Communication skills for academics

Lectures: 1 session / week, 1.5 hours / session

The purpose of this course is threefold. First, the course will acquaint you with guidelines that will help you create well-crafted academic communication. Second, it will give you the opportunity to practice your communication skills and to receive extensive feedback from your colleagues and from me. You will write and/or revise an article manuscript or conference paper, present a conference paper or job talk, write a manuscript peer review, and engage in various other communication exercises. The article and talk, which are the major assignments of the course, will be based on material from your own doctoral studies. Third, the course will provide an opportunity for you to learn about professional norms for a range of activities that surround the academic enterprise, including, for example, the scholarly publication process and the job search process.

This course is for doctoral students in management or related fields. It is best suited to students who have started on their own research, generally in their 2nd year or beyond, and who are beginning to think about the job market. If you are a first year graduate student and would like to take this course, please schedule time to talk to me about whether the course is appropriate for you.

There are four graded requirements in this course, weighted as follows:

We will discuss and in some cases do exercises (included in your class participation grade) around giving "elevator pitches" about your research, conducting a job search, teaching, and interviewing for field work.

As you will see from the attached class outline, we will discuss several types or genres of academic communication during the course, from journal articles to job talks. Much of the class time, however, will be devoted to giving you an opportunity to practice those genres and to give and receive feedback. Each member of the class is expected to provide critical feedback on the work submitted by his/her classmates.

You will need the following books for the course:

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