Category: News

CSU Writes is happy to introduce our Spring 2024 interns. These interns assist Dr. Kristina Quynn, the director of CSU Writes, to coordinate researchers and scholars from dozens of disciplines to support their writing productivity and craft. CSU Writes interns are effective behind-the-scenes facilitators who drive the program forward.  This year’s group reflect a diversity of backgrounds, programs, and projects:  

• Conor McMahon is from the Biological Chemical Engineering department and serves as the data intern. 
• Hana Gatlawi is from the Microbiology, immunology, Pathology department and serves as the facilitator for show up & write.  
• Kimi Conro runs CSU Writes data group and teams and is from Journalism and Media Communications department. 
• Lindsey Bush is from the School of Education and serves as the Writing Accountability for Research Projects (WARP) Coordinator. 
• Nancy Achiaa Frimpong is the Communication intern and is from Communication Studies department. 
• Riana Slyter is from the Communication Studies department and is the intern in charge of Special Data Project Program Analysis. 

 You can read about our fabulous interns on the CSU Writes “People” page: https://csuwrites.colostate.edu/people/  . 

The internships are paid and are designed for graduate students; although, we have also had postdoctoral fellows join the CSU Writes team. The intern program is competitive, with a number of applicants for each position. The program is designed to be mutually beneficial and encourages interns to draw from their own areas of interest or expertise to contribute to the CSU Writes program.      

If you are a graduate student who is interested in applying for a paid internship, you can look for announcements in late summer via the Graduate School and on Handshake. You can also reach out to CSU Writes for information at csuwrites@colostate.edu and see the CSU Writes https://csuwrites.colostate.edu.  

 

Writing can be a solo endeavor, but it does not have to be lonely, stressful, or cumbersome. It can be liberating, enjoyable and therapeutic. Yes, even therapeutic, if you have the right resources to walk you down the writing path, the right spaces to ignite your muse and the desire to complete your writing project.   

CSU provides multiple writing resources and spaces for students and faculty to accomplish their writing projects: spaces, conversations, consultations. Whether it is the silence you desire, or the intermittent distractions of shuffling feet, muffled giggles and loud phone conversations, or the proximity to books, or virtual consultations and engagement, writing spaces are spread across campus. Each space tends to different writing needs and routines. Writing guides and consultations are designed to make your writing journey a success.   

CSU Writes 

show up & write.  CSU writes provides many writing programs to help boost your productivity and develop a sustainable writing practice. The Show Up & Write sessions are designed to help you write more, write alongside others, maintain focus and produce more. There are many multiple time slots from Monday through to Thursday from 8am to 4pm. There are 2-hour sessions either in-person or virtual. Drop-in and write for as long as you can and your schedule allows. 

 CSU Library. The Morgan library has different resources for meeting your writing needs. You can use the main library or reserve a study room for group or individual study during library working hours. Study room reservation is easy and simple. There are perks to reserving study rooms at the library for writing purposes. These rooms come equipped with a large video monitor, and a whiteboard. You can request dry-erase markers, and laptops at the Library Services desk. Users have a 3-hour time limit per day. Visit the CSU library website and go to Reserve A Room to make reservations using your CSU NetID and password.   

Library Cube. There is also the CSU Libraries 24/7 Study Space in Morgan Library. If you study or write between midnight and 6am, the library has arrangements to accommodate your writing routine. The Library Cube is a 24-hour study space for students and Faculty. It is the glass unit north of the library entrance. This space is available all day. There is no reservation required. You only need your ID card to swipe into the library entrance after the main library closes.  

Additional spaces on campus for writing: If you are up for the magic scenery provides, then consider these other spaces like the Lory Student Center, Behavioral Sciences building and Biology building. 

 Writing@CSU Are you searching for specific materials that address writing? Writing@CSU is your next stop shop. Writing@CSU provides support for writers and teachers of writing. Writing@CSU is an open-access educational website supported by Colorado State University. The website has excellent instructional materials like writing guides for different writing projects and directs users to various resources for writers.  

Writing Center: Do you want feedback on your writing? The CSU Writing Center offers free consultations and feedback drafts to all writers at the university. You can request face-to-face consultations, real-time online consultations, and written responses to drafts via their online draft response queue.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring brings more sunshine, more rain (or snow), and increased pressure to finish up those lingering writing projects.

To address the writing pressures our early- through late-career researchers and professional writers face in the spring, we have organized a collection of workshops with guest presenters that focus on writing Well. Look for these upcoming workshops in the Write Well series:

 

APRIL 2 | 12-1:30pm | LSC 304-306 (lunch provided; register early)

Writing with Ease and Grace with Dr. Roel Sneider

Dr. Roel Sneider is an award-winning Geophysicist and W.M. Keck Distinguished Chair of Professional Development at Colorado School of Mines. In this workshop, Sneider acknowledges that many of us face hurdles that keep us from writing with ease and grace. Examples include the curse of perfection, a wish to not be vulnerable and to keep a low profile, or a sense of having to do it all alone. These are barriers that can be overcome with effective strategies. Author of The Joy of Science, Sneider brings practical writing and interpersonal skills to CSU from his training as a theoretical physicist, building a career in the sciences, and practicing ease and grace.

 

APRIL 10 | 12-1:30pm | LSC 300 (lunch provided; register early)

Tell Your Story: Memoir Methods for Researchers with Ross Atkinson

What first brought you to advanced research or scholarly studies? What will be your research or scholarly legacy? How do you craft the story of your career to help others understand your work and contributions to a field of study?

Everyone has a story to tell—a memory held onto that begs to be captured and framed, or perhaps released or reframed. Whatever your memoir goals are, this workshop is aimed at helping you get your story out. Modeled after CSU’s Military-connected Writing Workshop, this event is aimed at extracting, through targeted writing prompts, memories about significant moments in life. Don’t know if you have a story to tell? Come find out! No experience necessary. This session is open to all writers on campus.

 

Lunch buffet for diverse food needs will be provided at each session. Register early at: csuwrites.colostate.edu/guest-speakers

show up & write.  Spring 2024 

• show up & write. has in-person (Walnut Bldg.) and virtual (Teams) locations
• Lead Writers are needed for all sessions! Commitment is 2-Hours 2xWeek
• Sign up to be a lead writer here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F094FAEAF2CA3F58-48246254-show#/
• Contact CSU Writes intern Hana.Gatlawi@colostate.edu for more information

Showing up to a writing session is the first step to writing your article, proposal, thesis, or dissertation. The extensive research projects we write require that we build documents incrementally over time. We must show up & write. regularly if we are to be both successful and happy in academe.

According to Communications scholar, Joli Jensen, the recipe for a rewarding life in academe is “brief, frequent, low stress, and highly rewarding encounters with a project we enjoy.”

Ultimately, we write better when we “contain” our writing to specific times and places. We also write better when we have other writers for company. Rowena Murray and her collaborators have shown the benefits of “writing in social spaces” for reducing task related anxieties, improving overall mood, and increasing productivity (MacLeod et al. 2012; Murray 2014).

show up & write. is a CSU Writes offering that helps writers “contain” their projects in time and space AND provides a writing companion to enhance focus, wellbeing, and productivity.

After nearly a year of hiatus, show up & write. is launching anew this spring! You can find more information and locations at:

We currently need about 10 committed Lead Writers to host in-person or virtual sessions!!

Lead Writers (formerly known as “proctors”) host a 2-hour session for writing either in-person or virtually so that writers from across CSU can “show up and write.”

If you are looking for some additional accountability to show up & write. this semester, please sign up to become a Lead Writer.

If you are looking for an easy access strategy to contain and build momentum on your writing projects, attend the show up & write. times and locations that will work best for you this semester. The Lead Writers will love to have you at their session!

Writers who show up 10, 20, or 30 times can earn CSU Writes swag by using our “StampMe” app.

Until we meet again, may your writing be brief, frequent, low stress, and highly rewarding.

 

To plan or not to plan summer writing projects, that is a critical question:

Let’s not pretend. All research and scholarly writing projects need a plan—a systematic way of coordinating tasks through time to help you manage what can often feel unmanageable.

We could go into our summer months without a writing plan, but, knowing the benefits and how writing planning helps protect our summer fun time, why would any of us really want to?

Before the glorious and distracting months of summer are upon us, we will benefit greatly by taking some time (10-30 minutes) assessing where we are in relation to our current writing projects and goals. No matter what those are or what career stage you are at.

Early career scholars and senior scholars alike benefit from reflecting at the close of the spring semester on what they accomplished and what they will either put on hold or continue to work on over the summer.

Your summer writing plan can be as simple as putting a current project on hold. Taking care to leave notes and information that will make your fall return to the project easier. You may also be less tempted to worry or ruminate about the project if you know it is well contained—awaiting your return.

Your summer writing plan can be as complex as creating a list of tasks associated with each section of each article, chapter, proposal, or other project you wish to complete by August and then mapping a path to completion on your summer writing schedule and calendar. Not for the faint of heart.

Many of will plan somewhere between these two options by identifying a project or two that has been languishing or ready to start and that we will pick up with renewed energy.

Again, take a few moments to sketch a plan in a form that works for you—or if you do not yet know what works for you, experiment! Summer months are a fabulous time to practice and learn about you as a writer, today, as you are.

Writing retreats are also a great way to build planning and build writing into your summer. Low-stakes and just the right amount of social pressure to get some good progress made.

The payoff for planning your writing is that you can also plan for and take summer vacations! What rest or recreation adventures will you take this summer knowing that your writing projects are progressing as you wish?

Until we meet again, may your writing be brief, frequent, low stress, and highly rewarding!

CFGP: Call for Gold Papers

CSU Gold Papers is a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow publication hosted by CSU Writes. A riff on the familiar “white papers” that present summaries of emerging topics of interest in a field of research or scholarship, Gold Papers publishes original summaries of research or scholarship written by CSU graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

If there’s an emerging topic in your field you wish to explore further and to share with readers, submit a proposal to write for the Gold Papers!

If you wish to build your communication skills by writing to non-expert but interested readers, submit a proposal to write for the Gold Papers!

If you geek out about writing and want to connect with like-minded researchers, submit a proposal to write for the Gold Papers!

And, if you enjoy reading about what’s going on at the far reaches of research and is of interest among CSU’s graduate students and postdocs, you definitely need to check out CSU’s Gold Papers!

Buddy and Ami, your accountabilibuddies from CSU Writes, are here to tell you about show up & write.

Call for summer show up & write. proctors. If you want to show up and write over the summer, you can connect with other CSU writers and have additional accountability to ensure you “show up” by proctoring sessions. Reach out to CSU Writes to sign up: https://csuwrites.colostate.edu/show-up-and-write/

This semester’s CSU Writes book club participants read How to Talk to a Science Denier (2022) by Lee McIntyre, which draws on both his personal experience attending a Flat Earth convention and academic research to outline the common themes in science denialism. These themes are present in misinformation campaigns, such as the tobacco industry’s denial of the link between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s and the anti-vaccine movement today. The result is – as one participant eloquently put it – a series of “ethnographic vignettes” that challenge our idea of how we might engage with science deniers and why it is important that we must. McIntyre’s book provides a nuanced and introspective view of the divisive rhetoric used in debates surrounding science denialism.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the participants who read the book and engaged in conversations on this increasingly exigent topic. The participants came from various academic disciplines, including but not limited to political science, atmospheric science, English, education, and clinical sciences.

If you have an interest in joining our future book club events and have any suggestions for topics or books, please let us know by emailing csuwrites_mail@colostate.edu.

CSU Writes is offering writing retreats this summer for faculty, junior women faculty, and graduate students. These retreats offer designated time and space for faculty and graduate students to make great progress on summer writing projects in a supportive environment. Join us!

FACULTY WRITES SUMMER 2023 WRITING RETREATS

Weeklong Retreat: All Day 8:30am–4:30 pm (In Person)

• May 30 – June 2

1.5 Day Retreats: Thursday 12:00pm–4:30 pm, Friday 8:30am–4:30pm (Virtual on Zoom)

• July 6-7
• July 20-21
• August 10-11

Junior Faculty Women’s Writing Retreat

• June 12-14, 8:30am–4:30pm

Weeklong Women Faculty Retreat

• June 26-30, 8:30am–4:30pm

Register here.

GRAD WRITES SUMMER 2023 WRITING RETREATS

Weeklong Retreat: All Day, 8:30am–4:30 pm

• May 22-26 In Person

1.5 Day Retreats: Thursday 12:00pm–4:30 pm, Friday 8:30am–4:30pm (Virtual on Teams)

• July 6-7
• July 20-21
• August 10-11

Register here.