Program Chair for the 2015 IWCA Conference

Transcription

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Welcome from the Program Chair
Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University
Welcome to Pittsburgh! Thank you for joining us for the 2015 IWCA conference.
We have assembled what we hope will provide an inspiring and innovative conference for you this year. In addition to a variety of panels and presentations,
you’ll notice new opportunities to exchange ideas with your colleagues, including
Ignite sessions and our Works in Progress. During the conference, I hope you’ll
consider the theme of Writing Center (R)evolutions and the ways it connects and
extends writing center work. That is, we invite you to consider ways in which we
create our writing center pedagogies, practices, spaces, and programs through
artistic and technological innovations. As you’re here at the Wyndam, consider
ways in which (r)evolutions move writing centers forward.
You’ll see that each session features a unique hashtag as well. We hope you’ll use
it to extend the conversation to social media, while connecting with colleagues
and the organization.
I offer my appreciation to the over 50 reviewers from around the world who took
time to read and comment on proposals this year. In addition, my sincere thanks
to the IWCA Executive Board and membership throughout the globe. My sincere
thanks to Emily Vinson, an undergraduate in EKU’s Noel Studio, for her outstanding work during the programming process. We’re fortunate to work with such
great students!
We hope you have an enjoyable and productive conference!
Russell Carpenter
2015 IWCA Program Chair
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Schedule at a Glance
Thursday, October 8
Registration & Information...................................................................... 7:00-5:00
Newcomers’ Coffee Hour & Orientation ................................................ 7:30-8:30
Opening General Session & Keynote..................................................... 8:45-10:00
Session 1.............................................................................................. 10:15-11:30
Session 2................................................................................................ 11:45-1:00
Session 3.................................................................................................. 1:00-2:15
Session 4.................................................................................................. 2:30-3:45
Session 5.................................................................................................. 4:00-5:15
Regional & Affiliate Meetings.................................................................. 5:45-7:00
Two-Year College Meetup........................................................................ 7:30-9:30
Friday, October 9
Mentor Matching Breakfast.................................................................... 7:30-9:00
Session 6................................................................................................ 9:00-10:15
Session 7.............................................................................................. 10:30-11:45
Session 8................................................................................................ 12:00-1:15
Session 9.................................................................................................. 1:30-2:45
Session 10................................................................................................ 3:00-4:15
Posters..................................................................................................... 4:30-5:45
IWCA Reception....................................................................................... 6:00-8:00
Saturday, October 10
IWCA Town Hall Meeting......................................................................... 7:30-8:30
Session 11.............................................................................................. 8:45-10:00
Session 12............................................................................................ 10:15-11:30
Session 13.............................................................................................. 11:45-1:00
Session 14................................................................................................ 1:15-2:30
Session 15................................................................................................ 2:45-4:00
Featured Session..................................................................................... 6:30-8:45
A NOTE ON CONFERENCE TECHNOLOGY: All meeting rooms will be equipped
with a projector and screen. Presenters should bring their own cords, and MAC
users should bring adapters. No internet will be available in meeting rooms,
except where reserved in advance.
A NOTE ON THE CONFERENCE LOGO: The IWCA thanks Eric Mason for his design
of the Conference Logo.
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Keynote
Ben Rafoth, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Faces, Factories, and Warhols: A
r(Evoluntionary) Future for Writing Centers
The combination of revolution and evolution, the theme
of this conference, invites us to think expansively and even
radically, and today I would like to do just that. The annual
meeting of the IWCA offers a fresh perspective on the particulars of our lives and work -- the kind of fresh perspective
you sometimes feel when you experience great art. The extraordinary creativity of an artist like Warhol is easy to take
for granted, in part because Warhol and his followers helped
to shape the world we live in today. That is the amazing, and terrifying thing about revolutions and revolutionaries -- they never leave the world as they found it. And so if we want
to make a difference, it pays to study those who have done so. What can we learn about
writing centers from Andy Warhol?
Featured Session
David Sheridan, Michigan State University
We’re Making It!: What Can Writing Centers
Learn from Makerspaces?
Recent years have seen the emergence of makerspaces: community gathering spaces where people can access old and
new tools for making things. At makerspaces, one often encounters the latest digital fabrication technologies, like laser
cutters and 3D printers. But one also finds more traditional
making tools as well, including kilns, looms, and sewing machines. It’s not uncommon to encounter traditional writing
technologies, like movable type and letterpresses. Even more
important than these technologies, however, is the fact that makerspaces are populated
with people devoted to helping each other put these old and new tools to creative use.
What can writing centers learn from these spaces? This presentation builds on some striking commonalities that writing centers and makerspaces share: a commitment to peerbased learning and collaboration; a desire to create a safe space for risk-taking and experimentation; a healthy disregard for more formal educational structures; and, of course, the
goal of nurturing processes of making themselves (variously referred to as “composing,”
“designing,” “creating,” and “inventing”). Indeed, writing centers have always been a kind
of makerspace. At the same time, I argue that these new spaces can teach us something. I
examine practices of play, spontaneity, and technology-use found in makerspaces in order
to suggest some lenses for refreshing our vision of writing center work.
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International Writing Centers Association
Membership Information and Association Leadership
MEMBERSHIP STATEMENT
Your membership to the IWCA can be bundled with subscriptions to the two
IWCA publications--the Writing Center Journal (WCJ) and WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. Note that pricing is based on your mailing address, so
please ensure that your country is listed correctly in your profile.
FULL-TIME STUDENT
IWCA Membership: $15.00/year
Membership & WCJ Subscription: $30/year
Membership & WLN Subscription: $40/year
Membership & WCJ/WLN Subscription: $55/year
PROFESSIONAL
IWCA Membership: $30.00/year Membership & WCJ Subscription: $45/year
Membership & WLN Subscription: $55/year Membership & WCJ/WLN Subscription: $70/year
MEMBER BENEFITS
IWCA Membership is open to all writing center professionals, scholars, and tutors, as well as to those who are interested in writing centers and the teaching
and tutoring of writing. By joining the IWCA, you will become involved in a international community that is committed to strengthening the field of writing
center studies. IWCA Membership benefits include, but are not limited to the
following:
• Vote in elections
• Access to online events (open board meetings and workshops/presentations/discussions)
• Opportunities for Mentor Matching
• Eligibility to apply for IWCA Research and Graduate Research Grants
• Reduced rates for IWCA events
• Subscription to the IWCA Update, the organization’s news update
• Reduced rates for the Writing Center Journal and The Writing Lab Newsletter
ASSOCIATION LEADERSHIP
EXECUTIVE OFFICERS
President: Kevin Dvorak, Nova Southeastern University
Vice-President: Shareen Grogan, National University
Secretary: Alanna Bitzel, The University of Texas at Austin
Treasurer: Kim Ballard, Western Michigan University
Past-President: Nathalie Singh-Corcoran, West Virginia University
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AT-LARGE REPRESENTATIVES
Julia Bleakney, Stanford University
Lauri Dietz, DePaul University
Andrew Jeter, The Idea Lab
Julie Platt, University of Arkansas at Monticello
Lindsay Sabatino, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Trixie Smith, Michigan State University
Patricia Stephens, Long Island University
OTHER ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
Community College Representative: Megan Ward, Northwestern Michigan College
Graduate Student Representative: Rebecca Hallman, University of Houston
Secondary School Representative: Amber Jensen, Thomas Edison High School
AFFILIATE REPRESENTATIVES
Canadian WCA: Lucie Moussu, University of Alberta
European WCA: Franziska Liebetanz, Schreibzentrum der Europa-Universität Viadrina
Latin American WCA: Violeta Molina-Natera, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Middle Eastern-North Africa WC Alliance: Kelly Wilson, Texas A&M University at Qatar
East Central WCA: Sherry Wynn Perdue, Oakland University
Mid-Atlantic WCA: Lisa Zimmerelli, Loyola University Maryland
Midwest WCA: Katrina Bell, Southern Illinois University
Northeast WCA: Anna Sicari, St. John’s University
Northern California WCA: Tereza Joy Kramer, Saint Mary’s College of California
Pacific Northwest WCA: Amanda Hill, Cornish College of the Arts
Rocky Mountain WCA: Chris LeCluyse, Westminster College
South Central WCA: Dagmar Scharold, University of Houston-Downtown
Southeastern WCA: Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University
Southern California WCA: Kathryn Tucker, Nevada State College
EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS
2015 IWCA Conference Chair: Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University
2015 IWCA Collaborative Co-Chair: Jenn Wells, New College of Florida
European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing Representative: Magnus Gustafsson, Chalmers University of Technology
NCPTW Representative: Brian Fallon, Fashion Institute of Technology
Web Editor: Christopher Ervin, Western Kentucky University
WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship Editor: Muriel Harris
Writing Center Journal Editors: Michele Eodice, Kerri Jordan, and Steve Price
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Newcomers’ Welcome
Thursday, October 8 | 7:30am to 8:30am
KING’S GARDEN 3
Newcomers’ Coffee Hour
Alanna Bitzel, University of Texas at Austin
First time at the IWCA Annual Conference? New to writing centers? This interactive orientation session, hosted by members of the IWCA Outreach Committee, is for you! We are pleased that you have chosen to participate in the
Conference as part of your professional development and want to help you
make the most of your experience in Pittsburgh. Attend this session to learn
more about the IWCA, network with members of the IWCA Board and writing
center community, and receive tips on navigating the Conference. You’ll leave
with valuable information, insights, and resources. #IWCANewbies
Keynote
BALLROOM
Faces, Factories, and Warhols: A r(Evoluntionary) Future
for Writing Centers
Ben Rafoth, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Session 1
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Data Analytics for the Writing Center: A
(R)evolutionary Collaboration
Carol Mohrbacher, Sharon Cogdill, Emily Hennes, Judy Kilborn, Carol Kuhn, David Robinson, St. Cloud State University
Writing-center scholars agree on the need for more substantive research.
However, planning and producing nuanced quantitative research and materials promoting and summarizing research for multiple audiences may challenge
center directors. This workshop discusses a recent cross-disciplinary collaboration in a writing-center research project, including planning, summarizing,
and developing materials for several audiences. Presenters include a writing-center director, statistics professor and university analytics director, document content and design professor, digital-humanities professor and former
administrator, and two graduate students. After discussing our collaboration
and suggesting approaches to analytics, presenters will facilitate small group
discussions concerning planning their own project. #IWCA15B1
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BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Anatomy of a Tutor: Soft Skills for Effective
Human Interaction
Jacob Blumner, Vicky Dawson, David Linden, University of
Michigan-Flint
This workshop focuses on the under-examined soft skills required for successful tutoring. Though a number of activities, participants will identify, define,
and discuss soft skills such as empathy, active listening, and mirroring to examine how these work in tandem with the technical skills more commonly
addressed in writing center scholarship. Finally, we will look at how soft skills
can be incorporated into tutor professional development. #IWCA15C1
BALLROOM 3
Workshop: Writing Center: Home of Creative Writing
Kay Bosgraaf, Montgomery College
The Writing, Reading, and Language Center at Montgomery College offers ongoing workshops in creative writing to motivate students to write, to allow
them to self-explore in playful ways, to build their confidence through autonomy in their writing, to foster growth in their writing in all disciplines, and to
improve critical thinking about their own and each other’s writing. Creative
writing may well be the key to improving student writing across the curriculum. The Writing Center is the perfect venue where students can learn to
write through creative writing without being graded and in a more relaxed
environment. The Writing Center can support students in this way while slowly
gaining the support of the Writing in the Disciplines Program and influencing
faculty to use creative writing in all of their subject areas to increase student
learning. #IWCA15D1
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: The ‘Inner Humanist’ Revolts agains the
‘Inner Accountant’: Balancing the Need to Make Our Successes Legible to University Administration and the Need
to Genuinely Value the Work of Writing Center Employees
Jennifer Halpin, Charlie Jones, Jacob Kovacs, Caitlin Palo,
Mihaela Giurca, University of Washington
Our writing center’s four-year Cinderella story – 600% growth, a permanent
budget, a new full-time directorship, newly-renovated and much larger space
– is also a sort of cautionary tale. In roundtable discussions with participants,
we will offer and explore both the reporting strategies behind our success and
evolution (how we appealed to the university) and the means by which we
might now alleviate the employee under-compensation on which writing center and other support program successes are too often built. #IWCA15C1
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Writing Center Labor Crises and
(r)Evolutions: Addressing the Problems of Contingency
Dawn Fels, University of Pittsburgh | Maggie Herb, University
of Tennessee, Chattanooga | Clint Gardner, Salt Lake Community College | Lila Naydan, Penn State Abington | Anna Sicari,
St. John’s University
By the end of Pittsburgh’s Industrial Golden Age in 1910, early writing cen9
ters became central to Composition’s labor concerns, relieving professors of
too many underprepared students (Lerner, 2009). Contingent workers staffed
those centers. Today, 71% of writing center directors hold contingent positions,
with 82% of centers staffed by contingent peer tutors (Isaacs & Knight, 2014).
We invite attendees to join us to discuss the risks of contingent positions and
develop actionable ideas to address them. #IWCA15A1
BRIGADE
Graduate Orientation
Rebecca Hallman, University of Houston
Please join us for a conversation about forming an IWCA Graduate Organization. We’ll begin our conversation by talking with WPA GO representatives
about their experiences running a graduate student organization. Then, we
will work in breakout, small group sessions to discuss what we might want
IWCA-GO to do, including topics such as mentor matching programs, research
and virtual writing group opportunities, and grants/funding. Sandwiches,
snacks, and refreshments will be served. #IWCA15K1
COMMONWEALTH 1
Negotiating Revolutions Across Writing Centers
Elise Dixon, Michigan State University
The (R)evolutionary Space Between: Considering the Conflation of Student-Centeredness and Non-Directivity
This presentation argues that non-directivity and student-centeredness are
terms unnecessarily conflated in writing center theory and practice. This conflation in terms can lead tutors to experience inner-conflict and guilt as they
respond fruitlessly to difficult sessions with the Socratic method. In order for
the writing center to gain and maintain its legitimacy within the academy, WC
scholars and directors need to consider creating space between the concepts
of non-directivity and student-centeredness. This small but revolutionary consideration can allow for more fruitful sessions and less guilt-ridden tutors as
they learn to embrace and develop multiple strategies for the diverse needs of
the myriad students they serve. #IWCA15L1
Stacy Rice, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Repeatedly Wrestling with Revolution: Writing and Technology
Anxieties of Past and Present
Writing centers are seeing an increasing number of multimodal/multimedia
compositions. Yet, there is relatively little scholarship on how to prepare peer
consultants for such texts, leading to the potential for technology-related anxiety. This presentation examines the anxieties that accompany the ongoing revolution in writing technologies, noting historical and current trends between
emerging forms of communication and the questions and concerns they bring.
Participants will be asked to reconsider their definition of writing, the roles
writing centers play in technological societies, and how we might fill in missing
gaps of scholarship as it relates to writing technology revolutions and consultant training. #IWCA15M1
Molly Parsons, University of Michigan
Coming (in)to Conflict: Toward a Research-Informed Theory of
Conflict for the Writing Center
Writing center scholarship offers advice for undergraduate consultants about
understanding and navigating conflict in consultations. We recognize conflict
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as inevitable, yet there is little systematic research underpinning the advice,
which emerges, most commonly, out of “lore” and “anecdote” (Babcock &
Thonus, 2012). Because of this, we only partially understand how consultants
theorize conflict (as potentially productive? as incompatible with writing center values? as destructive? as necessary?) and if/how they engage with it. This
presentation will present research which provides a window into consultants’
experience and suggests multiple ways of theorizing and responding to conflict
in the center. #IWCA15N1
COMMONWEALTH 2
Evolution or Revolution? Improving the Writing Center
Andrea Efthymiou, Hofstra University
Methodological Middle-Space: The Evolution of a Dissertation Research Plan Beyond Defense
As evidenced by Driscoll and Purdue’s recent article “RAD Research as a Framework for Writing Center Inquiry,” the question of what constitutes replicable,
aggregable, and data-driven research persists in our field. The desire to articulate our methods and methodologies in ways that speak beyond an individual
research plan also underlies Liggett et. al.s article “Mapping Knowledge-Making in Writing Center Research: A Taxonomy of Methodologies.” My presentation, similarly grounded in both advocating for and questioning our methods
and methodologies, looks at the research plan I outlined in my dissertation
and the questions that arose about my methodologies during my defense.
#IWCA15O1
Sunny Hawkins, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Nomadology: Or, the (r)Evolution of (dis)Location
This presentation argues for a revolutionary dis-location of Writing Centers
(which often wish to know our “place” within our institutions, and within the
academic community more broadly, for security’s sake) according to Deleuze
and Guattari’s theory of “nomadology.” Dislocation allows for a freshness of
perspective, a constantly-evolving, consciously-occurring in-habiting of place
that protects against stagnation, entrenchment, and rigidity in everything from
tutor training to marketing to research. #IWCA15P1
Michael Pemberton, Georgia Southern University
When a Writing QEP Ignores the Writing Center: Evolution or Revolution?
In this presentation, I will begin by tracing the development of the new writing-focused QEP developed by Georgia Southern University (“Write! Write!
Write!”) and the behind the scene politics that left the writing center without
additional funding or an enhanced campus presence, at least in the short term.
After briefly recounting this history of the QEP, I will focus the remainder of my
presentation on productive strategies for growth and evolution that can be
useful not just for my own center but for other centers whose support systems
may be languishing. #IWCA15Q1
FORBES
Special Session: International Peer Tutor Networking
Brandon Hardy, East Carolina University
With the goal of promoting a broader understanding of writing center work
outside the U.S., this session will provide a hybrid physical-digital space for
informal conversations with peer tutors from various writing centers across
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Europe, who will participate via Google Hangouts. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss various social, cultural, and institutional contexts in which
writing centers operate, but many topics may be explored during the session.
This moderated discussion is designed to build community among peer tutors
across the globe and serve as a pilot for connecting members of IWCA affiliates
at future IWCA conferences. Please sign up in advance if you wish to participate, as space will be limited to 25 attendees. #IWCA15IPTN
KINGS 1
Panel: Risky Business: Confidence Building as the Key to
Enhancing Student Success
Rachel Robinson, Beth Carroll, Julie Karaus, Appalachian State
University
Student success can be measured by student confidence. Many student populations enter college already at risk for low confidence levels (transfer students, ELL students, underperforming students, etc.), and the writing center
is the ideal place for these students to build that confidence. For writing centers, this means capitalizing on our already unique institutional position and
encouraging student confidence in writing. Identifying and partnering with
campus-wide initiatives, writing centers can target these student populations
while reinforcing the legitimacy of the important work that we do. #IWCA15E1
KINGS 2
Panel: Communities, Conversations, and Collaborations:
The Evolution of Graduate Writing
Nathalie Singh-Corcoran, Laura Brady, Dibyadyuti Roy, West
Virginia University
We examine how our center has co-evolved with a campus-wide initiative focused on graduate student support. We use our local situation to illustrate
the environmental features, conditions, and strategic alliances that allow local
programs to address campus needs through communities, conversations, and
collaborations. During our session, we will address the following four points: 1.
What do faculty and students value in writing? 2. How do faculty and students
learn to write in their disciplines? 3. Is there a conflict between faculty and
students values and how they learn to write? 4. How does a Writing Center
negotiate divergent expectations? #IWCA15F1
KINGS 3
Panel: Intersections: The Sweetland-Skyline Writing Center Collaboration in Context
Jeffrey Austin, Skyline High School | Christine Modey, University of Michigan | Ella Horwedel, Skyline High School | Andy
Peters, University of Michigan
Collaborations between high school and university writing centers provide
fruitful opportunities for peer tutors in different contexts to learn from each
other. While university writing centers’ outreach typically involves providing
services to high school writers, collaboration between high school and college
writing centers for professional development is less common. Yet, truly collaborative relationships recognize that all participants have something unique to
teach and to learn. This panel presentation explains the history of the evolving
collaboration between Skyline High School in Ann Arbor and the University of
Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing and its benefits to tutors, students,
teachers, and institutions. #IWCA15F1
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KINGS 4
Panel: A Revolution for Students with Learning Disabilities: Re-abling Students by Enacting Writing Studio Pedagogy across the Disciplines
Matthew Kim, Michael Riendeau, Marshall Robinson, Richard
Raymond, Eagle Hill School
We share with conference participants a research project on which we embarked looking at how emphasizing writing studio pedagogy across disciplines
might afford secondary students opportunities to re-able themselves by developing into rhetorical-savvy composers and thinkers. #IWCA15H1
KINGS 5
Panel: (r)evolving Spaces: The Mandatory Connection of
the Classroom, the Writing Center, and Online Tutoring
Emily Berliner, Queensborough Community College | Melissa
Bobe, Rutgers University | Blaise Bennardo, Queensborough
Community College | Armando Rodriguez, Queensborough
Community College
Multimodal pedagogical approaches to teaching and providing feedback for
student writing can work to further promote learning in the classroom, the
writing center, and through online tutoring forums. This presentation will underscore the need for classroom teachers to mandate the use of campus writing centers and e-tutoring to develop the scope and utility of these services,
allowing them to play a more meaningful role in the composition and revision
process. #IWCA15I1
RIVERS
Panel: “Don’t Fence Me In”: Expanding the Writing Center at (R1 State University)
Alice Batt, Brianna Hyslop, Courtney Massie, Mary Hedengren, University of Texas at Austin
For the past year, our writing center has faced the best possible problem: designing a new space. While working to design a learning commons with our
university libraries, we have realized that expanding the writing center means
expanding our thinking, not only about how we use physical space but also
about our place in the university community. Our panel explores how different
assumptions about space complicate the development of a learning commons,
and how the creation of new literal and figurative spaces re-shapes our mission and role at the university. #IWCA15J1
Session 2
Thursday, October 8 | 11:45am to 1:00pm
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Using Vernacular Language to Sail through
Brainstorms for Multilingual Writers
Andy Kirkpatrick, Annie Keig, CJ Cosas, David Fujii, Shane McCarthy, St. Mary’s College of California
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Sailing through brainstorming sessions can be difficult for multilingual writers;
those not necessarily familiar with the language they are using can face significant challenges in trying to express their ideas on paper. To this end, writing
advisers can use unconventional strategies to assist writers in finding a focus
for and confidence in their work. This workshop will incorporate improvised
performances of sessions with the help of the audience: participants will experiment with vernacular language and conversation to help multilingual writers navigate through brainstorms. #IWCA15B2
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Tutor Training Manual Makeover
Rachel Dortin, Stephanie Ries, Troylin Banks, Courtney Bates,
The University of Findlay
Tucked away on a bookshelf somewhere in the Writing Center, almost all of
us have an archaic tutor-training manual. We will review recent research on
Writing Center training manuals, brainstorm ideas on what should be included,
illustrate revisions with our own manual, and workshop with one another to
modernize our tutor-training manual. This interactive workshop will engage
participants to modify their own tutor-training manual, and so we invite all
participants to bring copies of their Writing Center’s current manual. Even
without your manual in-hand, you’ll leave with ideas and handouts that you
may want to adopt and adapt. #IWCA15C2
BALLROOM 3
Workshop: Revolutionary Design: Creating Consultant
Education that Yields Energy, Innovation, Collaboration,
and Ideas
Katie Elliott, Amanda Hemmingsen, Aron Muci, University of
Kansas
To work effectively, tutors must be well trained, supported, and invested in
their work. That’s a fact of life in writing centers—yet we struggle to provide
consultant education as rich in collaboration and energy as our work with
clients, relying instead on top-down, training-centric models. This workshop
explores (r)evolutionary approaches that energize bottom-up, active collaboration and development. Guided by facilitators’ experience, participants will
reflect on and reimagine their consultant education. Together, we’ll assess
current practices to better capitalize on existing sites of engaged energy and
cultivate new ones, developing action plans for immediate innovations and
long-term revolutions in participants’ own centers. #IWCA15D2
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Evolving Writing – Promoting Writing Center
Scholarship
In 2013, Brian Fallon and Rusty Carpenter gave a presentation at the IWCA
Summer Institute that was an overview of writing center history and scholarship, pointing to the prominent role that various publications – WCJ, WLN,
PeerCentered, Praxis – have played in shaping writing center dialogues and
guiding how we in the writing center community think about our work. Their
presentation points to the enduring importance of publication and scholarship to the field of writing centers. Publication and scholarship serve to inform
and bolster writing center work, providing avenues for writing center practitioners to learn from each other and offering much-needed evidence of the
legitimacy of writing centers as a field of study and practice. In the decades
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since the emergence of writing centers, the writing center community has
grown exponentially – IWCA nears 1,000 members at the time of this writing and it has witnessed a similar growth in the number of writing center-focused
publications. The number of regional newsletters has increased, as has the
number of online forums and publications that highlight scholarship at both
the undergraduate and graduate levels. This growth represents the vitality of
current research and is a response to the need for adequate opportunities to
showcase writing center ideas and innovations. It has afforded opportunities
for connection, specialization, collaboration, controversy, and, most importantly, writing. The growth in publications, while tremendously exciting, can
also seem daunting. Each publication has a unique purpose, format, audience,
array of standards, and review process. For authors seeking to make decisions
about where and how to publish, the choices may seem confusing or intimidating. This roundtable hopes to demystify the publication process and facilitate ongoing participation in writing center scholarship. In this roundtable
session, editors from a variety of writing center publications - both online and
print, peer and non peer-reviewed, long-standing and new, traditional and experimental - will discuss their publication (including goals, intended audience,
relevant guidelines, associated technologies, nature of feedback, etc.) and respond to questions about what their publication looks for in submissions. Attendees will learn about different publication possibilities and have the chance
to brainstorm best avenues for the work they are doing. #IWCA15C2
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Developing Support for Graduate
Students in the Writing Center
Linda Macri, University of Maryland | Kyung-Hee Bae, Rice
University | Valerie Balester, Texas A & M University | Clare
Berminghman, University of Waterloo | Peter Grav, University of Toronto | Jane Minton, Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design | Nicole Kramer Munday, Salisbury University | Elizabeth Curtain, Salisbury University | Jennifer Shade Wilson,
Rice University
As the demand for graduate student services in writing centers increases, so
too does the need to develop resources, scholarship, and community to respond to that demand. This SIG invites participants to share and discuss ways
to respond to the challenges of promoting, designing, and developing support
for graduate students in the writing center. #IWCA15A2
BRIGADE
Learning and Understanding Writing Center Practices
Kimberly Fahle, Virginia Wesleyan College
Writing Centers on Social Media: Revolution or Evolution of Our
Practices?
Many writing centers now have a social media presence, but little has been
discussed in writing center literature about this practice. This presentation
will address some of the considerations and challenges that arise with its use,
bringing to light issues of engagement, authority, and labor challenges that
must be contended with when writing centers use social media. Using scholarship from both writing centers and critical internet studies, this presentation
focuses specifically on topics such as humor, meme use, playbour, creepy tree
house syndrome, and promoting collaborative conversations in relation to
writing centers’ social media use. #IWCA15O2
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Anthony Edgington, University of Toledo
Teacher/Tutor Schizophrenia: Understanding Identity in the
Process of Responding to Student Writing
This session will explore the different identities teachers and tutors adopt
when responding to student writing, with a focus on how new teachers/tutors
navigate this process. #IWCA15Q2
COMMONWEALTH 1
Programming and Program Design
Brooke Schreiber, Pennsylvania State University | Snezana
Djuric, University of Nis
Alternative venue: Founding an EFL Writing Center Outside the
University
This presentation describes the founding of a writing center in Serbia at an
Embassy-sponsored language resource center. The presenters discuss how this
alternative site and its pre-existing member base have shaped the recruitment
and training of tutors, the types of clients, and the center’s overall mission.
The presenters consider the advantages and disadvantages of this site and describe the center’s current outreach efforts, then conclude with suggestions
for seeking out and making use of alternative, non-institutional spaces for writing centers. #IWCA15R2
Claire McMurray, University of Kansas Writing Center
Getting Groups to Coalesce: The Evolution of a Graduate
Writing Group Program
In my presentation I describe the evolution of our Writing Center’s graduate
writing groups program, explaining how we have increased the number, quality, and longevity of groups by experimenting with five important factors: 1)
social cohesion – members’ sense of accountability and loyalty to the group,
2) task cohesion – the group’s shared vision or goal, 3) an effective workshopping/feedback structure, 4) a clear, structured first meeting, and 5) a trained
facilitator. In my account I elucidate each factor, drawing from group dynamics theory, data collected from participants, and case studies in order to offer
guidance on creating strong writing groups. #IWCA15S2
COMMONWEALTH 2
Software Assistance and Other Techniques at Work in the
Writing Center
Matthew Ramirez, WriteLab/UC Berkeley | Donald McQuade,
WriteLab/UC Berkeley | Les Perelman, WriteLab/MIT | Richard Sterling, WriteLab/NWP
Research on Software Assistance for Writing Students & Tutors
Writing centers afford students opportunities to practice, experiment with,
and make decisions about their prose. Yet students visiting these centers often
stay for only fifteen minutes to an hour. This leaves tutors little time to address student needs, which are often complex and difficult to assess. To gather
meaningful data about the revision process, we have developed WriteLab, an
online tool designed to encourage students to make decisions about syntactical and structural features of composition. We will report on our findings from
charting and analyzing these decisions, to better understand how students become practiced and confident writers. #IWCA15T2
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Tennyson O’Donnell, Trinity College
Using Data Visualization Software to Capture Student Learning
in the Writing Center
Writing Centers often utilize online scheduling, tracking and evaluation programs to improve services, and collect data. Data visualization software can
turn large amounts of complex, qualitative data associated with such programs
into understandable, insightful, and compelling communications for multiple
stakeholders. My research examines what student-writers state they need
when making an appointment, what student-writers learn during an appointment, and what student-writers say they learn about writing in a survey after
the appointment. Ideally, my research utilizing data visualization will show the
value of a writing center by capturing student learning. #IWCA15U2
Liz Mathews, Villanova University
Take One: Visual Metaphors at Work in the Center
I propose a visual rhetoric for the center that is practical and strengthens the
tutor’s and writer’s notions of writing and engagement with the tutorial. Presenting appointment cards that use visual metaphors to explain topics such as
“specificity,” “revision,” and “incorporating sources,” I will discuss how production and reception of the cards encourage interaction with figurative language,
incite interpretation from writers, and prepare both tutor and writer for the
tutorial. #IWCA15V2
FORBES
Panel: Charting Our Evolution: From Directing the Writing
Center to Leading the Campus
Julia Bleakney, Stanford University | Gina R. Evers, Mount
Saint Mary College | Tereza Joy Kramer, Saint Mary’s College
of California | Joseph Zeccardi, Saint Mary’s College of California
This panel explores the role of the writing center director as a campus leader
by theorizing our collaborative and innovative work; discussing how we develop the skills of leadership, vision-setting, and management; and exploring
partnership opportunities and possibilities across campus and with students.
After sharing four distinct perspectives from three distinct institutions, these
Writing Center Directors encourage participants to consider their own opportunities to develop as leaders and for continued leadership on their home campuses. #IWCA15E2
KINGS 1
Special Interest Group: Professional Writing Center Staff
Jessica F. Kem, Amherst College
Professional Writing Center staff (tutors, instructors, consultants) get little
attention in the literature of Writing Center work. In a field rooted in peer
tutoring, many of us wonder where we fit in. This special interest group will
be an opportunity for professional staff to define and discuss issues of interest
to us, such as job definitions, professional development, faculty/staff status,
collaboration within and beyond our institutions, and teaching responsibilities.
#IWCA15SG2
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KINGS 2
Panel: Cultivating Collaboration: The Evolution of Peer
Review Workshopping at Noel Studio
Sarah Ferry, Emily Hensley, Brielle White, Eastern Kentucky
University
This panel will examine the development and reshaping of peer review workshops at the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity at Eastern Kentucky University. Using original research on student perception, instructor involvement,
environment, and student comprehension of writing concepts, the speakers
will explore common challenges in peer review implementation. In an effort
to address and improve upon these difficulties, the presenters will discuss the
Studio’s evolving approach to this workshop, which now employs more effective practices and ultimately aims to foster greater student collaboration for
future, instructor-led peer reviews as well. #IWCA15F2
KINGS 3
Panel: Awaken Your Senses: Developing Creativity and
Communication Skills Through Arts Integration in Writing
Centers
Kyle Cohlmia, Oklahoma State University - Oklahoma City
Students experience different emotions throughout the writing process from
anxiety to happiness, and writing centers are often the sounding board for
students who are processing these emotions. Neurolinguistic Programming
(NLP) is used in education to help students manage emotions and maintain
resourceful learning states through sensory-based activities. This presentation
will discuss how utilizing NLP in writing centers by having students view, listen
to, and/or create the visual arts during the pre-writing stage produces a sensory experience which encourages well-rounded writers, helping students manage the emotional process of writing and develop a higher level of creativity
and communication in their writing. #IWCA15F2
KINGS 4
Panel: Shantay, you stay!: Lessons from a Case Study in
Partnering with an On-Campus LGBTQ Center
Tammy Conard-Salvo, Jeffrey Gerding, Stacy Nall, Harry Denny, Purdue University
This panel addresses ways that writing centers can partner with on-campus organizations and departments to support writing-for-change activities, collaboration, and community-based literacy practices. Partnering with our LGBTQ
Center has allowed us to position the writing center as a hub for social justice
and the rhetorical action that accompanies such work. This case study demonstrates how we can re-envision engaged writing centers by providing increased
support for student activists’ writing goals. We believe that a critical reflection
on the mission of writing centers could prompt the field to more critically consider the possibilities for outreach and engagement. #IWCA15H2
KINGS 5
Panel: The Ethos of the Engine: Calculating the Cost to a
Writing Center Powering Institutional Change
Rachel Greil, Mary Lou Odom, Milya Maxfield, Michael
Ruther, Kennesaw State University
Writing centers are capable of generating their own momentum for improving
student writing as they respond to concerns such as those relating to degree
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completion and post-degree competency. This panel presentation examines
ethical challenges resulting from the momentum created by one writing center’s involvement with high stakes assessment for a university’s prestigious
business program. Panelists discuss challenges such as adhering to process-focused pedagogy amid product-focused pressure, negotiating conflicting notions of successful writing, and serving students identified as underprepared
late in their college careers. They also address using these challenges as further
momentum to develop a lasting institutional culture of writing. #IWCA15I2
RIVERS
Ignite Sessions
Maggie Myers, McDaniel College
Writing the Signs
In this presentation, tutors with varying levels of American Sign Language proficiency will focus on their experiences working with deaf students. #IWCA15J2
Elizabeth Festa, Rice University
Multisensorial and Corporeal Arguments: Supporting Students
Making Ethnographic Films
This session focuses on the support our center provided to graduate students
in an ethnographic research methods course as they were making their first
ethnographic films. The presentation focuses on the workshop we designed,
in which we limned the history of the turn to the visual in anthropology and facilitated a class discussion on innovative and experimental work in the field of
anthropology and in documentary photojournalism. It closes with a discussion
of our future plans for scaffolding this project, to include enhanced training
for our graduate and undergraduate peer consultants in supporting creative,
scholarly digital and film projects. #IWCA15K2
Barbara Lyras Dubos, Youngstown State University
Globalization, Technology, and High School to College Acceptance Programs: The Revolution of University Writing Centers
Globalization, technology, and high school to college acceleration are changing
university student landscapes across America. Globalization is increasing the
foreign student population, which requires tutors, trained to meet the needs
of ESL students. Technology enables writing centers to reach a larger student
population. High school to college acceptance programs will produce a student
population, which will include middle school students. This Ignite session will
examine how each of these aspects will funnel in larger and diverse student
populations, which will challenge the overall mission and future of university
writing centers. #IWCA15M2
Mark Latta, Marian University
Say, “Making Better Writers,” One More Time... Confronting
the Status Quo of Deficit Thinking
Although North’s mantra of “making better writers” was first proclaimed over
thirty years ago, it continues to proliferate across writing center websites,
Twitter feeds, and marketing documents. For many, this phrase has risen to
quasi-religious levels. However, at the core of “making better writers” lies the
belief that writers are things in need of fixing. What if “making better writers”
is deficit thinking camouflaged as empowerment? What if this deficit mode
of thinking not only prevents growth in writing center theory, but also works
against the ethos of collaborative learning? #IWCA15N2
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Session 3
Thursday, October 8 | 1:00pm to 2:15pm
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Students with Learning Disabilities: Tutors’
Perceptions and Evolving Practices
Sasha Yambor, Jennifer Follett, York College of Pennsylvania
In what ways do tutors’ perceptions of and feelings about learning disabilities shape the evolution of their tutoring strategies when working with this
population of students? Workshop leaders will summarize the results of a
multiple-methods study that investigated how tutors in one writing center
understood, felt about, and developed strategies to respond to the writing
support needs of students with learning disabilities. Workshop participants’
exploration of the study results will scaffold active reflection on and discussion
of their own perceptions about and practices for working with students with
disabilities. We hope this workshop will help lead to the evolution of both individual tutors’ practices and writing centers’ policies concerning students with
learning disabilities. #IWCA15B3
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Creating Environments That Work: Building a
Culture of Challenge and Support in the Writing Center
Kathryn Inskeep, Kean University
Safe. Welcoming. Accessible. These values are at the forefront of designing
writing center spaces, physical and digital, as they reflect the philosophies that
undergird writing center work. While I share these values, I am concerned that
a writing center can be too successful in creating an inviting environment and
I fear it is becoming less of a contact zone and more of a comfort zone. Using
Nevitt Sanford’s (1968) theory of student development as a framework, this
workshop will explore ways to emphasize the element of challenge in proportion to support in writing center design and practices. #IWCA15C3
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Navigating Emotional/Therapeutic Roles,
Responsibilities, and Limits in Writing Centers
Alison Perry, Tom Philipose, Ella Leviyeva, Miguel Vasquez,
Lynnae Freeman, Aseefa Rasool, Yugi Paul, Dan Heffernan, St
John’s University
Writing Consultants are not therapists. Or so we hear. Consultants are often
cast into the role of unofficial counselors, and consultants themselves can just
as often be triggered and/or re-traumatized by sessions. We plan to explore
several of these types of occurrences from our staff’s perspective and then
engage the audience in discussing the boundaries and possibilities of how
writing consultants can and should straddle the line of tutor/mentor/guide/
emotional-resource. #IWCA15D3
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: (R)evolutionizing Consultant Training: Preparing for Multimodal Design
Lindsay Sabatino, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
As writing centers embark on a (r)evolution to multiliteracy centers, directors
and consultants need to determine the best ways to prepare for sessions focused on multimodal composing. The goal of this roundtable is to offer directors and consultants options for training in multimodal composing, opportunities to share resources and discuss limitations they are currently facing in
terms of preparation. #IWCA15E3
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Turning Our Backs on the Revolution: The Past and Future of Synchronous Online Tutoring
in the Graduate Writing Center
Craig Medvecky, Loyola University Maryland
The de-centered, specialized nature of graduate education necessitates a complex and flexible approach to graduate writing support. Graduate Writing Centers must explore and understand the complex world of synchronous online
tutoring in order to understand how best to meet graduate student needs and
achieve productive results. #IWCA15A3
BRIGADE
Analysis and Approaches
J. Christian Tatu, Lafayette College
Evolution or Revolution: De-centering Academic Prose in the
Writing Center
For many years, writing center professionals have been advocating for the role
of visual rhetoric and multimodal composition in writing center work, yet inclusion of these competencies into writing center praxis has been slow at best.
This presentation seeks to explore how we can integrate visual rhetoric, multimodal composition, design thinking, and other competencies into existing
tutor training programs and asks whether, instead, writing center work needs
to be re-imagined in more comprehensive (and, perhaps, revolutionary) ways
in order to respond to, in the language of this conference’s CFP, “increasingly
complex definitions of writing.” #IWCA15O3
Margaret Stahr, Catawba College | Susan Hahn, DePauw University
Tutoring for Transfer: What Focus Groups Reveal about Tutors’
Efforts to Facilitate Transfer
“Transfer” and teaching for it have dominated recent composition scholarship.
Theories about the best ways to “teach for transfer” abound, and many of
these methods complicate the ways that instructors teach writing. As teaching
writing evolves toward teaching for transfer, so might writing centers evolve
to educate their consultants to “tutor for transfer.” This presentation reports
on findings from focus groups with tutees at two different institutions, both
of which have integrated transfer scholarship into the tutor education course.
#IWCA15P3
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COMMONWEALTH 1
Working with Unique Populations
Lucy Manley, Reginald Charles, Ramon Wright, Valley Forge
Military Academy & College
(Re)viewing the Playbook: Academic Support for Student-Athletes at a Junior College
This session will present data from a research project attempting to better understand ways to support conditionally admitted, developmental writers at a
military junior college. Presenters (a basic writing instructor, a football player,
and a basketball player) will share interview and survey statistics and narratives from their research project at a small, junior, military college with a 40%
student-athlete population. Because the athletic department does not employ
academic support service personnel, we present creative ways for writing centers to partner with athletic departments to advance academic success of their
student-athletes. #IWCA15Q3
Jason Ueda, Columbia University
Problems with Profiling
Consultants often look to writer background for inroads into a productive
session and anticipate writer concerns. With NNSs, a frequent request is help
with copyediting, which puts tension on a session, and may inadvertently and
negatively affect the morale of the session’s dynamic. I plan to explore the tendency of consultants to profile NNSs and the potentially caustic assumptions
based on ethnicity and propose revised practices to effect a more harmonious
consultation. #IWCA15R3
David Albachten, Istanbul Sehir University
Writing Center Involvement with Multilingual Graduate
Students Demonstrably Improves Dissertation Writing
Can it be objectively shown writing center involvement improves graduate dissertation writing outcomes? This paper answers this question through a twoyear fifty-student study. Using a variety of objective and reproducible measurements (grammar/mechanics/style, plagiarism, minor/major corrections,
outcomes of the defense presentation, and time-to-complete) students using
the writing center and those who choose not to are compared. Writing center
intervention students achieved higher scores in all areas by more than 50%.
77% of the students who completed within the allocated time used the writing
center. Writing center intervention students learned how to achieve a higher
quality and more-timely dissertation. #IWCA15S3
COMMONWEALTH 2
International Developments in Writing Centers
Franziska Liebetanz, Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) Germany | Anja
Poloubotko, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
(R) evolution in Germany – From Six to More Than 50 Writing
Centers in 7 Years
The goal of this presentation is to tell the story of the writing center evolution
by highlighting challenges and conditions for the success stories. We will take
a look at the key events in the German writing center history starting with
three key figures in 1993 at the universities in Berlin, Marburg and Bielefeld (cf.
Ruhman 2014). This will be followed by a presentation of the Viadrina-Writing
Center, which was founded in 2007, strongly contributed to the development
of the Peer Tutoring Model and transferred this idea to other German writing
centers. #IWCA15T3
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Julie Williams, San Diego State University Writing Center
What kind of conversation takes place between non-native
English speakers and their native English-speaking tutors?
The number of non-native English speakers, especially international students,
who frequent university writing centers is continuing to increase. Many studies (Thonus 1993, 2004, Williams and Servino 2004, Williams 2004) indicate
ways in which language and culture barriers impede the peer conversation
model considered valuable in writing-center culture. The practices that might
encourage a peer conversation model have had less scrutiny. This report uses
an analysis of tutor-written reflections to identify practices that might impede
a conversation model and, also, practices that may encourage more natural
conversations between tutors and NNS tutees. #IWCA15U3
John Walsh, Rebecca Dorman, Cochise College
Teaching Latino Students Information Literacy Skills: An
Integration of Library Instruction and the Writing Process
Instructional librarians are engaging students and designing programs to teach
students how to find and evaluate information. However, this instructional approach has segregated these information literacy skills from the rest of the
information literacy learning paradigm. This presentation introduces the concept of the Learning Librarian. The learning librarian works in a multiliteracy
center that combines the learning environments of the writing lab and the
library. The learning librarian integrates the mechanical skills of information
seeking with the cognitive skills of the writing process in an attempt to more
fully implement the information literacy learning paradigm. #IWCA15V3
FORBES
Identity and Authority
Elise Geither, CWRU
Prime, Model, Show: Supporting Students with Autism
Spectrum Disorder at University Writing Centers
With the increasing number of students on the spectrum moving from high
school to university, we see an increasing number of students visiting the university writing centers as they navigate their way into academic writing and
meeting the expectations of faculty. This session offers background along with
three practical tips and exercises for working with students on the spectrum
and supporting them in academic writing. #IWCA15W3
KINGS 1
Panel: Our “Totally RAD” Writing Center: Empirical
Research, Replication, and Rewards
William Macauley, Jr., Maureen Mcbride, University of
Nevada, Reno
RAD research (Haswell 2005), especially replication, create rich layers of complexity and opportunity for our work that adds to our local understandings
and the field. Replication and aggregation are keys to overcoming the trope
of local uniqueness and measures as barriers to deeper understanding of our
work. As writing centers move out into the campus community, they will need
to develop more sophisticated and recognizable ways of substantiating their
work. #IWCA15F3
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KINGS 2
Panel: An Alternative Approach to Writing Center Training and Professional Development
Marjorie Coffey, Dennis Bennett, Kaely Horton, Aimee Clark,
Michelle Marie, Oregon State University
A typical writing center staff includes tutors with years of experience as well
as tutors just beginning training. The traditional model of training through allstaff weekly meetings is challenging, as it does not always address the professional development needs of writing center tutors with varying levels of
experience. This session will describe how a large, land-grant university’s writing center has met this challenge through a training (r)evolution, developing
a tiered, module-based approach to professional development. The panel will
share the strengths and challenges of designing and implementing this curriculum to better meet the needs of a diverse writing center staff. #IWCA15G3
KINGS 3
Special Session: IWCA Graduate Student Event
Rebecca Hallman, University of Houston
#IWCA15H3
KINGS 4
Panel: Centering Institutional Plagiarism Policies and
Practice
Kim Ballard, Western Michigan University | Sherry Wynn
Perdue, Oakland University
Plagiarism policies, perhaps more than any other institutional statements,
capture how an institution’s faculty and administrators define writing, which
makes the plagiarism landscape apt terrain for writing center work. Drawing
upon two directors’ recent experiences negotiating plagiarism policy changes
at our institutions, this presentation demonstrates the central leadership role
writing centers can and should play in defining plagiarism and refining institutional responses to it. #IWCA15I3
KINGS 5
Panel: Writing Center Labor Crises and (r)Evolutions: Addressing the Problems of Contingency
Dawn Fels, University of Pittsburgh | Maggie Herb, University
of Tennessee, Chatanooga | Clint Gardner, Salt Lake Community College | Lila Naydan, Penn State Abington
By the end of Pittsburgh’s Industrial Golden Age in 1910, early writing centers became central to Composition’s labor concerns, relieving professors of
too many underprepared students (Lerner, 2009). Contingent workers staffed
those centers. Today, 71% of writing center directors hold contingent positions, with 82% of centers staffed by contingent peer tutors (Isaacs & Knight,
2014). This panel outlines the risks of contingent positions across diverse institutional settings and calls for action to address them. #IWCA15J3
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RIVERS
Ignite Sessions
Summer Bowling, McDaniel College Writing Center
Building Linguistic and Interpersonal Bridges with Non-Native
Speakers
The presenters will discuss their personal experiences tutoring non-native
speakers at McDaniel College in Maryland, as well as McDaniel College Europe
in Budapest, Hungary. #IWCA15K3
Shannon McClellan, Emily Connell, McDaniel College Writing
Center
Storytelling in the Writing Center: Personal Narratives for ESL
Tutoring
The presenter will share personal experiences from sessions with non-native
English speakers from Ethiopia, Belgium, Hungary, parts of Asia, and several
South American countries to build upon these arguments of narrative intelligence and its role in writing center pedagogy. She has observed and experienced multilingual writers’ use of personal narrative storytelling, which she believes necessitates a place in ESL writing center tutoring strategy. #IWCA15L3
Geoffrey Middlebrook, Univerity of Southern California
Writing Center Topographies: Art, Space, and Stature
Writing centers confront many challenges, including spatial (location and look)
and statural (prominence and prestige). Arising from the intersection of those
two challenges, this presentation explores how the physicality and feel of a
center can not only contribute to the experience of the students it serves, but
may also make faculty and administrators more aware and appreciative of
what it does. Specifically, the presentation discusses how one writing center
capitalized on its relocation by collaborating with campus leaders to commission student-produced original art for the walls of its new venue, and as a
consequence expects to have its profile elevated. #IWCA15M3
Fernanda Queiros, Federal University of Bahia (SalvadorBahia, Brazil) | Katia Sa, Bahian School of Medicine and Public
Health | Abrahao Baptista, Federal University of Bahia | Gigi
Taylor, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Creating a Writing Center in Brazil: Revolutionizing the Unknown
In this session we will share the first steps in our international collaboration to
create a writing center at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Brazil. The
presenters will describe the stages of collaboration between UFBA and the
UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center, which include training Brazilian colleagues in
writing center pedagogy at UNC, adapting the model for the Brazilian university context, implementing tutoring programs, and evaluating outcomes. We will
describe the variety of tutoring services implemented in this context, share
our initial successes and challenges, and invite feedback from participants on
fine-tuning and future directions. #IWCA15N3
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Session 4
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Writing Center 2.0: Updating Writing Sessions
to iSessions with New Technologies
Danielle Farrar, University of South Florida | Sandy Branham,
University of Central Florida | Rachel Efstathion, Florida State
University
Writing centers have begun considering how digital tools can increase writer agency and engagement because new technologies not only re-imagine
how writing consultants approach the writing session but also how writers
approach the writing process. In this workshop, participants are introduced
to iSessions: digitally enhanced writing sessions that implement iPads and
Notability. Participants can gain hands-on experience with a walk-through of
Notability’s iPad and/or laptop interface, as well as partake in mock iSessions
as both writer and consultant. #IWCA15B4
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: The Mindful Tutor: Evolution of Consciousness
Jared Featherstone, Maya Chandler, Rodolfo Barrett, James
Madison University
For the past five semesters, we have incorporated mindfulness meditation
into our tutor training course. During that time, I collected pre- and post-data
using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) (Brown & Ryan, 2003)
and conducted surveys to get a sense of whether the practices were affecting
tutors’ work. This presentation, given by the writing center Director and a participating tutor, will describe the integration of mindfulness practice into tutor
training, and offer qualitative and quantitative data collected in our center.
Participants will also experience mindfulness meditation and a specific applied-mindfulness exercise for writing tutors. #IWCA15C4
BALLROOM 3
Workshop: The Slack(er) (r)Evolution: An Innovative
Approach to Team Communication
Alex Funt, Sarah Miller Esposito, University of North Carolina
- Chapel Hill
This workshop introduces Writing Center applications for the popular team
communication app Slack. Slack combines synchronous chat, asynchronous
collaboration, and multimedia file sharing to effectively supplant instant messaging, email, and online fora. We will share our experiences using Slack as a
communication hub at the UNC Writing Center, a professional development
platform for a writing program, and a home for a dissertation writing group.
Participants will join a Slack team created specifically for the workshop and
engage in challenges designed to orient them to Slack’s environment as well
as promote conversation about technology and team communication in their
centers. #IWCA15D4
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: An Evolution in Approach: A Discussion on
Race, Culture, and Identity in Tutoring
Corey Brown, Emily Welsch, Cat Williams, Towson University
Writing Center
The role of identities in the writing center has become an increasingly important aspect of broader writing center discourse. Co-presenters will provide a
foundation for discussion on the role of race, culture, and identity in one-onone tutoring sessions. After connecting current scholarship to the lived experiences of attendees, attempts will be made to conceptualize and approach
differences in culture between tutors and students. Through this discussion,
we hope to challenge former methods of confronting culture and contribute to
an evolution in tutor pedagogy that is socially responsive. #IWCA15E4
BOARDROOM
Concurrent: Unearthing Digital r(Evolutions) in the
Archives of The Writing Lab Newsletter, Writing Center
Journal, and Praxis: A Writing Center Journal
Elisabeth Buck, Ball State University
This presentation reports on an archival study of digital/multi literacy-related
scholarship in The Writing Lab Newsletter, Writing Center Journal, and Praxis:
A Writing Center Journal. By examining how these materials work to develop
a journal’s ethos, it will be possible to think about how a publication’s archives
and digital representation also shape the way that readers perceive and interact with it. This presentation will therefore investigate r(evolutions) and intersections between writing center scholarship and digital literacies, and discuss
how these connections impact the way that researchers participate with academic texts. #IWCA15S4
BRIGADE
Panel: Developing a RAD Methodology: A Discourse
Analysis of Post-tutorial Writers’ Language
Kathi Griffin, Jackson State University | Tatiana Glushko, Jackson State University | Daoying Liu, Nantong University
Studies providing models for RAD research have focused on tutorial conversations and student satisfaction in trying to understand the effectiveness of writing centers. Although informative, these areas of focus do not help us understand writing center effectiveness as defined by Stephen North, who asserts
we must look for “changes in the writer.” To determine if our conversations
with writers “change” them into better writers, we turned to language students used on post-tutorial reflection forms. We will share our methodology
and findings, and explore with our audience what might constitute effective
RAD research in the writing center. #IWCA15L4
COMMONWEALTH 1
Writing Centers as New Sites of Learning
Christopher Giroux, Helen Raica-Klotz, Saginaw Valley State
University
(re)Visiting Lower-Order Concerns: A Research-based Approach
to Grammar Instruction for Tutors
This presentation will share Saginaw Valley State University’s Writing Center’s
seven-week “grammar seminar” provided for our tutoring staff, a seminar
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created based on the results of Ellen Schendel’s 2007 international survey on
tutors’ perceptions of the role of grammar in writing center tutorial sessions
and our own work tutoring multi-lingual writers. We will discuss the efficacy
of this grammar seminar based on pre- and post-seminar tutor surveys, tutor observations, and coded session records. We will explore our attempts to
ensure this supplemental instruction does not privilege lower-order concerns
over higher-order concerns in tutorial sessions. #IWCA15O9
David Medina, Lizbett Tinoco, University of Texas El Paso
Better Writers, Not Better Writing: Investigating Transfer From
The University Writing Center
This presentation will discuss findings from a case study at University of Texas
at El Paso that is currently investigating how transfer of knowledge from its
writing center to other contexts occurs. The presentation will share preliminary results from semi-structured interviews, student writing samples, and
tutor/tutee consultation data. We will also discuss the evolution of our writing center’s consultation methodology to include meta-consultations. We also
explore ways in which writing centers can promote tutor awareness of transfer and consultation practices that actively encourage transfer of knowledge.
#IWCA15N4
COMMONWEALTH 2
Writing Center Strategies
Elizabeth Wilcoxon, New Mexico State University
Have Strategy, Will Travel: Supporting Multilingual Graduate
Students in Academic Writing
Multilingual students from around the globe pursue graduate studies in the
United States, but may find that sufficient writing support (specifically for academic writing about research) is lacking at their institutions. Therefore, a need
arises for these students from all disciplines to have a space to formulate, edit,
practice, and revise their writing as well as share experiences within the context of the university. By drawing on current scholarship regarding multilingual
writers, in this presentation I give suggestions as to how an interdisciplinary
writing workshop class can bridge the gap between writing centers and various
graduate programs in our universities. #IWCA15P4
Craig Medvecky, Loyola University Maryland
Training & Professional Development Strategies for Graduate
Tutors
Despite the clear need for graduate-specific tutor training, many grad tutors
simply receive an oblique manual and are told to ‘have a look’ being assured
that they are ‘good enough’ writers to make due. This paper will describe the
efforts of Loyola Maryland University writing center to create an implement
a graduate peer tutor training and professional development program that
accounts for 1) a graduate writing process, 2) technological mediation in the
twenty-first century writing process, 3) special needs of graduate tutees, and
4) the emerging identities of the graduate tutors themselves in the writing
center. #IWCA15R4
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FORBES
Special Interest Group: Refocusing the Conversation:
Creating Spaces for Online Writing Center Community,
Support, and Discussion
Beth Nastachowski, Walden University | Sarah Prince, Walden
Univeersity | Dana Matthews, Columbia Southern University |
Wendy Troup, Columbia Southern Univeresity
This SIG invites all writing center staff who work with students in an online capacity to discuss the ways we can better connect with one another and form a
supportive community. Possible topics for discussion include forming an online
writing center organization (similar to the already-formed regional organizations in IWCA), an online-specific writing center listserv, and an online-specific
writing center conference. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own ideas
and propose other ways we can better form a community for online writing
center work. After this SIG, the facilitators of this session plan to act on ideas
discussed by the group. #IWCA15A4
KINGS 1
Panel: Evolving Paradigms for Thirdspace Writing: WC
Studio Class
Linda Di Desidero, Andrea Hamlen, Stase Wells, Marine Corps
University
Integrated presentations examine writing center’s development of non-credit,
graduate-level studio writing classes at university in terms of theory, strategy,
and practice. Using Grego and Thompson (2009) to characterize studio writing
as “alongside-but-outside” of the regular curriculum, panelists analyze evolution and efficacy of thirdspace teaching and learning in the writing center’s
studio classes, now entering their third year. Panelists use frameworks derived
from theories of social learning to conceptualize and present research that
aims to be replicable, aggregable, and data supported (Haswell, NCTE 2005;
Driscoll and Perdue, WCJ 2012). #IWCA15G4
KINGS 2
Panel: Stop Bitchin’ Start a (r)Evolution: A Translingual
Vision for Writing Centers
Rachel Griffo, Indiana University of Pennsylvania | Michele
Ninacs, Buffalo State College | Kim Huster, Robert Morris
University
While the ability to serve students from diverse linguistic backgrounds challenges content area teachers, institutions continue to admit students from
non-English dominant countries in order to diversify and supplement funding
cuts. Taking up these issues, the writing center serves as a middle ground for
multilingual students and their writing, but there are still important questions
to address. Using a translingual framework, which views difference in language
as a resource rather than a problem, this panel provides examples of practices
that contribute to the infrastructure and evolution of writing centers and their
ability to serve students and teachers across disciplines. #IWCA15H4
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KINGS 3
Panel: Revolving Revolutions: A Writing Center, a Library,
and a Foundational Writing Program Meet a New General Education Requirement
Susan Dinitz, Libby Miles, Daisy Benson, University of Vermont
This presentation describes how a new General Education initiative inspired a
Writing Center Director, a First-Year Writing TA Supervisor, and a Librarian to
collaborate in revolutionizing a Foundational Writing Program. Working closely
together, each of the three units transformed elements of their own practices,
which then impacted each of the others – resulting in what has now become
a continual, ongoing process of r/evolution both within and among the units.
Participants will explore their connections with their institution’s library and
composition program, leaving with a series of possible new collaborations to
consider. #IWCA15I4
KINGS 4
Panel: (R)evolutions in Online Consultations: Rethinking
Consulting Space, Training, and Research Methods
Dustin Edwards, Kathleen Coffey, Ryan Vingum, Miami
University
In three interconnected presentations, speakers will reflect upon pilot programs that developed online writing consultation best practices. Each presenter will discuss a specific angle to online consulting, including navigating consulting space, strategies for tutor training, and research methods for studying
the processes of online consulting. #IWCA15J4
KINGS 5
Panel: Understanding the Needs and Expectations of
Working-Class Students in Writing Centers
Harry Denny, Purdue University | Lori Salem, Temple University | John Nordlof, Eastern University
This panel reports initial results from an IWCA grant-supported, cross-institutional research project that uses in-depth interviews to explore how working-class/first-generation students experience the support that they receive in
university writings. We hypothesize that students have fundamentally different visions and goals for college-level writing and career preparation, possess
different concepts of how writing centers fit into that ideation, and negotiate
their place in writing centers in ways that beg for a reconsideration of hegemonic notions of non-directive peer tutoring. #IWCA15K4
RIVERS
Roundtable: (r)Ebranding Your Writing Center
Trisha Egbert, University of the Sciences
Although it took a while for the whole notion of “branding” to leak into the
higher education landscape it has now become essential to sell a university’s
brand to potential students, employees, and the outside world. Branding has
become a (r)Evolution of sorts but how can our writing centers, entities often
plagued by stigmas, use this popular notion of branding to (r)Ebrand our identities on campus? This session will focus on exploring ways, both big and small,
that can help you to (r)Ebrand your campus writing center. #IWCA15F4
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Session 5
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Holistically (re)Thinking L2 Writing: Backgrounds, Concerns, and Best Practices
Brent Weaver, Dan Zhang, Shana Schmidt, Kansas State University
In this workshop, we will discuss three different aspects of working with L2
writers: (1). Understanding their educational and linguistic backgrounds, (2).
Investigating the concerns of L2 students upon coming to the center, and (3).
Creating new practices for working with these students. Ultimately, our goal is
to give our participants ways to understand and empathize, as well as practical
methods of working with international or multilingual students. #IWCA15B5
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Tutoring STEM Writers: Approaching Visual
Rhetoric
Susanne Hall, California Institute of Technology | Wendy
Menefee-Libey, Harvey Mudd College
Many writing centers wish to support students in the creation of tables, figures, and images common in STEM writing. Writing center staff members,
however, often have limited personal experience both reading and composing such texts. This workshop aims to give participants increased fluency in
visual rhetoric and a basic understanding of the processes of creating some
common visual elements and multimodal texts. Participants should expect to
experiment with the creation of visual texts, take part in small and large group
discussions, and collaborate to produce a list of best practices to take back to
their centers for further use. #IWCA15C5
BALLROOM 3
Workshop: The Seven Panic Points of Struggling Writers,
and How We Help Them
Robert Holderer, Tanya Teglo, Sharon Conklin, Charity Yarzebinski, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Every writer, no matter how proficient, usually goes through what we term
as seven panic points. These points can form insurmountable roadblocks for
three of our most at-risk populations: students with physical disabilities, students with learning disabilities, and faculty members. This presentation will
show how we provide supportive and concrete help to make them better writers and to build a strong culture for writing on campus. #IWCA15D5
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Zones of Ambiguity: Institutional Ecologies,
Writing Centers, and Sustaining (R)evolution
Marilee Brooks-Gillies, University of Colorado Colorado
Springs | Julie Platt, University of Arkansas at Monticello |
Gwendolyn Hale, University of Mary Washington
31
In this roundtable discussion, we contrast diverse institutional ecologies that
can nurture or stifle writing center (r)evolutions. Together, we map the institutional ecologies in which our writing centers are embedded to gain a greater understanding of our centers’ integral roles. We explore how our common
position as WCPs help us negotiate different institutional contexts as we work
to evolve the discipline and achieve change within our own writing centers,
departments, colleges, universities, and communities. #IWCA15E5
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Creative Writing in The Writing
Center
Melanie Ojwang, Emily Connell, Jehan Silva, McDaniel College
Writing Center
At our center, we have seen significantly fewer appointments for creative writing pieces. Because there is so little information about these situations, we
hope to present the idea of adapting The Writing Center to creative writing
appointments to colleagues and peers in order to cultivate a holistic view and
create strategies and techniques for other centers. #IWCA15A5
BRIGADE
Panel: Juniata College: Working from the Bottom Up
Carol Peters, Victoria Wolf, Ryan Mull, Katie Jeffress, Penny
Sehat Niaki, Juniata College
Through utilizing a bottom up management style, the Writing Center at Juniata College exemplifies its motto of “Think, Evolve, Act.” Tutors become independent thinkers and team-oriented professionals. Tutors evolve into leaders
who eventually assume ownership of the day-to-day operations of the Center.
Tutor-led focus groups investigating student perspectives of the Writing Center
revealed that the Juniata students find the Writing Center to be a welcoming,
comfortable, and convenient place to learn how to become better writers.
These student perspectives are a reflection of the management style of the
Director and the professionalism of Juniata College’s undergraduate tutors.
#IWCA15L5
COMMONWEALTH 1
Revolutionizing the Writing Center
Susan Mendelsohn, Columbia University
Roots and Offshoots: Researching Writing Center Histories
The Writing Centers’ Roots Project is a year-long effort to compile the largest
collection of writing centers’ founding dates ever gathered. These data--pinpointing the origins of over 1,300 writing centers--provide the widest aperture
yet available through which to view our field’s complicated historical development. This presentation invites participants to delve into the data to identify
major trends and discover historical outliers that complicate current notions of
our disciplinary history. #IWCA15M5
Katrina Bell, Jennifer Hewerdine, Southern Illinois University
(R)evolutionizing the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research
Project: Alumni Roundtables in the Virtual World
Brad Hughs, Paula Gillespie, and Harvey Kail’s work with the Peer Writing Tutor
Alumni Research Project (PWTARP) began a rich conversation about the longterm effects of relatively short-term work in writing centers. Our paper builds
on that research by specifically extending the survey to our graduate tutor
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alumni, and by opening a dialogue among alumni respondents and current
graduate and undergraduate tutors through a hybrid face-to-face and virtual
roundtable discussion conducted through a ZoomMeeting platform. This paper explores our methods, findings, and works to foster similar research in
other institutions that rely on graduate peer tutors in their writing centers.
#IWCA15N5
Heidi McKee, Miami University
Writing Centers as Agents for Change: Using Incremental,
Interconnected Research for Large-Scale Transformations
In this presentation, I discuss how writing centers can weave together smaller, more manageable research projects into large-scale arguments for major
program and institutional changes. Using multilayer, mixed-methodologies
over a period of years, I explain the direct connections of research to changes
we made in center staffing, expansion of center focus, and revision of writing
course curricula. I offer flexible strategies that others may deploy in their local
contexts to effect change at their institutions. #IWCA15O5
COMMONWEALTH 2
Experiences from Writing Centers Around the World
Violeta Molina-Natera, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
The Revolution of the Writing Centers in Latin America
In the last five years, specially, writing centers has begun to emerge in several
Latin American countries. The reasons for this occurrence are as varied as the
modalities of implementation of these programs. This individual presentation
aims to show the results of a survey with writing centers from different Latin
American countries in order to share an overview of the current situation in
our region. The results are presented in three analytical categories: theories,
practices and administration, which are the cornerstones on which the research involving this survey is based. #IWCA15P5
Andrea Scott, Pitzer College
A Call for Translingual Writing Center Research: Or, What
Scholars in the U.S. Can Learn from Our Colleagues in Germany,
Austria, and Switzerland
Writing center practice may be multilingual, but writing center scholarship
in North America is not. This presentation builds on recent calls for translingual research (Horner, NeCamp & Donahue 2011; Donahue 2009) by investigating the disciplinary stories told by writing center professionals (WCPs) in
German-speaking countries. My study—conducted in German—reproduces a
survey created by Jackie Grutsch McKinney (2013) in order to test the universality of the “writing center grand narrative.” I discovered that WCPs in German-speaking countries are telling different stories—ones that highlight the
field’s translingual identity and history. #IWCA15Q5
Robin Sutherland, Chris Thompson, Mark Currie, University of
Prince Edward Island
ELLE of an Opportunity: Writing Centre Staff Volunteer their
Time & Expertise for the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation
Challenged by limited resources, rising plagiarism cases, and an unclear
sense of the relevance and craft of academic papers, what is a Writing Centre
Coordinator to do? At UPEI, she turned to the university’s Strategic Plan, which
mandated that faculty and staff provide an enriched learning experience for
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students, and find ways to connect with the wider Island community. A unique
writing partnership with the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation has helped
fulfill this commitment, while also providing additional gains in terms of writing centre management, and the evolution of a more positive writing culture
on – and off – campus. #IWCA15R5
KINGS 1
Roundtable: Do Evolving Demographics Demand an
Outreach Revolution?
Meg Mikovits, Moravian College | Eileen Brumitt, Northampton Community College | Rachel Liberatore, Albright College
This roundtable explores how writing centers can revise outreach efforts to
respond to campus changes—including the diverse needs of growing populations of lower-income, adult, underprepared, and international students; and
subsequent pressure from some parts of higher education to shift towards
an “intrusive” advising model. From class visits to social media, from faculty
brown bags to student workshops, writing centers often strive to do more—
and more innovative—forms of outreach. Presenters from three institutions
will give examples of campus outreach efforts and raise the question of how
to evolve in response to these trends while remaining true to our missions.
#IWCA15F5
KINGS 2
Panel: Representing the Work: Appointment Summaries
as a Site for Understanding Peer Writing Tutor Threshold
Concepts
Lauri Dietz, DePaul University | Matthew Pearson, DePaul
University | Matthew Fledderjohann, University of Wisconsin
Ever wonder the extent to which peer writing tutors understand their work
with writers within the disciplinary communities of writing center and writing
studies? Which disciplinary threshold concepts do they find most transformative and most troublesome? To explore these questions, we decided to investigate the extent to which our peer writing tutors represent four threshold
concepts in their post appointment summaries. At this panel presentation, we
share the methodology we employed to code 500 writing center appointment
summaries and what we learned about how our peer writing tutors represent
their work in terms of certain writing center threshold concepts. #IWCA15G5
KINGS 3
Panel: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: The (R)evolution of
Expanded Mission in Secondary Schools’ Writing and
Literacy Centers
Amy Hale, Rustburg High School | Hannah Baran, Albemarle
High School | Beth Blankenship, Oakton High School | Andrew
Jeter, Niles West High School
As the definition of literacy evolves, writing centers serve a vital role in providing academic and social support and leadership in secondary schools. By
expanding tutoring services to include all subjects, four high school tutoring
centers are more comprehensively addressing the needs of their diverse student populations. These centers focus on the fundamentals of quality tutoring
and problem-solving to adapt to client needs. Furthermore, the centers promote leadership and serve as a hub for innovative teaching in their schools.
#IWCA15H5
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KINGS 4
Panel: The Writing Center as Tempered Steel: Developing
Malleable Teaching Methods for Multilingual and Special
Needs Writers
Jennifer McGovern, David Perez, Helyn Wohlwend, Grinnell
College
When steel is tempered, it gains flexibility as well as strength, allowing steel
beams to bend without breaking. Similarly, Writing Centers function as a support structure for multilingual and special needs students, yet the beams with
which they construct that support become stronger because they are malleable. These student populations benefit from innovative classroom and extracurricular teaching methods even as Writing Centers maintain their foundation in one-on-one tutoring. Three professional Writing Center lecturers from
Grinnell College will speak about services for multilingual and special needs
writers, as they discover new methods of tempering the steely strength of oneon-one tutoring practices. #IWCA15I5
KINGS 5
Panel: From Nub to Nexus: Turning a Writing Center into
a Connection Point for a College Writing Initiative
Paula Harrington, Jen McGeoch, Carli Jaff, Colby College
This panel will use the evolution of our writing center from a stand-alone entity to a connection point for all stakeholders in a new college-wide writing program as a model for how writing centers can respond to institutional change.
It will examine four key aspects of our (r)evolution: an expanded writing fellows program, increased inclusion of international students, participation in a
college-wide symposium, and our new location on a technologically updated
collaborative library floor. #IWCA15J5
RIVERS
Panel: HS Writing Center Redux: Lessons Learned from
r(E)volutions, 1985-2015
Charles Youngs, Nicola Hipkins, Christopher Jack, Bethel Park
High School
How does North’s “Idea of a Writing Center” serve a lab amid next generation
initiatives at the secondary school level? Three teachers share tales of “r(E)
volution” from their high school’s 30-year program, particularly a redesign
of curriculum and service as technologies change, standardized testing and
STE(A)M programs proliferate, and students begin 1:1 computing. This dynamic trio provides context, models, and suggestions to inspire dialogue and future
practice. #IWCA15K5
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Regional & Affiliate Meetings
FORBES
BALLROOM 1
BALLROOM 2
BALLROOM 3
BALLROOM 4
BOARDROOM
BRIGADE
COMMONWEALTH 1
COMMONWEALTH 2
KINGS 1
KINGS 2
KINGS 3
KINGS 4
KINGS 5
RIVERS
European Writing Centers Association
Canadian Writing Centers Association
Latin America Writing Centers Association
East Central Writing Centers Association
Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association
Middle East/North Africa Writing Centers Alliance
Midwest Writing Centers Association
Northeast Writing Centers Assocation
Northern California Writing Centers Assocation
Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Assocation
Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Assocation
South Central Writing Centers Assocation
Southeastern Writing Centers Assocation
Southern California Writing Centers Assocation
National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing
Two-Year College Meetup
UPPER SCENES Megan Ward, Northwestern
LOUNGE#IWCA15TYC
Michigan College
Mentor Matching Program Reboot
Friday, October 9 | 7:30am to 9:00am
KINGS GARDEN 3 Are you a writing center director who wants to be paired with an experienced
writing center director? Are you interested in becoming a mentor and sharing
your writing center expertise? Then the IWCA Mentor Matching program is for
you.
For those who are curious about Mentor Matching, the Mentor Matching
Breakfast is an opportunity to learn more about the program and possibly be
matched. During the breakfast, we’ll hear from successful partnerships and
then have time for partnerships to plan their next steps.
Seating is limited for those who are curious about the IWCA Mentor Matching
program. We’ll reserve places for the first 10 directors who wish to be mentors
and the first 10 directors who wish to be mentored.
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Session 6
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: From Research Question to {R}evolutionary
Results: The Publication Pipeline
Michele Eodice, University of Oklahoma | Kerri Jordan,
Mississippi College | Steve Price, Mississippi College | Karen
Keaton Jackson, North Carolina Central University | David
Stock, Brigham Young University | Stacy Nall, Purdue University | Roberta Kjesrud, Western Washington University | Romeo
Garcia, Syracuse University
This workshop will engage writers in understanding the publication pipeline
through mentoring and guidance. Participants will interact with invited researchers while developing a research agenda/research questions and practice peer review strategies as a giver and receiver. The editors of The Writing
Center Journal offer this opportunity to emerging scholars in order to make the
process more transparent and navigable. #IWCA15B6
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Hallmarks of Effective Writing Centers:
Creating Dynamic “Best Practices” Statements
Sandee McGlaun, Rachel Barton, Stephanie Spector, Roanoke
College
This workshop will introduce participants to the multiple, responsive “hallmarks” lists articulating best practices in creative writing programs developed
by the Association for Writers & Writing Programs. Informed by this model,
the work of Muriel Harris, and their own institutional contexts, workshop participants will brainstorm sets of dynamic “hallmarks” statements for writing
center work, launching a larger discussion about the possibility of developing
“hallmarks” lists at the organization level. #IWCA15C6
BALLROOM 3
Workshop: Writing Centers: The Affective Dimension
Kathy Evertz, Renata Fitzpatrick, Nora Katz, Zara Pylvainen,
Carleton College
This interactive workshop--inspired by an upcoming special issue of WLN on
affect and the writing center--reveals how a writer’s process and text may be
sources of anxiety, frustration, or other difficult feelings for him/her and the
consultant who provides feedback. Through activities and discussion, we will
explore ways for consultants to recognize when and how the affective can
overwhelm the cognitive, and what strategies produce effective outcomes.
Facilitators and participants will work together to develop consultant education materials that address the affective dimension of writing center work.
#IWCA15D6
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Multiliterate Identities and Translingual
Moments in Online Writing Center Consultations
Christine Modey, University of Michigan | Liliana Naydan,
Penn State-Abingdon
This roundtable discussion examines moments in online consultations when
writing consultants self-identify as multilingual or translingual and/or make
translingual code-switching or code-meshing moves of the sort that Bruce
Horner et al. theorize in “Language Difference: Toward a Translingual Approach.” After presenting their research findings, presenters will invite attendees to engage in freewrites and conversations to explore when, how, and why
they reveal their respective multiliteracies or engage in translingual moments
themselves in their writing center administration and practice. #IWCA15E6
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Creative Writing in Writing
Centers
Julie Platt, Travis Nicholson, University of Arkansas at
Monticello
In this Special Interest Group (SIG) we will begin a conversation about how
writing centers and creative writers can best work together. We wish to connect with other writing center professionals and share ideas on pedagogical,
administrative, and scholarly issues surrounding creative writing in writing
centers. #IWCA15A6
BRIGADE
Concurrent: The Fine Art of Curriculum Transformation,
One WAC Course at a Time
Michael Kaler, Tyler Evans-Tokaryk, University of Toronto
Mississauga
We present the five-year process by which a WAC project evolved into a set
of weekly discipline-specific writing tutorials embedded into a large (200+
student) first-year Art History course. These tutorials provide an additional
hour of class time per week and work intensively with course content to teach
writing. We share the strategies we use to teach these tutorials as well as the
trajectory this project took to Departmental self-sufficiency. #IWCA15L6
COMMONWEALTH 1
Research and Method
Claire Gearen, Hawaii Department of Education
Adding One to One-to-One: An Idea for a Writing Center
Method
Even in such comprehensive and forward-thinking histories as Lerner’s The
Idea of a Writing Laboratory, the one-to-one conference as the foundation
of writing center practice is mostly unexamined. I propose a writing center
method composed of three peers rather than two, one that recasts the tutor
as an intellectual equal who best understands the protocol and rationale of
the method. My claim is that this method “emancipates” the tutee (in Jacques
Rancière’s terms), cultivating independence in the writer. Are new spaces and
institutional practices around writing possible if we reexamine our penchant
for one-to-one tutoring? #IWCA15M6
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Lucy Bryan Malenke, James Madison University
Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Disciplinary Writing
through Empirical Research
More research is needed into the varied and complex relationships that writing centers have with WAC/WID initiatives. In this presentation, the writing
center liaison to James Madison University’s largest college will discuss the
results of her empirical, mixed-methods study, “The State of Writing in the
Health Sciences Major at JMU.” Additionally, she will share her instrument and
discuss ways that it might be adapted and used by writing centers to better
serve students engaging in disciplinary writing, to establish a baseline for assessing writing center outreach efforts, and to enlist faculty and departmental
buy-in across the disciplines. #IWCA15N6
Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Metropolitan State University of Denver
The Writing Center as Research Hub
This presentation will describe how a Writing Center serving mostly non-traditional and first-generation college students has evolved from a place of ad
hoc research to a research hub. I will describe our research programs and how
they have reshaped our relationships with faculty and several offices on campus and driven our annual report. The presentation will address how writing
centers can be sites of research for writing center staff as well as other university constituents, how writing centers can publicize on campus the results
of research, and how writing centers can mentor undergraduates engaged in
original research. #IWCA15O6
COMMONWEALTH 2
Writing Center Evolutions: Students and Student
Engagement
Emily Cosgrove, Wallace Community College
Created to Retain, Evolving to Truly Engage: How Writing
Centers Can Spearhead Student Engagement Initiatives that
Align with Institutional Goals
This session encourages creating foundations for sustainable and relevant initiative building within writing center structures that support institutional goals.
By highlighting ways in which the retention and faculty development-specific
goals of a DOE grant move our institution forward in better meeting the needs
of current and incoming students, the session facilitator will also discuss the
interdisciplinary theories and practices that were combined with writing center scholarship to form a basis for building campus-wide initiatives that would
both collaborate with existing offerings and spur the creation of new programs
to increase student engagement, and ultimately, persistence and retention.
#IWCA15P6
Jennifer Marciniak, Berea College
The Dignity of Work: Writing Tutors as Student Laborers at
Berea College
This presentation looks at the perceptions of Berea College’s writing center as
a place of labor and tutors as laborers. Part of the mission of Berea College, a
small work college in Central Kentucky, claims that labor, in all its forms, has
“dignity as well as utility.” While I entertain faculty and staff perceptions of
labor, I focus specifically on how our tutors define the term “labor” in terms
of their identity, their work, and what “dignity” and “utility” mean to them as
student, tutor, and laborer. #IWCA15R6
39
FORBES
Revolutionizing Diversity and Inclusion in the Writing
Center
Nancy Alvarez, St. Johns University
Tutoring While Latina: Creating Space for Nuestras Voces
The presenter will share the results of an IRB approved study on the writing
center experiences of Latina tutors working in 2-year and 4-year colleges
across New York City. How do these Latinas negotiate their identities and
language within the writing center - with clients, coworkers, administrators?
Where do we find the tutoring experiences of Latinas, and the experiences of
other multicultural tutors, within writing center studies? As Latinas continue
to enroll and graduate from college at an increased pace, Latinas have lots to
contribute to how writing centers can better serve multicultural and multilingual tutors/tutees. #IWCA15S6
Alexandria Lockett, Spelman College
Off Center: Reflections of a Black Feminist Writing Tutor
This presentation seeks to contribute to Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan’s
call for “sustained and productive” dialogue about race and racism in the
writing center. Drawing on the detailed notes from over fifty sessions that
occurred at the Pennsylvania State University’s undergraduate and graduate
writing centers, I will discuss how black feminist theory informed my tutoring
practice (Collins; hooks; Richardson; Royster). By discussing theoretical continuity between black feminism and student-centered tutoring approaches, the
presenter evaluates the potential of writing centers as liberatory intellectual
spaces. #IWCA15T6
Joseph Janangelo, Loyola University Chicago
“I Hot Andy Warhol: Reflections on Repeat Clients and Gay
Epitexts”
My title is drawn from the film, I Shot Andy Warhol. I hope it will “move writing center conversations forward” by discussing the “layered ways that writing
centers get their work done” (Call). In Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation,
narrative theorist Gerard Genette coins the term “epitext” to describe “things
that draw readers outside the text proper.” He calls them “obviously marginal
and somewhat deviant” because they “lie outside the declared responsibility
of the author” [read here as student writer] and “involve the participation of
one or several third parties” [read here as tutor] (17). Ideas of professional
deviance will come into play as I reflect on my work as a gay student tutor.
The story involves weekly sessions with a college senior who came to work on
her papers. Each session, she would discuss her engagement to a soldier who
“confided” he was having sex with men and was leery of marrying her. She
would discuss her progress and setbacks as an intended bride, often asking for
advice. I will argue that these tutorials complicate notions of focus and rambling (since the student was also writing about her experience) and challenge
ideas about what it means to make “better” essays and writers (North). For
example, what does it mean to deviate in a given tutorial--to go beyond the
project an author is working when they are seek something more than writing
instruction in a session? #IWCA15U6
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KINGS 1
Panel: From Isolation to Alliances: Collaborations Beyond
our Institutions in a Regional Consortium of Writing Center Leaders
Rachel Liberatore, Albright College | Rachael Zeleny, Alvernia
University | Megan King, Alvernia University
As WC and WAC professionals, we value collaboration with others as we negotiate complicated roles. Yet, leaders at one institution are often isolated from
similar leaders at nearby institutions. This panel will discuss a consortium for
formal networking and collaboration created by writing center leaders across
Berks County, Pennsylvania, including the process of goal-setting and group
definition, and challenges faced in budgeting, communication and garnishing
administrative support. Panelists will also reflect upon how membership in the
consortium has helped them redefine their positions as WPA or writing/learning center directors, argue for/obtain resources, create materials, and evolve
as writing instructors. #IWCA15F6
KINGS 2
Panel: Evolving into Specialists: How One Writing Center
Met the Needs of a Rigorous English Program
Julie Moore, Isaac Mayeux, Adam Wagner, Austin Cordle,
Cedarville University
Our presentation will trace the ten-year evolution of the unique mentoring
program for English majors at the Cedarville University Writing Center (CUWC).
Two present tutors, the CUWC assistant director (also a CUWC alumnus), and
the CUWC director will share how our English majors’ ever-increasing needs
caused us to gravitate toward specialist tutoring. We will also share students’
evaluations of their mentors, discuss advantages and disadvantages of our
program, and ask audience members to participate. #IWCA15G6
KINGS 3
Panel: Writing Center Evolution: From a Center to the
Center
Millie Jones, Claire Edwards, Chandra Howard, Ashford University
Learn take-away strategies for making your writing center a vital part of the
university and the university’s writing instruction. We will explore ways to add
authority and credibility to the writing center, develop working relationships
with faculty and departments, and better reach the online student population
as well as reaching students when they are simply away from campus. We
argue that in order for a writing center to be seen as a vital and critical component of the university, it must evolve beyond just a tutoring center to become
the CENTER for writing expertise at the university or college. #IWCA15H6
KINGS 5
Panel: (r)Evolutionizing Narratives of Writing Center
Work with Undergraduate Research
Michelle Miley, Montana State University | Rebecca Hallman,
University of Houston | Kelsey Weyerbacher, Montana State
University | Jack Bouchard, Montana State University
In her 2012 IWCA Keynote Address, edited and reprinted in the 2014 WCJ, Lau41
ren Fitzgerald argues that tutor research, among other positive outcomes, can
lead to “more funding and support for our programs” (29). Our panel extends
Fitzgerald’s argument by considering how, given current institutional environments prioritizing undergraduate research, formalizing tutor research revolutionizes narratives of writing center work. Through the voices of undergraduate, graduate, and professional writing center scholars, panelists describe
how undergraduate research can internationally and locally revolutionize the
narrative of writing centers as sites of inquiry. #IWCA15J6
RIVERS
Panel: From Safe to Brave Worlds: Developing a Heuristic
for Discussing Social Justice in Writing Centers
Erin Herrmann, Kerri Bright Flinchbaugh, Rex Rose, East
Carolina University
Many writing centers have worked to be safe spaces for all, but situations exist
where safety can become dangerous. In order to better support consultants as
they engage with people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, writing
centers need to shift mindsets from safety to bravery. Consultants and administrators can collaboratively develop a social justice heuristic as an alternate
approach to diversity training that embraces risk, difficulty, and controversy.
This presentation invites participants to examine common assumptions of safe
spaces, consider key components of brave spaces, and explore strategies and
activities to engage social justice issues in consultant professional development. #IWCA15K6
Session 7
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Integrating Creative Thinking into Writing
Center Pedagogy: Approaches and Strategies
Sohui Lee, California State University Channel Islands | Russell
Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University
This interactive workshop situates creativity as critical writing center work.
We argue that writing centers would benefit from examining specific creative
thinking strategies. Participants will be introduced to and experiment with five
creativity principles and generate at least one creative thinking application in
their own centers. Participants will explore how creative thinking principles
can be applied in a range of writing center work. #IWCA15B7
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Taking into Consideration Institutional Strategic Planning: Writing Centers and Our Steps to Success
Nicole Evans, University of St. Thomas | Neisha Green, Washington College
This session will present the means by which writing centers can positively
affect change within their institutions and the importance of considering the
support provided by writing centers in the development of institutional strategic plans. Evans and Green will consider their respective university’s strategic
plans and determine - through networking, gathering data, and reviewing literature - the best ways to negotiate their centers into their university’s success.
#IWCA15C7
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: A Union of Voices: Using Peer Programs to
Advance Community for Multilingual Writers
Mary Gallagher, Adam Binkley, The Universities at Shady
Grove
For many multilingual students, anxieties about their language skills cause
them to withdraw when faced with challenges and setbacks related to their
performance as writers. Community building, which underscores the fact
that multilingual students are not alone in their experiences, encourages
confidence and thus persistence. This roundtable discussion will present the
evolution of one peer led writing program, Writing Fellows, into another, the
Bilingual Writing Mentors which creates a community for multilingual students
while also advancing their writing in targeted disciplines. Participants will be
encouraged to share ideas about serving multilingual writers and ways their
institutions might offer similar programs. #IWCA15D7
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Turf wars, culture clashes, and genuine
collaboration: rEvolutionizing writing center/library
partnerships
Maggie Herb, University of Tennessee, Chatanooga | Lindsay
Sabatino, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Increasing numbers of libraries are becoming home to writing centers; however, little scholarship examines the day-to-day realities of these collaborations.
Thus, this roundtable will begin with a brief presentation of key results from
our survey of over 100 directors of centers located in libraries. We will then
invite participants to discuss the benefits and challenges of center/library partnerships and share concrete strategies for effective, collaborative relationships
between the two. #IWCA15E7
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Curriculum and Classroom-Based
Peer Tutoring, Program Development Strategies
Ben Ristow, Hannah Dickinson, Alex Janney, Hobart and
William Smith Colleges
This SIG gathering provides participants with the opportunity to collaborate
and share experiences and information on their current or future curriculum
based peer tutoring program. As directors and the coordinator for the Writing
Colleagues Program (est. 1992), the SIG leaders will provide a brief overview
of their program and facilitate a discussion for those participants interested in
creating or revising a curriculum-based peer tutoring program at their institution. #IWCA15A7
BRIGADE
Concurrent: (r)evolutions in our Midst: Re-thinking
Writing Center Practices with NCLB Writers
Lisha Daniels Storey, Robin Garabedian, University of Massachusetts Amherst
In this paper, we discuss our research on students’ experiences of the impact
of testing discourses and instruction under No Child Left Behind. We will present findings from a qualitative study and consider their implications for evolving writing center practices to better engage with writers educated in the wake
of these significant changes in U.S. public education. #IWCA15L7
COMMONWEALTH 1
Classroom Connections: Required Writing Center Visits
and Instructor Translation
Allison Keene, Duquesne University
The Absent Instructor: Translating Instructor Language in the
Writing Center Session
Consultants occupy what scholars such as Suffrendini, Auten, and Pasterkiewicz call the “third space,” an intermediary space between the student and
the instructor. In this space, the consultant collaborates with the student to
translate the instructor’s language in comments and assignment sheets. Together, they develop a shared understanding of the instructor’s language. In
this paper, I will converse with scholarship on instructor language and conduct
primary research on consultations in the Duquense University Writing Center. I
will prove that the “third space” facilitates a translation that preserves instructor intent while producing new, collaborative meaning between the consultant
and the student. #IWCA15M7
Rachel Azima, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Stereotypes or Validation?: Investigating Required Writing
Center Visits for Students in a Multicultural Bridge Program
While writing center lore has traditionally cautioned against required visits,
a number of studies have demonstrated their benefits. When considering
whether to require students in a multicultural bridge program to come to the
writing center, the question become even more pointed, as such practices risk
engaging stereotype threat. This presentation investigates the relationship between a summer bridge program for multicultural students and the writing
center at a large Midwestern university, to explore whether required visits can
not only sidestep stereotype threat, but also help students feel more connected to the university, following Rendón’s 1994 validation theory. #IWCA15N7
Holly Ryan, Penn State Berks
Creating Effective Classroom Visits: Results of a Large-Scale
Research Study
Many writing center professionals use classroom promotional visits to inform
students about their services and to encourage students to schedule visits
with tutors. However, there is virtually no scholarship on the effectiveness of
these visits. This presentation shares the results of a large-scale research project that interrogates our assumptions about these visits. The researchers examined three different approaches to the classroom visit and examined changes in student knowledge, their attitudes toward the writing center, and their
likelihood of visiting the writing center. This session will also offer suggestions
for how to create more effective classroom visits. #IWCA15O7
COMMONWEALTH 2
Continued
David Rogers, Kingston University, London
A Paradoxical Evolution: Simplifying the Process of Writing at
Kingston University, London
The curriculum in UK Higher Education requires centers to adopt a different
strategy for support than their US counterparts. Explaining the evolution of
the writing center at Kingston University to a multi-faceted center providing
44
a University-wide initiatives for students at all levels, my presentation aims to
generate discussion about differences by focusing on the centres’ attempt to
simplify the process of writing for students. #IWCA15M7
Nicole Bailey, Indiana State University
The Experiences of Tutors and Students in a South African
Multilingual Writing Center
This session will discuss the results of an ethnography conducted in the writing
center of Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. This study aimed to understand the experiences of students, directors, and tutors in a multilingual center
through interviews, artifacts, and field notes. The presenter will discuss findings, as well as implications for the ways in which US writing centers work with
multilingual students, including those who speak multiple dialects of English.
#IWCA15N7
Anthony Schiera, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Responding to Students When Worlds Collide
The Writing Centre at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Muscat, Oman provides tutoring services with non-directive and open-ended questioning. However, the majority of students seeking help with their writing have received an
education that is based on direct instruction techniques in teacher-centered
classrooms featuring rote-memorization. When these two constructs meet,
opportunities for collaboration can be missed. This paper will describe the educational context of Oman and the expectation of students entering the Writing Centre at SQU. Implications for writing center practice in contexts outside
of Oman will also be explored. #IWCA15O7
FORBES
Educational Tools and Tips
Lucie Moussu, University of Alberta
Long Night Against Procrastination: The Do’s and Don’ts
The presenters will talk about the do’s and don’ts of planning a Long Night
Against Procrastination event, finding sponsors, securing financial support,
managing a budget, designing posters and banners, scheduling tutoring and
workshops and other activities, recruiting and training volunteers, advertising
the event, managing risks and safety procedures, providing food and snacks,
using technology and social media, communicating with the media, collecting
feedback from participants to evaluate the event, and writing a final report of
the event. #IWCA15M7
Kathy Block, Matthew Sanscartier, Enrique Paz, Miami
University
Mobilizing an American Idea: Taking the Cite Right Program
into a Canadian Context
This presentation describes how staff of the Academic Learning Centre (ALC)
at the University of Manitoba, Canada, implemented a plagiarism remediation program originally designed in an American post-secondary context. The
program, Cite Right, offered the ALC’s peer writing tutors an opportunity to
work with and support undergraduate students who had gone through the
university’s discipline process. Our discussion will provide an overview of how
an idea, originally presented at the NCPTW, was adapted to the institutional
and student needs in a new context and how the ALC built momentum for a
student-oriented program on its campus through Cite Right. #IWCA15O7
45
KINGS 1
Panel: Tutor-Researchers in the Writing Center
Melissa Ianetta, University of Delaware | Alexis Hart,
Allegheny College
In “Scholarship Reconsidered,” Jeanne Rose and Laurie Grobman “encourage peer tutoring programs to promote undergraduate research as a means
of cultivating engaged tutor-scholars.” Responding to this call, writing center
directors from a research-extensive university, a regional university and a liberal arts college explain how the integration of tutor-research into the writing
center can enrich practice across a range of institutional contexts. #IWCA15F7
KINGS 2
Panel: Evolving with Multilingual Writers: Results from a
Cross-institutional Research Study
Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, University of Massachusetts Amherst | Shanti Bruce, Nova Southeastern University | Deirdre
Vinyard, Emily Carr University of Art and Design
As universities “internationalize” campuses, writing centers are experiencing
a revolution in the number and backgrounds of multilingual students seeking support. This panel’s three speakers present results from an ongoing,
grant-funded, cross-institutional research study about the language repertoires multilingual writers bring to college campuses, and consider, in three
turns, the implications of this research for writing center practices, training,
and research methodology. #IWCA15G7
KINGS 3
Panel: Evolving Relationships in the Writing Center
Lynn Shelly, Kathleen Hynes, Lara Hauer, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania
Drawing on existing scholarship, as well as their own experiences and initial research findings, this panel will explore how writing center relationships evolve
over time. The panelists will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of long-term
writing center relationships and the implications for tutor training and writing
center administration. #IWCA15H7
KINGS 4
Panel: (R)Evolving The Narrative: Revisiting Key Terms
through Consultation with Underrepresented Writers
Heather Lang, Aimee Jones, Bruce Bowles, Jr., Florida State
University
Popular, and powerful, narratives in the field of writing center studies position
nondirective and collaborative methods, higher order concerns, and peer-topeer tutoring as key terms in the field. Though an accomplishment for writing
center scholars and administrators, this narrative has neglected the experiences of some writers. This session explores the (r)evolution of the writing center
and its narratives by bringing three underrepresented client populations to the
fore: students with disabilities, international students, and graduate students.
These populations represent consultations where key terms, such as higher
order concerns or peer-to-peer, might not hold the same weight as they do in
more traditionally theorized consultations. #IWCA15I7
46
KINGS 5
Panel: OMG! SLA with ESL in the WC!
Kathy Radosta, Michael Nichols, Rita Shelley, University of
Nebraska Omaha
Consultant preparation for working with ESL academic writers often consists
of flyover treatments of linguistic and composition theory. From this limited
exposure, consultants acquire an underdeveloped meta-writing vocabulary
to draw on while, borrowing from Bartholomae (1985) “inventing the consultation.” But to what extent at what point does flyover mean flying blind?
What are the implications for ESL writers who look to us for both language
and cultural guidance, when consultants work from decontextualized theory
and research? This presentation challenges “Theory LITE,” proposing practical
alternatives to accepting “good enough” as good enough. #IWCA15J7
RIVERS
Panel: Crossing Campus, Writing Centered: How Institutional Partnerships Promote Writer Self-Efficacy
Danielle Farrar, University of South Florida | Sandy Branham,
University of Central Florida | Megan McIntyre, University of
South Florida
Developing partnerships to better support academically underprepared students has long been part of writing center work. This panel seeks to explore
the development of several strategic, cross-campus partnerships and initiatives between a writing center and various university units, such as Athletics, First-Year Composition, and the Offices of Undergraduate and Graduate
Studies. These campus-wide initiatives have sought to not only increase retention rates of underprepared students but also concurrently increase writer
self-efficacy and agency through the development of productive writing spaces. #IWCA15K7
Session 8
Friday, October 9 | 12:00pm to 1:15pm
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Meme and Monument: Writing Center
(R)Evolution Through Effective Social Media Strategies
Julie Platt, University of Arkansas at Monticello | Ben Erwin,
Syracuse University | Patti Poblete, Iowa State University
In this workshop, participants will imagine, formulate, and critically question
the ways writing centers create identity and promote themselves through
various social media platforms. Workshop facilitators will help writing center
directors define and deploy an effective social media presence, or reconsider
and revise a center’s pre-existing online brand; more specifically, this session
will explore how social media complements a center’s ability to connect with
students, faculty, scholars, and writers on campus and beyond. #IWCA15B8
47
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Re-Invention: A Closer Look at Student
Invention and WC Conferences as a Site of Collaborative
Invention
Michael Reich, Patricia Medved, St. Johns University
Research on writerly invention focuses on accomplished writers and their generative processes; recent studies have mapped their creation at the pre-cognitive level. But what about students - what are their generative processes?
In this workshop, we will share insights from an IRB approved pilot study with
student writers in Writing Center conferences. By looking more closely at the
recognized and unrecognized influences on student writers’ processes, we will
see how the three aspects of writerly invention--the automatic, emotional and
social--identified by Jason Wirtz in his research with experienced writers, are
realized in the student writing experience (Wirtz, 65). #IWCA15C8
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Visuals in Writing Center Consultation What
can we do, What could we do, What should we do?
Daniel Emery, University of Minnesota | RM Wolff, University
of Minnesota | Holly Bittner, Moore College of Art and Design
While writing scholars have considered the role of visual communication as
both visual rhetoric and multimodal process, writing centers continue to emphasize attention to conventionally textual genres. Nevertheless, as WC’s serve
increasingly diverse disciplines and as technologies simplify visualizations as
artifacts of instruction, how can and how should writing centers respond? The
discussion leaders, a Writing in Disciplines specialist, an Art Historian working
in a WC, and the Director of Writing at a College of Art and Design will facilitate
discussion and collaboration on this under-investigated topic. #IWCA15D8
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Can Faculty Development Be at The Center?:
(Re)envisioning SOTL and POD networks in the Writing
Center
Jennifer Follett, Cynthia Crimmins, Leslie Allison, York College
of Pennsylvania
This roundtable discussion invites participants to explore the possibilities and
challenges of writing centers’ support of SOTL, the scholarship of teaching and
learning. When we (re)envision writing centers as sites where faculty’s teaching and writing lives intersect, we can (re)cast writing center administrators’
work with faculty as collaborative scholarship in the SOTL field. In this session,
two writing center administrators and one CTL director with a writing center
background lead a discussion of what it might mean to recast writing center
work with faculty as SOTL projects, how we collaborate with CTL and POD networks, and how to overcome challenges as we venture into the emerging field
of SOTL. #IWCA15E8
BOARDROOM
Workshop: Credibility and Sustainability of Writing Centers in European Contexts
Dilek Tokay, European Writing Centers Association
Why Writing Centers are a must in some European countries and how institutionalization and internationalization foster growth beyond administrators’
48
~Rector/ Provost/ Dean/ Department Head~ individualistic decision to close a
center when commercialization of higher education accelerates and corporate
philosophy dominates norms of academia. #IWCA15A8
BRIGADE
Concurrent: Let’s Get Embedded Together: Examining
Roles and Expectations in Community College Embedded
Tutoring Services
Janice Privott, Matt Groner, Ian Bodkin, John Tyler Community
College
This qualitative study examines the roles and expectations of students, instructors, and embedded student tutors in community college embedded tutoring
sessions. Through an open-ended, two-part survey, the researchers sought to
discover distinguishable differences in embedded tutoring sessions at a community college, versus embedded tutoring sessions at four-year institutions.
#IWCA15L8
COMMONWEALTH 1
Continued
Michelle Kaczmarek, Penn State University
Rights and Responsibilities: Reimagining Student Power in the
International Writing Center
Studying a writing center in Bangladesh, I map what John Trimbur calls the
“terrain of power” within the “mangle of practice” of the international writing
center. Understanding the complex construction of the tutor/tutee and the
variable of multilingualism, I investigate how multilingual writers assert power
with/against tutors. Specifically, I explore the gap between theory and local
practice by comparing the work of two tutors who had contrasting approaches
to student agency and tutor authority with common ESL pedagogy, therein
demonstrating the complex ways in which these writers develop power structures alongside their tutors. #IWCA15N8
Maimoonah Al Khalil, King Saud University
Navigating the Consultation Session: Uncharted Linguistic
Waters for Consultants and Second Language Writers
The study investigates the language patterns of consulting sessions at a center
for writing in English at an Arabic-medium university in Saudi Arabia. The student population is 100 percent Arabic first language learners of English. The
writing center team includes English-speaking consultants who do not understand Arabic, heritage consultants who speak English but understand some Arabic, and bilingual consultants who speak both Arabic and English. Consulting
sessions on work written in English will be recorded, transcribed, and analyzed
for instances of breakdowns in communication, negotiations for meaning,
code-switching, and code-mixing. Consultants will be interviewed for beliefs
underpinning their code decisions/behavior. Writers will also be interviewed
for perceptions regarding variations in code used during consultations regarding English-written work. #IWCA15O8
49
COMMONWEALTH 2
Identity in the Writing Center
Eliana Schonberg, University of Denver | Pam Bromley,
Pomona College | Kara Northway, Kansas State University
What Do We Mean by “Identity” in the Writing Center?:
Student Voices Reveal Wide-Ranging Definitions and Unforeseen Impacts
Scholars from educational psychology and writing center studies define “identity” in somewhat related, if differing, ways. These definitions range from
Frank Pajares’s “writing self-concept,” namely “judgments of self-worth associated with one’s self-perception as a writer,” to Lori Salem’s and Harry Denny’s identity politics in the writing center. However, these definitions remain
too limited. By using a quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups, our
cross-institutional, empirical study shows students reporting richer influences of writing center visits on their identity than thus far noted by the field.
#IWCA15M8
Patrick Anderson, Texas A&M University
Producing the Zone of Non-Being: An Anti-Colonial Analysis of
the Writing Center
Drawing on anti-colonial theory, I will offer an analysis of the writing center not
as a space of contested identities and discourses, but as an institution complicit in the colonial practice of assimilating colonized subjects into imperial
ideologies, theories, and discourses. Because writing centers are not merely
historically white-dominated but presently white-dominated, I will critically
examine writing centers sites of colonial oppression and writing consultants
as colonial functionaries. I will also offer suggestions on how to exploit writing
centers for anti-colonial practice. #IWCA15N8
Susannah Clark, Oklahoma State University
Land Grants and Ivory Silos: Writing Centers in the People’s
Colleges
This session highlights writing centers in land-grant universities, arguing that
writing center pedagogy embodies the social contract charged to land-grant
institutions since the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. Along with a historical
overview of land-grant institutions and their general approach to composition,
the presentation showcases survey data from writing center administrators
employed by the nation’s 122 land-grant institutions. Responses reflect on
how a writing center’s mission does or not does refer to the overall mission of
its institution. #IWCA15O8
Chinese Second Language Writers & The Native Speaker
Fallacy
FORBES
Jessica Nowacki, Carlow University
Lost in Transition: The effects of L1 writing pedagogy in China
on L2 interactions in the Writing Center
This paper presents the findings of an IRB-approved study of Chinese international students and interactions with their writing tutors at a small liberal
arts college (SLAC) writing center. This study hypothesized that Chinese second-language (L2) speakers of English visited the writing center for different
reasons than those of American students, and come from a different concep50
tual framework for describing the act of writing. Literature focusing on ESL
students in writing centers informed the approach. The findings revealed that
extra-lingual issues, such as client motivation and expectations, complicated
typical dialogue-based, non-directive exchanges. #IWCA15M8
Yelin Zhao, Oklahoma State University
The “Native Speaker Fallacy” in the University Writing Center:
Analysis of a Nonnative Speaker (NNS) Tutor-Nonnative Speaker (NNS) Student Tutorial
Studies in the TESOL literature have shown the prevalence of the “native
speaker fallacy” (Phillipson, 1992), which refers to the belief that by virtue of
their native speaker status, native speakers are superior to nonnative speaker
teachers in English language teaching. Has the “native speaker fallacy” influenced the writing center tutorial? If so, how? This presentation features the
results of a qualitative study on one NNS–NNS tutorial. The participants will
be invited to discuss some possible implications for tutor training. #IWCA15N8
Dan Zhang, Kansas State University
Pulling a Spectrum out of a Rainbow: How are Chinese Multilingual Writers Special, and Why?
This session focuses on Chinese multilingual writers in the center. I will summarize and analyze the characteristics Chinese multilingual writers have to see
how that affect the writing process. Suggestions will be given so that tutors
can adjust their tutorial method. Specific questions I will cover include: 1)
How does Chinese education (especially their view on cooperative learning)
influence Chinese multilingual writers? 2) How does English teaching under
Chinese education system influence these students’ view on learning English?
3) How does Chinese article structure, sentence structure, and oral Chinese
influence multilingual writers’ English writing? #IWCA15O8
KINGS 1
Panel: Forward Momentum: Negotiating Partnership between a Writing Center and a School of Education
Jennifer Mitchell, Eudora Watson, Deborah Conrad, SUNY
Potsdam
How can Schools of Education and writing centers work together to provide teacher candidates with writing support that addresses key aspects of
these students’ development as professionals? This session will describe a
decade-long collaboration in which a writing center and school of education
worked as full partners to create, to sustain, and to evolve a writing improvement program for teacher candidates. #IWCA15F8
KINGS 2
Panel: (r)Evolutionary Tutoring: A RAD Study of F2F and
Digital Practices at a Traditional Liberal Arts College
Jennifer Jackson, Hannah Bevis, Emily Johnson, Robert
Tomaszewski, North Central College
Undergraduate tutors housed in a cement-block, windowless Writing Center
are conducting a term-long research project this spring with faculty teaching first-year seminars, their director, and 100+ student writers at our tradition-bound liberal arts college. Gathering both quantitative and qualitative
data, we want to hybridize f2f tutoring practices, incorporating on-line ses51
sions and designing new methods of tutoring multi-modal projects. Tutors
seek to learn whether and in what ways blending analog and digital tutoring
can be most effective. As definitions of writing evolve at our institution, we
want to be at the center of meaningful changes. #IWCA15G8
KINGS 3
Panel: Digitalpoetics: A Map for Writing Centers Encountering a Virtual Frontier
Robby Nadler, Lindsey Harding, Joshua King, University of
Georgia
As writing centers recognize the digital world as an essential component of
their clients’ lives, they must consider online consultations as an option to
work with students. However, there is great danger in thinking of online consultations as merely in-person appointments conducted via computers. Using
ecopoetics as a lens to recognize how place mediates encounters in any landscape, this panel explores the unique challenges and opportunities that arise
for the digital writing center. Focus will be devoted to virtual geography and
collaborative consultations, digital interfaces and interaction design, and interpersonal relations in the absence of the body. #IWCA15H8
KINGS 4
Panel: The (Re)Evolution of Stanford’s Online High School
Writing Center
Rebecca Shields, Stanford University OHS | Anthony Bennette,
Stanford University
Last summer, we were tasked with the creation of an online writing and resource center for the Stanford University Online High School (OHS).Using our
backgrounds in face to face writing centers on university campuses, we tried
to envision how a fully functional writing center would exist within the nether
sphere of the Internet and how we might adapt the university writing center
model to meet the needs of a high school student body located throughout
the United States and across the globe. A year later, we reflect back upon our
experiences and assess the data. #IWCA15I8
RIVERS
Panel: Emotional Labor in the Writing Center
Daniel Perlino, Yoonha Shin, Rhonda Reid, University at
Buffalo
The writing center has an increasingly complex and layered relationship to the
university’s distribution of intellectual and emotional labor. The consultants
of the writing center reflect wider university trends in racial/ethnic representation, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and more. As a result of these
changing demographics, there is a widening gap between student need and
professorial attention. The writing center has become the front line of emotional and intellectual support for students. Our panel will examine the way
the emotional labor of the writing center supplements and mitigates uneven
relationships between students and faculty. #IWCA15K8
52
Session 9
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Optimizing Difference: Collaborating Across
Personality Types in Writing Center Administration
Laura Tabor, Miami University of Ohio | Jenelle Dembsey,
Miami University
Administrators can be introverted or extroverted, organized or spontaneous.
Our workshop will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these personality
types and the benefits of their collaboration in writing centers. The presenters
have used their opposite personality types to develop workshops, prepare activities, and develop an archive system. This workshop will involve diagnostics
for finding personality types, personalized activities for administrators to build
best practices, and small-group discussions of past challenges with personality
types and their resolutions. #IWCA15B9
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Why and How Writing Centers Need (R)evolution for Tutoring ELLs
Lan Wang, West Virginia State University
This workshop will discuss why and how university writing centers (WCs) need
(r)evolution to enhance working with English language learners (ELLs). By analyzing the inadequacy of commonly acknowledged WC theories and widely
used pedagogical tutoring practices in ten aspects, I will not only reveal some
mismatches between WC theories and English as a second language (L2) tutoring practice, but also present ELLs’ perceptions in terms of tutoring them.
From a critical perspective, this workshop, which is on the cutting edge of WC
scholarly research, may offer a full-length treatment of tutoring ELLs in university WCs. #IWCA15C9
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: How May I Help You? The Evolving Center
Experience before and after the Introduction of Front
Desk Staff
Jessica Hermesch, Cheryl Rauh, Kansas State University
Three years ago, our center introduced a new front desk position, tutor coordinator (TC), to help manage administrative needs and coordinate patrons
with tutors and other resources. This part-time student role is continuously
evolving and expanding as the TCs take on more tasks. By gathering current
and former staff perspectives on the change in atmosphere with the addition
of TCs, we hope to recognize the ways in which this evolving role enhances the
quality of student and tutor experiences in our center. #IWCA15D9
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: The (r)Evolution Must Be Televised: Perspectives of Men of Color in Writing Center Work
Richard Sévère, Centennary College | Kevin Agyakwa,
SUNY-Potsdam | Ameer Cooper, Centenary College | Marcus
53
Garcia, Centenary College | Roberto Romero, Centenary College
While there is a resounding roar in writing center work to address issues of
anti-racism, there has been an overwhelming silent population—a population of individuals who are not only victims of oppressive practices but have
found themselves absent from the conversations addressing such practices.
Our roundtable discussion will feature perspectives from those who are confronted by bias and the ways they address issues of racism and inclusion in the
writing center. #IWCA15E9
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Non-traditional Student Learners
and Writing Centers
Maurice Wilson, Rebeccah Hallman, University of Houston
The purpose of this SIG is to create a space in which WC scholars and graduate
students can converse about the theories, challenges, and practices of working
with (and addressing the specific needs of) non-traditional students and adult
learners in university writing centers. #IWCA15A9
COMMONWEALTH 1
Revolutionizing the Writing Center Beyond the University
Jessica Weber, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
The Next Frontier: Writing Centers in the Workplace
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s writing center opened two years
ago as the first of its kind. Data now shows that writing center visitors have
markedly improved writing and increased rhetorical awareness. As our writing
is high-stakes and central to our work, the Reserve Bank has been tremendously supportive of the center’s growth. This presentation explores corporate and
professional agencies as a viable next step of expansion for the writing center
world; this may help to further legitimize our field, to show universities the
value in what we do, and to provide potential job opportunities for writing
center professionals. #IWCA15M9
Dickie Selfe, Ohio State University
Voluntary, Sustained, Interdisciplinary Writing Groups Sponsored by Writing Centers
This presentation explores the value of voluntary, sustained, interdisciplinary writing groups sponsored by a writing center. The groups meet weekly,
involve 4-8 writers and a facilitator. The writers are either working on similar
genres—dissertations, theses, personal statements, similar class assignments,
creative projects, proposals, grants—or involve writers from specific levels of
the university—from undergraduate students to advanced academic writers,
including graduate students, post-docs and faculty. Descriptions of the theory,
logistics, and research around these groups will inform our discussion of how
these experiences differ from one-on-one consultations. #IWCA15N9
Alexander Wulff, Saint Louis University
Appreciative Consulting: Partnering with Academic Advising to
Better Serve “At-Risk” Students
In this presentation I will argue that, as writing centers have increasingly be
asked to demonstrate the ability to work with specific populations like at-risk
students, there has not been enough emphasis upon using campus partners
54
as a technology for developing pedagogy for these specific populations. The
most important resources for working with at-risk students will not be found
in The Writing Center Journal or a training manual, but in other offices specializing in working with these students. I will report on the successful adaptation of an advising model for at-risk students to writing center consultations.
#IWCA15O9
COMMONWEALTH 2
The Writing Center and Graduate Students
Elena Kallestinova, Yale University
Hybrid Writing Consultations for Graduate Students
In response to graduate students’ unique writing needs, universities expand
individual consultations to graduate students (Phillips 2008; Badenhorst et al.
2015). Yet the length and disciplinary language of graduate writing challenge
traditional face-to-face consultations. In this presentation, we discuss a hybrid
model of a writing consultation. Similar to the hybrid model for tutoring ESL
students (Breuch and Clemens 2004), our model allows consultants to receive
students’ written work in advance to effectively discuss their writing during a
follow-up face-to-face consultation. We show how hybrid consultations can
help writing centers address graduate students’ long papers and writing across
the disciplines. #IWCA15M9
Janel McCloskey, Kerri Rinaldi, Drexel University
Evolving the Graduate Writing Center: Connecting Globally to
Build Locally
As writing centers evolve, the need for graduate writing centers (GWCs) grows
while model programs remain scarce. Taking up the call of others (Gillespie
2007, Sniveley, Freeman and Prentice 2006, Summers 2012), I’ll share complex
and layered ways I met the challenges of starting a GWC in my local context,
specifically: location, services, staff, administration and funding. Collaboration
with university administration and faculty led to a new GWC community and a
new writing center space. This session will seek to create a SIG to connect the
GWC community and build on each other’s work. #IWCA15N9
Jill Sunday, Michelle Steimer, Mary Hoffman, Addie Pazzynski, Bonnie Strang, Waynesburg University
The (R)evolution from Within: How a Small Writing Center
Changed a Graduate School’s Culture
When the graduate nursing program at a small private university threatened to
become a diploma mill, the faculty and university administrators turned to the
writing center for a solution. Since its founding ten years earlier, the writing
center had successfully served the undergraduate program (although operating under the radar of the administration’s focus), but the facilities, funding,
and personnel were insufficient to serve this new influx of graduate student
writers. Or were they? This case history tells the story of how a small department on campus caused (is causing) (r)evolution within a university system.
#IWCA15O9
FORBES
Tutor Training
Kathryn Tucker, Nevada State College
Mutually Beneficial Coevolution in FYC and Tutor Training
Our four-year public college opened its first writing center in Fall 2014, the
55
same semester the English department piloted a writing-about-writing curriculum in first-year composition courses, hoping to improve their high DFWI
rates. Tutor training and course content now have a lot in common, and composition assignments facilitate real scholarly conversation about writing between peer writing specialists and FYC students. This collaboration provides
valuable training for tutors and student writers and empowers both groups to
pursue questions as scholars. This presentation will share strategies and outcomes from the first year of writing program and writing center coevolution.
#IWCA15M11
Matt Dowell, Le Moyne College
Paratexts in Tutoring Training and Practice
In this presentation, I respond to the privileging of conversation in both tutor
training materials and writing center lore by illustrating how paratexts—reflective memos, post-draft outlines, comments to comments, revision plans,
etc. – offer tutors a supplementary strategy. Specifically, I examine how I incorporate such paratexts into tutor training as a means to introduce these texts
to students and to illustrate the role they can play in the tutoring session as an
accessory to conversation. #IWCA15M9
Margaret Ervin, West Chester University
Time for a Revolution: The Role of Tolerance for Ambiguity in
Tutor Training
“Am I being non-directive?” This question preoccupies tutors in most writing
centers, and has for decades now. Maybe it’s time for a revolution. Instead
tutor training can place focus on the moment at hand, by replacing “non-directiveness” with the concept of “tolerance for ambiguity.” Methods and outcomes will be reported, along with suggestions for future inquiry. #IWCA15N9
KINGS 1
Panel: Building and Sustaining Community Outreach
through the WC
Trixie Smith, Dianna Baldwin, Michigan State University
When building a writing center outreach program that is designed to last over
the years, it is imperative that you take the time to first build a strong infrastructure. In our experience, this foundation should include a mission/vision,
an intentional logo, and a media plan. You also have to consider the types of
relationships you want to build, can build, and need to build, as well as what
you can sustain over time. Most of this labor is invisible, as foundations often
are, but the time and energy spent will materialize in your future outreach
programming. We will use our two-year Community Composing Project as a
case study to show our theory in practice. #IWCA15F9
KINGS 2
Panel: “I’m Not Dead Yet”: Reviving and (R)evolutionizing
Asynchronous Tutoring
Dagmar Scharold, Zahmar Rounds, Yvette Powell, Sean
Curcio, University of Houston-Downtown
In this panel, presenters will share the results from a study designed to examine how peer consultants appropriate screencasting technology into their
asynchronous tutoring practices by focusing on their experiences, perceptions,
and attitudes towards giving mediated feedback. Presenters will share training
materials, followed by an interactive screencasting tutorial for the session participants. #IWCA15G9
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KINGS 3
Panel: Program Evolution, Practicum Revolution: Assessing Troublesome Learning and Rethinking Tutor Education in a Course-Embedded Peer Tutoring Program
William Morgan, Tara Parmiter, Noelle Molé Liston, New York
Univeristy
What should a practicum do? And how should a practicum prepare new tutors
to enter into an embedded peer-tutoring program? This panel takes up these
questions, discussing our reinvention of our practicum for new tutors in light
of A) the evolution of our program and of scholarship about embedded peer
tutoring; B) the refinement of our assessment mechanisms and understanding
of how our tutors struggle; C) the shift in our conception of tutor education
caused by threshold learning and troublesome knowledge. This panel explores
tutor evolution and the learning that occurs across various liminal spaces between theory and practice. #IWCA15H9
KINGS 4
Panel: Considering The Rise of Writing in Writing Centers
Rebecca Nowacek, Marquette University | Bradley Hughes,
University of Wisconsin-Madison | Julie Nelson Christoph,
University of Puget Sound
This panel considers the implications of literacy scholar Deborah Brandt’s The
Rise of Writing (2015) for writing centers, considering ways that the rise of
writing in our culture more broadly might affect how writing centers conceive
of and promote themselves. #IWCA15I9
KINGS 5
Concurrent: Integrating Language Learning in Art and
Design Education through a University-wide WAC Initiative
Emilie Brancato, Susan Ferguson, OCAD University
This session describes the first stage of implementation of a Writing Across the
Curriculum Initiative at a post-secondary art and design institution. It explores
some of the unique challenges of a visual-arts-specific context (e.g. the perceived encroachment of “academic subjects” on studio education; the variety
of writing tasks that might be expected in a studio context) and highlights strategies that both support inclusive teaching for multilingual students and that
foster campus-wide change towards an inclusive writing culture. #IWCA15J9
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Session 10
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Exploring the Universe of Writerly Support: A
Workshop on Interpreting Quantitative Survey Data
Lori Salem, Leslie Allison, Temple University
This workshop offers participants an opportunity to explore the creative processes of interpreting quantitative data. The data we will use come from a
survey of 917 students at a public university. That survey revealed that most
students seek support for their writing, but most do not seek it in the writing
center. Rather, they turn to instructors, roommates, friends, and family members. What explains these choices? Our statistical analyses of the data form
the basis for exploring that question. In the workshop, we will demonstrate
creative games and activities that are designed to help researchers synthesize
and make sense of quantitative data. #IWCA15B10
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: From “Dealing With” to “Learning With” Multilingual Writers – Helping Peer Tutors Develop Flexibility
of Practice
Jennifer Staben, College of Lake County
In this interactive workshop, participants will learn ways to develop “flexibility
of practice” when working with multilingual writers—from seeing the diversity
and complexity behind the label of ESL to concrete strategies for negotiating
with and learning from the mix of rhetorical and language needs that multilingual writers bring to sessions. This workshop is designed both for tutors
who want to work with multilingual writers more effectively and for writing
center staff looking to enhance their current tutor development program.
#IWCA15C10
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Beyond the Tutorial: (R)evolutions in Multilingual Student Support
Thomas McNamara, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign | Yu-Kyung Kang, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign | Mark Lazio, DePaul University
This roundtable invites participants to reimagine how their centers serve domestic and international multilingual writers. The presenters will discuss how
they have expanded their centers’ work beyond the space of the tutorial to
better support students’ language-learning goals. Doing so, they argue, acknowledges the social nature of language use and acquisition and enables
centers to more deliberately shape attitudes toward writing and language
across campus. Participants will imagine new center initiatives and examine
how their current campus partnerships can foster linguistic difference and language learning at their institutions. #IWCA15D10
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Evolution and Process: Adventures in Developing a Writing Center Administration Certificate Program
Carol Mohrbacher, Tim Fountaine, St. Cloud State University
This roundtable presentation focuses on the recent experiences of a writing
center director and her predecessor in developing a writing center administration certificate program. The program has been approved at the administrative
level and will be implemented in about a year. During this session, we describe
our process of researching, writing, meeting institutional requirements, and
gaining approval from stakeholders. Then we will turn the topic over to the
attendees for a discussion of the feasibility and possible challenges of implementing a similar program on their campuses. #IWCA15E10
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Nonnative Speaker Tutors in the
Writing Center
Yelin Zhao, Oklahoma State University
Despite a growing body of literature on nonnative speaker students in the writing center literature, nonnative speaker tutors have been largely ignored. My
person tutoring experiences and the literature have indicated some unique
challenges that non-native speaker tutors encounter. The participants, both
native and non-native speakers will be invited to share their tutoring experiences and discuss effective ways to empower nonnative speaker tutors in the
writing center. #IWCA15A10
BRIGADE
Concurrent: From Writing Center to WRIT: Adding Reading & Technology Services to Our Writing Center
Jennifer Niester-Mika, Angela Trabalka, Delta College
In the fall of 2011, Delta College expanded its Writing Center Café to include
new services. In addition to its long-standing success in writing consultation,
our center now provides reading and information technology consultations.
Peer consultants are trained in three areas—writing, reading, and multimedia composition—to assist a wider student base and address multiple literacy
needs. Our expansion areas provide further service to developmental students
in need of reading, writing, and/or technology support. In this presentation,
we will highlight our new reading and multimedia services and training, as well
as outline plans and ideas for further expansion. #IWCA15L10
COMMONWEALTH 1
Faculty Development and the Writing Center
Dawn Dowell, Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi
Building Momentum for Writing: A Writing Center’s Role in
Faculty Development
The need for faculty support in developing Writing-Intensive courses has increased with the implementation of High Impact Practices (HIPs) at our institution. To respond to this need, the CASA Writing Center is collaborating with
the Center for Faculty Excellence to develop a series of faculty development
workshops. This session will focus on the practical elements involved in this
collaboration: its impetus, the challenges of practical application, and its future possibilities. The information explored in this session is applicable to oth59
er Writing Centers or programs working to support Writing-Intensive courses
at their institution. #IWCA15M10
D. Alexis Hart, Jon Wiebel, Allegheny College
“Thinking Communicatively”: Integrating Writing and Speaking in Faculty Development
The learning outcomes for the first- and second-year seminars at our small liberal arts college include writing, reading, speaking, and listening. Since faculty
in all disciplines teach these classes, the Director of Writing and the Director
of Speaking at the college have collaborated to create faculty development opportunities that focus on rhetorical strategies that subtend effective oral and
written communication in ways that afford faculty across disciplines a shared
vocabulary when constructing syllabi, designing assignments, and offering
feedback to students. #IWCA15N10
Deryn Verity, Pennsylvania State University
The Proleptic Minute: Reflecting on the Future
Professional development is not linear. Novices develop through reiterative
and recursive activity. This talk analyzes, from a Vygotskyan perspective, “proleptic minutes”—flash-forward glimpses of future expertise—in data collected
from novice MA TESL writing tutors working with first-year college ESL writers
over one semester. #IWCA15O10
COMMONWEALTH 2
Peer Assessment and Understanding
Christian Vasquez, Universidad de los Andes
Peer Assessment: A Way to Understand Writing as a Social
Process
This presentation aims to demonstrate how peer assessment is an activity that
allows us to educate an autonomous and reflective writer who is aware of the
social process involved in writing an academic text. The presentation analyzes
three stages of this activity in the academic writing courses of the Writing Program at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia: design, implementation and some students’ and teachers’ reflections about the benefits of peer
assessment in the academic writing learning process. #IWCA15M10
Kathryn Denton, University of New Mexico
The Peer-Interactive Model as Writing Center (r)Evolution
This presentation makes a case for the peer-interactive writing center as an
innovative model that can be adapted to meet the needs of diverse student
writers. Drawing on qualitative data gathered through the implementation of
the peer-interactive model at [institution], I highlight the ways that this practice challenges the predominance of one-on-one writing tutoring, and how
tutors and students have benefited from these innovations. This presentation
will then focus on how other writing centers can begin to employ the peer-interactive model, with an emphasis on tutor training and strategies for working
with students through the transition. #IWCA15N10
Louis Herman, University of Texas at El Paso
De-centering Writing Centers: Giving Students Compositional
Authority in the Classroom Through Peer-Review
Peer-reviews are a powerful tool in the writing center arsenal. They provide
60
students with a “two-way street” of learning: seeing models of what other
students write and providing critical feedback for that writing. This presentation provides theories and methods used at the University of Texas at El Paso’s (UTEP) University Writing Center (UWC) in providing in-class disciplinary
peer-reviews for a variety of classes from small graduate level writing classes
to large (150+ students) core curriculum classes. Here we share our methods,
successes, and failures of in-class peer review sessions by giving back the compositional authority to students through peer-review, de-centering the writing
center, putting writing back into the classroom, and how to manage the whole
process. #IWCA15O10
FORBES
Revolutionizing Writing Center Space
Alexandra Maass, New College of Florida
Downtown or Neighborhood?: Using the Metaphor of “City” to
Examine Evolution in Writing Center Spaces
Looking to urban studies as a method for rethinking our understanding of
space offers a new perspective on issues of student ownership and access.
This presentation considers what the metaphor of “city” has to offer to our
understanding of the organization and ownership of space in a writing center
and the necessity for change. Change in organization, practice, and resources
that best reflect the student tutors’ interests and expertise guarantees that the
writing center is challenged to evolve just as it challenges its writers to do the
same. #IWCA15N10
Adam Gray, Fashion Institute of Technology - SUNY
Measuring New Tutors’ Engagement in Writing Center Work
Drawing on video-taped “entrance interviews,” my study of nine new tutors’
experiences during their first semester in our writing center investigates what
“engagement” means as new writing center community members negotiate
their expectations of writing center work. This longitudinal project will also
explore what the concept of “engagement” means over time in order to better
understand how tutors perceive their work starting from their first days in the
writing center on through graduation and beyond. #IWCA15O10
KINGS 1
Panel: Who Do We Think We Are? Institutional, Student,
and Disciplinary Perceptions of the Writing Center
Jennifer Lawrence, Matthew Johnson, Prabin Lama, Becky
Morrison, Diana George, Virginia Tech
In a 1990 Writing Center Journal piece, Muriel Harris paused over the term
“writing center,” wondering if we even know what a writing center actually is
given that centers have evolved in very different institutions to serve different
needs at different time periods in our history. Twenty-five years later, this panel asks much the same question: Who Do We Think We Are? That is, what is
a writing center to those students and faculty who use it, to administrations
that hire personnel and create job descriptions, and even to Writing Studies as
that discipline has changed over time. Currently, for example, Writing Studies
encompasses fields as varied as Writing in the Disciplines and translingual or
global language theories. In addition, though many writing centers continue
to be housed in English departments, the field is witnessing a growing trend
to place one-on-one writing instruction in academic support centers, discipline-specific centers, and learning commons. The question, then, of who we
think we are is wrapped up in its corollary question: Who do others think we
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are? Or, to recall what is a perennial writing center question: What do they
(our students, our faculty, our institutions) think we do? In an effort to address
those questions, this panel reports on four different but related studies. Speaker 1 reports on a case study of first-year international clients and their writing
coaches in an effort to gauge this population’s response. Speaker 2 reports
on a similar study examining graduate student writing center use. Speaker 3
reports on her examination of the role of writing centers in the disciplines.
Finally, in an attempt to provide a portrait of the writing center market today,
Speaker 4 offers an overview of current job ads for writing center positions.
#IWCA15F10
KINGS 2
Panel: Theorizing Heirarchy and Collaboration in
Writer-Consultant Relationships
Zeeshan Reshamwala, Abigayil Wernsman, Hannah Ingram,
University of Denver
Our panel theorizes how external expectations of the writing center and definitions of collaboration as expressed through our analysis of writing-consultant self-reflections generate different hierarchical dynamics between the
consultant and the writer during the consultation. We use this analysis to
reevaluate those current writing center practices that establish and support
counterproductive power dynamics through illusions of collaboration and interfere with the goals of the writing center. We propose that consultants must
acknowledge the reality of hierarchical power differences in order to renegotiate collaboration that enhances the learning community, and our presentation
will suggest strategies for attending to this delicate tension. #IWCA15G10
KINGS 3
Panel: Patterns of Response in Asynchronous Online Writing Center Sessions
Daniel Lawson, Tracy Davis, Josh Weirick, Central Michigan
University
This session presents findings from a qualitative study of asynchronous online
feedback at a midsized midwestern university writing center. We will include
descriptions of our research design, coding and data collection methods, and
findings. Specifically, we will focus on findings that help us understand feedback our consultants are giving to NS and NNS writers, as well as the issues
they are frequently providing feedback on. We will also discuss the implications of our findings for our online writing center. #IWCA15H10
KINGS 4
Panel: (R)Evolutionizing Faculty/Writing Center Relationships: Innovative Models of Collaboration
Kelly Webster, University of Montana | Brooklyn Walter,
Washington State University | Michelle Miley, Montana State
University
Partnerships between writing centers and faculty across the curriculum can
provide, as Mullins (2001) argues, rich, innovative spaces for faculty development. Despite the possibilities, scholars like Pemberton (1995) and Mahala
(2007) acknowledge the tensions inherent in these programmatic relationships. Focused on funding and production, faculty/center relationships can
devolve to an outsourcing to the writing center, a one-way relationship that
sidesteps the messy, productive space of collaboration and threatens to render
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invisible student writing processes. In this session, panelists describe strategies for creating alternative spaces in which faculty partner with the writing
center rather than outsource to the writing center. #IWCA15I10
KINGS 5
Panel: Writing Center Studies and the Evolving Search for
Disciplinarity
Neal Lerner, Northeastern University | Beth Burmester, Georgia State University | Jennifer Forsthoefel, Georgia State University | Kyle Oddis, Northeastern University
This panel considers the labor of writing center studies in three areas—scholarly publishing, job advertisements, and pedagogy/curriculum/activism—to
raise the visibility and professionalization of our field. Specifically, we examine
identity, intellectual contribution, and social practices with research studies
of: 1) citation practices of Writing Center Journal authors published this past
decade, 2) the rhetoric of posted job ads for writing center administrators from
the 1980s through 2013, and 3) efforts for creating specialization in writing
centers inspired by Women’s Studies certificate programs started in the 1970s.
Overall, we take up the (r)evolutions of disciplinarity for writing center studies.
#IWCA15J10
RIVERS
Panel: Evolving Methods and Delivery: Analyzing Diverse
Tutoring Options and Expectations
Tamara Girardi, Harrisburg Area Community College | Shelah
Simpson, Liberty University
Presenters will share research and reflective practice regarding varying methods and delivery options for tutoring services available to online students. The
first speaker presents research illustrating variations in services through faceto-face campus centers at a community college, while the third speaker shares
experience diversifying a face-to-face writing studio to include online services.
The second speaker connects the two with a discussion of students’ perceptions of quality in online writing center options. #IWCA15K10
Poster Session
BALLROOM
Ann Blakeslee, Beth Sabo, Kim Pavlock, Bryan Alfaro, Eastern
Michigan University
Supporting Literacy Within, Across, and Beyond the University
Emilie Brancato, OCAD University
(r)Evolutionizing Perceptions of Writing and Research in the
First-Year Graphic Design Studio Classroom
Susan Callaway, University of St. Thomas
Evolving Peer Consultant Education: Inclusivity and Intercultural
Competency
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Nicholas Delgrego, J. F. Oberlin University
Just How Good Is the Writing Center?
Jessica Gorman, Amherst College
Poster Design Workshops: Teaching Visual Rhetoric to
Undergraduate Science Researchers
Rebecca Hallman, Mark Sursavage, Adrienne DeLeon,
University of Houston
Digital Revolutions and Writing Center Evolutions: A
Comparative Analysis of Text-Based and Audio-Visual Online
Consulting Platforms
Brenda Horetsky, Taylor Ruszczyk, Amy Halfinger, Kiersten
Toye, Jonathen Muñoz, Centenary College
The Personal is Political: Exploring Personal Experiences of
Gender in the Writing Center
Dawnelle Jager, SUNY ESF
Synergy in Student Support Centers: The Public Speaking and
Writing Skills Center
N. Jean Hodges, Neihan Yaqoob, Virginia Commonwealth
University in Qatar
Connecting the Dots: How Multilingual Design Students
Reflectively Think and Write to Innovate
Angela Messenger, Jason Newman, David Nickell, Youngstown
State University
Creative Writing Revolution: Completing an Assessment Cycle
Rachel Nyhart, Kansas State University
Using our Inside Voices: Negotiations in the Writing Center
When Students Use an Individual Voice When Writing Academic
Texts.
Katherine Schmidt, Rosario Peralta Cortez, Xinjie Luo,
Western Oregon University
LEAPing Forward: Writing Center as Facilitator for the
Integration of the LEAP Written Communication Value Rubric
in General Education
Jenny Scudder, Rider University
Ahoy, Pirates! Change Ahead!
Katie Sealy, Megan Peters, Lipscomb University
Mind the Gap: The Writing Studio at Lipscomb University
Establishes an Engineering Satellite Studio
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Kim Sharp, Laura Burgher, University of Washington Bothell
(re)Structuring our Work: Using Project Management Processes
Jamie Teixeira, Kansas State University
Investigation of Collaboration in Writing Center Tutorials
Bailie Roskow, Texas A&M University
Evaluating the Efficiencies of Career Center Referrals: A
Qualitative and Quantitate Analysis
Scott Whiddon, Transylvania University | Russell Carpenter,
Eastern Kentucky University
A Cross-Institutional Look at Designing and Assessing CourseEmbedded Peer-to-Peer Writing Consultation Programs
Melissa Yang, University of Pittsburgh
Mapping Centers in the City: Bridging Pittsburgh’s Writing
Commons
Margaret McGuirk, Dickinson College
Making Science Human: Tutoring Science Writing as a
Humanities Major
Ashley Malafronte, Muhlenberg College Writing Center
Agenda Setting in Tutorial Sessions: When It Happens, What It
Looks Like, and What It Does
Jason Hoppe, United States Military Academy
Professional Imaginations and Intellects, or PerformanceBased Curricula in the Writing Center
Anna Rollins, Marshall University
Metaphors of Inclusion in Writing Center Promotion
Lina Lara-Negrette, Universidad de los Andes
Observation and Feedback to Learn How to Be Tutor
Brenda Abbott, Bay Path University
The (Writing) Center Cannot Hold (Us): The Experience of
Embedded Tutors, Faculty and Students in the First Year Writing
Classroom
Eric Mason, Julia Mason, Nova Southeastern University
Usability in the Writing Center
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IWCA Reception
#IWCA15Recep
Friday, October 9 | 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Ballroom 1
IWCA Town Hall #IWCA15Town
Saturday, October 10 | 7:30am to 8:30am | Ballroom 1
Session 11
Saturday, October 10 | 8:45am to 10:00am
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Working Without a Script: Using Improv to
Foster Reflective Practice and Team Building in the Writing Center
Jody Cardinal, Christopher Petty, Laura Angyal, Marym Khan,
Minna Scholl, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Have our tutoring practices become routine? Are we tempted to impose preconceived narratives onto sessions instead of remaining open to the unfolding
possibilities of the present moment? This workshop explores the role theatrical improvisation can play in revolutionizing tutoring practice, examining how
three central principles of improv – “be present,” “say yes,” and “trust that
everything is a gift” – can enable tutors to avoid a mechanistic approach and
instead embrace the unexpected in sessions. Participants will perform and
discuss improv exercises valuable for fostering creativity and mindfulness and
learn activities potentially useful for training and professional development in
their own centers. #IWCA15C11
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Transgressing the Legislative (D)Evolution
through Writing Center and Classroom Collaborations
Aaron Leff, Michelle Medeiros, Front Range Community
College
How do we continue to empower ourselves and transform our practice in a
time of forced legislative mandates? Two grant-funded, research projects examine how to improve student agency in the peer review process and use
writing center pedagogy to provide non-composition instructors with valuable
tools to support student writers. Moreover, these projects show the importance of writing center and classroom collaboration. #IWCA15D11
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Consultant Training and Supporting Graduate Student Writers: New Challenges
Linda Macri, University of Maryland | Peter Grav, University of
Toronto | Nabila Hijazi, University of Maryland
The challenges faced by graduate writing centers are both similar and distinct
from those of undergraduate writing centers, but perhaps no challenge is quite
as distinct as that of training consultants to respond to the expansive demands
of graduate student writing. Speaking from our somewhat unique circumstances of working in centers dedicated exclusively to graduate students, we
will focus the roundtable discussion on what writing consultants need to know
and do to effectively support graduate student writers and the challenges
of preparing our consultants to meet the specific needs of graduate writers.
#IWCA15E11
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Anti-Racism
Katie Levin, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities | Neil
Simpkins, University of Wisconsin-Madison
At this year’s meeting of the IWCA Anti-Racism SIG, SIG members and newcomers will focus on goals: we will discuss and plan both practical and structural ways that the Anti-Racism SIG and IWCA more broadly can evolve to
become a more equitable, racially just space. Currently, we plan to include a
collaborative writing circle in which participants help create a proposal to be
circulated to IWCA Board Members and an action plan for the Anti-Racism SIG.
We recognize, though, that if the group has a more urgent concern or goal in
October, the agenda of the SIG meeting may shift. #IWCA15A11
BRIGADE
Concurrent: Writing Centers in Iran: Teacher and Learner
Views and Potentials
Fahimeh Marefat, Mojtaba Heydari, Mohammad Nasser
Vaezi, Mohsen Mahdavi, Javad Mohammadi, Elahe Moladoust, Vahid Panahzade, Mahmoud Qaracholloo, Allameh
Tabataba’i University
We aimed at investigating the needs, expectations, potentials, and challenges of funding an academic writing center. Iranian academic EFL context has
become more competitive in recent years. Graduate students are urged to
publish articles in inche journals. One hundred and twenty graduate and undergraduate students from 3 majors and 25 professors from 3 different departments participated in this study. The instruments were interviews with
different focus groups, and a survey questionnaire developed based on the
coding and analysis of data from the interviews. Qualitative and quantitative
analyses of the results revealed the common themes and implications are discussed. #IWCA15L11
COMMONWEALTH 1
Evolving Tutor Training
Michael Mattison, Wittenberg University
(Steeling) Voices: Helping Tutors Evolve as Critically Reflective
Practitioners
This presentation will consider how a shared cycle of listening and reflectingto audio sessions has pushed our staff beyond a reliance upon stereotypical
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sessions or writers. Rather than pre-set scripts, we hear the messy exchanges
that mark our work. We have found that utilizing the audios in this manner
pays off for our advisors in two ways: they can steal ideas and approaches
from one another, but they also steel themselves for their upcoming sessions.
#IWCA15M11
Gabrielle McCullough, Kate O’Donoghue, Muhlenberg College
MOVING FROM CONCEPT TO TERM: Refurbishing the Tutor’s
Understanding of Cognitive Scaffolding
Isabelle Thompson’s essay “Scaffolding in the Writing Center: A Microanalysis
of an Experienced Tutor’s Verbal and Nonverbal Strategies” suggests the importance of “cognitive scaffolding” in writing tutoring. By looking at instances where the tutor influences (actively or passively) the writing process or
product, we seek to expand the current understanding of the term “cognitive
scaffolding” and come to a set of more precise and applicable terms for the
complex and elusive concept behind it. #IWCA15N11
Carolyn Megan
The Photographic Frame: Teaching Tutors the Art of Asking
Questions
A tutor’s questions can deepen a writer’s development by enlarging the field
of exploration and by honing critical skills. How do we teach tutors to ask engaging, heuristic, and/or directive questions? The presentation will argue that
the curiosity inherent in studying and making photographs is the same driving
force in generating strong questions in the tutor-writer discourse. This presentation will model the inclusion of photography into the tutor training curriculum as a teaching tool for developing the skill of asking sound and directed
questions. #IWCA15O11
COMMONWEALTH 2
Embedded Tutors
Melissa Bugdal, University of Connecticut
Course-Embedded Tutors Facilitatating Transfer: Initial Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Writing Knowledge Transfer
This presentation examines the role of a course-embedded tutoring model in
facilitating transfer of writing knowledge from a Basic Writing course to FirstYear Composition Courses and into WAC/WID contexts. #IWCA15M4
Sophia Gourgiotis, University of South Florida
Expanding Beyond the Dichotomy: How Writing Center Tutors
and Embedded Fellows Can Learn from Each Other
Embedded fellows and traditional writing tutors are similar in many ways, including their education/training programs and tutoring strategies when working with various styles of writing. Typically, WC scholars view community tutoring and embedded programs as fundamentally different; however, this study
examines similarities and differences between these styles to explore how the
structure of tutoring can shape the goals and outcomes of the writing center.
This presentation considers the ways we can learn from the experiences of
tutors in these different contexts to (r)evolutionize writing center research and
practice. #IWCA15N11
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Cynthia Johnson, Miami University
The Writing Fellows (r)Evolution: A Snapshot of Program Features and Practices
Through a detailed review of program websites, this presentation provides a
snapshot of common features and practices of writing fellows programs. I then
outline the process my own university is undergoing to develop a writing fellows program within its school of business. I use this focus to avoid a general,
oversimplified compilation of best practices, and rather, through example, address the diverse and complex contexts in which these writing programs exist.
This presentation is meant to generate conversation about writing fellows programs’ features and best practices—a compilation largely missing and much
needed. #IWCA15O11
FORBES
Works in Progress (WIP-Pitt)
Trixie Smith, Michigan State University
In this interactive session, presenters will share their in-progress research projects in small groups in order to get feedback from leaders in the field as well
as other researchers and attendees. Projects cover a wide variety of writing
center topics and interests and represent various stages of the research and
writing process. #IWCA15WIP
KINGS 1
Panel: The Center Will Hold: Creating Tutoring Spaces for
Unconventional Pedagogies
Lynn Reid, Indiana University of Pennsylvania/Fairleigh Dickinson University | Jack Morales, Indiana University of Pennsylvania/Community College of Allegneny County | Christine
Bailey, Union University
Although Composition Studies and Writing Center Studies have long embraced
multigenre (Trabochia, 2006; Bowen and Whithaus, 2013), multimodal (Naydan, 2013; Sheridan and Inman, 2010; Carpenter, 2008) and critical pedagogies
(Belanger and Heaney, 2012 ), curricula and tutor training designed around a
restrictive definition of academic writing continue to present challenges for
faculty who contest those models and for tutors who work to support students. This panel focuses on how attempts to “change the story” about writers
and writing (Adler-Kassner, 2008) in three distinct institutional contexts have
created opportunities to reimagine relationships between faculty and tutoring
staff and expectations for a successful tutoring session. #IWCA15F11
KINGS 2
Panel: Evolving Strategies for Cross-Campus Collaborations, Tutor Education, and Tutoring in a Climate of Vigorous Campus Internationalization
Susan Lawrence, Karyn Mallett, Alisa Russell, Psyche Ready,
Paul Michiels, George Mason University
This panel explores the opportunities and challenges of responding to vigorous
campus internationalization and making writing centers sites of convergence
of TESOL and composition pedagogies (Phillips, Stewart, & Stewart 2006). Collectively, the speakers show how this trend elicits strategic responses across
multiple functions of a writing center: directors charged with forming partnerships and securing resources, directors and graduate students who shape
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tutor education, and tutors who themselves develop and pilot new strategies
for tutoring multilingual writers. #IWCA15G11
KINGS 3
Panel: Taking to the Digital Frontier: A Writing Center
Journey
Stephanie Ries, Rachel Dortin, Troylin Banks, Courtney Bates,
University of Findlay
As higher education gradually takes to the online platform, Writing Centers
likewise offer options for online Writing Center services. Whether these are
synchronous or asynchronous appointments, Writing Centers can better meet
the needs of a growing student body through online sessions. All too often we
use these technological services without properly creating a training scheme
for tutors. The University of Findlay’s Writing Center team will share the results
of the research behind their training program. Online Writing Instruction (OWI)
can be the bridge that creates a sustainable future for the Writing Center when
Writing Center administrators sufficiently train their tutors. #IWCA15H11
CHARTIERS
Panel: Deliberate Collaboration: How Writing Centers, Interns, and Writing Faculty Can Change the World (Or At
Least the University)
Kim Pennesi, Sara Tantlinger, Seton Hill University
To support initiatives in writing across the curriculum and in multimodal composition at our small, liberal arts university, our writing center has deliberately
collaborated with various campus constituencies. This panel will discuss some
of these cooperative efforts, from the varied perspectives of a writing program administrator, a student intern in the writing center, and a writing center director. The panelists will cover how our university’s WAC program has
evolved through formal and informal partnerships with the writing center. Also
addressed will be how campus connections provide a foundation to develop
resources, workshops and training materials. #IWCA15I11
TRADERS
Panel: Can Everyone Say Community?: Teachers/Students/Administrators/Mentors Collaborate to Establish
an Inner-City Baltimore High School Writing Center
Leigh Ryan, University of Maryland | Lena Stypeck, Vivien T.
Thomas Medical Arts Academy | Abby Shantzis, University of
Maryland, College Park
As a first year teacher and former university writing tutor starts an inner-city
high school writing center, her partners/supporters/mentors include, among
others, a university writing center director and the school’s outreach coordinator. This group discusses the goals, challenges, and successes of the program,
and their roles as the Center came into being. #IWCA15J11
RIVERS
Panel: The More Capable Peer: Revising Vygotsky for
Graduate Writing Support
Carrie Aldrich, Bonnie Sunstein, Amanda Gallogly, Claudia
Pozzobon, University of Iowa
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Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development is a concept central to writing center pedagogy, traditionally understood as a psychological state where learners
are able to perform above their current level of development with the assistance of “more capable peers.” Our panel challenges the centrality of this dialectic in the peer writing relationship by complicating the more-to-less capable
dichotomy. #IWCA15K11
Session 12
Saturday, October 10 | 10:15am to 11:30am
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Using Social Media to Align Campus Perception with Reality of the Writing Center
Kimberly Smith, Emily Recchia, Daniel Neff, Nicki Clark,
Western Michigan University
Campus-wide misperceptions of writing centers may lead to clients expecting
consultations to function as passive proofreading sessions where consultants
correct and alter a text. When clients’ perception of the writing center differs
from our mission, difficult consultations can occur that leave both the client
and consultant feeling frustrated. Based on research and practices conducted
by our writing center, this presentation explores ways a writing center can proactively use social media to educate and engage with its writing community
about the mission of the center. #IWCA15B12
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Working with Science Technology Engineering
and Math (STEM) Genres in the Writing Center
Joanna Wolfe, Nisha Shanmugaraj, Juliann Reineke, Carnegie
Mellon University
Writing center directors and tutors often have backgrounds in English studies and can be unprepared to work with students from STEM disciplines. This
workshop presents three highly effective strategies for working with technical
papers. Participants will practice applying these strategies to highly technical
content, thereby demonstrating how tutors can provide discipline-appropriate
advice to writers, even without understanding the subject matter of their papers. #IWCA15C12
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: (R)evolutionizing how Tutors Navigate the
Self-Doubt, Stress, and Anxiety of Student Writers
Megan Schoettler, York College of Pennsylvania | Samantha
Stowers, University of Wisconsin–Madison | Chelsea Fesik,
University of Wisconsin–Madison
What strategies can Writing Tutors and Writing Fellows use to effectively anticipate and respond to negative student emotions? This session will begin with
brief descriptions of three studies conducted by writing tutor researchers that
investigated practices for (r)evolutionizing approaches to self-doubt, stress,
and anxiety of college writers. The session will continue with roundtable discussions of how writing center professionals and tutors: 1) Respond to nega71
tive affective elements of tutoring sessions; 2) Train our tutors and teachers
to respond to them; 3) Consider the roles of our own doubts and stresses in
relation to our writing. #IWCA15D12
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: (r)Evolution Prospect: Writing Center to
Rhetoric Commons
Neill Johnson, Jon Olson, Pennsylvania State University
What happens when complementary disciplines combine resources to transform a writing center into a rhetoric commons by co-locating writing tutors,
ESL tutors, and public speaking tutors in a space conducive to participatory
observation? Which dichotomies hold and which break down: professional vs.
personal styles of communication, second language vs. translingual writing,
studies of writing or speaking vs. studies of language learning? How would students and those tutoring and studying the tutoring benefit? Bring your ideas
and experiences to this roundtable discussion. #IWCA15E12
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Secondary School Writing Centers
Amber Jensen, Edison High School | Andrew Jeter, Niles West
High School
Building off the momentum of the 2015 IWCA Position Statement on Secondary School Writing Centers, this SIG invites secondary school writing center directors, peer tutors, and other interested parties to connect with each other in
celebrating successes, discussing current realities and challenges, exchanging
best practices, and imagining new possibilities in this ever-growing community
of IWCA directors and tutors. #IWCA15A12
BRIGADE
Concurrent: Inspiring Academic Excellence with Innovative and Integrated Writing Support
Siri Sorensen, Amy Buechler-Steubing, Capella University
In the book Change by Design, innovation is defined as, “a good idea executed
well.” In this session, participants will discuss and identify ways to design and
develop innovative resources. In this presentation, we will share our process
and what we learned on our journey to develop an innovative and integrated writing support model at our institution. Presenters will share examples of
writing resource innovations at their institution – instructional media, website
design, and an online community. #IWCA15L12
COMMONWEALTH 1
Tools used in Tutorials
R. Mark Hall, University of Central Florida
What Work Do Tutor Reports Do?: An Analysis of the Rhetorical
Moves of Session Notes
Answering recent calls for more RAD research in writing centers, this presentation examines a corpus of 700 session notes, asking, “What work do tutor
reports do? What are the commonplace rhetorical moves of session notes?”
Findings indicate that tutors engage a narrow set of predictable rhetorical patterns, which construct not only the work of consultations, but also the roles
or identities of tutors and the ethos of the local writing center context. Implications suggest that with more thorough knowledge of the work session
notes do, then we may turn our attention to teaching tutors to compose more
effective tutor reports. #IWCA15M12
Mikala Grubaugh, Ohio State University
Tutor as Rhetor: Persuasive Communication in Writing Tutorials
Tutors fill many roles. Peer. Coach. Guidance counselor. Rhetor? The interpersonal nature of one-on-one tutorials in the writing center provides an opportunity for persuasive communication. By focusing the rhetorical lens on writing
tutorials, writing center directors and tutors alike can create an experience
that is more conducive to impactful learning. Because rhetoric, the art form of
persuasion, is vast and multifaceted, this presentation will focus on two fundamental rhetorical devices – ethos (appeals to character) and kairos (a sense of
timeliness). #IWCA15N12
Laura Feibush, University of Pittsburgh
Of Hearing and Hands: Gestures of Listening in Writing Center
Tutorials
This presentation investigates gestures of listening in Writing Center tutorials
through an analysis of video footage taken at the University of Pittsburgh Writing Center. I identify the embodied dimensions of listening found in Writing
Center tutorials: the gestures, postures, and other forms of non-verbal communication that reflect understanding, responsiveness, and reciprocity. Ultimately, I suggest ways of incorporating the gestures of listening into Writing
Center tutorials and trainings. #IWCA15O12
COMMONWEALTH 2
Tools Used in Tutorials Continued
Shoshana Marin, Muhlenberg College Writing Center
Examining Tutees’ Questions for a More Receptive Tutoring
Approach
A tutee-centered session relies heavily on tutees’ questions, which are a rich
example of what I call “tutee talk.” Tutees might perceive the tutoring relationship through any number of assumptions, and tutors can offer more profitable
input if they can sense such things as how tutees feel about their papers, about
getting tutored by a peer, and about their own writing process. To accomplish
this, tutors must notice and attend to implicit elements within tutees’ questions. The conclusions I hope to draw from this research can equip tutors with
a more receptive ear and a more flexible tutoring approach. #IWCA15N12
Tracy Santa, Colorado College
Examining Listening Behaviors in Writing Center Tutorials
Our felt sense of writing center work situates listening at the heart of practice
--it is listening that makes the collaboration inherent to a successful tutorial
possible. But how do we communicate to others that we are not only hearing
them, but paying attention? This presentation proposes to examine identifiable listening behavior in tutorials through study of audio and visual recordings, and to the extent possible in a pilot study, determine the bearing of this
behavior on the success of a given tutorial. #IWCA15O12
FORBES
Second Language Tutoring at Work in the Writing Center
Pisarn Chamcharatsri, University of New Mexico
The (R)Evolution of Second Language Writing in Writing Centers: Meta-Analysis Approach
This meta-analysis study has traced back 10 years of publications relating to
second language (L2) writing and writers in the Writing Center Journal. The
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study aims to provide historical aspects of what has been accomplished in the
field and suggestions of what how we can go forward to help our L2 writers in
our institutions. #IWCA15N12
Gita DasBender, Seton Hall University | Catherine Siemann,
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Effective Pedagogies: Developing Strategies for Tutor Education in Second Language Acquisition Approaches to Tutoring
Acknowledging the critical role of writing center directors in tutor development and education, this session will focus on concrete strategies that allow
directors to conceive, plan, and conduct tutor training sessions to put into
practice some of the suggestions Ben Rafoth makes in his new book *Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers.* Practical methods of training tutors to apply concepts such as “reformulation,” “exemplification,” and “noticing” to student writing will be discussed along with a model of metacognitive activity that
promotes heightened awareness of effective tutoring strategies. #IWCA15O12
KINGS 2
Panel: Writing Tutors, Research Coaches: How Do We
Negotiate Our Roles?
Mary Tripp, Emily Proulx, Garrett Arban, Somaily Nieves,
University of Central Florida
Synthesizing various tutoring experiences across the university, this presentation offers perspectives of one professor and three writing tutors as they
tried to navigate their roles as disciplinary research coaches, writing coaches,
classroom tutors, and writing center tutors. Presenting survey and interview
data from a pilot study conducted during Spring 2015, this presentation offers
insights into the variety of roles demanded of writing tutors as they attempt to
create partnerships with disciplines across campus. #IWCA15G12
KINGS 3
Panel: (R)evolution through Collaborations: Interdisciplinary Connections of Writing Centers to Increase Student Engagement
Susan Pagnac, Central College | Abhijit Rao, Iowa State University | Elizabeth McMahon, Central College
This panel focuses on two small writing centers and their collaborations with
other academic institutions on campus to develop student interactions. The
first presentation describes the collaborative research and writing program
created by the director of the writing center and director of the library. The
second presentation describes the business writing center’s collaboration with
their university’s graduate college to develop discipline-relevant tutoring for
its graduate students. #IWCA15H12
CHARTIERS
Panel: Building New Identities through Curriculum-Based
Peer Tutoring Placements
Ben Ristow, Stephanie Nieves, Katherine Drinkwater, Cornelia Smith, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
This panel presentation focuses on undergraduate research completed while
curriculum-based tutors were placed in the Higher Education Opportunity
Summer Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva, NY) and
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within Five Points Correctional Facilities in Romulus, New York. The first two
presenters discuss how they negotiated their identities and authority as female curriculum-based tutors in an all-male prison. The third presenters discusses how under-represented college students solidify their identities as writers in the academy through personal narrative writing. #IWCA15I12
TRADERS
Panel: Effective Environments: Changing Locations,
Changing Dynamics, Co-authoring Spaces
Mark Latta, K.C. Chan, Alyee Willets, Gabrielle Fales, Marian
University
Participants trace the development of peer-tutoring sessions held in nontraditional spaces and the disruption of tutoring perceptions. Learning opportunities are heightened when tutorials are held in responsive environments.
Additionally, utilizing new and innovative spaces provides the opportunity for
collaborators to think and talk about writing in new ways. Students and faculty combine their perspectives on spatial analysis and critical reflection to
detail effective tutorial strategies and professional growth within this panel
presentation, charting the Marian University Writing Center’s movement into
creative campus and community spaces. #IWCA15J12
RIVERS
Ignite: Growing Writing Center Communities Online: New
Avenues for Research, Collaboration, and Support
Muriel Harris, Purdue University | Josh Ambrose, McDaniel
College | Kim Ballard, Western Michigan University | Russell
Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University | Harry Denny, Purdue
University | Clint Gardner, Salt Lake City Community College
| Jill Gladstein, Swarthmore College | Lee Ann Glowenski,
Duquesne University | Steffen Guenzel, University of Central
Florida | Allison Holand, University of Arkansas Little Rock |
Amber Slater, DePaul University | Rachel Pomeroy, DePaul
University | Bradley Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison
As writing centers expand from individual physical spaces that once defined
them, a welter of new and useful virtual spaces are evolving online. But that
very profusion means that writing center professionals can profit from learning about and seeing some new digital spaces at work. This ignite session will
introduce, demonstrate, and discuss how to use eight new online spaces for
research and/or information gathering. Each online space listed here will be
limited to 5-minute presentations, thus allowing 25 minutes for audience
members to ask questions and discuss how to use these spaces. #IWCA15K12
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Session 13
Saturday, October 10 | 11:45am to 1:00pm
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Beyond Institutional Walls: (r)Evolutions of a
High School Tutor Training Curriculum
Melody Denny, Cottey College | Ashley Johnson-Wood,
Oklahoma State University
This session will emerge participants in the work that the OSU Writing Center
has done through partnering with its local high school, Stillwater High School
(SHS). After introducing participants to how our work began, we will share lessons used to train incoming high school consultants. In sharing these lessons,
participants will take the role of student consultant trainer or incoming student
consultant trainee and actually participate in a few hands-on activities. The
purpose of this session, in addition to sharing our work and process for moving beyond institutional walls, will be to demonstrate the ways in which such
partnerships push us to develop our own innovative research. #IWCA15B13
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: Enacting Writing Studio Pedagogy in Forum
Theater to Reimagine Social Justice at School
Matthew Kim, Eagle Hill School/Central Massachusetts Writing
Collaborative
The workshop we wish to offer to IWCA participants is a series of hands-on
activities where through theater we examine, understand, and begin to solve
the problem of people being bullied because of their disabilities. The goal of
our theater troupe is to use elements of writing studio pedagogy—conversation, creativity, problems-solving, spatial design, and play—to produce Forum
theater productions. Forum Theater was developed in Latin America, by Augusto Boal, as a means of working popularly in theater to tackle the overriding
problems of the lives of ordinary people. #IWCA15C13
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Rapid Revolutions, Stunted Evolutions: The
Revolving Door of Writing Center Staffing and its Effect on
Writing Center Studies
Heidi Stevenson, Amy Hansen, Molly Fox, Michael Jacoby,
Northern Michigan University
This roundtable seeks to explore the relationship between working conditions
of writing center staff and scholarship in the field of writing center studies.
First, it looks to examine how the challenging and unsustainable working conditions increasingly common in higher education negatively impact the ability
of those working in writing centers to contribute scholarship to the field, and
how the scholarship of the field suffers as a result. Second, it hopes to facilitate
a place where participants can share and develop ideas on how writing center
faculty and staff might address this challenge. #IWCA15D13
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BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Using Policy Statements in Writing TutorTraining
Beth Towle, Patrick Love, Purdue University
Policy statements that emphasize the need for socially just classrooms and
the pedagogical framework for fostering diversity, such as “CCCC Statement on
Secondary Language Writing and Writers” and “Students’ Right to Their Own
Language,” have an important role in writing instruction, but these documents
are not common in writing center tutor training. This roundtable discussion
will provide a space and time to discuss the possibility of using policy statements in tutor training as a way to help foster social justice through writing
centers. #IWCA15E13
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Religious-Affiliated Writing
Centers
Lisa Zimmerelli, Loyola University Maryland | David Stock,
Brigham Young University
The Religious Affiliated Writing Centers (RAWC) SIG examines writing centers
as sites where religious belief, broadly defined, can incite productive, transformative social action. Topics for discussion may include writers’ and tutors’ religious identities; institutional religious affiliations; the intersection of doctrinal
and educational values; and tensions between religious belief and secularism.
#IWCA15A13
BRIGADE
Special Session: Introducing IWCA’s TPR: A Peer Review,
Open-Access, Multi-Modal Vehicle for Sponsorship,
Collaboration, and Publication
Sherry Wynn Perdue, Oakland University | Rebecca Hallman,
University of Houston
This conference launched IWCA’s The Peer Review, a vehicle to sponsor and
publish the writing center research and scholarship of graduate, undergraduate, and high school practitioners as well as their early career professional
collaborators. In this session, we: 1. Share TPR’s vision and mission; 2.Introduce the sponsorship scaffolding the editorial team has developed to support
contributors; 3. Elaborate our first call for submissions; and 4. Invite attendees to work with members of the editorial team to reconceive their posters,
conference presentations, or other works-in-progress for submission to TPR.
#IWCA15L13
COMMONWEALTH 1
Developing and Evolving a Writing Center
Travis DuBose, Rutgers-Camden
If You Build It... Then What?: Developing a Writing Center From
Scratch in This Day and Age
Need and opportunity result in an experimental Writing and Design Lab, an
initiative of our English department in the absence of a robust campus writing
center to meet the communication needs of our first year students and majors.
We describe the goals and features of this new center, document the factors
that led to its creation, and discuss the challenges that lie ahead in moving the
WDL beyond a pilot project phase. #IWCA15M13
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Jennifer Dempsey, Heidelberg University
From 0 to Open: The Revisions and Realities of Building a Writing Center
When a 160-year-old university opens a writing center for the first time in its
history, the process –on paper– may seem fairly straightforward: Find a space.
Hire consultants. Train consultants. Make a schedule and an APA format handout. The actualities of this situation, however, are significantly more complicated. This session will discuss both the hurdles and triumphs of launching a
writing center, and delve into creative problem-solving strategies which may
help veteran directors expand their services or re-see their centers’ possibilities. #IWCA15N13
Judi Jewinski, Clare Bermingham, University of Waterloo
Helping “Old Dogs” Explore “New Tricks”: Evolving in a New
Writing Centre Culture
This paper shares strategies for engaging staff and peers in any kind of training or renewal project. It presents what happened at one university’s writing
centre when radical changes in purpose and delivery called for significant reorientation for permanent staff. The eventual structure and process for professional development are modelled on a typical tutoring session emphasizing
collaboration, models of good practice, and plenty of peer review. Encouraging
staff to become leaders and catalysts of change rather than simply imposing
change upon them has improved morale, performance, and commitment.
#IWCA15O13
COMMONWEALTH 2
Assessment of the Writing Center
Roger Powell, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Re-imagining Writing Center Assessment Practices: Writing
Centers and Transfer Theory
This presentation will explore the following question: How could transfer theory help improve assessment practices in writing centers? The presentation
will begin by examining common writing center assessment practices. It will
then re-imagine these practices through a transfer theoretical lens and suggest ways that these practices could be improved. The final portion of this
presentation will conceptualize how transfer theory could lead to innovative
longitudinal research possibilities with transfer and writing center assessment
and pose questions for the audience to discuss and consider as time allows.
#IWCA15M13
Matthew Moberly, California State University, Stanislaus
A National Survey of Writing Center Assessment Practices
This presentation will report on mixed methods survey data I’ve gathered from
writing center directors at public, 4-year universities across the country about
their assessment practices. Presentation participants will have the opportunity
to see what methods their colleagues are using to answer the call to assess and
to discuss their own practices. #IWCA15N13
Kelsie Walker, Ball State University
Assessment (R)evolutions: Developing Student Learning Outcomes-based Assessment
Few studies have assessed student learning outcomes (SLOs) in the context
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of a writing center; yet, some researchers have suggested that SLO-based
assessment is one way to measure the effectiveness of the tutorial, as well
as one way to align with institutional values (Neaves, 2010; Pantoja, 2010;
Deal, 2012). After briefly summarizing current SLO assessment research, this
20-minute presentation discusses an assessment framework that uses digital
portfolio technologies and student reflection in order to gauge student learning in a writing center. This presentation aims overall to foster a conversation
among attendees about the value of assessing student learning, and if valuable, the best practices for assessing student learning. #IWCA15O13
FORBES
The Writing Center and the University
Paula Abboud El Habr, Lebanese American University
Sustaining Relationships Between the Writing Center and
Other Departments: A Key to Survival
The question of sustaining relationships between the writing center and other departments in the university has been perceived as crucial to a writing
center’s survival. However, research on collaboration has been restricted to
administrative communication and has not addressed the short and longterm benefits such a relationship could have on faculty and students.In this
presentation, I reflect on the Lebanese American University Writing Center’s
collaboration with academic departments and the Student Affairs Office. My
findings are supported by statistics revealing the impact of this collaboration.
#IWCA15M13
Katherine Bridgman, Texas A&M University, San Antonio
The (r)Evolution of a Writing Center Mission Statement
This presentation examines writing center mission statements. It provides insight into this key location where our visions for what we do are put in conversation with the expectations of our stakeholders across the university.
#IWCA15N13
KINGS 1
Panel: African American Vernacular English: Roots, Rules,
and Reclaiming Legitimacy
Savannah Thorpe, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
The interaction among language, culture, and thought has intrigued many researchers for decades. Today, our understanding of psycholinguistics has increased dramatically with technology. Some of this analysis has been extended
to African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Careful parsing of the dialect
has led to an understanding that it is legitimate, follows set rules, and may
influence a writer’s perceptions and thoughts. By understanding a scientific
analysis of AAVE’s roots, rules, influence, and cultural significance, tutors may
better empathize with their students and consider how to preserve the students’ right to their own language in the classroom. #IWCA15F13
KINGS 2
Panel: Collaboration: A Community Writing Center and
Senior Center Using Writing and Digital Technology to
Develop and Connect
Nkenna Onwuzuruoha, Westminster College
In the spring of 2015, Write Here, a community-based writing center in South
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Salt Lake, UT partnered with a nearby community center to “reintroduce” writing into the lives of many of their senior citizens. The main worry was that both
centers are in a working class area with people of various writing abilities and a
limited skill set using digital technology. In this brief presentation, I will discuss
how Write Here helped seniors put their fears aside about writing by using art
as a tool to create multimodal personal histories. #IWCA15G13
KINGS 3
Panel: Creating and Theorizing “Write it Like Disaster:” A
Compilation of Music by Writing Center Staffers, Professionals, and Allies
Stacia Watkins, Lipscomb University | Scott Whiddon, Transylvania University | Brad Walker, Lipscomb University
This presentation describes and reflects upon a collaborative project developed as part of the recent 2015 Southeast Writing Center Association Conference. “’Write it Like Disaster’ – A Compilation of Music Made by Writing
Center Staffers, Professionals, and Allies” showcases the work of 33 musicians
who – in a range of ways – serve the larger writing center community. After
describing our process of curation and design, we locate this work in discussions of sonic/ambient rhetorics via interviews with selected contributors.
Our session will conclude with an audience-driven reflection of how creative
projects might strengthen and illuminate the work done in their own spaces.
#IWCA15H13
TRADERS
Panel: Competing Notions of Work: Perspectives on
Writing Center Labor and Leadership
G. Travis Adams, University of Nebraska Omaha | Angela
Glover, Midland University | Jenna DeWilde, University of Nebraska Omaha | Whitney Schutt, Midland University
With significant populations of student workers and facing a multitude of work
to get done, writing centers are positioned at the nexus of conversations about
leadership and labor. The administrators and peer tutor speakers in this session utilize scholarship and experiences in composition, writing centers, administration, labor, and leadership to push writing centers to consider student
labor and leadership practices that are ethical, sustainable, and productive for
all stakeholders. #IWCA15J13
RIVERS
Panel: Contextualizing Graduate Writing and Research in
the University
Bethany Mannon, Pennsylvania State University | Shakil
Rabbi, Pennsylvania State University | Kristin Messuri, Texas
Tech University
Writing center scholarship increasingly focuses on layered and complex understandings of the ways a center can work with the communities it serves. In
addition to addressing issues of language and communication, writing centers
can be sites of innovative research, new ways of understanding the demographic shifts the recent influx of international students represent, and more
situated understandings of the knowledge practices in various disciplines. This
panel attempts to present a multifaceted illustration of empirical methods,
moving between the perspectives and practices of administrators and the populations of disciplines that make use of the center. #IWCA15K13
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Session 14
Saturday, October 10 | 1:15pm to 2:30pm
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Bean-counting Evolved: Understanding and
Using the National Census on Writing and IWCA WCRP
Survey to Foster Research Inquiry
Jill Gladstein, Swarthmore College | Harry Denny, Purdue
University
This panel briefs participants on the possibilities and limitations on the National Census on Writing (formerly the WPA Census) and the IWCA Writing Centers
Research Project Survey. Participants will then turn to collaborative planning
and problem-posing of campus-based and cross-institutional research questions. Concluding plenary discussion will spur on-going projects and challenge/
pose future revisions of these projects. #IWCA15B14
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: How Writing Center Pedagogy Transforms
Developmental Writing and First-Year Writing Classrooms
Priscilla Van Aulen, Ramon Reyes, Ramapo College of New
Jersey
Instructors will demonstrate how their work in the writing center informs their
classroom pedagogy in developmental and first-year writing courses. Strategies for individualizing instruction in a computer-writing classroom and fostering active collaboration between the writing center and first-year writing
program will be discussed. #IWCA15C14
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Both Here and There: Creative Writing and
Metalinguistic Learning in the Writing Center
Michael Turner, Alex Shapiro, Joanne Afornalli, Kyle Oddis,
Northeastern University
Our creative writing group for English Language Learners allowed us to have
conversations around language that helped students develop metalinguistic
awareness. Roundtable participants will discuss a prompt designed specifically
to help ELL students use creative writing to re-imagine their academic writing and engage with concepts of genre, argument, conventions, and language
usage. We will discuss the most effective spaces to have these conversations
with students and consider how top-down approaches to language acquisition
can work with bottom-up grammar approaches that are often used in writing
tutorials. #IWCA15D14
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: Collaboration as (R)evolution: Repositioning
the Writing Center
Brittney Tyler-Milholland, University of Kansas | Shana
Schmidt, Kansas State University
Collaboration is at the center of the writing center and distinguishes it from
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other institutions. While writing centers utilize collaboration, tutors and administrators still desire more collaboration both within and outside of the writing center. We will create a roundtable discussion to reflect with fellow tutors
and administrators how writing centers currently use collaboration, how it
might be re-envisioned, how it could alter the perception of the writing center,
and how it could more accurately reflect writing as a social act. Group reflection enables an understanding of how writing centers can evolve and how to
use collaboration with more intentionality. #IWCA15E14
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: Student-Athlete Writing: A
Revolution in the Making
Participate in the second annual IWCA Student-Athlete Writing SIG (SAW).
SAW aims to: (1) establish a community of writing center practitioners committed to ongoing work in the student-athlete arena; (2) develop best practices
and models for supporting student-athlete writing; and (3) promote research
and scholarship. SAW participants will brainstorm ways to promote the application of writing center principles in working with student-athletes and take
action to foster scholarship and innovation in the area of student-athlete writing. #IWCA15A14
BRIGADE
The Writing Center and High School Collaboration
Kerri Mulqueen, St. John’s University
One High School Writing Center Bridges the Opportunity Gap
This presentation discusses how a student-staffed writing center has thrived
at one inner city high school and examines some of the ways in which writing
center praxis can help to bridge the opportunity gap that plagues American
K-12 education. Data drawn from interviews with high school peer tutors argues for the inclusion of writing center pedagogy in schools seeking to bridge
the opportunity gap by providing meaningful, organic learning experiences for
their students. #IWCA15N14
Michael Shirzadian, Ohio State University
“Pedagogies of Belonging”: The Writing Center and University
Acculturation in the Underprivileged High School Space
This paper examines the many partnerships between university writing centers and underprivileged high schools, situating these partnerships in the
field’s scholarship of university belonging (Julie Bosker), acculturation (Andrea
Lunsford) and the dangers of regulation (Nancy Grimm). The paper analyzes
three partnerships in particular, and includes interview material from the
founders/directors of all three: Stanford University’s “Project W.R.I.T.E.” in East
Palo Alto (Lunsford), Washington University’s partnerships with high schools in
St. Louis (Dawn Fels), and Bread Loaf’s partnership with Santa Fe Indian School
(Susan Miera). The paper argues that these partnerships carefully expose underprivileged high school students to university discourse, preparing them to
succeeds in that space once they arrive. #IWCA15O14
Jessyka Scoppetta, Amanda Greenwell, University of Saint
Joesph
Revision Isn’t Just For Papers: The Evolution of an Outreach
Program
82
This presentation will detail the evolution of an outreach program pairing college writing tutors and high school juniors, over its three distinct iterations.
Central to that evolution were changes to our writing center’s mission, opportunities and challenges of funding and logistics (timing, transportation, locations, etc.), level of writing tutor participation and leadership, shifting writing
cultures at both institutions, and programming adjustments to account for student need. We will share insights for writing center directors who are interested in forging community partnerships, including the importance of flexibility,
persistence, collaboration, and revision. #IWCA15P14
COMMONWEALTH 1
The Writing Center and the Community
Lisa Zimmerelli, Loyola University Maryland
Writing Center Service-Learning Tutor Training as High-Impact
Practice for Social Justice
This presentation blends emerging adult and identity formation theory with
Harvey Kail’s anthropological framework for tutor training (2004) in order to
elucidate service-learning tutor training as a journey and a process for social
justice. According to Kail, in tutor-training, students empathetically identify
with other students, create dependency, engage in self-discovery, and, finally,
are able to transfer learned skills to other areas of their studies. When applied
to service-learning tutor training—in which students are on this journey with
an other, an often misunderstood, feared, and disadvantaged other—and read
through the lens of emerging adult theory, Kail’s anthropological metaphor has
increased weight and symbolic power. In short, service-learning tutor training helps tutors begin to see, understand, and negotiate the myriad of differences—age, gender, race, sexuality, class—they encounter on campus and
beyond, and to see these differences as generative and dynamic. #IWCA15Q14
Andrés Forero Gómez, Universidad de los Andes
The Writing Center Goes Beyond Campus: Aiding Access to College in Underprivileged Backgrounds
This presentation aims to demonstrate how writing centers can use their resources to help underprivileged communities gain access to university programs, through the description of a project carried out with six hundred students in Bogotá, Colombia. The presentation focuses on three aspects related
to the project: the development of a blended course centered on Academic
Reading and Writing, the design and implementation of one-on-one tutoring
sessions to assist students’ individual learning needs, and an analysis of the
impact of the project on the students’ language skills. #IWCA15R14
Subrinia Bogan, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
A Helping Hand: Writing Centers and Community Outreach
Programs
Writing Centers have become known as the “best kept” secret on college campuses across the country. The same can be said for the University Writing Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but with a twist. The UWC is not
only a place where students can get help for their writing, but it is also a place
that is reaching out and helping the local community. Giving back has become
a part of what the University Writing Center does. This simple act of giving
back is something that all writing centers can participate in. #IWCA15S14
83
COMMONWEALTH 2
Multiliteracy at Play in the Writing Center
Cassandra Book, University of Louisville
(W)Centering Multiliteracy: An Unexpected Journey
This presentation explores implications of multimodality for a small liberal arts university writing center. It will describe collaborations for place and
space with a department of communication. In addition to opening a satellite location, the writing center partnered with a communication course to
develop the center’s capabilities with multimodal projects. The presentation
shows that moving from a text-based center to a multiliteracy center is not a
straightforward or linear process. Yet, evidence is emerging that demonstrates
changes in undergraduate peer consultants’ conceptions of “writing” and their
actual consulting practices. Interviews and taped sessions will be analyzed.
#IWCA15T14
James Purdy, Duquesne University
Design Thinking in the Writing Center
By considering ways in which consulting sessions might enact design thinking, this presentation argues that employing design thinking approaches in the
writing center can help writing center (r)evolve and respond to calls to be multiliteracy centers. #IWCA15U14
Matthew Rossi, Columbia University
Use Your Doodle: Grammars of Design, Making, and Motion in
the Writing Center
While dialogues around inclusion in writing centers tend to focus on helping
writers maintain ownership of their own speech, there is room to expand this
to focus toward understanding individual modes of thought. This presentation
will focus on incorporating doodles into consultations as tools for bridging modalities with visual thinkers. Participants will be presented with techniques for
using in-session doodling. We will also engage with a text visually and discuss
the different approaches we discover. #IWCA15O4
FORBES
Whose Paper Is It Anyway?: How a “Yes-And” Mindset
Connects the Writers with Their Writing
Dawn Hershberger, University of Indianapolis
For clients to be active in their own creative process, and connect with their
work so they improve as writers rather than just improving their drafts, we
must alter slightly how we conduct tutoring sessions. Borrowing the “yes-and”
idea from the world of improv, tutors should abstain from making declarations
and instead strive to understand the meaning behind a client’s perceived error. The rationale behind and techniques of this approach will segue into a
discussion of how participants could use this strategy in their writing centers in
the face of obstacles including the time constraints of sessions. #IWCA15V14
KINGS 1
Panel: Tutor Professionalization 2.0: New Issues In Tutor
Research and Teaching
Jennifer Wells, New College of Florida | Melissa Ianetta,
University of Delaware | Brian Fallon, Fashion Institute of
Technolgy
84
In 1987, John Trimbur argued that “we need to resist the temptation to professionalize peer tutors by treating them as apprentices.” Almost thirty years
later, writing centers find themselves in another debate about peer tutor professionalization, this time involving scholarship and research. This panel explores the how the current focus on undergraduate research in the writing
center influences the peer tutor experience and asks if this push is yet another
form of apprenticeship that loses sight of other key features of peer tutoring?
#IWCA15F14
KINGS 2
Panel: Constraints and Collaboration: Tutoring in and for
the STEM Disciplines
Karen Head, Peter Fontaine, Brandy Blake, Georgia Institute
of Technology
Collaborating with STEM programs can mean negotiating curricular approaches and evaluation mechanisms that are in opposition to the best practices in
the writing and communication fields. However, to help the students who seek
our assistance, we need build trust and offer to compromise with our STEM
colleagues so that, over time, we become more fully acknowledged partners
who can answer the evaluation demands for students and contribute to better overall approaches for training and evaluating students for communication
within their disciplines. To elaborate this, we will discuss the tutoring partnership between our center and our Industrial and Systems Engineering program.
#IWCA15G14
KINGS 3
Panel: Room to Grow: Crossing Disciplinary and
Language Boundaries to Meet Students’ Needs
Lisa Wolff, Noreen Lape, Asir Saeed, John Kneisley, Dickinson
College
The Writing Center at Dickinson College serves approximately half of the student body every year and offers writing tutoring in eleven languages. This fall,
we are also piloting quantitative reasoning tutoring from our Writing Center.
As our center expands, we are addressing student needs that do not fall under
the parameters of the “typical” session. Our panel will share new practices
that we are developing across language and disciplinary boundaries. By addressing the overlooked needs of these students, we can revolutionize our
ideas about what writing is and what the writing center does. #IWCA15H14
CHARTIERS
Panel: Centering Institutional Status and Scholarly Identity: An Analysis of Writing Center Administration Position
Advertisements, 2004- 2014
Sherry Wynn Perdue, Oakland University | Dana Driscoll,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania | Andrew Petrykowski,
Oakland University | Samuel Boyhtari, Oakland University
Labor issues long have presented critical challenges for many WCAs, who interrogate their “marginal” status with questions about how position type, resources, and support impact individual WCAs and WCs as well as our research
practices and production. WCAs’ professional status and institutional identity,
therefore, are central to our field’s future. If some positions afford little time
and few resources to conduct research or to engage in scholarly exchange,
WCAs will be unequally empowered to serve writers and to sustain our field.
85
We address these issues with results from a study of over 500 job ads posted
during the last decade. #IWCA15I14
TRADERS
Panel: Safe(r) Space: Reconfiguring Relationships in a
Writing Center
Jennifer Mitchell, SUNY Potsdam | Stephanie Hedge, SUNY
Potsdam | Sheryl Scales, SUNY Potsdam | Frankie Condon,
University of Waterloo
How can the writing center become a safer space for clients and tutors? This
session will describe professional development for tutors as they consider
their boundaries as tutors. The session also describes a cross-institutional collaboration to mentor first-year, multilingual, immigrant writing center clients
through a “cultural inquiry partnership.” #IWCA15J14
RIVERS
The Writing Center and Remedial Writing
Crystal Mueller, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
(r)Evolutions: The Role of the Writing Center in “Remedial”
Writing
Loop back with the writing center at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, a
public comprehensive university deliberately working to reconstruct “remedial” tutoring. The UW Oshkosh Writing Center has renamed and refocused
the role of writing tutor as Writing Mentor. Qualitative analysis of Writing
Mentors’ and writers’ reflections reveal that the new role is grounded in the
holistic advising model, perspective-taking strategies, and co-mentoring in the
performance of “college student.” #IWCA15K14
Julie Story, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
Co-requisite (r)Emediation through the Writing Center: A Pilot
(r)Evolution
In response to the mandate to improve college students’ writing skills AND
reduce their time and expense in a developmental elective college composition course, writing center personnel collaborated with writing and educational technology faculty on a pilot co-requisite remediation composition course.
This presentation will describe the origins, goals, design, implementation,
outcomes, and implications of the pilot as it evolved into a revolutionary experience in teaching, tutoring, and learning. A central focus will be the roles
of the peer and professional writing tutors at the heart of a hybrid pedagogy:
classroom writing instruction, peer and professional tutoring, and educational
technology. #IWCA15L14
Adam Pellegrini, Columbia School of Social Work
Motivational Interviewing and (Re)structuring Discovery in
Social Work Writing Centers
Structure and discovery form a constant tension in writing center sessions,
with the need to steer towards concrete learning outcomes, and the conviction that students should steer. This paper draws from the therapeutic method of motivational interviewing to explore how a writing center situated in a
social work school might utilize its academic environment—the curriculum,
students, and center staff—for pedagogical guidance. The complex positioning of practitioner guidelines within motivational interviewing is posed as
86
a useful parallel for a writing consultant’s role in scaffolding a student-led
session. Finally, the paper promotes an ecological approach to developing
discipline-specific centers. #IWCA15M14
Session 15
BALLROOM 1
Workshop: Plagiarism, the Important Conversation: Understanding the Conversation Around Academic Integrity
Deryn Verity, Pennsylvania State University
International first-year students at American universities are often surprised
by the intensity and extent of the conversations that writing instructors and
tutors engage them in regarding the importance of academic integrity. This
workshop will introduce and practice three ways of structuring that conversation so that it makes sense to this target population. The presenter works
with writing tutors who themselves are international students, so the strategies presented in this workshop are designed to increase understanding and
participation by both tutor and tutee. #IWCA15B15
BALLROOM 2
Workshop: A (r)Evolution for Writing Center Theory
Graham Stowe, University of South Carolina | Brandy Grabow,
North Carolina State University
The intensely local identity of writing centers often presents a challenge to
the theorizing of writing center work. To create a generalized theory of writing
center work that will not get mired down by local institutional practices, we
propose a Levinasian framework. Levinas’s ethics provides the freedom to develop administrative perspectives and pedagogical practices that allow for the
infinite variations of local situations. This workshop will consist of a directed
writing to demonstrate a Levinasian administrative practice and an interactive
activity exploring new approaches to the tutorial session. #IWCA15C15
BALLROOM 3
Roundtable: Be Careful What You Wish For... You Just
Might Get It: Supporting Growth and Encouraging Community in the Writing Center
Leslie Valley, Old Dominion University/Eastern Kentucky
University | Trenia Napier, Eastern Kentucky University
While most writing centers acknowledge the need and advocate for increased
funding for larger staffs, increased staff sizes simultaneously accommodate
a variety of services while providing challenges for training, supervision, and
community building. In this roundtable, presenters will first discuss the advantages and challenges of overseeing a large student staff in their own institutional context and the ways they have tried to encourage and offer suggestions for developing a strong sense of community. Presenters will then open
up the discussion, posing questions of sustainability, training, and community
and encouraging presenters to offer insights and suggestions of their own.
#IWCA15D15
87
BALLROOM 4
Roundtable: The Evolution and Future of Technology in
Writing Centers
Adam Wagner, Kat Meakem, Sam Franklin, Cedarville
University
Over the past 30 years, technology usage in writing centers has evolved reaching new levels of innovation and progress. Online resources and methods like
informational videos, online scheduling, interactive tutorials, digital assessment surveys, and blogs have all adapted to a changing technological environment. Discussing the evolution of technology will benefit the writing center
community, by noting current progress and exploring the uncharted potential
of new technological horizons. #IWCA15E15
BOARDROOM
Special Interest Group: LGBTQ
Jay Sloan, Kent State University at Stark | Andrew Rihn, Stark
State College | Trixie Smith, Michigan State University | Harry
Denny, Purdue University
Intended to help writing centers foster an academic culture inclusive of LGBTQ
communities, the LGBTQ SIG hopes to be a venue for developing and pursuing “activist” agendas in writing center scholarship and pedagogy. We plan to
discuss events affecting the SIG on a national level, as well as engage in roundtable discussion of relevant local topics. The LGBTQ SIG invites all interested
parties to attend. #IWCA15A15
BRIGADE
Online and Digital Revolutions in Writing Center Spaces
Jacqueline Kauza, Jessica Miller, Eastern Michigan University
A Question of Context: When to Use Different Online Consultation Models?
The technological revolution has spurred the evolution of online writing center
practice. Debate exists as to whether asynchronous or synchronous online
consultation best supports student writers and the writing center mission.
To begin creating a more nuanced understanding of online consultation, research conducted amongst consultants at two institutions examined different
contexts in which different online consultation models might be more or less
effective. Areas of inquiry included how well different models facilitated writing center goals; how well different models worked both technologically and in
different composition scenarios; and which student populations seemed best
supported by different online consultation models. #IWCA15N15
Kate Warrington, Western Governors University
Reinventing an Online Writing Center: Intersections Between
the Mission Statement, Space, and Measurable Data
This paper examines the importance, when building a writing center, of a clearly articulated mission statement that considers the affordances of the space as
well as the measurable data available to assess the efficacy of the mission. The
linkage between mission, space, and data will be explored in the context of the
reinvention of an online writing center at a large, public non-profit university.
Supported by research in business and higher education, this paper will show
that connecting mission, space, and data creates a well-defined organizational
culture and increases the probability of effectively embodying the mission in
practice. #IWCA15O15
88
Landon Berry, Brandy Dieterle, University of Central Florida
(r)Evolutionizing Space: The Effects of Physical and Digital
Space on Group Consultation Dynamics
This presentation discusses the results of a study that observed how space
can foster collaborative and multimodal practices within a specially designed
Digital Workspace. Through video analysis and stimulated recall interviews,
we identified multiple ways that tutors and tutees were appropriating and (r)
evolutionizing both the physical space and tools within the Digital Workspace.
The results highlight the importance of analyzing physical space as a technology, and suggest new avenues for tutor training in writing centers that seek to
implement multiliteracy center initiatives. #IWCA15P15
COMMONWEALTH 1
The Writing Center & the Arts
Steven Corbett, George Mason University
Perform, Tutor, Revolutionize: Writing Centers and the Performing and Visual Arts
The speaker will draw on his substantial experiences founding and directing
performing arts writing centers and tutorial programs, and editing collections
on writing in the performing and visual arts (PVA) to offer some of the challenges and opportunities involved in the tutoring of writing in the PVA. The
PVA have much to offer writing center studies in terms of process, creativity,
design, delivery, and habits of mind (and body). Come join an interactive performance designed to enact some of the ways tutoring in the PVA can revolutionize the ways we tutor all students of writing. #IWCA15Q15
Bruce Kovanen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
Carly Taylor, Knox College
The Writer’s Workshop: Evolving Relationships between
Writing Centers and Creative Writing Departments
Through a new connection with a creative writing department, the writing
center at a liberal arts college reimagined the services that they offered. The
newfound Writer’s Workshop seeks to connect writing consultants with creative writers, in addition to the other academic writers that consultants see.
Of course, the partnership is not without its own challenges, but, as the speakers will attest, there is enormous possibility for connection and growth. The
speakers will provide an outline for how other centers can incorporate creative
writing departments into their work, and how writing centers can seek collaboration and connection through writing consultant knowledge. #IWCA15R15
Helen Raica-Klotz, Chris Giroux, Saginaw Valley State
University
“Often Courageous, Sometimes Ridiculous, Always Strange”:
One Writing Center’s Story of Collaboration with the Visual and
Creative Arts
This presentation will discuss Saginaw Valley State University Writing Center’s
various art and creative writing projects developed over the past few years.
We will explore how these collaborations address the needs of targeted
groups, allowing the Writing Center to engage in writing with populations who
are often underserved by our Center. In addition, rather than merely becoming a sponsor of the arts, we are able to use the arts as a way to promote
writing and strengthen our presence on campus and in the community. Finally,
89
all of these projects provide rich professional development opportunities for
our tutors. #IWCA15S15
COMMONWEALTH 2
Exploring Revolutions Between the Writing Center and
the Classroom
Dana Driscoll, Paige Brockway, Oakland University
Expectations and Transitions: Embedded Writing Specialists as
Bridges to the University for Basic Writing Students
At our university, writing center tutors are embedded in first-year basic writing
courses in order to help prepare developmental writers for college-level writing and act as liaisons between the center and the classroom. Through tutor
reflection and survey data, we have found that these embedded tutors also
play multiple roles in helping students adjust to college life as a whole. Our
presentation explores the dual roles embedded tutors facilitate by examining
the relationships between faculty, tutors’, and students’ expectations and perceptions about embedded writing tutors. Our presentation specifically focuses on the role that EWSs play in helping students make the transition to college-level literacy and transfer literacy skills to college settings. #IWCA15U15
Elizabeth Powers, University of Maine at Augusta
Embeddedness, Mobility, and the Writing Tutor in Digital &
Multi-Platform Classrooms
This presentation examines embedded writing tutor (or, writing fellow) programs within the changing spaces of twenty-first century education. Course
instruction and learning communities tend to occupy multiple spaces, both
online and in person. In this climate, embedded tutors must (r)Evolve and
re-evaluate the spaces and roles they occupy. The presenter will share preliminary findings from a qualitative study of one embedded writing program,
where the shifts between spaces is prominent because of the variety of instructional modes used in the participating courses. #IWCA15V15
KINGS 2
Panel: Visual Communication in the Writing Center:
Research and Application
Joanna Wolfe, Nisha Shanmugaraj, Juliann Reineke, Carnegie
Mellon University
Visual literacy is becoming increasingly important to professional success, yet
communication centers often ignore or under-theorize visual communication.
This panel will discuss how our communication center has evolved to support
visual communication in three contexts: creating effective PowerPoint presentations, designing scientific posters, and supporting basic data visualizations.
Each speaker will present research and design principles relevant to their topic. We will also discuss how tutors can adapt these principles in a tutorial to
support student learning. #IWCA15G15
KINGS 3
Panel: Local and Global (r)Evolutions: Writing Center Partnerships on Campus, in our City, and in Central America
Tara Friedman, Jayne Thompson, Patricia Dyer, Widener
University
The 1999 report of the Kellogg Commission, Returning to Our Roots: The En90
gaged Institution, helped refocus our mission of engagement in Higher Education as “a commitment to sharing and reciprocity . . . [with] envisions [of]
partnerships, two-way streets defined by mutual respect” (9). Keeping this
ideal in mind, we as Writing Center faculty wondered: In what ways are we
expanding our philosophy outward to campus, our city, and through international partnerships? Presenter 1 will begin with a discussion of campus partnerships. Presenter 2 will provide examples of recent community initiatives.
Presenter 3 will expand the evolution of engagement to the international spectrum. #IWCA15H15
Panel: Talkin’ ‘Bout a (r)Evolution: Dismantling Silos on
Campus
TRADERS
Misty Knight, Felicia Shearer, Deah Atherton, Crystal Conzo,
Heather Hockenberry, Shippensburg University
The battle of ever-increasing demands and ever-decreasing funds has forced
departments to emerge from their silos and forge alliances with other departments to provide much needed services to students. This panel will explore
the way in which a writing center can serve as a model for cross-disciplinary
assistance to Communication Studies. Panelists will discuss the motivation for
collaboration, standards that cross disciplines, tutor training techniques, the
impact that cross-disciplinary tutoring has on the tutors, and strategies for developing collaborative programs with other departments. #IWCA15J15
RIVERS
Race & The Writing Center
Wonderful Faison, Sarah O’Brien, Michigan State University
What Makes a Space Raced?: Exploring Whiteness in the
Writing Center
This presentation discusses the results of a case study conducted at the Writing Center@Michigan State which shows (1) how a writing center becomes a
raced space; (2) how this racialization of the Michigan State University (MSU)
Writing Center space, which is meant to serve different people from varying
cultural and linguistic backgrounds can, in fact, exclude the very people the
center is meant to serve, and (3) how centers can begin to disrupt the visual
and cultural representations of the writing center as a historically White space.
#IWCA15K15
Sherita Roundtree, Ohio State University
Noise Activism: African American Students’ Social Positions
and Access in the Writing Center
For the purposes of this presentation, I will use a Black feminist critique to
redefine Elizabeth Boquet’s (2002) concept of “noise” in order to account for
degrees of disciplined resistance by African American students in spaces that
have worked to accommodate, not facilitate and support their needs. As I define it, noise is a way of speaking back to and, at times, disrupting the narrative
that works to oppress and alienate their situated knowledges. This presentation will examine the ways in which writing center administrators and tutors
can acknowledge the needs of African American students by utilizing noise
activism. #IWCA15M15
91
Featured Session
BRICOLAGE THEATER
The Theater is located at 937 Liberty Avenue. Transportation is on your own. A walking group will meet in the
Wyndham lobby and depart at 6:00pm.
92
THE PEER REVIEW
A JOURNAL FOR WRITING CENTER
PRACTITIONERS
(n): a fully online, open-access, multimodal and
multilingual webtext for the promotion of
scholarship by graduate, undergraduate, and high
school practitioners and their collaborators
(v): to extend the sponsorship continuum via
collaboration, mentorship, and multi-tiered
leadership, thereby sustaining writing center
researchers as they move throughout their
professional lives
Issue One: (R)evolutions and Revisions:
From Presentation to Publication
Submission deadline: January 15, 2016
thepeerreview-iwca.org
An International Writing Centers Association Publication
WCJ
writingcenterjour nal.org
Notes
Notes

Program Chair for the 2015 IWCA Conference

Transcription

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