Consulting and Workshops

  • Strategizing with higher education administrators to develop publishing policy and identify support needed for faculty publishing.

  • Organizing and leading writing retreats for your group, department, or organization.

  • Offering in-person and online workshops for graduate students and academics on topics related to advanced academic writing and writing for publication.

Academic Literacy Workshops

  • This workshop helps participants develop an understanding of the value of seeing academic writing as a regular practice. It offers tools for integrating planning, writing, and thinking about writing into one’s daily and weekly workflows. It also offers approaches to lessening the emotional weight of academic writing in high-stakes environments and breaking through writers’ block. 

  • This workshop focuses on how to read academic journal articles and other academic texts efficiently and rhetorically. Participants will practice deconstructing academic texts by identifying arguments, pinpointing the author’s position, evaluating evidence, asking questions, and taking notes. NOTE: This is NOT a speed-reading course, but rather an approach to unpacking academic writing.

  • Making arguments is a core function of many types of academic writing, from reading responses to critical commentaries, proposals, and longer texts such as theses and dissertations. This workshop will discuss how to develop an argument drawing on one’s ideas, the research, and other evidence.

  • This workshop explores the typical structure of literature reviews and how to approach writing one. We will discuss how to identify themes in the research literature, and how to structure the review through synthesis rather than a series of summaries.

  • The purposes, types, and styles of abstracts used for different academic purposes is growing. This workshop investigates the functions abstracts serve as communication genres, the characteristics of different types of abstracts, common conventions of abstracts, and how they can support the writing process.

  • Academics often need to write both specialized abstracts and ‘non-technical summaries’ of the same information. This workshop covers the genre features of abstracts in general and distinctions between abstracts and non-technical summaries in terms of language, sentence structure, and style overall.

Academic Publishing Workshops

  • This workshop provides an overview of the academic journal publishing process to help writers understand the social practices of publishing, make strategic decisions about building on conference presentations, selecting journals, tailoring manuscripts to specific publishing outlets, and managing the emotions elicited in receiving feedback on a paper.

  • Making arguments is a core function of many types of academic writing, from reading responses to critical commentaries, proposals, and longer texts such as theses and dissertations. This workshop will discuss how to develop an argument drawing on one’s ideas, the research, and other evidence.

  • Presenting at conferences is an important opportunity for students and scholars to communicate with interested audiences, get feedback on your work, learn from other presenters, and build your academic network. This workshop covers how to draft and revise a conference proposal for an individual paper or poster session, including common structures, rhetorical styles, and approaches for developing a presentation. It also provides tips for presenting at a conference, such as rehearsing for a presentation, and communicating effectively with the audience.

  • This workshop goes behind the scenes of peer reviewing to explore the benefits and drawbacks of serving as a peer referee for academic journals. It covers the functions, timelines, and social practices of peer reviewing and offers suggestions for how graduate students and early career scholars can become peer reviewers, the first step toward becoming editorial board members and journal editors.

  • This workshop comprises two parts: First, an overview of the publishing process and its stages and a discussion of how conference presentations can support the development of articles for publication. Part Two engages participants in considering their personal goals for publishing and identifying opportunities for publishing in a range of types of journals, from research to policy to practice-focused journals to genres aimed at the general public.

Prof. Curry's workshop on "Publishing in English-medium journals by multilingual scholars" was insightful and practical. It offered invaluable strategies to help multilingual researchers navigate the complexities of academic publishing. The event included findings from her decades of research on the topic and actionable advice, which was particularly appreciated by scholars from diverse linguistic backgrounds and career stages, making it a highlight of our symposium.

—Rami Zeedan, PhD
Associate Professor
University of Kansas

Dr. Curry, a seasoned educator
and expert in research writing for graduate students, engages students with comprehensive lectures and full-day workshops. Her ability to tailor content specifically to our students' needs ensures impactful learning experiences.

—Christine Heusner
Project Manager, Graduate Programming
RIT Graduate School
Rochester Institute of Technology

After working with MJ on my own academic writing, I invited her to facilitate an academic publishing workshop on our campus. Fifteen faculty members from disciplines ranging from economics to English to engineering attended the full-day workshop. In advance, MJ collaborated with me and registered participants to design a workshop that would meet the needs of our diverse participants. She arrived well-prepared to engage participants in a balanced day of research on academic publishing, brief writing, evaluations of their target journals, and small- and large-group discussions. The day wrapped with handouts on responding to reviewers’ feedback. Participants ended the workshop energized and encouraged to take next steps with their academic publishing projects.

–Elizabeth H. Boquet, PhD
Professor of English and Director
The Writing Center
Fairfield University, CT

I’ve worked with MJ twice –once on running writers’ retreats and a second time on how to incorporate English as a New Language learners into team projects. As we did, I’m confident that you’ll find her suggestions to be practical while grounded in evidence-based principles. She listens well, thinks through issues, and recommends multiple actionable solutions. Her advice helped my university build stronger writers’ retreats and me to train others in multiple settings about how to run better team projects when one or more members are learning English. I strongly recommend that you reach out to her!

—Dr. Tim Franz
Professor of Psychology
St. John Fisher University

Rochester, NY

My university was grateful to have Dr. Curry present an excellent professional development workshop on academic publishing for faculty.  She is a skilled speaker who fully engages her audience.  She offered valuable suggestions on identifying one’s publishing goals, homing in on a paper or research finding to contribute, selecting a target journal, and much more.  Early career faculty were particularly impressed by her practical advice about how to continue their scholarly work beyond completion of their dissertations. We highly recommend her!

–Linda Quinlan, EdD
Associate Professor of English & Chair

Language & Literature Department
Roberts Wesleyan University
Rochester, NY

“Dr. Curry organized a workshop for graduate students in the physical sciences about writing scientific abstracts for experts and lay audiences. She did a great job and the students loved it!”

—Todd D. Krauss, PhD
Jay Last Professor of Chemistry
Professor of Optics, Department of Chemistry
University of Rochester