Project Summary
Like many schools, my university aims to recruit and support faculty in ways that align with our newly established anti-racist action plan, which includes efforts to recruit and retain diverse faculty, especially individuals from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups. Beyond recruitment, my project focuses on recruitment and promotion of underrepresented faculty through a post-tenure Assocaite Professor Writing Program. Using the HuMetricsHSS framework areas of equity and collegiality, the Associate Professor Writing Program will be a forum for interdisciplinary scholarly communication, exploration of digital and open-source opportunities for production, and community-engaged scholarly practice. The primary aim of this program is to increase scholarly productivity of faculty who are women and/or individuals from historically underrepresented communities, particularly in light of the negative impact on research, scholarship, and creative activity caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic and increased pressures on tenured faculty that have resulting in low numbers of women and underrepresented faculty in full professorships. By providing support for mid-career faculty, this program intentionally works to connect faculty across the university with resources to enhance their own scholarship and create opportunities for faculty to explore new scholarly practices.
Biography
Patrick W. Thomas is Associate Professor of Writing and Director of Undergraduate Studies in English at the University of Dayton. His research intersects literacy studies, writing technologies, empirical methodologies, and computer-mediated communication. With Pamela Takayoshi, he has edited the collection Literacy in Practice: Writing in Private, Public, and Working Lives (Routledge Press). He has published in the journals Computers and Composition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Patrick teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in digital writing, argumentation, composition theory, writing assessment, discourse analysis, business communication, report and proposal writing, writing for the web, and research methnods. In addition to his research and teaching, Patrick is an inaugural member of the University of Dayton Men for Gender Equity, an initiative that educates men at all instutitonal levels about gender inequities and trains them on how to work for equity in their local environments. In addition, men in this initiative advocate for cultural change toward data-supported inequalities, including gender disparities in pay, initiatives to support caretaking during COVID, and advocating for leadership opportunities for women. Patrick is also a co-founder of QDayton, an employee affinity group for LGBTQ+ individuals at the University of Dayton.