RSA Career Retreat for Associate Professors

Call for applications

The Career Retreat for Associate Professors is an initiative of the RSA to reach out to associate professors seeking to complete a scholarly project and achieve promotion to full professor. Following tenure, many RSA members suffer from isolation at their home institutions that can make completing scholarly projects difficult. Advice and support on advancement issues often disappears, and a host of new obligations often compete for our attention. 

With a special invitation for women and underrepresented minorities, the 2016 Career Retreat offers the opportunity to work with a senior member of the RSA who has agreed to serve as a Career Mentor to:

• Learn how to “read” your own institution,
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your current curriculum vita,
• Develop an action plan to achieve promotion to full professor, and
• Confer with a writing workgroup designed to sustain you once the Retreat is completed.

Following the Retreat, your writing workgroup will be asked to keep in touch on a monthly basis and check in with your Career Mentor every few months. Writing workgroups are expected to continue for at least 18 months. Career Mentors for the 2016 Career Retreat include Jack Selzer, Sue Wells, Lynee Lewis Gaillet, and Cheryl Geisler. Short bios can be found below.

The Career Retreat begins at noon on Thursday, May 26 and concludes at 10:45 on Friday, May 27.   It is open to all associate professors. Women and underrepresented minorities are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications should be submitted HERE. Space is limited to 30 participants.

Questions about the Career Retreat can be directed in email to Cheryl Geisler, cgeisler@sfu.ca. See you there!

Jack Selzer, Penn State University, recently completed a term as President of the Rhetoric Society of America, is an expert on the work of writer, critic, and theorist Kenneth Burke, and is recognized for excellence in scholarship by ATTW and RSA.

Susan Wells, Temple University, works on the rhetorics of science and medicine, critical theory, theories of the public sphere, and feminism. Her book, Out of the Dead House, won the 2002 W. Ross Winterowd Award for the most outstanding book in composition theory.  

Lynee Lewis Gaillet, Georgia State University, has served as President of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric. She is author of numerous articles addressing Scottish rhetoric, writing program administration, composition/rhetoric pedagogy, and mentoring.

Cheryl Geisler, Simon Fraser University, has led Career Retreat for Associate Professors since 2009. For this work, in 2014 the Rhetoric Society of America created the Cheryl Geisler Award for Outstanding Mentorship and Distinguished Service and made her its first recipient.   She has written extensively on texts & new technologies, rhetorical agency, and academic literacy.