I teach workshops for graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professional programs. Most of these sessions concern writing, though grammar and polish are usually the small part. I spend more time on process, professional habits, audience, structure, revision, and the working conditions that make academic writing harder than it needs to be.
I do this work through the University of Alberta and, sometimes, with other institutions.
I have taught sessions on academic integrity, plagiarism, generative AI, and the decisions graduate researchers face when AI enters the writing process. I have also helped with a faculty workshop, offered through the Centre for Teaching and Learning, on building a Gemini chatbot.
Much of my workshop work concerns grants and proposals: Tri-Council applications, plain language, significance, literature framing, jargon, non-specialist audiences, and the problem of making a research project sound possible, consequential, and worth funding.
I also teach on theses, dissertations, journal articles, revision, writer’s block, procrastination, paraphrasing, sentence clarity, and writing for specific professional audiences, including medical, scientific, clinical, planning, legal, and literary contexts.
I rarely try to inspire people. I want them to understand the writing situation they are in, the demands professional writing places on them under pressure, and the practical choices that keep the work from becoming more punishing than it already is.