James M. Lang

Writing Coach

James M. Lang, is a senior writing coach at Defend, Publish & Lead LLC. He is a former Professor of English and the founding Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA.  He is the author of six books, the most recent of which are Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2020), Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2016), and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013). Lang writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education; his work has been appearing in the Chronicle since 1999.

Jim’s book reviews and public scholarship on higher education have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Conversation, Time, the Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune.  He edits a series of books on teaching and learning in higher education for West Virginia University Press.  He has conducted workshops on teaching or writing for faculty at more than two hundred colleges or universities in the US and abroad, and consulted for the United Nations on the development of teaching materials in ethics and integrity for college faculty.  In September of 2016 he received a Fulbright Specialist grant to work with three universities in Colombia on the creation of a MOOC on teaching and learning in STEM education.  He has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in English from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. You can follow him on Twitter at @LangOnCourse or learn more at http://jamesmlang.com

Why I Love Coaching

My own academic career was launched into exciting new places when I began writing to more general audiences. In recent years, I have been the editor of a book series that crosses over all academic disciplines, and guiding writers through the process of presenting their ideas to new audiences has become the most satisfying aspect of my career these days. I am happy to work with writers through every phase of the publication process: developing ideas for essays and books, crafting queries and proposals, writing accessible prose, revising and editing drafts, and promoting work after it has been published. I bring to that work both my perspective as a writer and as an editor. I have a special interest in working with people who would like to write about teaching, learning and education, but my areas of interest are broad and always growing. I should note, finally, that not every writer I work with has ambitions to write to general audiences; if you are writing for publications in your discipline, I am still happy to guide people from idea to publication in academic journals and university presses and I have experience with publishing in both trade and academic presses.

Selected Publications

James M. Lang

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