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.

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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.

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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%).

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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.

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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.

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Busy TAA People: TAA Member Angelica Ribeiro Authors New Book on How to Create Happiness at Work

TAA member Angelica Ribeiro, Ph.D. recently authored a new nonfiction book, How to Create Happiness at Work: Seven Evidence-Based Strategies to Enjoy Your Day (Kindle Direct Publishing, March 2024).

Based on scientific evidence and her own journey toward happiness in the workplace, Ribeiro shows how to create happiness at work, especially if we have experiences such as too much sitting; too little movement; too much time stuck in traffic; too little time building positive habits; too many tasks to do; too few hours of sleep; too much computer work; and too few social interactions.

Combining storytelling and science, Ribeiro shares how we can transform such experiences into happiness strategies, including making time to move, building positive habits during traffic, and creating social connections at work.

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