CEHD CEHD CEHD CEHD

Writing Support Services

"The writing paradigm used by the POWER folks helped me put my writing habits 'back on track' and reminded me how important it is to write daily. I was aware that publishing was important in a professor's career, but the POWER model focuses on strategies and resources that will help me publish consistently when I become a professor."

~ Doctoral Student, College of Education & Human Development

Who are we?

The acronym POWER stands for:

Promoting Outstanding Writing For Excellence in Research

POWER Services supports doctoral students in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) who wish to improve their writing ability, wish to learn how to write more productively, or who struggle with their current writing skills. POWER is NOT a proof-reading service, nor an editing center.

POWER Services consist of a group of doctoral students and faculty in the college dedicated to helping graduate students

  • gain mastery (power) over their writing
  • become more productive writers and researchers

What is our Mission?

POWER Services' mission is not to teach doctoral students how to write, but rather to help students deal with the common, but seldom discussed, problems and complexities of writing. Consulting with members of POWER Services, graduate students will be able to discuss the writing process, de-stigmatize the writing difficulties faced by many students and faculty, and learn practical tips for academic writing (click here to see what to expect during a POWER appointment). In short, the goals of POWER Services are to: 1) help students transform their writing assignments into more pleasurable and less frustrating tasks; and 2) foster the development of productive writing habits among graduate students.

Supported by the CEHD and utilizing workshops, web-based resources, and consulting support, POWER Services aims to foster a POWERful model of writing that will remain with graduate students throughout their professional careers. The motivation to develop these services grew out of the need to help graduate students in the college understand what it takes to become productive, high-quality writers in their professional fields, even while they are graduate students.

As writing constitutes one of the most important tools for a successful career within academia (e.g., for promotions, performance assessments, peer reviews), the pressure to write well and to write often, begins early. Doctoral students currently entering the academic workforce, for instance, do better if they graduate with at least one peer-reviewed publication listed in their vita, when applying for competitive faculty positions.

Nevertheless, as the research on academic writing indicates, productive writing does not happen 'naturally' for most people. Nor does a positive attitude toward writing occur without 'hard work'. Unfortunately, the opportunities to learn how to be more productive, and how to develop a positive attitude regarding writing, were rare, until now!

Learning to Write with POWER

When you schedule an appointment with one of the POWER writing consultants, you begin to learn how to write with power. This notion of 'writing with power' comes from Prof. Peter Elbow's work . Peter Elbow - a Professor of English at M.I.T. and The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, now retired - is well known as a theorist of the writing process, and as someone who revolutionized the teaching of writing. For many years, he studied the mechanisms that hinder or facilitate writing. His work began as he studied himself: when he dropped out of graduate school due to his poor writing, he began to systematically analyze the factors that helped or blocked his ability to write. What he learned since then has become a model for high quality, productive, and enjoyable writing for many people.

For Elbow, the phrase 'writing with power' has two meanings. The first meaning is probably what most of us think of, when we think about writing with power : powerful writing, of course! Written words that make a difference in readers' individual lives, or in the lives of entire communities. Writing with power makes us think of writing contained in such places as The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, religious texts, classical literature, and poetry.

Yet Peter Elbow emphasizes a second meaning for this phrase, and it is this second meaning that we will highlight, in the POWER Services:

"… writing with power also means getting power over yourself and over the writing process: knowing what you are doing as you write; being in charge; having control; not feeling stuck or helpless or intimidated. I am particularly interested in this second kind of power in writing and I have found that without it you seldom achieve the first kind."
(Elbow, 1998, p. viii)