Faculty Scholarly Activities Pilot

Academic writing can be challenging for early-career faculty as they balance finding their scholarly voice with meeting the demands of teaching, research and service responsibilities. Research shows that new faculty may struggle with composing fluency, navigating the publishing process, and genre transitions (Hewett, 2025). 
 
The Office of Faculty Success is pleased to announce a pilot program supporting pre-tenure faculty members in their academic writing projects. Two types of support are available:  writing consultation services, and contracted editing support.  
 
This pilot program aims to determine whether the types of writing support described above are in demand among pre-tenure faculty members at Texas Tech and, if so, how the program can be scaled to meet institutional needs. In this pilot year, faculty members may only apply for one type of support given the limited number of opportunities available.

 
Writing Consultation Services

The purpose of writing consultation services is to assist pre-tenure faculty members with journal article and grant proposal writing. Note: the type of writing support provided by the Pilot Scholarly Activities Center is distinct from the grant proposal support provided by the Office of Research & Innovation. The former aims to strengthen the faculty member’s academic writing skills, and the latter provides invaluable guidance specific to proposal structure, organization, and requirements set forth by external agencies.

• Academic writing coaching, guided by writing center pedagogy, is a collaborative process that uses strategies such as asking questions and responding as a reader to support writers across disciplines and writing backgrounds. This approach prioritizes writers’ ownership of their work and values growth, agency, and learning over one-time fixes.
• In this pilot program, all writing coaching will be asynchronous. Faculty members interested in applying for writing coaching must have a full draft of a document ready for review.  
• Applications must be submitted to the faculty member’s department chair, school director, or area coordinator by Wednesday, October 22.  Applicants will be notified about whether they have been accepted into the program by Wednesday, October 29. Submitted documents and comments will be returned to the faculty member on or before December 15. 
   

Writing Consultation Application

 Contracted Editing

• 20 funding awards of up to $1,000 are available to assist pre-tenure faculty with support for external, contracted editing services.
• Faculty will be responsible for identifying and contracting external editing services – including working with their unit's business managers on vendor setup – if they choose not to use one of the editing services recommended here:
  • https://morganfeltonconsulting.com
  • https://www.defendpublishlead.com/

 

The deadline to apply for 2025-2026 contracted editing funding is December 5, 2025.

Application for Contracted Editing coming Nov. 3, 2025

Additional Information

• Texas Tech University faculty who are pre-tenure in any discipline are eligible to apply for these programs.  Faculty members who submitted their applications for tenure this fall semester are ineligible to apply.
• As a pilot program, there will be limited opportunities for both types of support. Opportunities in both programs will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Leadership will make every effort to distribute awards evenly across academic units.
• All submitted applications will be routed from the faculty member to the faculty member’s chair, director, or area coordinator, and then to the program’s writing coach.
• The Pilot Scholarly Activities Center’s writing coach, Dr. Caroline Hetherington, is an experienced writing consultant who has been working at Texas Tech’s Graduate Writing Center since 2018. Dr. Hetherington holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Manchester, UK. She completed postdoctoral research at the University of Oslo, Norway and the University of Western Ontario, Canada.