Results by title
71 books match the query 'Writing centers' and 15 start with w
WPAing in a Pandemic and Beyond
Revision, Innovation, and AdvocacyTodd Ruecker
Utah State University Press, 2025
The chapters in this collection include a variety of voices who have been involved in writing program administration in recent years to reflect on the work done in this moment of crisis. Through both short vignettes and longer chapters, this book explores the complicated interactions between WPA work and navigating times of crisis to provide insights for moving forward. Authors explore a variety of topics including professional development, curricular change, advocating in the face of intransigent administrations and others, caring for students, and taking time for self-care. Pointing to specific actions for continued advocacy, WPAing in a Pandemic and Beyond will be of great interest to WPAs and writing studies scholars.
WPAs in Transition
Navigating Educational Leadership PositionsCourtney Adams Wooten
Utah State University Press, 2017
WPAs in Transition shares a wide variety of professional and personal perspectives about the costs, benefits, struggles, and triumphs experienced by writing program administrators making transitions into and out of leadership positions. Contributors to the volume come from various positions, as writing center directors, assistant writing program administrators, and WPAs; mixed settings, including community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and research institutions; and a range of career stages, from early to retiring. They recount insightful anecdotes and provide a scholarly context in which WPAs can share experiences related to this long-ignored aspect of their work.
During such transitions, WPAs and other leaders who function as both administrators and faculty face the professional and personal challenges of redefining who they are, the work they do, and with whom they collaborate. WPAs in Transition creates a grounded and nuanced experiential understanding of what it means to navigate changing roles, advancing the dialogue around WPAs’ and other administrators’ identities, career paths, work-life balance, and location, and is a meaningful addition to the broader literature on administration and leadership.
Contributors: Mark Blaauw-Hara, Christopher Blankenship, Jennifer Riley Campbell, Nicole I. Caswell, Richard Colby, Steven J. Corbett, Beth Daniell, Laura J. Davies, Jaquelyn Davis, Holland Enke, Letizia Guglielmo, Beth Huber, Karen Keaton Jackson, Rebecca Jackson, Tereza Joy Kramer, Jackie Grutsch McKinney, Kerri K. Morris, Liliana M. Naydan, Reyna Olegario, Kate Pantelides, Talinn Phillips, Andrea Scott, Paul Shovlin, Bradley Smith, Cheri Lemieux Spiegel, Sarah Stanley, Amy Rupiper Taggart, Molly Tetreault, Megan L. Titus, Chris Warnick
Weathering the Storm
Independent Writing Programs in the Age of Fiscal AusterityRichard N. Matzen Jr.
Utah State University Press, 2019
Leading writing specialists at the University of Texas at Austin, Syracuse University, the University of Minnesota, and many other institutions document and think carefully about the on-the-ground obstacles that have made the creation of IWPs unique. From institutional naysayers in English departments to skeptical administrators, IWPs and the faculty within them have surmounted not only negative economics but also negative rhetorics. This collection charts the story of this journey as writing faculty continually make the case for the importance of writing in the university curriculum.
Independence has, for the most part, allowed IWPs to better respond to the Great Recession, but to do so they have had to define writing studies in relation to other disciplines and departments. Weathering the Storm will be of great interest to faculty and graduate students in rhetoric and composition, writing program administrators, and writing studies and English department faculty.
Contributors: Linda Adler-Kassner, Lois Agnew, Alice Batt, David Beard, Davida Charney, Amy Clements, Diane Davis, Frank Gaughan, Heidi Skurat Harris, George H. Jensen, Rodger LeGrand, Drew M. Loewe, Mark Garrett Longaker, Cindy Moore, Peggy O’Neill, Chongwon Park, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Mary Rist, Valerie Ross, John J Ruszkiewicz, Eileen E. Schell, Madeleine Sorapure, Chris Thaiss, Patrick Wehner, Jamie White-Farnham, Carl Whithaus, Traci A. Zimmerman
What We Are Becoming
Developments in Undergraduate Writing MajorsGreg Giberson and Thomas A. Moriarty
Utah State University Press, 2010
Contributors to the volume address a range of vital questions for undergraduate programs, including such issues as the competition for majors within departments, the job market for undergraduates, varying focuses and curricula of such majors, and the formation of them in departments separate from English. Other chapters discuss the importance of flexibility, consider arguments for a rhetorical or civic discourse core for the writing major, address the relationship between rhetoric and composition majors, and review the role of multiliteracies in the major.
The field of composition has not come to a consensus on the shape, content, or focus of the undergradutate major. But as individual programs develop and refine their curricula, one thing has become clear: we must think about them in ways that go beyond our particular circumstances, theorize them in ways that secure their place on our campuses and in our discipline for years to come. What We Are Becoming is an effort to do just that.
Wiring The Writing Center
Eric Hobson
Utah State University Press, 1998
Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors
Nicole I. Caswell
Utah State University Press, 2016
The first book-length empirical investigation of writing center directors’ labor, The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors presents a longitudinal qualitative study of the individual professional lives of nine new directors. Inspired by Kinkead and Harris’s Writing Centers in Context (1993), the authors adopt a case study approach to examine the labor these directors performed and the varied motivations for their labor, as well as the labor they ignored, deferred, or sidelined temporarily, whether or not they wanted to.
The study shows directors engaged in various types of labor—everyday, disciplinary, and emotional—and reveals that labor is never restricted to a list of job responsibilities, although those play a role. Instead, labor is motivated and shaped by complex and unique combinations of requirements, expectations, values, perceived strengths, interests and desires, identities, and knowledge. The cases collectively distill how different institutions define writing and appropriate resources to writing instruction and support, informing the ongoing wider cultural debates about skills (writing and otherwise), the preparation of educators, the renewal/tenuring of educators, and administrative “bloat” in academe.
The nine new directors discuss more than just their labor; they address their motivations, their sense of self, and their own thoughts about the work they do, facets of writing center director labor that other types of research or scholarship have up to now left invisible. The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors strikes a new path in scholarship on writing center administration and is essential reading for present and future writing center administrators and those who mentor them.
Working with Faculty Writers
Anne Ellen Geller and Michele Eodice
Utah State University Press, 2013
Contributors from a variety of institution types and perspectives consider who faculty writers are and who they may be in the future, reveal the range of locations and models of support for faculty writers, explore the ways these might be delivered and assessed, and consider the theoretical, philosophical, political, and pedagogical approaches to faculty writing support, as well as its relationship to student writing support.
With the pressure on faculty to be productive researchers and writers greater than ever, this is a must-read volume for administrators, faculty, and others involved in developing and assessing models of faculty writing support.
Writing Center Administrators as Campus Leaders
Candis Bond
Utah State University Press, 2026
Writing Center Administrators as Campus Leaders challenges the current erasure of the WCA role within discourse on campus leadership by highlighting the various ways these leaders have had transformative impacts on their institutions, emphasizing the wide range of knowledge, skills, and added value that WCAs bring to the university ecosystem.
Contributors from diverse institutions, institutional contexts, identity formations, and career paths theorize different forms of leadership from within and beyond writing centers. The first section brings together perspectives on leadership theory and practice, focusing on the practical gains offered and challenges afforded via writing center professional pathways. The second section emphasizes partnerships and networks forged through intentional and creative leadership models. In the final section, contributors consider the emotional and affective dimensions of WCA labor, offering multiple roadmaps for WCAs to transition their experiences into more recognition, resources, and broader administrative roles while underscoring the potential of inclusive, community-focused leadership for current and aspiring WCAs.
Providing key insights and practical examples, Writing Center Administrators as Campus Leaders validates and inspires current and future WCAs and informs university administrators on the ways that WCAs can and do impact higher education as true campus leaders.
Writing Centers and Learning Commons
Staying Centered While Sharing Common GroundSteven J. Corbett
Utah State University Press, 2022
The chapters comprehensively examine the ways writing centers make the most of sharing common ground. Directors, coordinators, administrators, and stakeholders draw on past and present attention to writing center studies to help shape the future of the learning commons and narrate their substantial collective experience with collaborative efforts to stay centered while empowering colleagues and student writers at their institutions. The contributors explore what is gained and lost by affiliating writing centers with learning commons, how to create sound pedagogical foundations that include writing center philosophies, how writing center practices evolved or have been altered by learning center affiliations, and more.
Writing Centers and Learning Commons is for all stakeholders of writing in and across campuses collaborating on (by choice or edict), or wishing to explore the possibilities of, a learning commons enterprise.
Contributors: Alice Batt, Cassandra Book, Charles A. Braman, Elizabeth Busekrus Blackmon, Virginia Crank, Celeste Del Russo, Patricia Egbert, Christopher Giroux, Alexis Hart, Suzanne Julian, Kristen Miller, Robby Nadler, Michele Ostrow, Helen Raica-Klotz, Kathleen Richards, Robyn Rohde, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran, David Stock
Writing Centers and Racial Justice
A Guidebook for Critical PraxisTalisha Haltiwanger Morrison
Utah State University Press, 2023
In five thematically organized sections—Countering Racism and Colonialism in Higher Education; Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention; Tutor Education and Professional Development; Engaging with Campus and Community; and Holding Our Professional Organizations Accountable—scholars from a variety of institutions, both large and small, public and private, present critical reflection and concrete guidance on anti-racist writing center administrative policies and practices. Several chapters include sample materials, such as course syllabi, consultant education activities, and recruitment materials, to help current and aspiring writing center administrators implement changes in their own contexts.
Writing Centers and Racial Justice is the first book to offer clear and actionable advice on how writing centers and their staff can take up racial or social justice work that will result in real sustainable change. Writing center directors, professionals, and tutors, as well as administrators and decision makers at the institutional level, will benefit from this thoughtful and effective text.
Writing Centers and the New Racism
A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and ChangeLaura Greenfield and Karen Rowan
Utah State University Press, 2011
Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan have created a rich resource for writing center tutors, administrators, and scholars. Motivated by a scholarly interest in race, literacy, and pedagogy, and by an ethical commitment to antiracism work, contributors address a series of related questions: How does institutionalized racism in American education shape the culture of literacy and language education in the writing center? How does racism operate in the discourses of writing center scholarship and lore, and in what ways are writing centers unwittingly complicit in racist practices? How can they meaningfully operationalize antiracist work? How do they persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in their daily practice?
The conscientious, nuanced attention to race in Writing Centers and the New Racism is meant to model what it means to be bold in engagement with these hard questions and to spur the kind of sustained, productive, multivocal, and challenging dialogue that, with a few important exceptions, has been absent from the field.
Writing Emergencies
Composing (Ourselves) in Times of CrisisHolly Hassel
Utah State University Press, 2026
Despite the adage “there are no writing emergencies,” at times situations invite or require immediate written response. In a modern era of social media and with the constancy of “crisis,” knowing when, how, and why to respond quickly is increasingly important. In Writing Emergencies, a diverse group of authors contribute scholarly, narrative-based discussions of writing emergencies, descriptions of more and less successful strategies, and a reflective conclusion that offers implications for writing studies praxis and theory.
In this collection, contributors demonstrate the reality of writing emergencies—in their own writing lives, classrooms, and programs—and they offer both self- and community-focused approaches for response. Chapters focus on discernment and prioritization, recognizing that all stressors are not necessarily emergencies. Instead, expanding our vocabulary for (and subsequent understanding) of the kinds of difficulties we come across can build our professional capacity and support greater career sustainability. The volume also illustrates the role of coalitions in navigating writing emergencies and how purposefully building and activating these coalitions subverts some challenges before they become emergencies, particularly those that are recurrent or manufactured.
Writing Emergencies both names and grapples with writing emergencies and offers insights for capacity-building in the acts of filtering and prioritizing competing urgent demands. The findings are meaningful for all leaders, students, and teachers who center care in their relationships with others.
Writing Groups in the Writing Center
Negotiating Authority and Expertise in Collaborative LearningSara Wilder
Utah State University Press, 2025
As many higher education institutions strive to create spaces and systems that increase equity, accessibility, and diversity, they recognize the need for improved mentorship across academic levels. This book analyzes the significant benefits as well as the challenges faced by writing groups in providing such support. Wilder presents a nuanced account of how facilitators scaffold group practice, how members use and build genre knowledge across disciplines, and how institutional contexts shape emotional labor requirements.
For educators and tutors, the book provides an in-depth examination of the facilitator role, describing essential logistical, emotional, and intellectual practices, and addresses common conflicts and challenges. Administrators can find valuable material for training tutor-facilitators and frameworks for conceptualizing writing group functions on campus. For researchers, the book extends scholarship on writing groups, writing transfer, and collaborative learning, bridging writing center and broader writing studies research.
In an era of concern about generative AI’s role in writing education, Writing Groups in the Writing Center extends research on group facilitation, collaborative learning, and authority negotiation in writing center communities of practice and emphasizes the human connections that make collaborative writing meaningful and valuable for student writers.
Writing Majors
Eighteen Program ProfilesGreg Giberson
Utah State University Press, 2015
The writing major is among the most exciting scenes in the evolving American university. Writing Majors is a collection of firsthand descriptions of the origins, growth, and transformations of eighteen different programs. The chapters provide useful administrative insight, benchmark information, and even inspiration for new curricular configurations from a range of institutions.
A practical sourcebook for those who are building, revising, or administering their own writing majors , this volume also serves as a historical archive of a particular instance of growth and transformation in American higher education. Revealing bureaucratic, practical, and institutional matters as well as academic ideals and ideologies, each profile includes sections providing a detailed program review and rationale, an implementation narrative, and reflection and prospection about the program.
Documenting eighteen stories of writing major programs in various stages of formation, preservation, and reform and exposing the contingencies of their local and material constitution, Writing Majors speaks as much to the “how to” of building writing major programs as to the larger “what,” “why,” and “how” of institutional growth and change.
Writing Program Architecture
Thirty Cases for Reference and ResearchBryna Siegel Finer
Utah State University Press, 2017
Writing Program Architecture offers an unprecedented abundance of information concerning the significant material, logistical, and rhetorical features of writing programs. Presenting the realities of thirty diverse and award-winning programs, contributors to the volume describe reporting lines, funding sources, jurisdictions, curricula, and other critical programmatic matters and provide insight into their program histories, politics, and philosophies.
Each chapter opens with a program snapshot that includes summary demographic and historical information and then addresses the profile of the WPA, program conception, population served, funding, assessment, technology, curriculum, and more. The architecture of the book itself makes comparison across programs and contexts easy, not only among the programs described in each chapter but also between the program in any given chapter and the reader’s own program. An online web companion to the book includes access to the primary documents that have been of major importance to the development or sustainability of the program, described in a “Primary Document” section of each chapter.
The metaphor of architecture allows us to imagine the constituent parts of a writing program as its foundation, beams, posts, scaffolding—the institutional structures that, alongside its people, anchor a program to the ground and keep it standing. The most extensive resource on program structure available to the field, Writing Program Architecture illuminates structural choices made by leaders of exemplary programs around the United States and provides an authoritative source of standard practice that a WPA might use to articulate programmatic choices to higher administration.
Contributors: Susan Naomi Bernstein, Remica Bingham-Risher, Brent Chappelow, Malkiel Choseed, Angela Clark-Oates, Patrick Clauss, Emily W. Cosgrove, Thomas Deans, Bridget Draxler, Leigh Ann Dunning, Greg A. Giberson, Maggie Griffin Taylor, Paula Harrington, Sandra Jamieson, Marshall Kitchens, Michael Knievel, Amy Lannin, Christopher LeCluyse, Sarah Liggett, Deborah Marrott, Mark McBeth, Tim McCormack, John McCormick, Heather McGrew, Heather McKay, Heidi A. McKee, Julianne Newmark, Lori Ostergaard, Joannah Portman-Daley, Jacqueline Preston, James P. Purdy, Ben Rafoth, Dara Regaignon, Nedra Reynolds, Shirley Rose, Bonnie Selting, Stacey Sheriff, Steve Simpson, Patricia Sullivan, Kathleen Tonry, Sanford Tweedie, Meg Van Baalen-Wood, Shevaun Watson, Christy I. Wenger, Lisa Wilkinson, Candace Zepeda