The Writer's Guild: A Model of Support for Social Work Faculty

The retention and promotion of social work faculty is partially dependent upon their success in publishing. Because of a perception among junior faculty at one Midwestern university that writing barriers posed a threat to their career development, they developed a Writer's Guild. The Guild model represents a collaborative, non-hierarchical approach to supporting scholarship. In this article, the authors describe the model, discuss some of the challenges involved in its formation, and offer recommendations for transplanting the model to other schools.