Seminar focuses on the communication skills needed for a career in academia. Topics include writing for academic journals, preparing and delivering conference papers and job talks, peer reviewing for journals and conferences, and teaching. Participants are expected to work on a written project and deliver an oral presentation based on their current research. Restricted to doctoral students who have completed their first year. Your success as an academic will depend heavily on your ability to communicate to fellow researchers in your discipline, to colleagues in your department and university, to undergraduate and graduate students, and perhaps even to the public at large. Communicating well in an academic setting depends not only on following the basic rules that govern all good communication (for example, tailoring the message to meet the needs of a specific audience), but also on adhering to the particular norms of academic genres. The purpose of this course, then, 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 explores the process of qualitative research methods and qualitative data analysis. Topics to be discussed include historical traditions of qualitative research; steps in the research process; reviewing the literature; identifying qualitative research problems; collecting, analyzing and interpreting qualitative data; qualitative research designs; and reporting and evaluating qualitative research. Dr. Daphne E. Williams, instructor for DEED 736, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Grambling State University.  Dr. Williams teaches courses in the Doctor of Education, Master of Science and Post-Master's Certificate. Each program has the concentration of Developmental Education.  She teaches core courses and two research methods courses in the each of the degree and certificate programs.DEED 736 explores a number of qualitative research methods including historical traditions, multivariate models of qualitative inquiry, case studies, ethnographic and participant observation, biography, and phenomenology. Students arerequired to attend lectures and laboratory sessions