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Good teaching, commitment to students, service to the church and community, and writing for publication and presentation—all of these are marks of outstanding university faculty. At Northwest Nazarene, nearly 15% of faculty members participate each month in a group that learns about writing and publications strategies, assists each other with critiques of writing ideas, and serves as a support group with each other during the challenging writing process.

Rationale

Our mission statement calls for character to be built within a context of genuine scholarship. The work of Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation calls for a “broader and more encompassing definition of scholarship” in the academy. For some institutions, that mandate suggests increased attention to the scholarship of teaching, and faculty at Research I institutions are being called to greater attention to teaching. For other faculty, it encourages increased interest in the scholarship of writing and publication. In all institutions, it calls for assistance to faculty in meeting their own professional goals, and in advancing the atmosphere of inquiry and scholarship in the institution.

The NNU Scholars' Guild is formed with the following goals/intents:

• To provide a safe and affirming place for faculty interested in publication to share their ideas and their evolving writing.
• To provide opportunity for faculty with some experience in publication or juried publication to share some of their strategies with other faculty, in a supportive mentoring relationship.
• To provide “voluntary accountability” for faculty who genuinely want to get a scholarly work accepted for publication or for juried presentation, but who need some way of being held accountable for making progress.

Guidelines for Membership

• Members of the scholars' guild will covenant to receive and give help.
• Conversations in the guild will be confidential.
• Members will agree to complete the work called for by the calendar once it is finalized, in the interest of moving toward their publication goals.