In higher education, scholarly women often write in isolation. They experience difficulties producing scholarship due to the demands of teaching, service, and/or family responsibilities (Badenhorst et al., 2016). Preliminary data suggests the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem of scholarly productivity for women academics (Cui et al., 2020). Mindful of the challenges facing women scholars, we propose a workshop that will explore how creating and participating in a writing group may facilitate professional development and resilience. More specifically, we will discuss our experiences in an interdisciplinary faculty writing group, using the organizing framework of job crafting, a process by which employees take steps to shape the work experience to meet their work-related needs (Berg et al., 2010). Proactive in nature, job crafting consists of actions that initiate and create change in the context of a person’s existing work responsibilities and of their position in an organizational hierarchy (Berg et al., 2010). Three examples of specific actions, which we will examine in greater detail, are task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting. Task crafting deals with the management of responsibilities and resources like time. Relational crafting involves how, when, and whom people interact with in the workplace. Cognitive crafting refers to changing how individuals think of tasks related to their careers. After sharing our writing group experiences, we will explore how workshop participants may use job crafting themselves to better meet their needs as scholars, facilitate professional resilience, and create positive career outcomes.

Authors:
Stephanie Bauman, Washington State University, United States
Jennifer Lodine-Chaffey, Montana State University Billings, United States
Vanessa Cozza, Washington State University, United States
Tracey Hanshew, Eastern Oregon University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Tracey Hanshew is an Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Oregon University. Her scholarship on the rural American West explores feminism in ranching women and rodeo cowgirls at the turn of the twentieth century.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-hanshew-98a37954/
https://chasingrodeohistory.org/

Jennifer Lodine is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Montana State University Billings. Her monograph, A Weak Woman in a Strong Battle: Women and Public Execution in Early Modern England, was published in 2022.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-lodine-chaffey-4733a91a/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer-Lodine-Chaffey

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