Happy New Year from the CareFull Scholars Program

Well the summer is over. If you were able to get enough rest, rejuvenation and renewal, congratulations! However, if you are like me, August just marks a shift in the nature of demands on your time. If for some reason you didn’t get as much writing done in the last 3 months, fear not! Help is on the way..the weekly encouragements are back in the form of a weekly blog post aimed at promoting your writing!

While we can’t do anything about providing you with release time, we can point out that every day there is at least 15 minutes minimum (30 minutes optimum) Monday through Friday, in which you can write. We cant’ slow down that frantic pace of emails but we can remind you that taking deep breaths or having a stretch is a little bit of self-care that can be done anytime of day.

Generating scholarship in a way that feels fulfilling and nurturing goes against the grain of a "publish or perish" mentality. Therefore, "radical self-care" is needed in order to contribute rigorous and impactful science to our STEM disciplines, as well as informing the Science of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) literature on the unique characteristics of HBCU students.

So, make a new resolution for this school year. Complete that article. Submit that grant proposal. Write the book proposal. You can do it. We can do it together…15 minutes at a time.

The CareFull Scholars Program is about helping faculty at HBCU’s and minority serving institutions see writing as a practice and not for a project. We have learned from our Faculty Scholars that every big project can be tackled in small tasks consistently done over time. We provide that encouragement along with pointing out the physical, technical, mental and emotional structures of support to help your creativity.

Our first topic is “What’s on your desk tops”. It is possible that having a neat and organized physical desk and an inviting and uncluttered computer desk top could help your workflow. What if you spent 15 minutes working on your actual desk first. Imagine it with nothing on it but the things that spark joy.