Shanna Greene Benjamin
FireStarter Coaching and Consulting
Through FireStarter, LLC I offer academic coaching, consultation services, workshops, and write-ins aimed at supporting mid-career faculty.
ACADEMIC COACHING
This academic coaching package includes four one-hour, one-on-one coaching calls, up to three hours of document editing, and access to sample documents to support professional development at mid-career. Given the rising rates of Covid-19, coaching will be offered virtually.
Package Price: $1,800
INDIVIDUALIZED PEER MENTORING
These mentoring meetings will clarify the expectations for different types of documents—context statements, CVs, grant proposals, etc.—to level the playing field for underrepresented faculty while supporting faculty campus wide.
Two types of mentoring are available:
Out of the Blocks or Across the Finish: A revision “sprint” for faculty looking to get off to a strong start or clean up a document-in-progress, “Out of the Blocks” and “Across the Finish” include one round of revision and 60 minutes of one-on-one time, typically divided between a 30- minute initial meeting and a 30-minute follow-up meeting to discuss feedback.
Package Price: $500 per faculty member
Momentum Maintenance: For some faculty, this is the Goldilocks of peer mentoring: not too much, not too little—just right. “Momentum Maintenance” includes two rounds of revision and 90 minutes of one-on-one time, typically divided between a 30-minute initial meeting and two 30- minute follow-up meeting to discuss each round of feedback.
Package Price: $750 per faculty member
VIRTUAL WRITE-INS
Write-ins are flexible enough to be incorporated into just about any schedule. Given the rising rates of Covid-19, all write-ins will be offered virtually.
Half-Day Virtual Write-In: During half-day or full-day sessions, participants will write virtually within community using the Emergent Task Planner and Pomodoro Technique to structure time. Each presentation is based on participant poling and tailored to meet community needs.
Package Price: $2,500
Full-Day Virtual Write-in: Full-day workshops work well for faculty interested in committing to at least four hours of writing. After a PowerPoint presentation that offers my Seven Lessons on Writing, participants log off and write independently for two hours in the morning and at least two hours in the afternoon. I host optional office hours at mid-day. During a late-afternoon check-in, participants reflect on their accomplishments and complete an Emergent Task Planner for the Monday following the retreat so they can maintain their momentum.
Package Price: $5,000
60-MINUTE WORKSHOPS: WRITING RETREATS
The workshops outlined below—no more than one hour in length out of respect for faculty workload—will give participants an opportunity to focus on professional development in a supportive environment. Given the rising rates of Covid-19, all workshops will be offered virtually. These workshops are tailored to the audience.
Past themes include:
o “In Partial Fulfillment Of”: A Writing Retreat for Dissertators
o Paying Yourself First: A Writing Retreat for Mid-Career Faculty
o Thanks for the Feedback: Practical Tips for Editing Your Own Writing
o Mentoring Matters: High-Impact Practices for Faculty
o Inch-by-Inch is a Cinch, Yard-by-Yard is Hard: Sustainable Goal Setting for Graduate Students
o Starting Out Well: Best Practices for Early Career Faculty
o From Concept to Completion: The Scholarly Monograph as Pedagogical Practice
o First Book at Mid-Career™: Writing Strategies for Senior Faculty
o Securing the Bag: An Academic’s Guide to Grant Writing in the Humanities Workshop
Package Price: $1,500 per 60-minute session
90-MINUTE WORKSHOPS: DEMYSTIFYING THE REVIEW PROCESS
Given the legacy of bias in mentoring in higher education, faculty may experience unevenness in the advice they’re given in preparation for review. These workshops will pull back the curtain on the review process to provide usable guidance and emotional support.
These four 90-minute workshops will include a 45- to 60-minute presentation and between 30- to 45- minutes for discussion/Q&A. Sessions include a final report that summarizes workshop goals and feedback—from both participants and the presenter—that may be useful to the College’s DEI efforts.
Workshop Titles:
o The Interim Review in Perspective
o Prepare for Launch: The Complete Review
o (Re)Claiming Your Greatness: Tenure, Talent and Truth
o The Institution Builder: Promotion and Igniting Mid-Career Magic
Package Price: $2,500 per 90-minute session
Praise for FireStarter, LLC
"Shanna, thank you so much for the recent workshop with our postdoctoral fellows and beginning assistant professors. Your presentation and our subsequent discussion were really, really generative. I have been in this business a long time, and you changed the way I think about my own monograph writing. And I know our audience got a lot out of it because after you left the conversation continued for quite a while. Not only did you raise critical issues, including the question of what is "holding them back," but to a person, they all said that your workshop lowered their anxiety level about writing and made the process more approachable. I can't think of higher praise. I hope this workshop is the beginning of a long relationship with African American Studies at Penn State. --- Cynthia A. Young, Pennsylvania State University
"Dr. Benjamin led two writing workshops for our faculty fellows, tenure-track faculty working at private, liberal arts colleges from underrepresented backgrounds. Her first session in 2020, Dr. Benjamin guided our scholars through setting writing goals for the year and how to overcome obstacles to make progress on writing happening during the two day retreat. Her ability to connect with scholars across a range of disciplines established comfort and trust in her facilitation with early drafts. She was so popular, we happily brought her back in 2021. Impressively, Dr. Benjamin adapted her practice to a virtual format without losing any of the personal connection and writing expertise that makes a tangible difference for our scholars. Our program is eager to continue working with Dr. Benjamin as she represents an ideal balance of experience, program agility, and personal touch to elevate the strengths of any audience." — Allen Linton II, Associated Colleges of the Midwest
"Dr. Benjamin led two engaging and highly impactful workshops on mentoring students of color at Knox College, one for faculty and another for staff. Throughout these workshops, Dr. Benjamin emphasized the necessity of action oriented mentorship, drawing insight from her personal experiences as a student, professor, and dean and examining current national and college-specific data on race and gender. She challenged participants to consider the relationship between race and opportunity and ask, “What is getting in the way of underrepresented students realizing their full potential?” Recognizing that faculty and staff work with students in different ways and on different corners of campus, Dr. Benjamin offered participants practical, concrete strategies to help students of color achieve their academic and professional goals. One of the most valuable aspects of these workshops was the opportunity to create a collaborative and shared college resource, in which faculty and staff identified specific outcomes they would like to see and next steps they plan to take. Participants left Dr. Benjamin’s workshops feeling energized, inspired, and equipped to take on this vital work."
—Roya Biggie, Knox College