Twelve doctoral candidates participated in a week-long, full-time intensive writing workshop designed to help each progress their dissertation in a big way. Each student took a "time out" from all of their regular commitments to attend the Dissertation Kick Start, the first offered on this campus by the Graduate School and International Education.

Partners on the project, which ran from June 18 to 22, included the Doctoral Completion Project, the Quality Writing Center, and University Libraries, as well as many faculty and staff volunteers.

Participating students included: Asmaa Elkadi, electrical engineering; Terri (Montgomery) Malm, higher education; Elphin Smith, educational leadership; Rebecca Martindale, curriculum and instruction; Anita Farver, educational leadership; Tanya Vest, educational leadership; Fatemeh Sedaghatpour, space and planetary sciences/geosciences; Dawna Shin, philosophy; Felecia Smith, educational leadership; Jason (Jake) Edwards, rhetoric and composition; Daniel Chand, public policy; and Bryan Petty, entomology.

Several seminars were interspersed throughout the week on topics of interest, including research compliance, bibliographic reference citation software, plagiarism and copyright issues, and outlining.

Robert Wiedenmann, department chair of entomology, co-led the group with Diane Cook, director of graduate student activities. Wiedenmann said that at the end of the week, student participants reported they were unanimously delighted with the seminar, saying that it really helped them make substantial progress in their writing.

Wiedenmann said, "The students most appreciated the uninterrupted time to write, and the chance to be with other students also writing dissertations — a solitary and sometimes isolating activity.  The participants agreed they will meet each week going forward, to keep the momentum that they started in the workshop."