TAA member Dr. Karen Hardy has accepted a new position as President-Elect of the Association for Federal Enterprise Risk Management (AFERM). Hardy has written four books, including Enterprise Risk Management: A Guide for Government Professionals, which won the 2017 TAA Most Promising New Textbook Award; Mastering the Art of Success, co-authored with Jack Canfield, creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul; Building Self-Leaders: A Model Training Program for Public Sector Employees; and Destiny, Dreams & Decisions: Empowering Women for Success.
Starting Your Dissertation? Rethink Your Lifestyle
By Noelle Sterne, PhD
You’re ready to begin your dissertation, and you deserve congratulations! But realize, though, that your current lifestyle must change.
No Structure
Doctoral students beginning this coveted stage are often shocked at the lack of external structure. No prescheduled class meetings, specific assignments, or grades to goad you on. No classmates to remind you to tackle the next assignment. You’ve got to make your own schedule and follow through.
If you work away from home, you’ve already got some structure. You can easily figure out your dissertation time: evenings, weekends, and an occasional call-in-sick day.
Dissertation Proposals: When Stating Purpose of Study, Keep it Narrow, Focused, Practical
Dr. Laura Markos, owner, writing coach, and editor at WrittenHouse, and founder of Sage’s Journal of Transformative Education, shares the following advice for stating the purpose of the study in a dissertation proposal:
“When crafting the dissertation proposal, it’s important to focus, focus, focus on the research question(s) as narrowly as appropriate, but also on the statement of the purpose of the study, which has implications for both theory and practice. It can be tempting to overstate the purpose, to make the study sound like a larger potential contribution than one discrete, doable study.
President’s Message: TAA Reaches and Exceeds 3,000 Member Milestone, Other 2023 Accomplishments
It’s my privilege to enthusiastically report that we have had a banner year at TAA in 2023!
Thanks to the tireless efforts of our amazing new Executive Director, Kim Pawlak, and our two other new full-time staff members, Sierra Pawlak, and Kiley Thornton, TAA has been flourishing and the future looks brighter than ever. I’m proud to report that we ended 2023 with a record 3,020 members!
Allow me to highlight some other important accomplishments this year. We sent out a membership survey that revealed that thirty-one percent of responders said they joined the organization for our benefits and services. The top three benefits rated as most valuable were: (1) educational webinars (31%), (2) our annual conference (18%), and (3) our monthly print newsletter, The Academic Author (14%).
Considering Writing a Textbook? Questions to Ask
By Sierra Pawlak
In her November 9, 2022, TAA webinar, “Textbook Authoring Inspirations, Insights, and Innovations”, award-winning textbook author Jamie Pope shared several questions you should ask yourself before writing a textbook. Those questions include:
- What’s the book’s primary focus and level?
- Who’s your target audience?
- What are your qualifications to author the book?
- How does it differ from other books on the market?
- Why would someone adopt it over your competitors?
She used these questions to contrast what went right with her successful textbook, Nutrition for a Changing World, the recipient of a 2020 TAA Textbook Excellence Award, and what went wrong with a creative trade book proposal that was never published.
Writing is Thinking: Why It Should Be Integrated Early in the Process of Earning Your PhD
One discussion during a December 2023 TAA Conversation Circle on Writing a Dissertation centered on why writing should be integrated early in the process of earning a doctorate. Three academics who have earned their doctorates weighed in. Here are their thoughts.
Dr. Vernetta K. Mosley, a consultant and writing coach with Cultivate the Writer, explains that in her experience, students in non-writing intensive PhD programs tend to wait until the very end of the program to focus on writing, when it should be part of the process from the beginning.