Writing Center work is continuously recast by ever-changing policies in higher education, innovations in technology, outsourced alternatives to student services, increased diversity of student populations, and progressions in writing center praxis. With the tides, we must be willing to shift within our philosophies and our policies in order to best support the communities with whom we work.

For our 2012 International Writing Centers Association conference in San Diego, we invite you to consider the centers where you work and write: What lines do you draw? How do those lines shift? How do shifting lines provide a chance for new definitions of yourselves and your work? How do the disappearing lines of work that you thought finished reappear as issues you must revisit and re-vision? How can the Writing Center community adapt to the tide so that it is second nature for us to live with the shifting sands? And how do we encourage others within our institutions to shore up student writing for/in the 21st century?

The 2012 conference will have 75-minute concurrent sessions from Thursday morning until late Saturday afternoon. Special Interest Groups and board meetings can be scheduled for Thursday and Friday evenings for business meetings.

Please submit your proposals by April 23, 2012. May 14, 2012 (extended deadline!)

Conference Website: http://www.socalwritingcenters.org/iwca2012/index.html

Download IWCA Conference Notes #3 here.

Enjoy!

An Interview with Ben Rafoth on Writing Center Research, Dissertations, and Job Opportunities

By: Rebecca Day Babcock, University of Texas of the Permian Basin

Ben Rafoth has directed the writing center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for the past 20 years, and he currently directs the graduate program in Composition and TESOL there. He has edited A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One and ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors, with Shanti Bruce. Rafoth served as the Treasurer of the International Writing Centers Association, and in 2002 he was awarded the Ron Maxwell Award from the National Conference of Peer Tutoring in Writing, one of the highest honors in the writing center world. Rafoth is one of the original founders of the writing center movement, and a mentor of writing center researchers, theorists and practitioners. I wanted to speak more in depth about current issues in writing center scholarship, so I interviewed him in his office adjacent to the writing center on IUP’s campus.

Interviewer: Thanks for agreeing to speak with me today. I would like to begin our talk with the topic of research. What, in your opinion, are the most interesting or promising areas of inquiry right now, either current or potential, in the field of writing center research?

Prof. Ben Rafoth: Oh, that’s a good question. Well, I think that one is online tutoring, and how we can make use of the available technology in ways that are really sound pedagogically, and not just quick or easy or efficient or cheap. And you know, there are definitely movements in that direction, for example, with Smarthinking [1]. I think a lot of schools now have started to eye Smarthinking as an alternative to their writing centers, because they see it as a lot more cost-effective, but the real question is not whether or not it’s more cost-effective, but whether it’s any better or at least as good. So, I think one area of research would be to see whether these commercial ventures are really effective in helping students. I think another thing related to that is to figure out just exactly what these online tutoring sites are doing. I’ve talked a little bit about it with someone who works for them and I think there’s quite a bit to be done just describing what it is that they do, and then at some point, it would be good to write up a formal descriptive study along those lines [2].”

Read the full interview at Praxis: A Writing Center Journal website: http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis/?q=node/292

About the photo on the front page: Laura Greenfield (Mount Holyoke College), Shanti Bruce (Nova Southeastern University), and work collaboratively at the European Writing Center Association Conference in Freiburg, Germany in June 2008.

Join Jared Featherstone and members of his writing center staff for the first spring 2011 IWCA Talk Time. Jared and staff will discuss the conception and production of their writing center music video “We Think You’re Gonna Like It Here,” along with the effects of having their music video go viral within the James Madison University campus community. View the music video, along with an article in which Jared and staff discuss the piece, below.

IWCA Talk Times are synchronous Wimba-based audio/video discussions of a focused topic relevant to writing center work. They are hosted in Wimba at St. Johns University, courtesy of Harry Denny, IWCA Treasurer. Instructions for logging in to Wimba are available by contacting the IWCA Web Editor at iwca.webeditor@gmail.com .

Date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Time: 1:00-2:00 Eastern (12 Central, 11 Mountain, 10 Pacific)

We Really Like It Here

Our music video went viral. It literally shot up the billboard charts of the university administration, bringing praise from deans, administrators, and directors, some of whom I’d never met. The day I emailed the link to the WCenter and posted the video on our homepage, our center’s website traffic nearly doubled. I had been a bit reluctant to send this out to colleagues beyond James Madison University because we saw it as an advertisement for JMU students. Our Learning Center’s director, Kurt Schick, pushed me to send this creation out to a broad audience, and we soon heard the sound of virtual applause.

I had no idea our center could gain ground by producing an adaptation of a musical. Although this project was fun, it remained rather low in the mix of our Center’s work. The file sat dormant on my hard drive for over a month. The narrow vision of routine and daily maintenance did not allow me to see the video’s potential. It was only after I heard the reaction of others that I realized what we had done. Writing center scholarship has noted the value of these “Trickster moments” that can lead us to “a shape-shifting writing center practice, one that is not easily pinned down” (Geller, Eodice, Condon, Carroll, & Boquet, 2007).

Now I have my own example, one that reflects our practice and sets the tone for the center we are becoming.

Our center is somewhat unique in its personnel structure. We have faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates all tutoring in the center and working on projects together. We even eat lunch together. We are colleagues.  The peer tutors have a regular development meeting in which they discuss tutoring practice and theory.  They are also invited to attend the weekly UWC faculty meeting, develop new online resources for the center, co-present with us at conferences, and conduct in-class workshops. I try to offer them an active role in almost every aspect of our Center’s work and allow them to develop and follow through on their own ideas. The success of this video project reminded me that I need to look to my talented staff to help determine the future of our center. ―Jared Featherstone, Coordinator

Peer tutor becomes lyricist/director

I’m a peer writing tutor and a writing and rhetoric major. But I used to be a piano performance major. When I signed on to work at the University Writing Center, I couldn’t have foreseen my passion for music mixing with my tutoring job—but it did.

The idea for our writing center commercial grew out of one of our weekly peer tutor development meetings. A fellow tutor excitedly told us about a video she had recently stumbled across. It’s a writing center musical parody of Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero.” We watched it, and everyone laughed. It had a strong impact on me, though: I really wanted to make a music video for our writing center. I saw a music video as the perfect way to combine my music and writing talents, and to have the writing center collaborate with my musician friends from around campus.

I immediately started research to find a song we could parody to make a music video for our writing center. Listening to the Annie soundtrack, I first considered creating a song about citations: “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” could be rewritten as “You’ll Never Hit the Press Without a Style.”

At first, I was thinking that our video would be informative about writing center theory and practice; I envisioned it being used by tutor training classes and featured on the “peer tutor corner” of our website, a space where we want to share helpful resources for peer tutors. Then it occurred to me that there was a larger audience we could try to reach: the student body. We could make a commercial for the writing center—a musical commercial. Soon after this revelation, I decided that “I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here” from Annie would be the perfect song to parody.

I started drafting a script right away. I checked out the score to Annie from the music library and rewrote the lyrics line by line. I wanted to make the commercial funny and over-the-top but still true to the values held by the writing center. The writing center presented in our video needed to highlight our inviting, collaborative environment. So I imagined a first-time visitor being welcomed through song by enthusiastic tutors. The writer would work briefly with a tutor and then be ushered off to start writing. Within an hour, I had written almost the whole script.

Draft in hand, I took the score and went to the music building. For three hours, I sat at a grand piano with my laptop and used GarageBand to record myself—first playing the accompaniment part, and then singing the vocals. I had so much fun and couldn’t wait to share my creation with my writing center colleagues.

I brought my laptop to the next development meeting and played my demo for everyone. They smiled and laughed; their reactions provided me with some much-needed validation. I had worried that my parody was a dumb idea, and I was so glad to know that the others liked it. We made one revision to my “draft”: the writer’s paper originally was due in a few days, but we changed this to four hours to create more urgency. I played my demo for Jared, the UWC coordinator, and other members of the professional staff—everyone seemed excited and encouraged me to make my demo into a reality.

We then began the long and complicated process of making the video. So many aspects had to come together: we needed singers and actors and sound and video experts. Fortunately, we had some of these experts in our center. Jared volunteered do the sound recording and Martin, a peer tutor, offered his video expertise. I emailed a few singer friends and asked if they wanted to star in the video. I also got a small band of music majors together to record the background music. We made the background track first, me at the piano. Then we attempted to record the vocals with “real” singers in the two lead roles and some brave faculty and peer tutors singing the chorus part. This first attempt didn’t sound peppy enough—the style and energy didn’t fulfill my vision for the project.

We decided to try again with more qualified singers: nearly the entire cast of a recent student-run musical. These results were much better, as you can hear in the final product. A few days later, we rounded up a handful of these music theater majors, plus Andrea, a peer tutor, and myself, and shot the video in the center. It took about an hour and ten minutes to capture fifteen minutes of video. Martin and I edited the video that night. It took four hours to line up the lip-synced video with the final soundtrack and put all the best takes together, cutting the fifteen minutes down to two minutes and 38 seconds.

Making this video was quite an experience. The biggest challenge was organization, getting these people in this place at this time. I had to be really flexible since we had a limited amount of time to achieve the best result possible. Despite these organizational challenges, bringing together my music and writing was truly rewarding. And it was great to see writing center folks collaborating with music and theater folks.

I’m really excited about the result. We’ve tracked over 1,400 views so far! I think the video presents a positive message about our writing center. People on campus are talking about it and sharing and, unsuccessfully (we hope), trying to get the song out of their heads. ―Paul Loman, Peer tutor

Peer tutor becomes actress

One afternoon, Paul strolled into our weekly peer tutor meeting and confessed how he spent his snow day. Embarrassed, he told us he wrote a song about the Writing Center to the tune of a number from Annie, the musical. After some tutors and I urged him to share, he eventually caved and played his recording of the song. I knew that Paul was musically inclined and a great piano player, but this was impressive! We encouraged him to continue to develop this project. Christina Wulf, a UWC graduate assistant who led our peer-tutor meetings, suggested that Paul make it into a commercial by teaming up with others in the writing center, making use of tutors’ various talents. Paul asked for volunteers and assigned roles.

I volunteered to be one of the singing tutors in the video. The song was catchy, so the lyrics were easy to pick up. Paul walked us through the set-up of each scene, and then we briefly practiced. Each scene mirrored a fun and overly dramatized rendition of our writing center reality. Shortly after practicing, we began recording. Martin filmed each scene a few times until we said our lines right or got into our marked places on time. This was very much a group effort; each person contributed his or her talent to work toward the same goal.

Though I’m not gleefully singing during daily writing center sessions, this video connects to my real-life role as a tutor. This video portrays the tutors as welcoming and supportive towards students. The main tutor’s role in the session was to encourage and guide the stressed-out student in his writing endeavor. Similarly, as a tutor, I try to make students feel welcome and comfortable in a session, especially since—similar to the student in the video—students often enter a session feeling overwhelmed about assignment requirements and stressed about meeting their deadline.

Minus the dramatic singing, the writing center commercial quite accurately portrays what many sessions look like: encouraging students in their writing, which, in turn, equips students with confidence to face the challenges they may encounter in the writing process. ―Andrea Smith, Peer tutor

WC Coordinator becomes music producer

When I became the Coordinator for the University Writing Center at James Madison University, I, like Paul, did not foresee the intersection of my music career with my teaching life. The years I spent playing in rock bands seemed like a separate universe. When Paul brought his music theater commercial to our writing center, he opened the door for me to bring my music experience to the center.  Hearing how great his arrangement and lyrics were, I told him the song deserved full studio production.

I packed up the microphones, stands, cables, and laptop from my home studio and met Paul and the other musicians in a music classroom one evening for a recording session. I set up the microphones and software while Paul and the instrumentalists rehearsed the arrangement of the song. The players listened back to the first take and decided upon some changes. We altered the mic locations and recorded a few more takes until we had at least two versions everyone approved of. We recorded some vocal tracks, too, but we were running out of time before another group had to use the room. We decided that we might have to set up another recording session.

The second recording session involved the music theater cast Paul recruited.  We ran through several takes that sounded great except that the dynamic range of these vocalists made it difficult to get the recording level just right. Just when I thought they weren’t going to get any louder, they did, distorting the track and adding to my existing ear damage through the headphones. I had to practice moving the levels around while they were singing. Revise, revise, revise. Eventually, we all got it right.

Looking back on this video production process, I see that the roles of UWC Coordinator and music producer are alike in many ways.  The producer is not typically the star, but he or she has the power to make the musicians into stars. The producer has an overview of the project each individual musician might not get to see because he or she is focused on developing as a player.  From the control booth, the producer not only hears how good a musician sounds, but how good a musician could sound. He hears potential and possibility. He hears when a song needs a lead guitar part or some tambourine. Musicians become better than they realized possible, and the producer learns something from each musician he works with.

The producer also knows that mistakes are not always mistakes.  When the musician intentionally or unintentionally deviates from the rehearsed parts or conventions, the result is often better than what everyone expected to hear. A good producer has to know when to embrace fortunate accidents and welcome the Trickster. I had no plan to make a music video to advertise our center and no idea how effectively a video could communicate the atmosphere of our center. ―Jared Featherstone, Coordinator

Peer Tutor becomes videographer

As we were talking about Writing Center publicity ideas at our weekly meetings, we always mentioned doing a video, but it took awhile before a concrete concept took hold. Initially, I came up with a concept that ripped off a 5 Hour Energy commercial, while Paul, inspired by YouTube, suggested that we do a music video. Paul’s idea was better (and didn’t implicitly endorse 5 Hour Energy’s annoying commercials) so off we went.

I’d never done a video where lip-syncing was necessary, so instead of doing some research like a reasonable human being, I just guessed at how we could do it: have the actors sing along with the song while it played in the room, then mute all the audio from the footage, dub the song back in and wiggle the clips around until they lined up. This meant that we’d have to fit every clip precisely together while editing. Paul agreed with this method. Other than coming up with that, I didn’t do a whole lot until the actual day that we filmed.

Equipped with an out-of-date, cheap Sony camcorder and an unreliable tripod, I showed up to the Writing Center and met all the actors I was about to annoy the hell out of. For those of you who have never acted in a video, it involves a lot of repetition. By the end of the shoot I was as tired of asking people to “do it one more time…again” as they were of hearing it. The idea is to get as much film from as many different angles as possible to make it easier to edit later.

Anyway, we finished all of the shooting in a couple of hours. Paul and I went down to a video editing lab later that night and spent a few hours piecing it together. We were using relatively primitive editing software—iMovie—so it was painstaking to get the song to line up properly with the footage. About 2/3rds of the way through, we began to run out of time (the labs at JMU close at midnight) and from experience I knew that it’d take awhile to save everything. Paul told me he’d try to finish it himself, but I didn’t believe him. To my surprise, the next morning he told me he’d stayed up until four a.m. and finished editing the video.

Viewing the finished result and knowing what I know now about videography, there are a few things I’d do differently. For one, the video’s too dark, especially for the mood. I didn’t have access to or knowledge about proper lighting gear at the time, but doing something as simple as bringing in some floor lamps from my apartment would’ve helped.

Second, my camera had Steady Shot on the entire time. Steady Shot is a feature that autocorrects for shaking (to reduce the “Blair Witch” effect). This was a problem because Steady Shot assumes most camera movement is unintentional, so whenever I adjusted the camera, it created a jerky countermotion. I did not learn about this until the following semester, so I spent a brief amount of time blaming the tripod. Anyway, Steady Shot rendered a few clips unusable because they shook too much, and in a couple of cases we had to use a shaky clip anyway because there was no suitable alternate footage.

But overall I’ve been pleased with the feedback on this video. Oddly enough, some people have said they “recognized” me, even though I never appear on-screen. ―Martin Steger, Peer tutor

Writing Center becomes creative community

The contributions of the tutors to this project and their reflections on the process say a lot about the nature of our writing center. Paul’s vision revolved around the idea of giving a warm welcome to anyone who arrives seeking our help. Andrea, too, was thinking of this nurturing role of the writing center, the way we seek to make people feel at home in our space and to encourage their writing efforts. Students arrive stressed out and unconfident about their writing and perhaps even about themselves generally. If we do things right, we’ll not only lighten the mood, we’ll change a student’s view of herself as a writer, even if this change is incremental. In our video, the student starts off chattering nervously about his assignment but ends up singing.

Another central idea that surfaced again and again in this project was process. We are a process-focused center, and the tutors’ approach to this project shows it. Paul’s brainstorming period of scrolling through his iPod and evaluating possibilities, then bringing his idea to the group for feedback, mirrors the brainstorming sessions that happen in our daily consultations. Martin’s self-evaluation of his editing and filming process shows a perspective that goes beyond any specific project to the craft itself, applying experiential knowledge from one project to another.

A final recurring theme that I see is the way we all value collaboration. Paul, Andrea, and Martin all mentioned the development meetings as a place to workshop ideas with their peers. As the project moved forward, the video production involved several layers of collaborative work. I initially had some mixed feelings about bringing in singers and actors who were not UWC employees, but I realized that having the writing center staff collaborate with a group of music and theater students was a unique opportunity. The singers and actors learned something about writing center work, and the writing center staff learned something about performance.

Considering the results of this video project and thinking about the roles of producer and coordinator, I can see the type of leader I want to be at the writing center. I want to nurture the strengths of my tutors and encourage interdisciplinary thinking. I want to offer opportunities for collaboration. I don’t want tutors to compartmentalize their writing center life in a way that blocks out other interests and abilities. I don’t want anyone to check his or her creativity at the Center’s door, including me. ―Jared Featherstone, Coordinator

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Unfortunate Writer
by Laura Kay, Wittenberg University

When I was originally approached to create promotional films for the Wittenberg Writing Center, my initial idea was to simply make videos that were straightforward, to the point, and filled with every writing center fact possible. What I did not have in mind was a five-part Sherlock Holmes mystery complete with period costumes, a scheming murderess, a dead body in the English department wing, and a fictional, anti-writing center society known as the Staples.

The amount of preparation that went into making these installments was extensive. The first and most important step in the process was to select what information needed to be conveyed in each segment. In order to make these promotional films accessible for incoming students as well as current students, I tried to find a balance between providing basic information about the center and debunking some writing center myths that exist on our campus (perhaps the most widely accepted myth here at Wittenberg is the image of the Writing Center as a room full of English majors, correcting grammatical errors). Once I had the framework developed, the fun part came: creating a murder mystery for our Sherlock Holmes to solve that would lead him straight to the Writing Center. Then came the task of gathering a group of students who would be willing to spend some of their Saturdays as actors in each installment, as well as finding costumes, props, and filming locations.

My ultimate goal for these films was to find a balance between humor, plot, and information. While we were working on each segment, we focused a lot on what we could do to make our audience laugh. Most of the humor stemmed from our Sherlock Holmes, who had a knack for physical comedy as well as accents. Our hope was to create something silly enough so that our audience would almost forget they were watching a promotional film for the Writing Center.

Despite extensive footage of botched lines, explosive laughter, and other blunders, we did not lose sight of our primary objective. We made sure that the information presented was not convoluted or too buried within the plot. We understood from the very beginning that what we were doing was meant to provide students with a more entertaining way to learn about one of our campus’s most important resources.

Overall, the films had a positive effect. Once they were finished, we premiered one segment a week. We sent each installment out in an email to the student body, and posted them on our website and Facebook. Some professors showed the films in class, again providing students with a more relaxed way to learn about the Writing Center. Making these films turned out to be quite the endeavor, but I believe that their effect was a very important one: we were able to promote the Writing Center in a way that was fun and very accessible to the student body.

Wittenberg University Writing Center’s short film can be viewed at http://www5.wittenberg.edu/administration/writingcenter/staff.html .

Some of Dilek’s international colleagues said, Dilek “possesses a rare sense of vision for the future of international Writing Center development, and since her doctoral program in 1975 she has drawn on this long-term perspective to inspire colleagues and foster a spirit of collaboration that transcends national and cultural borders.”  Moreover, as Dr. Anna Challenger wrote, “Dilek Tokay has served the most crucial role in helping EWCA to grow, to evolve, and to reach its current stable status as an organization. Without her major contributions, this organization would certainly not be what it is today–a flourishing Regional Affiliate of IWCA.”  We agree.

Therefore, the Muriel Harris Award Committee, on behalf of the International Writing Centers Association, gave Dilek Tokay a special award in recognition of Her Sustained Dedication to the European Writing Centers Association on November 5, 2010 at the IWCA Conference in Baltimore, MD.

–Byron Stay

IWCA Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award
presented to Leigh Ryan by Al DeCiccio and the MHOSA Committee
at the IWCA/NCPTW Conference
November 6, 2010

When I received the Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award three years ago in Houston, I was completely surprised—as I think this year’s recipient will be. At the same time, I was humbled and overjoyed to receive that award. It is my favorite piece of hardware, and it hangs between important artifacts in my office—like the photographs of the Red Sox championships in 2004 and 2007. It is a wonderfully affirming award, because a whole community continues to value Mickey Harris’ work and acknowledges the value of your own contributions. I am very proud to have been a recipient.

You may read a little about the award in a short piece our committee wrote for the Writing Lab Newsletter (34.7; 6-7). I will offer today just a few words of context about it before I present this year’s recipient. As has been palpably evident during the past two days, writing centers enjoy strong community and growing scholarship. However, these resources did not and could not come into existence without the work of servant leaders—a phrase coined by Robert Greenleaf in Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Servant leaders have these traits:

• They listen;
• They are empathetic;
• They heal;
• They are aware;
• They persuade;
• They conceptualize;
• They are stewards;
• They are committed to the growth of others; and
• They are community builders.

As we all know, the career of Muriel Harris exemplifies this pattern of servant leadership, as it already had when the Writing Centers Association membership presented to Mickey its Outstanding Service Award in 1984. (Soon afterwards, in one of those moves that mark the writing center community’s warmth, the Association changed the name of the award to the more fitting Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award.) Other exemplary servant leaders who received this award include Joyce Kinkead, Jeanette Harris, Jeanne Simpson, Lady Falls Brown, Byron Stay, and Pam Childers. (Please join me in acknowledging these servant leaders now.) As the nominations for the award increased, the way in which the recipients were selected had to change. A committee of past award recipients, now supplemented by a graduate student and a member of the IWCA Board, deliberates and presents its recommendation to the IWCA President and, as is happening right now, to all of you. (In addition to those I cited earlier who served on this year’s committee, please acknowledge Sam Van Horne and Valerie Balester, who were the graduate student and Board representatives, respectively, on this year’s committee.)
All of the candidates nominated for this year’s award are servant leaders, and I expect them all to receive this award one day. Now, however, it is time to recognize this year’s servant leader. As the person who nominated this year’s award winner wrote, “service to [the] local, regional, and international writing center communities make [our recipient] truly deserving of this award. Across the globe, writing centers have benefited from [the recipient’s] leadership, mentorship, and collaboration.” All of us on the committee agreed. Another supporter wrote this about our recipient: “humble, funny, generous: not larger than life as I would have imagined. . . .And, as did the woman for whom this award is named, I think [our recipient] deserves this award because [of starting] writing center scholarship, philosophy, and practice for MANY people across the United States and the world.” A member of the European Writing Centers Association wrote that our recipient “was influential in helping us establish a method of working with students and training consultants.”

All of us on the committee were impressed with our recipient’s accomplishments and the acknowledgements of them, like those I just read, that we received. Moreover, in discussion, everyone on the committee acknowledged the length and breadth of service to the writing center community here and abroad. In addition to being highly professional, what struck us was our recipient’s understated way of working through the years. In fact, upon learning of the nomination for this award, our recipient stated, “I don’t think I’m anything special in the writing center world; I just have lots of experience. When I look at my record, I’ve done a lot, but I’ve always just done it quietly. It mattered to me.”

It mattered to all of us on the committee as well, and I know it has mattered to all of you. As a result, for 2010, on behalf of my colleagues on the committee and with the concurrence of our President, Roberta Kjesrud, I am delighted to present the International Writing Centers Association Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award to the Director of the Writing Center at the University of Maryland, Dr. Leigh Ryan.

The Ron Maxwell Leadership Award
presented to Brian Fallon by Leigh Ryan
at the IWCA/NCPTW Conference
November 6, 2010

In the early 1980s when the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing began, Ron Maxwell at Penn State was an integral part of it.  And when he retired, he left his legacy to NCPTW in the form of the Ron Maxwell Leadership Award.  Each year since 1999, this honor has been given  to a professional involved with NCPTW who has contributed with distinction to undergraduate student development through promoting collaborative learning among peer tutors in writing.  There are several criteria for this award:

• bringing peer tutors to present at the Conference
• serving the organization through various activities.
• helping students assume increasing responsibility for their learning
• fostering leadership skills among peer tutors
• showing leadership in collaborative learning on one’s home campus
• developing innovative peer tutoring programs in the home community
• in general, welcoming and meeting new challenges in leading a center guided by a collaborative learning philosophy

Brian Fallon meets all of the criteria, and he definitely does so with distinction.

As an undergraduate English major at the University of Kansas, Brian became a tutor in the writing center and he found peer tutoring.   He became committed to collaborative learning and began coming to and presenting at NCPTW.  As a graduate student, first at Colorado State University in Rhetoric and Composition and then at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Composition and TESOL, his commitment to peer tutoring and collaboration continued, finding expression in his activities—consulting in the writing center, participating in the IWCA Summer Institute, and attending and presenting at countless regional and national conferences, including NCPTW–and in his research and scholarship – doing both a masters thesis and a dissertation on writing center work.

His work has been remarkable.  Here’s just one example. In 2007 at IUP, he undertook a research project with four other tutors, including undergraduates, that resulted in winning the IWCA award for best article that year—“Taking on Turnitin: Tutors Advocating Change” published in The Writing Center Journal.   It was typical Brian—really good and really collaborative.  As one of our colleagues, Jeanne Simpson, noted:  “All five…deserve high marks for the intelligence of the effort, representing advocacy at its best.  It is a story about courage and conviction.  They have represented the writing center community so admirably.”

Two years ago, Brian created the first writing center at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.  Of course, for him that meant not just setting up a physical space and getting tutors and training them, but also expanding his connections with NCPTW to bringing his own tutors so that they could experience what had come to mean so much to him as a writing consultant—exploring writing center theory and practice by asking questions, finding some answers, and sharing expertise, as well as getting to know other tutors from other places—from big and little schools in rural and urban areas.  I learned today that he’s even gone on to expand that idea of tutors sharing by having tutors visit one another’s campuses and writing centers during Spring Break through an arrangement with Sue Dinitz at the University of Vermont.  Some of his tutors have visited Vermont, and some of hers have visited New York City.

I mentioned earlier that NCPTW has been around since the early 1980s—and it has pretty much remained exactly what its name says it is—a yearly national conference for peer tutors in writing.  NCPTW is loosely organized, and it’s guided not by officers with titles, but by a sort of steering committee—pretty much formed by caring people who volunteer to be on it—to do things for the group.  You know, many people in this world see something that could be done and maybe even ought to be done.  Most drop it there, but a few step up, and Brian has been one of those with NCPTW.  From the beginning, he not only presented at NCPTW conferences, but he made himself truly useful as a participant and a contributor, and he was thoughtful about it.  Early on, he published an article about making the most of the conference experience–what he called  “not just leaning on the lectern.”  When he realized that NCPTW had no website, Brian created one and he still runs it today.   He got involved in the Scholarship Committee, and in 2009 chaired it.

The last NCPTW conference held jointly with IWCA was in Las Vegas two years ago.  Here Brian served as the primary NCPTW contact and did much of the heavy lifting that goes with hosting such a conference.  As one of the people nominating Brian noted, “At this conference, he demonstrated to me the kind of professional tact and savvy that is necessary to get things done in a context that privileges collaboration over hierarchy.  He is a leader.”

One of the hallmarks of this award is that the recipient chooses a quotation that is engraved on the plaque that’s awarded.  I want to share with you Brian’s choice.  Fittingly, it comes from Harvey Kail and John Trimbur:  “To reorganize the relationship among students is to simultaneously probe the relationship between teaching and learning.”

There is much to celebrate in Brian Fallon’s being awarded the Ron Maxwell Leadership Award.  He so richly deserves it, but there’s more:

Just a few weeks ago at IUP, Brian successfully defended his dissertation, “The Perceived, Conceived, and Lived Experience of 21^st Century Peer Writing Tutors.”   I’ve been told that it’s not only an excellent dissertation, but a really good read!

And so, on behalf of NCPTW, it is my honor and my privilege to present the Ron Maxwell Leadership Award to my friend and colleague, DR. Brian Fallon.

“One year and one month ago I made a move that was as much a seismic shift as a transplantation. After 29 very happy years at Marquette University, a private Jesuit school set in downtown Milwaukee, I took a job as director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Florida International University, a public university often ranked the most diverse . . . .”

Read the complete blog entry at the CCCC blog: http://cccc-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/successes-and-mini-successes-of-latin.html .

All nominees must be IWCA members and be willing to serve as described below. Nominees for the graduate, community college, and secondary school positions must belong to the constituency they’ll represent. Board members must:
• Attend monthly online board meetings (held on WIMBA) throughout the academic year.
• Serve on one or more committees; committee assignments determined in consultation with executive officers.
• Represent their constituency to the IWCA executive board and report back to their constituency on a regular basis.
• Where budgets permit, represent the IWCA at our three main professional gatherings–NCTE, CCCC, and IWCA conferences.

Self-nominations and nominations of others should include the nominee’s e-mail address and telephone number and the position for which they will run. Send nominations by September 27, 2010, to IWCA Secretary Kerri Jordan at jordan01@mc.edu. Please include “IWCA Nomination” in the subject line.

Kerri will confirm receipt of all nominations and contact nominees via the email address provided. At that time, she will ask them to submit a personal statement of no more than 100 words that offers a brief overview of the their experience and outlines their plans for serving their constituents and the IWCA if elected. Please do not send personal statements at this time.

Voting will take place electronically from October 11 through October 18. The elected candidates will be notified by November 1, and they will be announced November 10 and at NCTE. Although the new Board members’ terms begin concurrently with the NCTE conference, attendance at that conference is not mandatory.

We were pleased by the number of nominees for our last election and hope to surpass that number this year. If you have any questions, please contact Kerri via email.

“Summary: Jennifer Wells, a teacher-consultant with the Central California Writing Project, writes about the establishment of a writing center at her high school and advises educators on how to create writing centers that are hubs of writing for writers of all levels.”

Read Art Peterson’s interview with Jennifer Wells at http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3141 .

Abstract of Thompson’s Article

Limited Time Full-text Access Courtesy of Written Communication and Sage Publications

http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/26/4/417?ijkey=ea5bP2hSlztBY&keytype=ref&siteid=spwcx

Nominator’s Statement

“I nominate this article for several reasons: 1) It represents an exciting new direction in writing center research, both in terms of methodology (a microanalysis of not only language but gesture) and in terms of findings as it provides much-needed nuance in regard to concerns about tutor “directiveness.” 2) The author’s theoretical framework nicely captures a great deal of research and theory on student development and socially situated learning, advancing our understanding of those models. 3) The article is published in one of the premier peer-reviewed research journals in writing studies, offering evidence that writing centers are key and valuable research sites.”

Also Nominated for 2009

Babcock, Rebecca Day. “Research-Based Tutoring Tips for Working with Deaf Students.” Kansas English 93.1 (2009): 73-98. Print.

Charlton, Jonikka. “The Future of WPA Professionalization: A 2007 Survey.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal 7.1 (Fall 2009). http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis/?q=node/275. Web.

Lape, Noreen. “Giving Voice to Tutors’ Really Useful Knowledge: A New Plan for Writing Center Podcasts.” Writing Lab Newsletter 34.2 (October 2009): . Print.

LeCluyse, Christopher. “Medieval Literacy in the Writing Center.” Writing Lab Newsletter 33.10 (June 2009): 10-13. http://www.writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v33/33.10.pdf. Web.

Ronesi, Lynne. “Theory In/To Practice: Multilingual Tutors Supporting Multilingual Peers: A Peer– Tutor Training Course in the Arabian Gulf.” Writing Center Journal 29.2 (2009): 76-94. Print.

Rowan, Karen. “All the Best Intentions: Graduate Student Administrative Professional Development in Practice” Writing Center Journal 29.1 (2009): 9-41. Print.

Best Article Committee

Steve Sherwood (Chair), Sam Van Horne, Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton.

by Bonnie Devet and tutors Ericka Burroughs, Lydia Hopson, Donna Kenyon, Trisha Martin, Cheryl Sims, Hope Norment, Liz Young, Prof. Sylvia Gamboa, Prof. Kathy Haney
College of Charleston Writing Lab

In late September, Hurricane Hugo roared through Charleston, South Carolina, ripping off roofs, toppling massive oaks onto buildings, and flooding historic homes. The Writing Lab at the College of Charleston was as protected as advanced preparation allowed. Computers were covered; disks with exercises and handouts were stored in safe, dry places; loose objects were put away in desk drawers. Like all such storms, Hugo was capricious, damaging some buildings but leaving others unscathed. The building housing the Writing Lab was lucky, receiving no appreciable damage, so the Lab could reopen the first day classes resumed. . . .

Read the full story at the Post and Courier‘s website at http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/sep/20/hurricane-and-writing-lab/?hugo

This article originally appeared in the Writing Lab Newsletter Vol. 14.7 (March 1990): 5-6.

For our international writing center friends, please join in the celebration of writing at http://blogs.bgsu.edu/internationaldayonwriting.

Visit the IWCA’s NDoW information page at http://writingcenters.org/2009/10/participate-in-the-national-day-of-writing-october-20-2009/ .

Dear Writing Center Colleagues,

Perhaps you’re still planning your celebration for the National Day on Writing. The IWCA team to promote NDoW is at no loss for ideas–

Karl Fornes, The University of South Carolina Aiken Writing Center, has suggested a writing marathon with a canned food drive for a local charity. Karl connects such a move as connected to service learning projects at his university.

Tiffany Rousculp, Salt Lake Community College Writing Center, has suggested the following:

• Huge, wall-size, poster that provides a space for collaborative writing prompts such as:

a.       Draw a visual representation of the brain/mind/body as it writes
b.      A prompt that asks for responses to “A world without writing…”
c.       “If I taught writing at XX College/University, I would…” that students can respond to…

• Hand out stickers that say “I’m a writer” or  “I write” to students/community members, etc.  (Our registration cards say “I Write Stuff” on them.)

• Have a “Twitter-day” for students where they tweet all day about when they write, see writing, read writing

• Do a “collection point” in the writing center that can physically show the amount of writing students do in, say, one week. It would not be eco-friendly, because it would be a lot of paper, but maybe some way to show the sheer amount of writing students do; notes, drafts, essays, exams…etc.

• If not the collection point for student writing, a collection point for found writing—a week where students/community members bring in writing that they find.

• A reading during the last week (or perhaps on the actual day of writing), open-mic, drop in, theme: “Writing is…”

If you can’t implement all these good ideas this year, there’s always next year. Remember NDoW is an annual celebration!

Whatever you do, do it NOW, errrr, we mean NDoW! :-)

Yours,

Barb Toth, Karl Fornes, Tiffany Rousculp, and Shannon Carter

To prepare for NDoW, we have a suggestion: write a check—that’s writing, right? To celebrate the power of writing and how it can bring joy to and diminish the suffering of others, let’s write a check to our favorite charity!

However great the amount, however small, write a check to your favorite charity this week. There are thousands of local, national, and international charities: Make-A-Wish, Homeless Kids, Humane Societies, Breast Cancer Awareness, Pregnancy Centers, Literacy Foundations, Habitat for Humanity, the hunger site.com  . . . Just google “charities” if you’re looking for a new beneficiary.

Think about it: if we each write a check this week, we can both show our support for writing and help others. What a statement that would be.

We all know that writing helps others anyway.  But here’s a chance to make a special statement, one that we make together and in celebration of the good that writing can do!

Please do it now, err we mean NDoW!

–From the IWCA Team for promotion of NDoW:  Barbara Toth (BGSU), Tiffany Rousculp (SLCC), Shannon Carter (TAMU/Commerce), Karl Fornes (USCA)

Do it Now . . . I mean NDoW!

Dear Writing Center Colleagues,

If you haven’t set up a local gallery at the National Gallery of Writing to showcase–and celebrate–writing in your centers, your schools, and your communities, do it now!

You can start a gallery by visiting this site: .

There are 770 galleries up so far . . . how great would it be to have a majority come from writing centers!

IWCA is hoping that the effect of writing center participation in the National Day on Writing will be resounding: NCTE will see the effects of the collective efforts of writing centers, and the nation will see how seriously we writing professionals take our work!

Remember: October 20 is the day!

–Barbara Toth, Bowling Green State University Writing Center for IWCA

If you haven’t set up a local gallery at the NCTE National Gallery of Writing to showcase—and celebrate–writing in your centers, your schools, and your communities, do it now!

You can start a gallery by visiting this site: http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting/gallery.

What a statement it would make to have a majority come from writing centers!

You can set up multiple galleries: for your writing consultants, for students, for administrators, for residents in senior homes, for religious organizations—for anyone who would benefit from a forum and readership. The galleries will remain open into 2010.

IWCA is hoping that the effect of writing center participation in the National Day on Writing will be resounding: NCTE will see the effects of the collective efforts of writing centers, and the nation will see how seriously we writing professionals take our work!

Keep your eye out for the IWCA NDoW blog to be posted on the IWCA website on October 20! Details will follow.

Remember: October 20 is NDoW!

Yours in the world of writing, Barbara Toth, Bowling Green State University Writing Center, for IWCA

·     Given economic challenges, consider providing a resume and cover letter workshop for your larger community. Perhaps a local restaurant or community library would house the workshop; writing center staff could work with the community members to draft resumes and get them online.

·     Some local low-security prisons allow community service projects.  In addition, some may allow a National Day of Writing online forum to be created. Contact your local prisoner community service advisor for more information. For example, the Ohio Prisoner Community Service office can be accessed at http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/commserv.htm .

·     Contacting an activities director at a local senior home to discuss how residents could join in the celebration is another idea. Sometimes seniors can’t write and need someone to write letters for them; sometimes they just need the encouragement (that writing center staff are famous for) to begin writing of various kinds including memoirs.

·     Contacting an orphanage in your area is another way to celebrate the day! Just googling orphanages in your area will give you an idea of how many there are and which one to contact.  You might create an NCTE gallery for submissions (http://galleryofwriting.org/).

From Barbara Toth (BGSU), Tiffany Rousculp (SLCC), Shannon Carter (TAMU/ Commerce), Karl Fornes (USCA)

National Day on Writing Letter from Barb Toth, Coordinator of IWCA’s National Day on Writing Committee:

Dear Writing Center Colleagues,

I’m emailing now as part of an IWCA committee responsible for involving writing center participation in the National Day on Writing scheduled on October 20. As part of our efforts, we’ve contacted the chairs of your regional writing center associations–to do a few things:

1. to remind you about the date for the National Day on Writing, October 20 to encourage you to set up a local gallery on the NCTE website (if you have not already done so) and to use the gallery to publish elicited writing submissions from your region. See: http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting/gallery. Individual writing centers can also set up local galleries.

and

2. to encourage you to think about ways that the day can be celebrated in your region and in your writing center. In short, we’re hoping you’ll celebrate the National Day on Writing however it suits your location and schedules. I know Michele Eodice, president of the IWCA, has encouraged celebrations of the day not only in academic settings but in the larger communities as well.

My IWCA colleagues Karl Fornes (karlf@usca.edu), Tiffany Rousculp (tiffany.rousculp@slcc.edu), Shannon Carter (Shannon_Carter@tamu-commerce.edu) and I will support you and will be sharing ideas and suggestions that we hear about from you and your regional reps. Of course, you can always just share directly.

To unify our efforts, we’ve created a logo that can be adapted to bookmarks, letterhead, T-shirts, buttons, flyers, posters, etc.  Hope you like it and use it in multiple ways!

In the spirit of brainstorming, below are some projects the Bowling Green State University Writing Center will be involved in:

1. We’ve set up a local NCTE gallery, in conjunction with the BGSU Human Relations Commission; we’re eliciting writing of various genres on the topic of respect. We’ve managed to garner prize money for the best submissions.

2. BGSU writing consultants will visit a local senior home during the week of Oct. 20 and will work with the residents as they write various genres, including memoirs.

3. BGSU has a developed Second Life (virtual) campus, so we’re also featuring this day in various ways in the SL forum as well.

Our  hope is that each region and writing center can participate in a meaningful way—however great, however small. As I think you’d agree, sharing or enjoying the importance of writing with one person is an apt and appropriate celebration of writing. In other words, we’re not asking you to take on huge responsibilities. Simply put, we’re asking you to consider participating as you, and those you serve both in your region, your writing center, and your community, are able.

I’m hoping that the effect of our participation in the National Day on Writing will be resounding: NCTE will see the effects of the collective efforts of writing centers; and the nation, I think, will see how seriously we writing professionals take our work!

More to come–stay tuned!!

Thank you!

Yours in the worlds of writing centers,

Barbara Toth

Visit the National Day on Writing Contribution page at http://www.galleryofwriting.org/contribute.php .

To save this logo for use in letterhead or on websites, right-click on the image and save to your hard drive or other disk:

Download the Spring 2009 IWCA Conference Notes at http://writingcenters.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IWCAConferenceNotes1.1.pdf .

Sherri is director of the Writing Center at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Washington and the community college representative for IWCA. Contact Sherri at swinans@whatcom.ctc.edu.

Wow!  This past summer the three of us finished one of the most satisfying experiences of our long writing center careers–co-chairing the 6th Annual IWCA Summer Institute (SI), which was held July 20-25, 2008, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Because the three of us have had the privilege of being involved with five of the six summer institutes, we want to share some highlights of this year’s Institute and offer some thoughts about the exciting future of the IWCA Summer Institute.  It was exhilarating to spend that intensive week learning together with 55 very smart and fun participants from around the United States and from eight other countries.  And it was an honor to plan and lead the institute with seven stellar writing center colleagues from around the US and from South Africa and to have wonderful staff and students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and from Marquette University help lead sessions as well.  This year’s leaders were Sharifa Daniels, Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Nancy Grimm, Michigan Tech University; Jenny Jordan, Glenbrook North High School, Illinois; Neal Lerner, MIT; Beverly Moss, The Ohio State University; Jill Pennington, Lansing Community College; and Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, Southwestern University.  (For additional information about the SI, including the schedule, please visit www.wisc.edu/writing/institute.)

Since its inception in 2003, the Summer Institute has migrated each year to different sites around the United States–ending up this past July in Madison, Wisconsin, where the first SI was held.  But the SI’s mission, philosophy, and format have remained largely the same.  The Institute brings 8-10 leaders–all top writing center practitioners and scholars–together with 50-55 participants for an intensive week of collaborative learning about the latest in writing center practice, theory, research, and administration.  Even though the Institute’s leaders always bring deep experience in the profession–collectively this year’s leaders and co-chairs brought 202 years of experience in writing centers–the SI co-chairs and leaders view themselves as co-learners along with the participants.  The Institute taps the collective wisdom of participants and leaders by organizing small-group work and discussions within sessions, by giving participants the chance to initiate and lead special-interest group discussions throughout the week, by providing opportunities for participants to share information about their centers, and by having participants and leaders work together in writing groups throughout the Institute.  Those who are interested in knowing more about the philosophy and history of the SI might consult “The Writing Center Summer Institute: Backgrounds, Development, Vision,” by Paula Gillespie, Brad Hughes, Neal Lerner, and Anne Geller.  Those interested in research about the powerful longer-term influence of having participated in the institute should read Anne Geller and Michele Eodice’s “The Rewards of Summer: IWCA Summer Institute.”

One of the central tenets of the Summer Institute is that the Institute belongs to the participants.  The leaders choose session topics only after carefully reviewing information from detailed surveys completed by every participant.  This year that meant reviewing several hundred pages of information about participants’ experience, their centers, their interests, and their familiarity with writing center literature.  This year’s participants—like those every summer—were a fascinating and varied group.  As has increasingly been the case, the SI included participants not only from the United States but also from abroad, including Japan, Malaysia, Canada, Namibia, Egypt, Qatar, England, and Sweden.  There was considerable institutional diversity as well.  Participants came from secondary schools, community colleges, small and medium and large colleges and universities.  What a wonderful opportunity this provided all participants and leaders to learn with and from each other!  Some of these powerful concepts underlying the institute–”collective wisdom” and “the institute belongs to the participants,” for example–come from Frank Christ, whose work with Martha Maxwell designing and leading wonderful learning-center institutes at UC-Berkeley, Cal State-Long Beach, and the University of Arizona is legendary.  Frank Christ’s philosophy of a professional institute makes wonderful reading for anyone interested in designing such a learning experience.

As might be expected, the SI participants arrived with varying degrees of experience and diverse goals. Some participants are long-time writing center directors with 10 or 20 years of experience.  Some are relatively new to writing center work and have served a few years as a director or associate director of a center.  Others are new directors, preparing to start a brand-new center, or others who’ve just finished graduate school and have been hired to direct an existing center.  And still others are graduate students or faculty or staff who aspire to start a new center, the first on their campus–or even the first in their country.  (Participant Rajes Sargunan hopes to open the first writing center in Malaysia, for instance.)  Some of the most experienced participants come looking for new ideas and inspiration.  Some who have experience directing centers want to broaden their horizons by learning about different writing center models and programs.  Some who are new to directing centers often have substantial experience as student-tutors and know much of the tutor-training literature, but want to learn more, much more, about designing tutor education . . . and about assessment and about funding and about leadership.  All the participants are eager to share their experiences, ideas, and questions with others, making for a stimulating, productive, and fun week!

Given how much the participants varied in their experience and knowledge, it was, frankly, a challenge to design a program that extended what experienced participants already knew, while welcoming and building a strong foundation for those newer to writing center work.  As co-chairs we wrestled with a number of difficult issues and questions.  Building upon and addressing the diversity of experience among participants was key. But we were also concerned with how to balance “showing” versus “telling,” how to balance discussions of theory and of practice, how to use the expertise of the leaders most productively, how to offer and share practical advice while maintaining a critical perspective, how to balance time for writing and reflection with time for sessions, etc.

With careful and thoughtful planning, it is, however, possible to strike the right balance, and the detailed evaluations completed by this year’s participants suggest that, as in the past, the SI managed to accomplish the semi-impossible.  Plenary sessions this year offered the latest thinking about foundational topics that cut across all writing centers (tutor education, the uses of theory in writing center work, the effective use of space, assessment, diversity, technology, preparing tutors to work with multilingual writers, current writing center literature, partnerships, perspectives from tutors and student-writers, and more).  Specialized topics were offered in breakout sessions–some led by specialists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center: these sessions included strategic planning, research, writing center classes, writing fellows, podcasts, funding, publicity, community writing centers, tenure and promotion, writing centers and learning centers, student-leadership positions in writing centers, WAC and writing centers, building community within centers, and developing computer simulations for use in tutor education. A plenary session with tutors, writing fellows, and a writing center user, drawn from UW-Madison and from Marquette, gave participants a chance to engage in a dialogue with those vital members of our communities.

Writing is of course central to writing center work and life, so throughout the week both leaders and participants worked on and responded to each others’ writing in small writing groups.  One group worked on creating podcasts instead of texts, including a wonderful podcast about the SI [http://www.wisc.edu/writing/institute/about.html#podcast].

We wanted to give participants and leaders a creative outlet during the week, so we instituted (no pun) an open mic night. We knew that any group as large as ours was would have some awesome talent, and we were not disappointed. It was fun! And we had other kinds of fun: a cruise on Lake Mendota and an optional trip to a professional outdoor theatre in nearby Spring Green for an outstanding performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Our venue at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offered us other opportunities we were eager to share with both participants and leaders. UW-Madison’s large writing center employs a number of career professional staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students who generously shared their expertise with us. Annette Vee co-led a plenary with Brad on online tutoring. Terry Maggio, Emily Hall, Melissa Tedrowe, Nancy Linh Karls, Rasha Diab, Beth Godbee, and many other graduate and undergraduate students helped lead breakouts on writing center classes, writing fellows, diversity, podcasting (a wonderfully popular topic–it was offered as a SIG as well), computer simulations for tutor education, publicity, community writing centers (co-led by a public librarian), student leadership positions in writing centers; and a panel of undergraduate Writing Fellows presented their research on writing centers. There were additional sessions as well, including a thought-provoking lecture on “Writing Over Reading” by noted rhetoric and writing scholar Deborah Brandt. We were also able to attend a demonstration of a program for educational research called Transana (http://www.transana.org/), developed at UW-Madison, a program which makes transcription easier and facilitates coding of videos. We were able to see this program in action and talk with the developer. In addition, Jason Mayland, the director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research at Lansing Community College, attended a few days of the Institute and demonstrated ways that assessment can be very functional and accessible. These professionals and their participation added a great deal to the depth and to our enjoyment of the SI.

The 2008 Institute aimed to integrate technology–especially web 2.0 technologies–before, during, and after the institute.  In addition to an extensive website, the institute featured a blog written by institute leaders (wcsi.blogspot.com), which drew comments from current and past institute participants, an electronic forum for institute participants and leaders, and a photo-sharing website (http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwwritingcenter/) which features hundreds of photos posted by participants and local volunteer photographers.  Participants posted daily updates on WCenter, an institute tradition begun at the first institute in 2003.  On Wednesday morning, July 23rd, the institute sponsored a live webcast of a plenary institute session, featuring three institute participants talking about the experience of the institute and a lively presentation about current writing center research by Neal Lerner and Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton.  The webcast was watched by writing center professionals around the world, who sent in live questions and comments by email, some of which were included in the discussion period.  During the first part of Neal’s and Elisabeth’s presentation, the audience in Madison used clickers to respond to a quiz about past and current writing center literature.  The archived webcast is now available to watch (http://mediasite.ics.uwex.edu/pyle4/Catalog/?cid=918b448e-8417-4e20-aea6-f58a1d44a7b3). In addition to the podcasts created by institute participants, Jill Pennington recorded an extended interview about writing center assessment with Jason Mayland and Neal Lerner; that podcast has been published on the UW-Madison Writing Center website (www.wisc.edu/writing; click on “podcasts”).

As we look ahead to future summer institutes, what would we like to see? On the final day we gave all participants a survey to fill out and we eagerly read and re-read them. What have participants suggested to us? Even within the same surveys they have asked for more time in sessions, less time in sessions, more plenaries, fewer plenaries, more time for reflection and writing, more down time, more breakouts (the smaller size appealed to some), but only if they could attend all of them. No one asked for less of anything, as our math worked out–all of the requests required more time, not less. We could see that our difficult choices led to the kinds of responses we expected.

Is it possible to add one optional day on either end of the Institute, a full day for new folks at the beginning–a day before the others begin–and a day at the end to focus in depth on research and publication? A full day of Writing Centers 101 would allow newcomers to make the kinds of introductions to one another that would explain and describe their goals, their institutions, and their constraints. If we had a full day for newcomers, we could include demonstrations and/or videotapes of tutoring, with analyses of sessions, and some practice tutoring–not role play, but one-to-one tutoring on a piece of writing participants would bring.

And at the end could there be a full additional day or two devoted to research and publication? One participant suggested that we query participants prior to the SI, asking for their research interests, fields of background study, and that, using this information, set up research sessions geared to particular interests. If participants have already paid for their transportation costs, why not add a day or two if it would make the experience even more rewarding? Not all leaders would be expected to take part in these extra days, but there could be an extra charge, such as there is for CCCC or IWCA preconference workshops or SIGS.

Is it possible that there could be a Summer Institute devoted solely to research? Research and publication are extremely important in some institutions for the tenure and/or promotion of writing center professionals, but even when it is not, understanding institutional research and the benefits it can offer a center could be vital to its success.

In addition to pointing the SI to some interesting future directions, we were buoyed by the overwhelmingly positive responses of participants in their evaluations.  Perhaps the best way to conclude our reflections is to present the voices of some participants from last summer’s Institute.
**This experience was what I needed to rethink where our writing center is going.  I learned so much that is truly beneficial.  I think my head hurts—but in a good way.
**Both the plenary sessions and the breakout groups were very helpful, but the most useful element was the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with both leaders and participants in an open and supportive atmosphere—and the feeling I’m sure most of us have that we can go on exchanging ideas for a long time.
**I especially appreciated learning how much practices vary from institution to institution.  I take so many ideas back with me, and I’m just overflowing with ideas I can use in our writing center.  Also, and perhaps more importantly, I will take back with me the friendship and professional contacts from this institute.  I now feel that I have a community I can continue to talk and collaborate with in the future.
**This was a wonderful, wonderful experience.  Thanks to all of the organizers for their careful and thoughtful planning—there were no bad moments!  I really appreciated the critical nature of our conversation, and the attempt to be self-questioning and to dispel myths and romanticisms.
In closing, the three of us want to express our deep appreciation to IWCA and to the Institute leaders and participants for giving us the chance to lead what was an amazing learning experience for us.  We’ve also cherished working closely together for over a year and learning so much from each other.

Works Cited

Christ, Frank.  “What Is the Winter Institute Philosophy?” Learning Support Centers in Higher Education. N.p. 29 May 2008. Web. 1 December 2008.    <http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/~lsche/wiarchives/about_philosophy.htm>
Geller, Anne Ellen, and Michele Eodice. “The Rewards of Summer: IWCA Institute.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 29.7 (2005): 6-7.
Gillespie, Paula, Brad Hughes, Neal Lerner, and Anne Geller. “The Writing Center Summer Institute: Backgrounds, Development, Vision.” The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. Ed. Christina Murphy and Byron Stay. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006. 33-43.

Yet, when leaders at the IWCA Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison this past July asked participants to reflect on “what you think of when you think of theory,” my first few minutes of freewriting conjured up nothing but three alarming anecdotes:

•    When I was in graduate school, one of my professors greatly befuddled a fellow student by politely but firmly telling her that “I always need you to put your ideas in a theoretical lens in order for me to understand them.”
•    Last summer, I led a teacher workshop focusing on “bridging theory and practice.”  One participant—a veteran composition instructor—frequently and unequivocally condemned all things “theory” throughout the three-week session, finally proclaiming that to solve the problem of theory, she was going to create an “anti-theory theory.”
•    One of my graduate students (in our Professional Writing program), read on the syllabus that we would be examining the theory and practice of writing pedagogy and subsequently exclaimed, “Why are we always talking about practice in this program and not focusing only on theory?  Isn’t this supposed to be graduate school?”

Alas, none of these reminiscences moved me toward a very productive (or happy) consideration of theory in my writing center work.  So as my fellow Institute participants fervently continued their own reflections, I decided to refocus.  Looking at my three anecdotes, I tried to parse out a thread, a commonality, an element that would help me make sense of the fact that after years of learning, researching, and teaching about the ways in which a unified notion of theory and practice made sense, my thinking was still plagued by the same old notions of that dreaded dichotomy—a view of theory and practice as disparate, opposite, even opposing.  It was then that I noticed the obvious commonality in my recollected examples: not one of them dealt with writing centers!  For a fleeting moment, I imagined that the theory-practice problem simply did not exist in the world of writing center studies:  we had evolved and successfully joined theory and practice in a perfect, seamless union in which all writing and writers flourished.

But, of course, evolution rarely comes so easily, and context, while important, rarely removes all complexity from an issue.  Nonetheless, it seemed a very real possibility that something in the nature of writing centers lends itself to avoiding many of the typical problems associated with the term “theory.”  So, in my last few minutes of writing that afternoon at the Summer Institute, I tried to move beyond the limiting notion of theory as something abstract.  I wanted—instead of holding theory at arm’s length and smiling at it in polite understanding—to embrace it, to really get to know it and what it could do.

And in that image of lessening my own distance with theory, I began also to see an image of the writing center and how, in so many ways, we constantly strive there to lessen distances of all kinds for students.  Certainly in the writing center, students are physically closer to us than in a traditional classroom, but we also do all we can to prevent elements like authority, rigidity, and formality from distancing us from them as well.  Perhaps it is our willingness to limit distances of all kinds in the writing center that allows us to be concerned not with particular notions of theory or practice but rather with the human being sitting next to us who seeks our help.  And when we focus on that person, that writer, that reason we are there, we have perhaps found the most true and meaningful bridge between theory and practice.

Surely this small revelation one beautiful summer day in Madison does not resolve the ongoing tension that exists between theory and practice.  It does not even wholly resolve the ways in which our theories and practices in the writing center sometimes seem at odds (for as enlightened as we may be, such difficulties do still happen).  But it has helped me to understand more fully that theory and practice exist not for each other but for the impact that—together—they can have outside of themselves and us.  For me, this was a powerful lesson, one made even more powerful by another realization I took from my Institute experience:  the fact that in our writing center community and often in our very own writing centers, we can find the answers—and, yes, the theory—we may not even know we seek.

We can chase your fears away,
and show you what you want to say.

Do thesis statements make you wince?
Does evidence not quite convince?
Is organization but a dream?
(Five paragraphs are not the only scheme.)
Do transitions fail to bridge the parts?
Is sentence structure lacking art?
We can help you pave the way . . .
to understanding MLA and APA!

We can help you. We are wise.
We can teach you to fix your papers up.
(I mean, revise.)

Your confidence you will recover
as you learn — to write is to discover.

Come and let us be your shapers.
Better writers make better papers!

Noreen Groover Lape
Director of the Writing Center
Columbus State University

by

MaryAnn Crawford, Ellen Schendel, Barbara Toth

MaryAnn Crawford is the Director of the Writing Center/Basic Writing and University Writing Program and a Professor of English at Central Michigan University

Ellen Schendel is an Associate Professor in the Writing Department, and the Director of the Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors at Grand Valley State University.

Barbara Toth is the Assistant Director of the Office of Academic Enhancement and the Writing Center Coordinator at Bowling Green State University.

Marginal Words, Marginal Work?: Tutoring the Academy in the Work of Writing Centers. Eds. William J. Macauley, Jr. and Nicholas Mauriello. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. 2007. 277 pages. Index. [27.50] ISBN 1-57273-770by

Introduction
This collection represents the testimonials of writing center workers claiming the current writing center predicament: Catch- 22s, struggles toward disciplinary recognition, and celebrations. As the title Marginal Words, Marginal Works? suggests, the testimonials situate current writing center praxis relative to often marginal and inferior positioning of writing centers within academia. They also speak to some advantages of marginal positioning but also to the dangers of passively accepting life on the margins as destiny. And, yes, the testimonials speak about the recognition and success of their work as well as the work that still needs to be done.

Encompassing fifteen different articles, this book is anything but marginal. The question mark in the title captures the point: despite (or perhaps “in spite of”) the lore of writing centers as marginalized, e.g., housed in garrets (or basements), underfunded, and fighting fix-it shop and remedial identities, this collection suggests that writing centers have arrived on the academic scene (and possibly elsewhere, although the articles in this book speak only to academic settings). If these articles are any indication, writing centers are prominent and visible in their institutions, and, if not exactly at their respective centers, then at least in the middle of a wonderful mix of ideas and practices that foster writing and learning. Perhaps, as Ben Rafoth suggests in his foreword, “our words and work are on the move and quietly leading the academy” (x).

This book asks us to reconsider this notion of “margins” and sets up a conversation to that end – a Burkean parlor that one can enter in medias res. The editors do not mention any kind of organizational pattern, and that absence reinforces the sense that the articles are “speaking” to each other and to us, about who we, and they, are. Like most good conversationalists, the authors reveal things about themselves and their centers while giving ideas for what other centers might want to become. There are many such ideas offered. A reader can dip in and out of the book, reading early, middle, late, backward or forward, and come away with an understanding of how another center functions, of practical ways of designing or redesigning a program, and of the current issues in our profession.

While the book as a whole examines the work of writing centers in a variety of configurations and contexts, some themes appear while reading it. Loosely, the three themes we consider are: identity within institutional contexts, expansion and collaboration, and the importance of viewing writing centers as more than service facilities.

Identity at Heart

MaryAnn K. Crawford

This book suggests various definitions for “margin.” As a writing center director, I thought about the tension between margins and centers as metaphors for what we do. I remembered a conference session ten years ago devoted to the benefits of living in the margins. I thought about the meaning of “being marginalized” and the difference between that meaning and the notion of “having margins.” Being marginalized implies a victim, while living within margins means defining who we are and what we will and won’t do. I found such identity work explicit in chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 15.

The book begins with the way stories shape identities. In “Why There Is No ‘Happily Ever After’: A Look At The Stories And Images That Sustain Us,” Melissa Nichols reminds us of an all too familiar origin story: once a upon a time, there was created a writing center to take care of students who just couldn’t write; it was hidden away in a basement (or garret), with few resources and an underpaid staff (2). Subsequent metaphors such as “midwife, parlor, wife” continue a feminine, subservient view of writing centers. Instead of feminized spaces, Nicolas advocates rearticulating writing centers as feminist. She encourages us to be activist both on campus and in our professional relationships: identifying the stories that encode us, examining our relationships to composition studies, agitating for more recognition, moving from directive/nondirective pedagogy to thinking about a rhetorical framework, finding those whom we do not serve and then deciding how we can. While these strategies will not necessarily lead to “happily ever after,” we can begin to tell new stories that will better support an adult identity for writing centers, one that looks toward the promise of future generations of students, faculty, and professionals.

Chapter 4, “Situated Learning in the Writing Center,” by Neal Lerner, is one of my favorite pieces in the book. Thinking about my reaction, I realized just how important having a common language is to identity. I’m familiar with situated learning, the concepts are familiar and comfortable; the references Lerner cites are people I’ve read: Gee, Wenger. In this way, writing centers share “an affinity group” (57) across institutions. The ease with which I read brought home even more quickly Lerner’s point: that students also need to find such familiarities and writing center work can help them do so. Our tutors interpret the college world in which they and student writers live at the same time that they share the intricacies of writing. Much like the conversations represented in this book, writing centers provide a “parlor” in which talk of writing and learning (in whatever discipline) can take place. Rather than marginal, writing centers are at the heart of a particular kind of learning opportunity, one rarely if ever available otherwise.

Chapters 9 and 12 both focus explicitly on issues of identity. In Chapter 9, “Two Centers, Not One,” Derek Owen questions writing centers as being a “service.” While a center obviously performs a service, to the students and to the university, it is not “only” a service, he claims. In fact, Owen suggests, centers do something much more important and much more subtle: they do the cultural work that underpins an institution. As sites of multi-disciplinary learning, often incorporating multimedia and current technology, writing centers are at the forefront of the critical and creative literacy learning crucial to education today. Similarly, Jennifer Beach (Chapter 12) examines the roles writing centers are assigned by their institutions and that they assign for themselves in relation to the ideals of the profession. She brings Goffman’s notion of “underlife” (198) to her analysis. Here, Beach looks not so much at what people say about her center as at how identities are encoded in the very documents used to report writing center work. I wanted to revisit my annual report immediately.

The book ends, appropriately so, with a success story – of sorts. In the final chapter, “Expanding the Center: A Narrative about Resources, Roles, and the Right Tutors,” Terry Myers Zawacki notes the benefits he sees in being director of both the writing center and the writing across the curriculum program, especially in leveraging resources. The combined existence of the two programs under one identity also meant that he was the go-to person when his college’s new campuses wanted to cash-in, so to speak, on providing the same benefits for their students. The difficulties he encountered across campuses remind us of centers needing to be responsive to local needs and pressures. This article, as do many others in this collection, illustrates the extent to which our writing centers are part and parcel of the local cultures in which we, and they, exist. And yet, despite such local exigencies, the ease with which these articles speak to me and for me points out that we are also part of a larger but equally important professional identity and conversation. This book is a fine example of just how vibrant such conversations are today.

Moving Out Into the Larger Community

Ellen Schendel

This is the sort of scholarship I enjoy reading. The chapters in Macauley and Mauriello’s book make important theoretical and disciplinary arguments about the centrality of writing center work to teaching and learning, and they give readers innovative models to follow in planning how to make their writing centers more proactive on their campuses. Its positive, can-do tone is inspiring and motivating.
The five chapters I examined share the themes of expansion and collaboration, of moving the writing center outward, into other classrooms, other programs—into the thinking and teaching and learning of students and faculty across the university.

“Exporting Writing Center Pedagogy: Writing Fellows Programs as Ambassadors for the Writing Center” is the story of the University of Iowa’s fellows program, and it’s centered on the idea that the writing center can be a force of profound change. In fact, the final section of the article is titled, “The University as Writing Center,” underscoring the potential Carol Severino and Megan Knight see for connecting writing center pedagogy and staff to other programs on campus.

Collaboration: Accountability as We Move Beyond the Center’s Walls” is the story of yet another fellows program, that of the Illinois State University writing center. It’s a celebratory (and yet cautionary) tale about the possibility and limits of bringing the collaborative spirit of the writing center into the realm of classroom-based work, in which tutors lead peer response groups and therefore realize a collaboration, of sorts, between the writing center and the classroom instructor.

Muriel Harris’s “Writing Ourselves into Writing Instruction: Beyond Sound Bytes, Tours, Reports, Orientations and Brochures” is a useful essay that discusses the challenges writing center directors face in finding the right metaphor or description to promote the center’s services to such a diverse audience: students, composition faculty, faculty in other disciplines, administrators. Harris’s solution is to resist the sound byte, at least some of the time, by facilitating a workshop for faculty that connects their own writing processes to the way they go about assigning writing in their classes and addressing the problems they seem to identify in student writing. And Chapters 13 and 14 are problem-solving narratives as well. In “Encouraging or Alarming?” Jill Frey recounts how the writing center at Presbyterian College caught the attention of the college’s new president, and how that precipitated a series of opportunities for the writing center to become involved with a number of programs and initiatives across campus. In “Quietly Creating an Identity for a Writing Center,” Jill Gladstein describes how internal changes in the training and expectations of the writing center staff as well as responsiveness to the student culture on campus led Swarthmore’s writing center to reinvent itself—and she focuses on how these changes came about in subtle, though powerful, ways that very few people even noticed.

What I most appreciate about all of these chapters is the level of detail they include about their programmatic success and challenges. For example, Severino and Knight’s chapter on the University of Iowa’s fellows program describes the recruitment and training of tutors, their funding, the programmatic relationship between the writing center and the WAC program, and the duties/responsibilities of the fellows. An appendix includes relevant resources on beginning a fellows program as well as the cover sheet students are required to fill out before submitting their work to a fellow for response. Likewise, Harris gives
enough detail about the workshop that it would be relatively easy for a writing center director to offer something similar on his or her campus. The narration and analysis in the other chapters would help readers to anticipate a number of complicating factors in beginning and expanding a fellows program, changing the culture of the writing center from within, or following an administrator’s vision for college initiatives.

Perhaps with all these examples of proactive expansion and collaboration, more writing centers will seize opportunities to leave the margins of their institutional culture and become central to the teaching and learning that happens at their university and beyond.

After all, writing centers are powerful spaces. The offerings in Marginal Words, Marginal Works? make this fact clear.

In and Out of (the) Margins–But Not Just a Service Facility Anymore

Barbara Toth

Numerous articles in this anthology testify to writing center work across oceans, across research projects, across new purposes, across writing programs, and across tutor/faculty interactions. Implicit in all of these articles are strong arguments for active participation of writing centers in the construction of universities and against writing centers as mere service facilities.

Kate Chanock in “On Being a Colleague” writes from Australia describing successes that she has experienced with a faculty-based model that positions her writing center staff to interact with faculty as colleagues, rather than as service workers. Chanock cites “othering that contributes most to the sense of insult felt by writing tutors” (91) when the “multidimensional” (87) nature of writing center work is misunderstood or ignored.

Paula Gillespie, Bradley Hughes, and Harvey Kail in “Nothing Marginal About This Writing Center Experience: Using Research About Peer Tutor Alumni to Educate Others” speak powerfully and persuasively to the disciplinary recognition due writing centers. According to Gillespie et al., “We want to argue that once a writing center has ‘graduated’ peer tutors, it is no longer exclusively a service facility that provides tutoring for struggling writers” (37). The research Gillespie et al. have conducted, eliciting feedback from “graduated tutors” about the role writing center work has played in their post-writing center life, substantiates
their claims.

In “Institutionalizing Ethical Collaboration Across Difference In Writing Centers,” Christopher Wilkey and Donelle Dreese call for “a citizenship-driven writing center” as “an ethical one” (173). Wilkey and Dreese remind readers of Nancy Grimm’s postulation and write that “writing centers should move away from an autonomous model of literacy towards an ideological model that explicitly places texts into social and cultural contexts” (172). They claim that initiating such changes will “transform perceptions of the service role of writing centers.” According to Wilkey and Dreese, “At stake in making convincing arguments about the appropriate role of writing centers is nothing less than the status and the role of literacy as a genuine contributor to the values and mission of a university education” (173).

In “Dialogue and Collaboration: Writing Lab Applied Tutoring Techniques to Relations with Other Writing Programs,” Linda S. Bergman and Tammy Conard-Salvo describe what happens when they apply the writing center signature of collaboration to negotiate meaning with staff in the first-year composition and professional writing programs on their campus. Bergman’s and Conard-Salvo’s use of “ongoing professional conversation” (195) as means to cope with change and construct mechanisms for student success provide valuable examples for writing center administrators to learn from and emulate.

Crystal Bickford in “Inside Looking Out: Trading Immediate Autonomy for Long-Term Centrality” describes her center as one in which “tutors, students, and faculty are talking and negotiating writing and learning” (149). Bickford’s tutor-centered approach and ability to negotiate an internship by which a tutor received academic credits argues strongly against the perception of the writing center as remedial and operating on the margins of her university’s mission. Bickford warns that “working behind closed doors,” i.e., in the margins, “only increases the opportunities for negative speculation” (149).

In a sense, these articles are a call to work toward perhaps whole new spaces where ideas and language get forged into new meanings and maps. They call not only for context-specific re-modeling but also for a rethinking about how writing center professionals define who they are and where they work. As Nicolas reminds us in “Stories and Images That Sustain Us,” the Burkean parlor’s connections to “women and the home” (5) promote a feminine rather than feminist message that may be counterproductive to “creating an adult identity” (15).

These moving and resounding articles deserve a place on our physical, virtual, and mental bookshelves. Perhaps Ben Rafoth may be suggesting too gingerly in the introduction that writing center “words and work are on the move and quietly leading the academy” (x). I, along with Beth Boquet, would assert perhaps not so “quietly.”

The authors in this anthology present lucid and candid records of writing center struggles and achievements at the start of the 21st century. These articles are useful not only for writing center people but also, perhaps more importantly, for non writing center readers who are interested in viable models of collaboration, interested in persons not merely personnel. It is a call to non-writing center colleagues to work along side us to take responsibility for student literacies in more dialogic ways.