Individual Writing Consultations

The Villanova Institute for Research and Scholarship offers individual consultations for faculty to develop their manuscripts, strategize ways to meet writing goals, and explore ways to incorporate writing into their work with students.

Developmental Editing

“A developmental editor is a focused, objective reader whose job is to improve the structure, content, and organization of your manuscript. In the world of scholarly writing, developmental editors usually (although not always) have PhDs and work primarily with academic writers. A developmental editor is familiar with the conventions of academic publishing and may specialize in a genre of academic writing like books or articles.” Kel Weinhold. Read more about Working with a Developmental Editor, by Kel Weinhold.

Strategizing to achieve writing goals

As academics, we are trained in researching and discussing intellectual ideas. To bring scholarly projects to fruition, however, requires a different set of skills: writing in a number of different genres for which we tend to receive little training, adapting projects toward new target audiences (often even a different journal within the same field), fitting writing into a busy schedule, understanding strategies for making writing more efficient, and managing the recursive nature of writing to successfully disseminate our work.

In addition to workshops, seminars, and resources to help faculty achieve their writing goals, VIRS offers individual consultations for faculty to determine the best way to benefit from these resources and to learn additional strategies to accomplish their research and writing goals.

Designing writing for students

Much as for faculty, writing represents an important means for students to establish disciplinary knowledge, to develop intellectually, and to contribute as scholars.

VIRS offers consultations to support faculty in exploring new ways to design writing activities and assignments into their courses, to share ways that writing specialists guide students through writing projects, and to encourage faculty to support student writing as fundamental knowledge-making activity across disciplines and through all levels of student learning (undergraduate to graduate).