The Academic Research and Writing Camp: Collaborating on an Intensive Thesis Workshop for Graduate Students

Academic libraries at master’s and PhD-granting institutions frequently end up fielding questions about thesis and dissertations that we are often missing context to answer thoroughly. These sorts of questions can be more frequent at institutions such as ours, which is a relatively new high-research activity (“R2”) campus that is still in the process of developing supports for graduate-level research. Having seen this need in our own context, the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) began a semesterly Academic Research and Writing Camp workshop in Spring 2025 as a partnership between UNCW Library, the University Learning Center, and the Graduate School. This day-long conference style event was envisioned as a workshop to help graduate students working on long-form academic research and writing projects such as theses, dissertations, and scholarly articles. Sessions focused on a variety of high-demand topics gathered via surveys of graduate students themselves as well as graduate program coordinators and covered such wide-ranging areas as getting started with research, managing citations, and storytelling as a form of research synthesis. We solicited presenters among library faculty and University Learning Center staff as well as campus faculty and instructors who specialized in relevant topics. The original event had two concurrent tracks, and following feedback from the camp attendees as well as the project team, the second iteration in Fall 2025 was streamlined to a single synchronous track. The Camp was envisioned as a hybrid event and is committed to remaining hybrid to better serve our large population of distance learners as well as benefiting those with busy work schedules, care commitments, and accessibility needs. A campus digital badge project was also developed for the Fall 2025 iteration of the Academic Research and Writing Camp to incentivize participation in the full event. The third camp will take place in January 2026. Our presentation details the iterations of the camp, from needs analysis and information gathering through the cycles of feedback and redesign. We will also discuss how the library’s partnership with the Graduate School and the University Learning Center has evolved and what part those offices play in the management of this project, and we will give attendees the opportunity to apply what they have learned to their own institutional contexts.