in many engineering…

This paper argues for a pedagogic practice to overcome the challenges that many professional practitioners face in undertaking a professional doctorate. Recent examination feedback on a professional doctoral programme of 300 candidates in the UK highlighted that a number of candidates often struggle to write persuasively, critically and…

This article takes up the "special strangeness" of grading practices in the graduate creative writing workshop, based on the author's research, personal experience, and interviews with the faculty of her doctoral creative writing program. Using a structure of notes, the author attempts to make sense of the way grades are understood by both teacher…

This essay discusses our failed attempts at the College of Charleston to sustain a Writing Studio course. Specifically, we explain how the failure of our Studio course revealed underlying problems in the department concerning the formation of writing program policy, the role of adjunct faculty, the oversight of our first-year writing curriculum,…