Sustenance and Sustainability in the Writing Center
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Saturday, March 31, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm
Proposals due by November 23, 2006
Keynote Speaker: Derek Owens

Conference Theme
Writing centers require different kinds of sustenance–material, visionary, intellectual, and communal. In turn, writing centers offer sustenance to students, teachers, and administrators across the curriculum, as well as to those working within the center itself. But how do we, as writing center administrators, staff, and tutors, achieve those levels of sustenance and sustainability? This year’s theme asks us to imagine the variety of ways that writing centers nourish, adapt, and grow, to sustain themselves across generations of administrators, staff, tutors, and the ever-changing student population, as well as shifting institutional climates and pressures. As writing center professionals, we face the challenge of adapting to meet the needs of our institutions and students, and this challenge often inspires us to explore new areas of intellectual inquiry and to renew our commitment to the writing center’s larger goals.

We invite proposals that explore the many obvious and hidden ways that writing center professionals renew, reshape, redefine, and re-imagine writing center work. Proposals for individual presentations, panel presentations, roundtable discussions, and interactive workshops will all be considered. Presenters may address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

*How do we form and sustain relationships with other communities, on and off campus?
*How do we continue to sustain writing centers in the face of budgetary cuts and political changes?
*How do changes in student demographics, calls for gen-ed reform, new technologies, and relationships with other programs on campus, such as WAC and ESL, inspire us to re-imagine our roles on campus?
*As administrators, how do we sustain or renew our intellectual commitment to the writing center and its vision(s)?
*As experienced tutors, how do we mentor and inspire novice tutors?
*As tutors, how do we find sustenance from our experiences in the writing center?
*As faculty, how do we nourish research and creativity?
*How do the transitions and regenerations we experience in the writing center give rise to new perspectives and/or expertise?

This year we would like to continue to reach out to community college and high school writing centers in order to include more voices and perspectives in our ongoing discussion. We also highly encourage tutors and first-time presenters to send in proposals. Your proposed panel, discussion, presentation, or workshop should actively involve the audience. In addition to interactive panels, we invite proposals that present original scholarship, such as presentations developed for courses or for future publication.

Proposal Guidelines
In order to allow for broad participation, individual papers will be limited to 15 minutes and panel presentations will be limited to 75 minutes.

Please include the following information in your proposal:

*Proposer‚s name, position (i.e. tutor, director, etc), institution, institutional or home address, telephone number, and email address
*Presenters‚ names with title and contact information, as above
*Title of presentation, one-page description of presentation, and a 75-word abstract for inclusion in the conference program
*Type of session (panel presentation, roundtable discussion, individual presentation, interactive workshop)
*Specific audiovisual and technical requests

Proposal Submission
Submit your proposal by November 23, 2006, either electronically or by mail. http://www.newca-conference.com/