Coordinator's Corner: Enhancing Procedural Knowledge and Community all at once: Reflections on Hume’s Fabled Dissertation Bootcamps

As I made the transition to the role of Associate Director role the Hume Center three years ago, one of the biggest shifts in my experience was rhythmic. Although much of what we do in PWR overlaps with our work in Hume, the flow of the output at a Writing Center is differently diffuse, moving in multiple simultaneous directions. I hadn’t before had a full grasp of just how many things are going on at Hume on any given day, how the Center exists at the intersection of so many different departments, disciplines, and communicative contexts. The “hum” that Norah wrote about so beautifully in June 2021 captures the felt sense of this rhythm on the ground, as writers, speakers and thinkers flow in and out of the building as in a Burkean Parlor, leaving with what we hope is a renewed sense of momentum and purpose as the door closes behind them. 

One of the defining rhythms of life as the Associate Director of the Center–and one that endures through metaphorical rain, sleet, and snow–is Dissertation Boot Camp. As many of you know, in general, Hume’s DBCs admit a maximum of 16 in-person participants and offer students 10 uninterrupted writing days over the course of each camp. Hume offers 7 DBCs during the academic year and 4 over the summer, and a total of 4 of those continue to be offered virtually even after the pandemic, due to the feedback we’ve received about the benefits of online spaces (including the use of ergonomic setups and the higher degree of accessibility for participants with disabilities and/or care obligations). Whether in-person or over Zoom, participants begin by setting their writing goals at the Opening Session and joining their peers to create accountability groups. Each day opens and closes with a check-in with other folks at the camp: How is your writing going? What is feeling difficult; What is flowing? What are you noticing about your process and what works for you? How can we support you today? In addition to the peer motivation and support, DBCs also offer a structured writing regimen (4-6 hours of writing time a day), a protected writing space with minimal distractions (except snack-related), and the opportunity to consult with lecturer-tutors regardless of where they are in the writing process, from ideation to revision.

If part of the work of writing a dissertation or other long form project is sheer endurance, DBC seems to reflect the determination that the genre requires of writers; over the last 3 years, we’ve navigated online shifts due to Covid outbreaks, a days-long campus-wide summer power outage, and various Quad-associated building problems too numerous to mention, but the camp marches on. There is always the next registration window on the horizon and there are so many writers who come to depend on it (participants are always shocked to know that in only 3 years in this role, I’ve known more than one person who managed to write their entire dissertation exclusively at DBC). There are tears in the hallway after difficult meetings with advisors, babies are born, people get married and divorced, lose and gain funding, switch topics and mentors and defense dates–in short, life happens, but the lights are always on in Hume 106 and the writing day continues. 

Although there isn’t a vast abundance of scholarship on DBCs and other forms of community-supported writing space for graduate students, the findings that exist are in agreement and won’t come as a surprise to any of us in PWR. For example, as Busl et. al. report, when writers commit to working together in community, they experience increased confidence levels and self-regulation; feel they have more agency in their identity as writers; consider writing processes differently; and establish relationships that endure long after the camp closes. These findings are closely reflected in Hume’s DBC Exit Survey, where participants frequently name “Accountability” and “Community” as the two most useful aspects of the camp. As one student put it, “I couldn’t believe other folks had so much in common with me. We are all Stanford doctoral students working on the biggest academic project of our lives–and we all need accountability and support to cross the finish line.” 

Of course, some of the most important threshold concepts for graduate students are related to professional identity and genre norms, which are (optimally) best supported by skilled intra-discipline mentorship; however, as Kathryn Baillargeon suggests, “procedural knowledge” in writing (or things like motivation, process awareness, drafting, planning, revising, accountability) is one thing that many disciplinary mentors don’t see it as their job to teach. In other words, what a lot of graduate students are missing (despite the resources available to them in their disciplines) is a PWR course! Many of us have worked with graduate students at Hume who are struggling with such procedural knowledge about writing, and we are acutely aware of the need for the kinds of support that DBC provides. When I reflect on the 33 DBCs I’ve had the privilege to facilitate over the last several years, it’s clear that community supported writing spaces are crucial for all of us as thinkers and communicators, and that our work to support students in developing procedural knowledge (and in understanding that category as denoting a legible set of skills) has traction and necessity in the many spaces outside of the PWR classroom that we impact in the work we do. 

At its best, DBC is one way in which the rhythms of PWR are built into the Hume Center itself, feeling as it does a bit like a PWR 1 class in Week 9. As my time in the role of Associate Director comes to a close and I look forward to the future, I’m excited by the continued cross-collaboration between PWR and programs like DBC in supporting the writing and communication goals of the wider campus community, keeping the dynamic rhythms of the Hume Center alive and thriving. 

Works Cited: 

Baillargeon, Kathryn. "Dissertation Boot Camps, Writing as a Doctoral Threshold Concept, and the Role of Extra-Disciplinary Writing Support." Composition Forum. Vol. 45. 2020.

Busl, Gretchen, Kara Lee Donnelly, and Matthew Capdevielle. "Camping in the disciplines: Assessing the effect of writing camps on graduate student writers." (2020).