The Promotion and Tenure Writers Group (PTWG) was initiated in 2003 by Missouri S&T participants in the New Faculty Teaching Scholars (NFTS) Program. Its purpose continues to be to help fellow faculty improve their writing and presentational skills - with an eye to the tenure and promotion process. The aim is to increase the probability that journal articles will get published, proposals will be funded, and presentations will be well received. The PTWG meets once a week over coffee to discuss and critique a single manuscript contributed by one of the members. The manuscripts may be a journal or conference paper, grant proposal, book chapter, promotion and tenure dossier, academic portfolio, etc. Typically, the manuscript is submitted by email to all PTWG members several days to a week in advance of the meeting.

Any faculty member is welcome to join the PTWG. Participants come from wide variety of disciplines. Reading technical articles outside your field can be challenging. However, the rules of clarity and organization apply across fields and we have found that all participants make suggestions that improve the manuscript, regardless of discipline.

The members of the PTWG encourage each other to produce high quality manuscripts at a high rate, improving our standing in the university and in our disciplines. Since its inception, the group has reviewed manuscripts ranging from "gasoline price sticky-ness" to "genre and public discourse" and funding proposals that seek to "create problem-based-learning modules for engineering classes" and "study mass-transport in indoor". Recently, the PTWG has begun to include critiques of oral conference presentations in addition to manuscript reviews. 

For further information about PTWG, contact Ron Bieniek (bieniek@mst.edu), Director of Missouri S&T's New Faculty Programs, or NFTS alumnus Adam Potthast (potthast@mst.edu),  this year's coordinator of the PTWG.