Date

5 October 2023 (onsite and online)
08:30 — 15:30

Participation Fee

About the Workshop

Graduating with a Ph.D. in any field means that you have promising career potential as an academic and social policy influencer. However, you are faced with the challenge of career advancement in an impact factor world. You want to know how to work smart and rapidly advance your career. This starts with coaching on “effectively and efficiently” writing papers and grants. Having the knowledge at your fingertips makes the production process less effortful and more rewarding. This is why I decided to put together a series of three workshops.

This is your paper or grant

Biology refers to structure and function

Your paper is structured like a timer and it functions as if it is on a timer. The introduction starts wide and acts as a funnel. The narrowest part of the paper is the procedure, which is in the methods section. From the first to the last lines of your introduction, concepts become less abstract. We do the opposite for the discussion. Said differently, we start with how a problem affects a target population. Concepts then become testable variables that are increasingly related to a hypothesis with a representative sample. In the methods, the “how-to” and “what happened” parts are very technical. We then discuss how the variables specifically behaved in the results and then offer concrete conclusions, which become increasingly generalizable and applicable in everyday life. We end with how the findings could potentially affect the population at large. The whole time we want your paper to be enjoyable and inspiring. We also want people, worldwide, to get the message without too much effort.

A solid series of writing workshops should cover the essentials of paper production, from start to finish. From this I mean that we will cover how to produce a generic title page all the way to how to write a cover letter that should get the paper reviewed and hopefully published! This workshop also tries to help the writing along, by reviewing common errors that even experienced writers typically produce. It would be important to have a mental checklist of such writing hazards. When publication is achieved, it is also great idea to have a bit of knowledge about organizing yourself for possible media exposure. Here is the content:

Sample Excerpts from the Workshops

“…Over 4 o 5 afternoons… When I write a paper, I always get going with short a “purpose” paragraph, accompanied by the results and followed by the methods. I then simultaneously write the introduction and discussion, ending with judiciously chosen references that show readers that I consume research of the same caliber as my chosen journal… The last thing we typically write is the abstract.”

Three workshops (in English and French)

About the tutor

Linda S. Pagani was born of post cold war-first-generation Italian immigrant parents. She was raised in the west end of the Greater Montreal area of Canada. Dr. Pagani worked as a registered nurse (1984-1994) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital of Montreal in medicine, surgery, CVA rehabilitation, and finally, psychiatry. During that decade, she also earned university degrees at both Concordia University (BA Psychology 1986-1989) and McGill University (MA and Ph.D. Educational and Counseling Psychology 1989-1993) in Montreal, Canada. In 1993-1994, Dr. Pagani pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the Université de Montréal, using some of the most valued and informative longitudinal data sets of North American children. After formally leaving hospital nursing in 1994, Dr Pagani began her professorial career at the University of Montreal. In 2005, Dr. Pagani was ranked Full Professor at the School of Psycho-Education. She also has served as Senior Researcher, since 1999, at the CHU Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center in the Brain Health Division.

Her research expertise examines modifiable factors in early childhood that affect human development. Her energy has been targeted at ultimately improving social/health policies addressing youth. She has always viewed psychology research/practice as a branch of public health. Her unique long-term research agenda currently examines: (1) Associated risks of screen-time in early childhood; (2) Associated benefits of physical activity and risks of sedentariness in childhood; and (3) Risks associated with a multitude of family environment factors such as maternal depression, second-hand smoke, minimized social interaction time, and bedroom screens. Dr. Pagani teaches and supervises fulltime at the University of Montreal including Research Methods and Scientific Writing, Social and Health Policy; and Clinical Evaluation and Treatment of ADHD. Her main clinical expertise as a practicing clinical health psychologist is the diagnosis and care of children, adolescents, and adults with ADHD, anxiety, and affective disorders. She offers 1-day, 3-day, or 5-day workshops on (1) scientific writing for AMA/APA journals; (2) ADHD Diagnosis/Care and (3) Social Science Research Methods.

Date

5 October 2023 (online)
08:30 — 15:30

Participation Fee

About the Workshop

Successful managers of complex projects and programs who value ‘people over process’ often adopt a variety of facilitation techniques to support their teams. Activities that support self-organization, dialogue, and learning together can be simple yet powerful. In this workshop you will learn about the activities introduced to a large interdisciplinary science research team (40 plus team members) over a five-year period, and the ‘when, why, and how’ those activities were used to support collaboration and knowledge co-production. The core activities included Consensus Brainstorm, Knowledge Café, Mind Map, Role Play, Lightning Talks, Open Market & Story Board, and Retrospective. You will have the opportunity to practice the foundational Consensus Brainstorm activity, and review its many potential applications in any project’s life cycle. You will have the opportunity to explore a common topic of interest using Knowledge Café and end the workshop with a quick and easy yet powerful Retrospective.

[This workshop is based primarily on the integration of these techniques in the South Florida Water Sustainability and Climate project- one of the PI’s recently told me that I was ‘the saving grace!’ in getting this academic team to deliver]

About the tutor

“You get your best results by clearing obstacles to allow the inherent motivation and wisdom of each person to emerge.”

My passion is to engage, inspire and support high-level decision-making across industries. My approach is inclusive and collaborative, grounded in consensus-building facilitation techniques and adaptive project management philosophy.

I have over 25 years of experience in managing projects and programs, with ten years focused on facilitation and coaching on complex projects that require collaboration and effective communication across inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary teams and stakeholders.

The workshop being offered ‘Facilitating Integration in Complex Projects: Activities based on self-organizing principles’ has received high praise in the past.

This workshop was given in Milan, Italy, at the International Association of Facilitators Europe and the Middle East Conference in 2019. The diverse group of participants included scientists, project managers, and facilitators from many countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Australia, Germany). The participants were interested in practicing new tools to incorporate into their own work with scientist research teams.

The workshop is based on a $5M (USD) 5-year research project, for which I served as the principal investigator coach, project manager, and facilitator. Some of the concepts and tools that will be covered in the workshop are discussed in the Springer Environmental Management article of which I was lead author. This article was cited in the IPCC Sixth Assessment report.

Since 2019, I have been managing a $16M (USD) multi-year stormwater flooding program for the city of Fayetteville, NC. Still using the same tools, same philosophy, with a different group of people trying to accomplish big things. You can learn more about this work in my recently published article “Managing for Complexity.”

I look forward to working with you!