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East Central Writing Centers Association
41st Annual Conference
April 4th through 6th, 2019
University of Dayton, Curran Place
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We welcome you to the University of Dayton!
Greetings from Stacie Covington, UD English Department Lecturer and Christina Klimo, UD Write Place Coordinator, your 2019 conference co-chairs! It is our pleasure to welcome you to the 41st annual East Central Writing Centers Association conference, Soaring to New Heights: Breakthroughs, Inventions, and Progress in Writing Centers. Our theme embodies the rich innovative history of Dayton, Ohio. From the Wright Brothers to Paul Laurence Dunbar, from Erma Bombeck to the Funk Music Hall of Fame, from the first automobile electric self-starter to the pull-tab soda can—Daytonians have a long history of invention, creativity, passion, and determination. These same qualities define writing center work!
SOARING—this idea came about as we reflected on the many ways writing centers help “lift up” writers. The more we considered this notion, though, the more we realized that writing centers not only allow writers to soar but serve to lift up our tutors and directors as well. Whether it is through tutor-led lightning talks, our keynote luncheon with Mike Mattison (Wittenberg) on “The Evolution of Writing Tutors,” our networking social and award ceremony at America’s Packard Museum, our closing reflection luncheon, or the multitude of presentations, workshops, and panels from members of our writing center community, we hope you find that this conference helps you explore the progress of writing centers and how they adapt to the ever-changing needs of institutions and writers. We are honored to be serving as this year’s conference chairs and hope that we can help make your ideas, innovations, and inventions SOAR during your time at the University of Dayton. Having fun with our aviation theme, sit back, relax; the pilot has turned off the ‘fasten seatbelt sign.’ It is now safe to ‘move about the cabin’ and enjoy your time SOARing with us! But, if you do experience a bit of turbulence or have any questions during your “flight,” please let one of us know. You may also reach out to our team of volunteers who will be wearing conference “volunteer” buttons. Serving you, Stacie and Christina
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About the University of Dayton
Our MISSION is simple, yet profound. LEARN. LEAD. SERVE.
The University of Dayton is a top-tier Catholic research university with academic offerings from the undergraduate to the doctoral levels. We are a diverse community committed, in the Marianist tradition, to educating the whole person and linking learning and scholarship with leadership and service.
A Comprehensive University We are committed to being an educational community that:
offers a broad range of undergraduate programs and selected graduate and continuing education programs;
views learning and scholarship as a shared task of discovering, integrating, applying and communicating knowledge; and
emphasizes learning and scholarship at the intersections of liberal and professional education, of the disciplines, and of theory and practice.
A Catholic University We are committed to a Catholic vision of learning and scholarship including:
a common search for truth based on the belief that truth is ultimately one and can be more fully known through both faith and reason;
a commitment to the dignity of the human person as a creative and social being created in the image and likeness of God; and
an appreciation for the ways creation, people, communities, and the ordinary things in life manifest, in a sacramental manner, the mystery of God.
Committed to the Marianist Tradition We are committed to the Marianist tradition of education that includes:
educating the whole person through a learning community of challenge and support;
connecting learning to leadership and service; and
collaborating for adaptation and change.
To learn more, visit: https://udayton.edu/about/mission-and-identity.php
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Conference Schedule at a Glance
Sessions A through H will be held in the following Curran Place Rooms:
First floor—Alumni Board Room, Deeds Board Room, Auditorium
Second floor—M2225, M2265, M2300, M2320
Thursday, April 4, 2019
3:00 pm to 8:00 pm Pre-registration, Main Entrance Lobby, Curran Place 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm Pre-Conference event and social:
Soaring—In a Flash—To New Heights!
Friday, April 5, 2019
7:30 am to 12:30 pm Registration, Main Entrance Lobby, Curran Place
8:30 am to 10:00 Light Breakfast Available, Curran Place, Alumni Center 8:30 am to 9:30 am Session A
9:45 am to 10:45 am Session B 11:00 am to Noon Session C
12:20 pm to 1:45 pm Key Note Lunch, Curran Place, Meyer Room 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm Session D
3:15 pm to 4:15 pm Session E
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm Poster Session, Curran Place, Deeds Room 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm Session F
7:00 pm to 10:00 8:00 pm Awards
An Evening of Desserts and Mocktails & Tutor Awards Ceremony, America’s Packard Museum
Saturday, April 6, 2019
8:30 am to 10:00 am Registration, Main Entrance Lobby, Curran Place
8:30 am to 10:00 am Light Breakfast Available, Curran Place, Alumni Center 9:00 am to 9:45 am State Networking and Dialogue,
Curran Place, Executive Dining Room, Alumni Center, Alumni Board Room, Auditorium
10:00 am to 11:00 am Session G 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Session H
12:30 pm to 1:30 Closing Lunch and Activity, Curran Place, Cafeteria
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Pre-Conference Event: Thursday, April 4 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Soaring—In a Flash—To New Heights
Curran Place, Alumni Center North (Star Trek Room) Join us on Thursday evening for a conference kick-off event featuring lightning talks from area tutors, networking opportunities with other writing center professionals, and light food and beverages. The schedule for this event is as follows:
6:30 pm
Welcome Address
6:40-6:50 pm Role of Implicit Beliefs in Argumentative Writing Manisha Nagpal
Ohio State University
6:55-7:05 pm Assessing Tutor Flexibility via Longitudinal Analysis Sam Turner
Ohio State University
7:10-7:20 pm Ready for Takeoff: How Writing Centers Can Support English Language Learners Lakmini Siriwardana and Mackenzie Guthrie
Wright State University
7:20-7:40 pm Socializing and food/drink break
7:45-7:55 pm Comparing and Contrasting Writing Centers Autumn Lala
University of Dayton
8:00-8:10 pm Writing Together: Research on Graduate Student Motivation and Accountability in Writing Groups Alyssa Chrisman
Ohio State University
8:15-8:25 pm Writing Fellowship Aaron Goode
University of Dayton
8:25 pm Informal Q&A with lightning talk presenters and open time for socialization and networking will resume at 8:30 PM.
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Dessert and Mocktails Event: Friday, April 5 from 7:00 to 10:00pm
Meet the East Central Writing Centers Association
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2018-2019 Regional Board
President Leigh Ann Meyer Indiana University Southeast
Vice-President Genie Giaimo The Ohio State University
Past President & Web Master
Sherry Wynn Perdue Oakland University [email protected]
Secretary Louis Noakes Lakeshore Public Schools
Treasurer Trixie Smith Michigan State University
At-Large Representative(2018-2021)
Christina Klimo University of Dayton [email protected]
At-Large Representative (2016-2019)
Marilee Brooks-Gillies IUPUI [email protected]
At-Large Representative(2017-2020)
Helen Raica-Klotz Saginaw Valley State University
At-Large Representative(2017-2020)
Eleni Siatra Indiana University East
At-Large Representative(2018-2021)
Joseph Cheatle Michigan State University
2-year College Representative(2018-2020)
Shawn Casey Columbus State Community College
Secondary School Representative(2017-2019)
Kyle Boswell South Haven High School
Grad Student Representative(2018-2019)
KC Chan IUPUI [email protected]
UG Student Representative(2018-2019)
Samantha Turner The Ohio State University
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Detailed Conference Schedule and Abstracts
SESSION A: Friday (4/5) 8:30-9:30 AM
Breaking Through the “Editing Service” Misperception: Using Telephone Consultations to Serve
Students in Online Courses
Alumni Boardroom
Ashley Bauman, University of Indianapolis
Richard Marshall, University of Indianapolis
Progress for most universities today means developing programs that attract applications from a
shrinking pool of students. The convenience of online courses is one solution, and writing centers have
looked to invent ways to serve these distant students. However, asynchronous email consultation often
becomes a mere “editing service.” Even when writing center consultants properly ask questions of a
writer before offering substantive advice, they often do not receive a response. The “virtual” visit to the
writing center then becomes a one-stop affair that hardly addresses global concerns of thesis, support for
it, and organization. Even in a synchronous chat format, the interchanges sometimes fall apart when the
consultant waits, for instance, 20 minutes for a response and finally sees on screen the question, “have
you finished marking my essay yet?” Skype, Facebook, and other electronic methods of face-to-face
consultation are quite promising but also present challenges. A writing center can have the most up-to-
date technology but the same technology is not always available to the students. Almost all students,
however, have a telephone. It might seem the opposite of a breakthrough, but the University of
Indianapolis Writing Lab has found that simple telephone consultations offer ease and convenience that
obviate many difficulties. A telephone consultation can easily begin by asking questions about global
issues; writers do not wander off during it, and, best of all, a consultant can often hear, even if s/he can’t
see, how the advice is being received and immediately react if needed with a different approach.
Integrating Online Writing Consultations into a Learning Management System (LMS) Alumni Boardroom
David Bauer
Digital Drop-Off (DDO) is a custom tool developed at the University of Dayton (UD). This tool provides
students a means of soliciting online feedback from UD peer writing consultants through the same
platform that the students use for most other academic activities.The Write Place (UD's writing support
center) was in need of a system capable of facilitating writing support for distance learning students and
those unable to stop by the on-campus writing support center for a consultation. DDO, piloted during the
Spring 2015 term, offers a simple way for students to drop off documents, and receive writing feedback
about organization, content, and mechanics from within the institution's LMS. This presentation will
discuss and demo the DDO tool as well as provide a forum to discuss how an LMS can be used as a
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platform for a robust online writing support center. Attendees will be encouraged to share feedback on
the tool and discuss their institution's needs in regards to online student writing support.
Access and Usability: Exploring Online Writing Center Consultations
Alumni Boardroom
Joseph Cheatle, Michigan State University
Ja'La Wourman, Michigan State University
Gabrielle White, Michigan State University
Becca Meyer, Michigan State University
Ashley Weiss, Michigan State University
Amber Abboud, Michigan State University
The online writing center is a tool that offers the opportunity to hold consultations remotely, eliminating
the need to physically travel to a writing center. This can be beneficial for clients and consultants alike
due to the convenience of an online space for consultations. Faculty and students that feel unable to
receive in-person consultations due to their potentially busy or unpredictable lives, or to extraneous and
often unseen factors, can be reached by online writing center spaces (Gardner, 1997). During the last few
years, The Writing Center has responded to student use by offering more online consultations and
assigning a graduate student as an online writing center coordinator; additionally, these online
consultations have a nearly 100% usage, higher than most other satellite locations.This presentation
examines the online writing center location at the Michigan State University Writing Center, more
specifically, focusing on the experience of the client. Specifically, How Writing Center clients perceive,
experience, use, and value the online writing center location is at the core of this research. Previously,
there has been emphasis on studying how the online writing center functions from the perspective of the
consultant; however, this project will examine the online space from the perspective of the client. Our
research studies the experience of the client, both positive and negative aspects. Aside from the online
platform being easy and efficient to use, the user experience of an online writing center must be able to
be accessible to all potential clients. While there are sure benefits to an online writing center location,
there has not been ample research to ensure the user experience of these online spaces are accessible
and easy to use. Thus, our research includes an examination of the differences between an online
consultation and an in-person consultations; how in-person consultations can translate to an online
consultation; as well as why and where students use the online writing center. We will also be looking
into the accessibility (defined by the ARIA standards that cover areas of color contrast, compatibility with
screen readers, and navigations through tabs) of an online platform. This project should improve The
Writing Center’s online consultation offerings while contributing to a growing body of research about
online consultations in the field of writing center studies.
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Soaring into the Classroom with Mini-Modules
Auditorium
Patti Tylka
The College of DuPage’s Writing, Reading, Speech Assistance coaches have created a menu of interactive
half-hour mini-module workshops that we offer to instructors to support the goals and course objectives
across all areas of study at the College of DuPage. Our first year of visiting classrooms has allowed us to
reach more students, supplement curriculum, and model effective writing practices. Join this workshop
session to sample portions of a mini-module workshop, learn about our workshop template, and
collaborate with others to design a mini-module for your center. (Handouts include the College of DuPage
Mini-Module menu and a design template.)
Soaring into the STEM-o-sphere: Preparing tutors to engage with STEM students
Deeds Board Room
Laura Hazelton Jones, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Corinne Renguette, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Students in STEM fields often lack strong writing skills. Although writing center tutors are generally
trained to assist students across a variety of disciplines, they often feel less confident when tutoring
writing from STEM fields. Using an assignment-specific, knowledge transfer, just-in-time approach to
tutor training may help improve tutor confidence and prepare them to engage effectively with STEM
students. This presentation will outline the tutor-training method and the preliminary results of this
study. This novel training method was developed and tested initially at a four-year university in the east-
central U.S. with tutors who primarily have non-technical backgrounds. It was then replicated and
expanded at another four-year university with tutors who have non-technical and technical backgrounds.
For the current study, an engineering course (10-30 students) at each institution was selected. The
instructor required a visit to the writing center for tutoring as part of the grade for the assignment. Four
to eight tutors were trained 1-2 weeks prior to the assignment beginning. The one-hour training session
included a collaboration between the instructor and the writing center supervisor to present and explain
the assignment (a lab report, in this case), well written and poorly written sample reports, a checklist of
important items, and a formatted template. Preliminary findings indicate that this training may increase
tutor confidence when applied to engaging with STEM students regardless of the tutor’s background. This
could be a useful method for other writing centers to use in tutor training.
Expanding into the Disciplines: Conventions and Expectations for Undergraduate Writing in Social
Work
Deeds Boardroom
Jacqueline Kauza
Writing centers support students from many disciplines, yet are frequently staffed, at both peer tutor and
administrative levels, by individuals with English or rhetoric/composition backgrounds. Undergraduate
tutors are, of course, trained to use generalist tutoring methods to support each individual student-
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writer, regardless of discipline. However, I recall my frustrations as a tutor, feeling I could better assist
more writers if I knew more about writing conventions in other disciplines. My desire to better
understand undergraduate writing expectations across the disciplines led to my current research into
writing-related pedagogy in disciplines like social work. Zawacki (2008) reports that writing fellows
learned more about disciplinary writing and writing-related pedagogy through close involvement with
disciplinary courses; in my study, I observed an upper-level social work course, interviewed the course
instructor regarding his pedagogical goals and perspectives on writing, and assessed and coded his
feedback on student assignments. From these data, I derived several core concepts that seemed
significant to social work writing. I then interviewed other undergraduate social work instructors to
determine if they considered these concepts important for undergraduate writers to demonstrate in their
courses. This presentation does not suggest strict rules for social work writing. Rather, it introduces some
concepts that tutors might consider when consulting on social work texts, concepts that could help tutors
better engage in conversational give-and-take with social work writers. The presentation also proposes a
possible framework for writing center administrators interested in expanding the work of their centers
and conducting similar research at their own institutions.
When They Go Low, We Go High: A Writing Center Amidst the Crisis in the Humanities
Deeds Boardroom
Julie Daoud
The crisis in the Humanities is real, and many colleges and universities today feel inclined to trim liberal
arts programs in an effort to streamline educational pathways toward the realm of careers. But while
institutions seem to cater more and more to students who pursue financial security through programs in
the business and the hard sciences rather than programs in the arts or humanities, we have managed to
protect a series of reading and writing intensive courses in our general education requirement. But how
do these courses serve students bent on lives that will be spent without reading and writing as leisure
activities? And are the expectations for communication fluency aligned with the interests of our
students? The Writing Center on our campus has helped to bridge some of the disconnect between
faculty and millennials who see college as a way toward a career--not so much lives rooted in critical
analysis. How are tutors the stewards who illuminate the value of lives rich with careful reading and
writing? This paper presents the liminal area that our peer consultants straddle--and in many ways help
to negotiate--for students who might see the conventions of a liberal arts education as out-dated. With
personal narrative from peer-tutors, this paper illustrates what writing centers are doing today to serve
students in ways that go beyond the mere teaching of grammar, mechanics and rhetorical stylistics.
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Expanding the Hat Rack: Investigating the Roles of Writing Center Social Media Content Creators
M2225
Amory Orchard, Indiana University - East
New adventures mean new possibilities and challenges. Adopting social media for one's writing center is
no exception. The level of writing center activity on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram has soared within
the past 10 years. Despite writing scholars calling for more replicable, agreeable, and data-supported
“RAD” research (Babcock and Thonus; Driscoll and Wynn Purdue; Gillespie et al.), the conversation
surrounding this topic remains anecdotal and without regard for individual writing centers’ local contexts
and needs. With this gap in mind, the speaker highlights major findings from her year-long qualitative
interview project consisting of 30 high school and college writing centers within and outside the United
States. Analysis reveals that writing centers can—at least with a reflective and purposeful eye toward
their own audience, mission statements, and the concept of the writing center—offer another medium
that fosters a culture of writing for stakeholders on and off a center’s campus. Conference attendees will
hear about the study in a 15-minute presentation to learn: (1) Who performs social media labor, (2) How
a center’s story informs a content creator’s posting process, and (3) How the study’s participants use
social media to do “writing center work.” The rest of the time, attendees will engage in a hands-on
activity and group discussion designed to apply the study’s findings to their own local contexts. In
addition to sharing stories about their own forays into social media, attendees will challenge themselves
by confronting notions of what writing center labor can be beyond the one-on-one tutoring model.
SIG: Working with International Students
M2265
Dawn Hershberger
Participants will learn from each other by sharing stories of successes and challenges of working with
international students. We will discuss some programs we have implemented such as Conversation
Circles where small groups of international students are paired with English-speaking facilitators for a
weekly hour-long conversation, and training techniques we have employed such as including an ESL
component in our training workshop every year and having an ESL specialist visit every other year for
more intense training. Participants will share information about what they are doing in their centers to
help international students see the value of writing center collaboration.
Tending to the Tutor’s Toolbox: Addressing Embodiment, Incorporating Kinesthetic Instruction,
and Training for Mental Health
M2300
Kyle Pratt, Ball State University
Will Chesher, Ball State University
Bethany Meadows, Ball State University
Jake Hennessy, Ball State University
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The writing center tutor skillset is ever changing and the amount of “tools” in which the tutor has
accesses to follows suit. The writing center tutor must keep their “tools” sharp and their toolbox up to
date. This panel of four tutor-scholars seeks to enhance the existing toolbox of our writing center tutors.
We explicate this through three different avenues (abstracts below): embodiment as a tutor, kinesthetic
learning/tutoring, and addressing mental health within sessions.
Panel Part One: Dressing the Part: Graduate Tutor Embodiment and Dress/Codes. At our center, graduate
tutors are also graduate teaching assistants or instructors; therefore, graduate tutors embody conflicting
roles on campus: instructor and peer-tutor. A lot of prior work has been done exploring this tension
(Conroy, Lerner, and Siska; Geller, Eodice, Condon, Carroll, and Boquet; Ianetta, McCamley, and Quick),
and in the past two years embodiment has included exploring the modality and rhetoric of dress (The
Peer Review 2018 CFP; Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics 2018 CFP). Using insights from Denny’s “Queering
the Writing Center,” navigating the tension outlined in Rollins, Smith, and Westbrook’s “Collusion and
Collaboration: Concealing Authority in the Writing Center,” and using the framework from Grouling-
Snider and Buck’s “Colleagues, Classmates, and Friends: Graduate versus Undergraduate Tutor Identities
and Professionalism” this introductory research project will explore the ways graduate tutors navigate
and construct their conflicting identities/roles on campus through the modality of dress/codes. This will
include a semi-structured interview of current graduate tutors in our center that will explore how their
choices of dress on a daily basis reflect their different roles on campus.
Panel Part Two: “This is not a moment, it’s the movement”: Incorporating Moments for Movement in
Writing Centers. The question of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences in learning styles has been
widely discussed in the fields of education as well as writing centers, with scholars, such as Libby Miles, et
al., Stacey Brown, and Marilee Sprenger, addressing various methods for teachers and tutors to
differentiate instruction. These works, however, have not adequately addressed the issue of how to
differentiate successfully for kinesthetic learners in writing centers. My project addresses the issue of
how writing centers can effectively and easily implement strategies for their toolbox in order to cater to
all three subtypes of kinesthetic learners: “hands-on learners,” “whole-body learners,” and “doodlers”
(Sprenger 38). Specifically, in my project, I will be looking at how the Ball State University Writing Center
can implement strategies to help these students. I will provide writing center tutors explicit and practical
methods for differentiating their tutor sessions for kinesthetic learners, such as using tinker toys, mind
mapping, walk-through essays, and more. In conclusion, by closely examining kinesthetic teaching
strategies, this project sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of differentiated instruction
based on Gardner’s multiple intelligences.
Panel Part Three: Compassion, Company, and Psychology: Realizing an Expanded Role and Preparedness
for the “Counseling” Tutor to Handle Psychological Stress. The role of tutors, their defined responsibilities,
and training needed to manage the varying levels of psychological stress that clients bring into sessions
have been in debate by many scholars (Suffredini; Murphy; Johnson). However, these works neglect to
offer any practical method in which to train tutors to handle the sometimes intense, emotional client and
the psychological stress that they bring into the session with them. This paper addresses an improvement
to tutor training for emotionally intense sessions with attention to the medical consultation method seen
in therapist settings (Gask and Usherwood). In this project, I will examine multiple experiential sessions
involving clients with various levels of psychological stress and extrapolate the medical consultation
method to demonstrate the importance of a counseling approach for tutors within sessions. I argue to
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position the writing center as a crucial gateway in improving student confidence, idea of self-worth, and
social activeness—and that to neglect the counseling aspect of tutoring is to intrinsically perform a
disservice to the client and the writing process. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining multiple
sessions and how they could be improved through the medical consultation method, offers a feasible,
practical way to implement tutor training to handle the often intense, emotional sessions tutors will
encounter.
“What Should I Like to Work on Today?” Assessing Student Response on Appointment Request
Forms
M2320
Suzanne Smith, The University of Toledo
Clayton Chiarelott, The University of Toledo
Jessica Aberl, The University of Toledo
Responses to appointment request forms, whether detailed or sparse, allow writing center tutors to
initiate conversations with students about perceptions of their writing and their identities as writers. In
this study, we examine how students answer the question, “What would you like to work on today?” from
26 appointment request forms submitted to The University of Toledo Writing Center during Fall 2018
along with an analysis of post-session tutor reports. It is an opportunity, as Muriel Harris (1986) writes,
“to listen more closely to hear what is being said ‘behind’ the words” (p. 61). Our analysis is grounded in
the idea of “threshold concepts” from Adler-Kassner and Wardle’s (2016) edited collection Naming What
We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Included in this theoretical framework is inquiry into
how students learn to use language to navigate their way into academia. One such threshold, we posit,
takes place through their interaction within the space of an online text box in which they articulate
expectations for their WC appointment. The text box becomes a valuable space for students to tell us
something, even if they are not sure exactly what that is. Presenters ask the questions: Do we need to
listen more carefully or ask better questions? When we ask, “What would you like to work on today?” are
we really inviting students to ask us, “What Should I Like to Work on Today?” Finally, what are
implications of this dialogue space for tutor methodology and training?
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SESSION B: Friday (4/5) 9:45-10:45 AM
Expanding the Writing Center: The Success of Writing Fellows in the Classroom
Alumni Boardroom
Allison Cloud
One recent effort made by Indiana University Southeast to improve student retention is the
implementation of Writing Fellows in the classroom to aid students in passing writing intensive courses
with low completion rates. This presentation will explore and explain the benefits of Writing Fellows for
students, the university, and for the Writing Fellows themselves. Material presented will include
background information regarding Writing Fellow programs, what a Writing Fellow does, insight from
students and professors who worked with Writing Fellows, and data, both qualitative and quantitative,
backed by statistical analysis. All of this will be synthesized to show the ability of Writing Fellows to help
students find individual success in writing through the collaborative nature of writing centers.
Breaking Through to the English Department: Reducing Misperceptions Held by English
Professors about Writing Lab Consultations
Alumni Boardroom
Richard Marshall, University of Indianapolis
Karrah Pattengale
Our Writing Lab has made great progress in collaborating with various departments that are not usually
considered writing intensive, viz. math, chemistry, and music. With these ventures the Lab has broken
through barriers that often divide academic disciplines, but a recent disturbing incident has made the
Writing Lab realize that breakthroughs are still needed with a very writing-intensive department: English.
Many “misguided perceptions” about the role of a writing center are still held by faculty in that discipline.
Recently an English professor walked into the Lab, accosting a group of tutors. She asked to speak with
Kara who had worked with a student in her composition course, “appalled” that a tutor could advise a
freshman to focus on “word choice” in poetry analysis. That was, asserted the professor, much too
complex of thesis for a freshman writer. Although the method the professor chose to instruct tutors on
their job was very unusual, her misguided thoughts on the Writing Lab’s purview were, unfortunately, not
that unusual. UIndy Lab faculty can still remember when years ago one instructor insisted that tutors
should only help writers insert in essays five periodic sentences. That instructor’s students insisted they
not be advised on their thesis or organization. More recently, another English faculty member so
frightened students about comma splices that they also declined advise on global issues.Our presentation
will undoubtedly prompt audience members to tell their own similar stories. But we also hope that a
discussion will discover ways to remove such misperceptions.
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Writing Centers in Current Industrialized Writing Education: Another Cog or the Remedy?
Alumni Boardroom
Amir Kalan, University of Dayton
Sachin Nagarajan, University of Dayton
Writing centers are often perceived as places where student writing is “corrected” and “fixed”. Writing
consultants, accordingly, are dominantly viewed as proofreaders. Current industrialized educational
structures have compartmentalized the process of writing to an extent that not only do writing
composition courses function in separation from actual writing contexts, but also, in a Fordian-conveyor-
belt mentality, writing centers are treated as a station where “faulty” writing products receive additional
service before being finalized. Based on this paradigm, students with writing issues walk into a writing
center with their “problematic” product to see a writing technician on duty and it doesn’t matter if the
consultant has ever met the instructor of the course for which the student is writing, or if the consultant
will ever see the student again. In this presentation, a writing composition instructor and a writing
consultant from University of Dayton’s writing center, Write Place, share their experiences about resisting
the industrial model of writing education by inviting writing consultants into the classroom all through the
process of a writing assignment and also by creating an intellectual relationship between the students
and the writing consultants, or in other words, by creating an intellectual community. In this approach,
writing consultants are not writing mechanics but part and parcel of the writing community. The
consultants create an ongoing human relationship with the instructor of the course as well as the
students. Moreover, rather than helping students execute an assignment by following a rubric—another
relic of industrialized pedagogy—actively co-create the assignment with the instructor.
We'll be there for you: a workshop to explore librarian-writing tutor collaboration
Auditorium
Heidi Gauder, University of Dayton
Writing consultations can be complex discussions covering multiple aspects associated with the act of
writing. However, writing consultants need not think that they must shoulder all of the challenges that
student writers bring to the table. Librarians are involved in the writing process as well, from helping with
topic generation, discerning research needs, locating and evaluating sources, teaching citation
management, and assisting with various citation formats. Librarians and writing consultants can be
collaborators and colleagues with the shared goals of helping students become better researchers and
writers. This workshop will lead participants through a training scenario that focuses on recognizing our
roles in the writing process, and specifically on collaborating to identify when a writing sample might
need additional writing support. In particular, this workshop will provide participants with the tools and
strategies to help writing consultants look at a writer’s source content with intentionality. This workshop
will show that in understanding the respective roles of the library and the writing center through all
composition stages, writing consultants will be better prepared to serve student writers who could learn
by working with a librarian counterpart, and vice versa.
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Strategically Queer: The LGBTQ Tutor in the Writing Center
Deeds Boardroom
Jay Sloan, Kent State University - Stark Campus
Nancy Grimm once suggested that “a playful, curious ‘what if” writing center practice” is the best method
for tutors and tutees to engage. But many queer tutors find embodying their own queerness in the
Center anything but “playful.” Often hesitant to step into visibility, queer tutors engage in the same
avoidance tactics they use elsewhere in life (what Yoshino identifies as "covering" mechanisms). To
borrow Sondra Perl’s term, just as writer’s develop a “felt sense” as they generate text, LGBTQ tutors
develop a felt sense about the “text” they articulate in their words, actions, and bodies, texts shaped both
by the perceived divide between them and tutees, but also by their own internal conflicts. This
presentation uses surveys conducted with queer tutors to explore what it means to be “strategically
queer” in the writing center.
Embracing Waywardness: Counter-narratives of Progress and Community
Deeds Boardroom
Kelin Hull, IUPUI
Barely six weeks in to my new position as graduate student assistant director of the writing center and,
words – microaggressions, depression, fear, confusion, suspicion, hostility, and suicide - landed like
cluster grenades, each one seeming to tear a new hole in the foundation of community in the writing
center. How do we feel, what do we do, how does a community survive when the story we’re
experiencing isn’t the story we want or expected - when it is, in a word, terrible? We are in a post-grand
narrative moment. We know our labor and our centers do not look, act, and feel cozy, iconoclastic, or
focused on one-on-one tutoring all of the time (McKinney). And yet, we must continue to move beyond
and press deeper. Gibson et al assert that our social institutional narratives are “embedded in or with”
individual narratives (72). Therefore, we need to think “about the work that the word ‘communities’ does,
as well as what it could do, in the work that we do” (Ahmed and Fortier 252). Using critically reflexive
stories as a way to change and shape practice, this presentation will highlight the relationship between
community and progress and disrupt their grand narratives. In this telling, progress “is not some mystical
force or dialectic lifting us ever higher...It’s the result of human efforts….[it] does not mean that
everything becomes better for everyone everywhere all the time” (Pinker). Progress, rather, “involves
changing as a person” (Quinlan 107).
From Chai Time to Difficult Conversations: Encouraging Self and Cultural Reflection in Consultants
Deeds Boardroom
Bayleigh Saulmon
There is a complexity to human identity that is often overlooked in favor of grouping people into
demographics, making it easier to understand and work by removing the complexity. There are a
necessary self and cultural reflection needed to override this impulse to heuristically group individuals,
which the work of writing centers depends on. In order to encourage this self and cultural reflection in
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consultants, the IUPUI writing center’s Language and Cultural Diversity Committee organizes an event
called Difficult Conversations three times every semester. Originally, the events were called Chai Time
and were promoted as a time to relax, have tea, and discuss open questions surrounding diversity if those
attending felt prompted. In Spring 2018, we transitioned from Chai Time to Difficult Conversations and
have become more deliberate with our topics and questions, allowing for the necessary self and cultural
reflection that enables the consultants to value each individual and respect the individual and cultural
characteristics that might differ from their own. Last semester we led Difficult Conversations on language
diversity, LGBTQ+ identities, and the spectrum of mental health. Each conversation built off a scholarly
article and incorporated questions to encourage reflection on how the article expanded the consultants’
knowledge, how it encouraged them to see the complexity within the demographic, and how this
knowledge and awareness could influence their consulting practices. My presentation will discuss the
transition from Chai Time to Difficult Conversations, review previous Difficult Conversations topics, and
explain the process of creating and leading a Difficult Conversation.
Off We Go, Into the Writing Yonder, Working Through Consultant Training
M2225
Zachery Koppelmann, Wabash College
The goal of this workshop is to take a critical look at how we teach writing consultants, how that training
aligns with the goals of our writing centers, and formulate a framework for more nuanced training. There
is a wealth of resources to teach new writing consultants the fine art of working with writers; however,
not all of the resources are needed or align with our needs and the needs of our institutions. This idea is
based on a <em>WLN </em>article, “Heading East, Leaving North,” by Mike Mattison, in which he
discusses his decision to not include Steven North’s foundational article, “The Idea of a Writing Center,” in
the course for training Wittenberg Writing Advisors. As Mattison points out, “not that many faculty are
calling for us to focus on grammar anymore. Some are, yes, but more and more faculty come to college
teaching with a solid understanding of writing center work.” So how many other standards of writing
center pedagogy are being used without critically examining how they fit into the changing needs and
roles of writing centers? What articles fit better? What makes them fit? There are no easy answers, and
the answers will vary based on local needs. During this workshop, participants will be asked to examine
their writers’ needs, to examine their role in their institutions, to think about what training best matches
those goals, and to speculate changes to how their writing consultant are trained to better reach their
writers and institution.
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If You've Got a Problem, Yo, Let's Solve It: A Solution-Oriented Discussion for High School Writing
Centers
M2265
Katie Maciulewicz
The goal of this roundtable discussion is to provide an opportunity for high school writing center directors
and tutors to discuss and solve problems or answer questions they may be having. Together, we can
brainstorm ways to better organize staff, materials, and time, as well as help newcomers get started.
Topics may include how to recruit student tutors, how to attract student writers, training student tutors,
collecting and tracking data, and gaining faculty support. New and veteran directors and tutors are invited
to join. Feel free to come prepared with your own questions or dilemmas to discuss.
From Dissonance to Authenticity: Strategies for Navigating Emotional Labor in the Writing Center
M2300
Libby Anthony, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
Eric Van Hoose, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
Kara Anand-Gall, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
Zac Tabler, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
While writing center work is important, rewarding, and highly gratifying, those who work in writing
centers recognize that the labor can also sometimes be difficult and draining. Writing center professionals
seeking to find best practices for alleviating burnout and maximizing well-being through self-care have
often looked outside their own disciplinary boundaries to better understand the nature of emotional
labor. Inspired by the 2018 ECWCA conference themes of well-being, mindfulness, and self-care in writing
center work, this presentation draws on our own experiences as well as research in the fields of
organizational psychology and occupational health psychology to examine the key concepts of emotional
labor (e.g. surface acting, deep acting, and expression of naturally felt emotion) and their applications to
writing center work. In this panel presentation, we will join emerging conversations about emotional
labor in writing centers. We will discuss how emotional labor is defined, investigate where writing centers
fall in the array of industries and occupations requiring emotional labor, and develop strategies for
creating a climate of authenticity and buffering against emotional dissonance within sessions. Some
questions this presentation will explore are: What are common (mis)understandings about emotional
labor?; What kinds of emotional labor happen in writing centers?; How do we create spaces for
processing and reflecting on our emotional labor?; and how can discussions of emotional labor be
incorporated into training and professional development? Participants will have the opportunity to reflect
on times when they have experienced emotional dissonance and have engaged in emotional labor.
Additionally, they will leave the presentation with action items to create a climate of authenticity in their
centers and tap into deep acting or expression of naturally felt emotions in their sessions with students
and interactions with colleagues.
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The Writing Center Handbook and the Discourse of Writing Centers: Four Critical Discourse
Analyses
M2320
David Marquard, Ferris State University
Paige Brady, Ferris State University
Kristen Kelly, Ferris State University
Sam Kodeski, Ferris State University
Jason Mickevich, Ferris State University
As noted by Jewell and Cheatle (2016), framing a professional consultant’s handbook can prove difficult,
particularly regarding how such handbooks frame their peer-to-peer and non peer-to-peer consultation
scenarios. As well, and for many writing center (WC) administrators, such a task of creating, framing,
and/or revising a central guide or handbook can be challenging. More specifically, for WCs who are in the
initial stages of drafting such handbooks, particularly with incoming and new writing center
administrators, this process can prove difficult. Adding to this difficult task is the fact that there is little
scholarship that offers guidance and informative ways to frame and outline WC handbooks. With this
difficult task in mind, this panel presentation/discussion offers four individual critical discourse analyses
(CDAs) of ten WC handbooks from across the country. More specifically, this CDA, as informed by the
work of Fairclough (1989, 1993), Wodak (2001), and van Diijk (1993), examines such handbooks’
“guidelines for tutoring/applied practices,” where the following research questions will be addressed by
the following presenters: Paige Brady: Offers a CDA that examines how WC handbooks outline the applied
practice of writing center appointments, where such a CDA offers insight into the language used to
instruct the interchanges between the writing consultant/tutor and the student/client. Kristen Kelly:
Offers a CDA that examines how WC handbooks use language to outline what WCs “do” and “don’t do”—
where such a CDA looks closely at the disposition and affect of negatives throughout such sections. Sam
Kodeski: Offers a CDA that examines how WC handbooks use such terms as “appointments” versus
“sessions” versus “meetings”; such a CDA responds to the overarching affect such terms create between
the consultant/tutor and the student/client. Jason Mickevich: Offers a CDA that questions how the agency
of the consultant/tutor and writer/student is framed, where such a CDA investigates how such language
shapes, frames, and/or defines the interdisciplinary discourse community of the WC. David Marquard:
Serves as faculty mentor and panel presentation/discussion moderator. The results of this study offer
insight into the interdisciplinary discourse (as defined by Hyland, 2004) of the writing center, particularly
regarding how writing centers potentially serve as facets of academic reproduction regarding linguistic
and cultural capital (as informed by Bourdieu, 1984). And due to the nature of this study, coupled with
the fact that there’s little research that examines how WCs write/frame the language within their
consultant handbooks, this panel presentation/discussion is of value for writing center administrators
who wish to create such handbooks or to further revise existing handbooks.
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SESSION C: Friday (4/5) 11:00-12:00 PM
Look out Below!: The Effectiveness of Email Comments
Alumni Boardroom
Emily Nolan, Wittenberg University
Courtney Buck, Wittenberg University
Jamie Spallino, Wittenberg University
One goal of writing centers is to improve student writing, but we often don’t have a paper trail of the
results of a session. However, email tutoring allows a record of first drafts, comments, and revisions if a
student resubmits their paper. Our research is designed to tap into the potential of this record to study
the overall effectiveness of email comments. In this presentation, we will discuss our work examining
asynchronous email tutoring and how we determined whether tutor comments on papers emailed to our
writing center were effective. In our research, we utilized papers that were submitted twice to the
Writing Center, categorizing the tutor comments made on the first draft and the respective changes on
the second draft using the taxonomy created by Witte and Faigley (1981). We used the taxonomy and
“improvement ratio” of Stay (1983) to gauge draft improvement: how do writers respond to tutors’
comments and do papers improve overall? By examining the changes made (or not made), we can
determine the comments’ effectiveness and which tutoring strategies elicit effective revisions. Our
research is especially relevant to any writing center engaged in email (and face-to-face) conferencing.
Ideally our study can educate writing center directors and tutors and encourage them to implement our
findings in their centers, allowing writers to take flight. We know you have many options when it comes
to conferences today and so we thank you for soaring with us! Have an elevated day!
Grammar? Check: A Look at Grammar-Checking Software in the Context of Tutoring
Alumni Boardroom
Brandon Stevens
Today, it’s rare to find software that involves typing that doesn’t at least contain a spell-checker:
everything from text messaging on smartphones, to email clients, to Microsoft Word. Although the
creation of grammar-checking software is by no means a recent innovation, there has been an explosion
of new commercial software in the last several years. Now, there are plenty of products on the market,
like <em>Grammarly</em>, which has advertised itself specifically to college students. However, how
accurate are these programs? Beyond that, how do we, as tutors, advise our tutees on using grammar
and spell-checking software? Grammar checkers are practically ingrained into our digital lives, and we
need to step back and assess the impact that they have on student writing. Within this presentation, I will
open the discussion on grammar and spell-checking software and its presence in a tutoring context.
Through a survey of the student population at my university (Ohio Wesleyan University), I will look at how
students may encounter, and interact with, grammar-checking software in the college classroom. I will
examine grammar-checking software from a pedagogical stance as well, through research and a survey of
professors of introductory college composition classes to see if and how they teach grammar, and how
they treat grammar-checking software in their course.
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Instituting and Assessing Online Writing Groups: When Flexibility and Change Supports
Engagement and Writing Success
Alumni Boardroom
Miriam Bourgeois, The Ohio State University
Genie Giaimo, The Ohio State University
The Ohio State University's Writing Center has implemented three models of asynchronous online
support with varying degrees of success: two-step Asynchronous consultations, one-step Drop-Off
consultations, and the Online Accountability Writing Group. After conducting assessment, the researchers
found that less structure led to higher levels of engagement, as evinced by increased participation and
retention. Our study fills a gap in the research in that it shares findings from one-on-one and group
asynchronous online support.
“’Don’t You Know it’s Time for Me to Fly:’ Articulating Writing Center’s Scope of Work”
Auditorium
Helen Raica-Klotz, Saginaw Valley State University
Chris Giroux, Saginaw Valley State University
In Peripheral Visions of the Writing Center, Grutsch McKinney (2013) argues that writing centers are
constantly evolving communities of practice. As such, we are often too busy to notice the various tasks
which encompass much of the work we do, work far beyond simply providing individual tutoring sessions,
APA documentation tips, and writing center orientation sessions. This extended workload, often
unrecognized, can lead to feelings of burnout for tutors and their administrators. As REO Speedwagon
would say, “I’ve been around for you / been up and down for you / but I just can’t get any relief.” Perhaps
one of the solutions to this issue is to begin to have conversations about the larger scope of work within
the writing center. This raises the question: what are the ways we can begin to articulate this work—to
ourselves and to others? This workshop will share a history of the evolving work of our writing center at
Saginaw Valley State University on our campus and inside our larger community, and discuss a model we
have used to categorize and represent that work. The workshop will conclude with the opportunity for
other writing centers to begin to articulate the ways their writing centers serve their respective
institutions and brainstorm ways for these centers to make this work more visible.
Writing Center Collaboration with Nonprofit Organizations
Deeds Boardroom
Robert Holderer, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Our writing center has collaborated with outside nonprofit organizations to help improve the quality of
their writing. This presentation will detail the work that we have recently done with Voices for
Independence, an organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities to secure needed services,
adequate housing, and employment. We have especially focused on helping this organization to create of
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organizational templates for record keeping, and effective documents and web pages designed for
providers and multiple outside audiences that tend to skim through documents rather than reading them
carefully.Often nonprofit organizations such as Voices of Independence of Erie come to us asking for a
grammar brush-up, thinking that improved grammar skills will produce better writing. As we work with
these organizations, we focus their attention from the knowledge of grammar terminology to discovering
more effective ways for communicating their messages, audience analysis (some of whom may be
indifferent or unsympathetic and for generating clear documents that include incorporate the effective
use of color and print fonts and bulleted lists to catch the attention of those who tend to skim through
documents. We have also shown them techniques for developing organizational templates and story
boarding for developing on-line web pages for staff and clients to find needed services, housing, and
employment
Evolving Training Techniques & Practices: The Story of Consult Right
Deeds Boardroom
Ashley Cerku, Oakland University
Red Douglas, Oakland University
Emma Shriner, Oakland University
Online learning and mentorship programs have greatly influenced the way that knowledge is exchanged
in academic settings. This same approach can be applied in writing centers for consultant training. The
Oakland University Writing Center has evolved their consultant training program, which further combines
traditional and technology-oriented techniques along with mentorship pairings to optimize consultant
preparedness. This model can potentially be adapted for future use in any writing center.
From Beyond the Center: Lessons on Collaboration from a Sixth-Grade Multimodal Outreach
Project
Deeds Boardroom
Nick Sanders, Michigan State University
Despite writing center studies enduring interests in the intersections among learning and collaboration
(North; Brufee), the field has yet to develop robust understandings of how collaboration happens and
comes to happen (particularly in liminal spaces). This presentation offers the possibilities of rethinking
collaboration based upon my experiences co-leading a multimodal storytelling outreach project outreach
program at Michigan State. Based on these experiences, this presentation will consider the ways in which
sixth-graders engaged in collaborative making as it might pertain to writing center pedagogy and
administration. I ask: what are the ways in which collaboration occurred in the space of the multimodal
outreach project? Using these observations as sites of departure, I hope to reconsider what writing
centers think about in terms of collaboration-- including what is collaboration (as both a practice and
methodology), what is produced by such collaboration, and how to develop practices that foster
collaboration as experienced by participants in the outreach program. I hope this talk and discussion can
help reframe the ways in which collaboration is routinely constructed in writing center scholarship (e.g.,
as democratic and nonhierarchical) by acknowledging the imperfect, frustrating, and often unequal
processes making occurs.
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Toward a Safer Space: Survivor Allies in the Writing Center
M2225
Grace Pregent
As we continue to interrogate the “grand narrative” of the writing center, recent studies have begun to
acknowledge the writing center as a deeply complex and political space through innovative approaches to
tutor education. This is boldly evident in the 2017 special issue of The Peer Review, “Writing Centers as
Brave/r Spaces,” which continues critical conversations initiated by such postmodern theorists as Nancy
Grimm and Harry Denny. Amongst this scholarship a gap exists regarding how to support survivors of
gender-based violence in the writing center, an undeniably essential topic in our current political and
social climate. On college campuses, one in three of sexual assault survivors are first-year students (Perez
and Gallardo 6), and at the same time first-year students frequently constitute a high percentage of
writing center clients. This offers peer tutors, students whose classification as "responsible employees"
varies according to each university's interpretation and implementation of current Title IX regulations, a
critical potential opportunity to build relationships with and offer meaningful support to survivors.
Informed by a partnership with Loyola’s Senior Health Educator and Advocacy Coordinator, this
interactive workshop focuses on how we can move toward creating a safer space for disclosures within
our centers and within tutoring sessions themselves. We will practice offering survivors both emotional
support, including critical listening and empathizing, and tangible aid. Participants will leave the workshop
with increased confidence and information about how to support and empower survivors in the writing
center.
What We Can Learn From Secondary School Writing Centers
M2265
Jeffrey Austin, Skyline High School
Christine Modey, The University Of Michigan
Ann Blakeslee, Eastern Michigan University
Carsten Finholt, Skyline High School
Emma Rose Carpenter, Skyline High School
Jackie Grutsch McKinney, Ball State University
Most of the documented interactions between secondary and post-secondary writing centers tend to be
situated in the context of “service learning.” In “service learning” contexts, the former is the primary
beneficiary of the expertise and outreach of the latter, as college and university directors and consultants
may train local middle and high school students to open their own writing centers (e.g., Hutchinson &
Gillespie, 2015), provide supplemental tutoring support or enrichment services (e.g, Tinker, 2006), or
engage teachers in professional development on postsecondary expectations for disciplinary writing (e.g.,
Blumner & Childers, 2011). While service-oriented frameworks can be useful and important in expanding
teacher and student capacity and closing achievement and opportunity gaps (Eby, 1998), they often fail
to account for substantial benefits accrued by postsecondary writing centers, their directors, and their
consultants in their interactions with their secondary school counterparts. As secondary school writing
centers continue to grow into powerful engines of scholarship and pedagogical innovation, radical sites of
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spirited inquiry, and hubs for social justice and activism, more substantive professional dialogue about
how stakeholders in postsecondary writing centers learn and benefit from their secondary school
counterparts is required. To begin this dialogue, representatives from university writing centers, a
secondary school writing center, and a professional writing center organization will contextualize how the
work of middle and high school writing centers is pushing pedagogy and practice in writing centers writ
large before breaking attendees into smaller hosted discussion groups for further collaborative learning.
Laying the Foundation: Writing Centers and Student Affairs Foundational Documents
M2300
Marie Ibarra, Michigan State University
Floyd Pouncil, Michigan State University
Lisett Roman, Michigan State University
Writing centers have a storied history in academia as student support centers. Recognizing this fact, the
Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education lists Carino’s “Early Writing Centers:
Toward A History” as a foundational text for the student affairs functional area of Learning Assistance
Programs. Similarly, there are several documents that serve as foundation to student affairs that are
useful to writing center professionals. The Student Personnel Point of View 1937 and 1949, ACPA Student
Learning Imperative, Learning Reconsidered 1 and 2, as well as the NASPA/ACPA Professional
Competencies are all viable sources for navigating higher education as a student centered writing center
administrator, tutor, or consultant. We argue that these documents, and the practice that follows, allow
for writing centers to find new strategies for navigating institutional politics and allow for the building of
bridges with like-minded colleagues across an institution. This panel will serve to give context to the ideas
mentioned above through a brief overview of the documents and provide a conversation on how a
current first year, second year, and graduate of a student affairs program utilize the foundational texts in
a writing center context to bridge the foundations of students affairs with that of writing centers.
Transfer Theory and Genre-Specific Tutor Training Interventions
M2320
Daniel Lawson, Central Michigan University
Kayla Taylor, Central Michigan University
Several studies on the implications of transfer theory for writing center practice have appeared in recent
scholarship. And though the various approaches to training tutors for work in particular genres often
draw tacitly on transfer theory, there are no studies examining the efficacy of tutor training interventions
focused on transfer theory for particular genres, nor on the efficacy of these genre-specific training
interventions in facilitating transfer for tutors working in other genres. In brief, this presentation shares
the results of an in-progress quasi-experimental research design on transfer theory and genre. The
researchers introduced two optional training interventions for writing center tutors and assessed the
entire tutor population after each intervention to determine the efficacy of the interventions. The first
intervention and assessment addressed applying transfer theory to writing center sessions in general and
the second specifically to the legal brief genre. In short, the presenters will 1) examine quantitative data
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recording tutors’ self-perceptions of their frequency of use of transfer-based techniques in sessions and
2) examine tutor language describing how they use these techniques. Aside from findings specific to
genre, the presenters found that direct training on transfer particularly influenced how often tutors
claimed to encourage writers to connect previous experiences with writing to their current task. The
intervention also seemed to influence how those tutors described doing so. By studying new training
interventions of writing center tutor--specifically associated with transfer theory--writing centers may
better adapt to the ever-changing needs of their institutions and writers who use that center.
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KEY NOTE LUNCH: Friday (4/5) 12:20-1:45 PM
“On the Evolution of Writing Tutors”
Meyer Room
What do the Wright Brothers, Charles Darwin, a platypus, and funk music have in common? All can tell us something about the evolution of writing tutors. What changes do we find in tutors over time, and how do we measure those changes? Most important, what might those changes mean for tutors and the writers they work with? Presenter: Michael P. Mattison Writing Center Director/Associate Professor of English, Wittenberg University If you take a look at his extended resume, Mike has been employed as a dish washer, disc jockey, sump-pump repairman, line cook, vacuum cleaner salesman, and telemarketer. When none of those career choices panned out, he turned to writing centers. In 1996, he started as a tutor in the Iowa State Writing Center. A few years later, at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he taught in their award-winning writing program and was the assistant director of their newly formed Writing Center. In 2003, he became a member of the English Department and the director of the Writing Center at Boise State University, before coming back to Ohio (his home state) in 2009 to take over the Wittenberg Writing Center. Through all those years, he's been able to work with hundreds of students on thousands of papers. Even better, he's worked with dozens of student tutors/consultants/advisors as they have learned to conduct their own sessions with writers, and learned to conduct their own research projects in the writing center field. He has published work in Writing on the Edge, Journal of Teaching Writing, Writing Center Journal, WLN, The WAC Journal, and The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. His article “Someone to Watch Over Me” won the IWCA Research Award in 2007, and in 2016 he received the Ron Maxwell Leadership Award from NCPTW. He was also the Most Improved Bowler in his Chillicothe league in 1978, and he is the current ping-pong champion in his house. He is a right-handed Taurus with a penchant for puns, and he hopes to someday write a novel using only the lines from Bob Dylan songs. Finally, he is co-chairing the 2019 IWCA-NCPTW Conference in Columbus, OH, in October, and all of you should submit a proposal (deadline: April 15th).
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SESSION D: Friday (4/5) 2:00-3:00 PM
The Story our Body Language Tells: Nonverbal Aspects of Communication during Tutoring Sessions
Alumni Boardroom
Anastasiia Kryzhanivska, Bowling Green State University - Main Campus
As tutors we aim to assist student writers in successfully completing their writing and reading tasks as
they navigate academia. We concentrate on communicating our ideas related to text organization,
ownership, and feedback, often forgetting about the communication that happens without us actually
saying anything – nonverbal communication. This 15-minute individual presentation will focus on the
nonverbal aspects of communication during a tutoring session, its meaning and implications. The
presenter will discuss such aspects as position of a tutor in relation to a tutee, eye contact, and body
movement, supporting the arguments with research results from literature (Bower, Kiser, McMurtry,
Millsaps, & Vande, 2002; Brooks, 2008; Janney, 2011; Ryan & Zimmerelli, 2010) and personal examples
from writing center sessions. This session will also present the best practices of nonverbal communication
in a writing lab, how they might be perceived by students from different backgrounds and cultures, and
what impact tutors’ body language could make on tutees. Being aware of the above-mentioned aspects
will allow tutors to understand the significance behind a writing session which might often mistakenly
seem as “a smooth flight pattern with little visible movement.”
Collecting Data: What's the Point?
Alumni Boardroom
Anna Shapland, Central Michigan University
Benjamin Kuzava, Central Michigan University
Data collected from Writing Center sessions is about more than logistics and statistics; it’s a way to reflect
upon and improve our services. More importantly, the data collection process should be linked to every
service the Center provides, ensuring that consultants have access to and knowledge of the full range of
resources available to them. This data collection process should also be designed to comply with FERPA
privacy policies, which ensure that trends can be analyzed without giving consultants access to personal
writer information. This year, the Central Michigan University Writing Center is developing a new virtual
system for booking appointments, gathering relevant writer information, and summarizing session trends.
By making the data system more user-friendly, for both writers and consultants, we will be able to better
utilize our collected information about what goes on in the Center. This knowledge can then be used to
improve our consultant training processes by giving them a better understanding of what to expect from
their sessions. In this presentation, we will discuss not only our efforts to improve our current method of
collecting data, but also how data processes can be linked to all other areas of Writing Center practice. By
analyzing data trends, we can better understand the needs of our writing community and make strides to
accommodate them. This presentation will feature a brief demo of our new appointment book system,
that is currently being piloted in the Spring 2019 semester, as well as an explanation of how the collection
process impacts our Center's practices.
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Expanding writing center services with an eye toward utilizing best data practices
Alumni Boardroom
David Luftig, University of Dayton
As writing centers continue to grow, refine and expand their services, one possible area for such
expanded services could providing basic assistance regarding best data management practices. Being able
to recognize potential red flags regarding backing up data, proper file naming conventions, proper file
directory structures, and managing research files (such as PDFs) could save student from the anguish of
deleting, misplacing, or corrupting their valued files. Writing centers are in a unique position to assist and
recognize potential problems as they are on the front lines of service with regard to students’ research
and writing projects. Additionally, the knowledge needed to recognize such potential problems could
typically be taught to writing center staff members in less than an hour. Therefore, this session will
examine the potential benefits of providing writing center staff with basic knowledge pertaining to best
data practices as well as a brief overview of what concepts could potentially be provided to such staff.
Such concepts include: The best ways to backup projects (and the “rule of threes”), the value of utilizing
sustainable (and not proprietary) file formats, proper file naming conventions, and organizing research
files. It is believed that by possessing such knowledge writing centers will be able to further their mission
of fostering information literacy and helping to create better and more confident writers.
Writing Spaces and Sponsorship
Auditorium
Madison Sabatelli, Ohio State University - Main Campus
Reflecting on the evolution of writing centers, this workshop aims to engage participants in exploring the
role of space in writing practices. Drawing from Deborah Brandt’s idea of literacy sponsorship and other
scholars’ recognition of other forces that shape writing practices, participants will be familiarized with
these theories and then challenged to consider how the spaces we inhabit can influence and support
writing. Participants will be encouraged to think of their experiences inside and outside of the writing
center in order to better understand the similar and dissimilar qualities of these spaces. Additional
questions will be raised as to how writing centers can accommodate an always-diversifying student body,
as well as how to foster better environments for writing within our own centers. Following a brief
introduction to this topic, participants will be given time to reflect on the writing spaces they utilize. After
this individual free-writing period, participants will break into discussion groups and participate in a
collaborative design charette to illustrate ideas about the writing spaces they envision. These written and
visual products are intended to serve as both reflections of where our writing centers have been, in
addition to recommendations for what our writing centers can become.
The Complexities of Social Justice and Writing Centers: A Reflection
Deeds Boardroom
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Aaron Wilder
Writing Centers have often positioned themselves as spaces championing inclusion, social justice, and
liberatory practices. But as Elizabeth Boquet, points out in "'Our Little Secret': A History of Writing Centers
Pre- to Post-Open Admissions," these ideals are often complicated, if not contradicted, in practice. I was
confronted by these contradictions at IWCA in 2018 at the Peachtree Station MARTA platform. While
ascending the stairs, I had to make a choice about how to address a man sleeping across the steps. He
was between myself (and a student) and the top of the stairs. But more pointedly, between me and an
elegant conference hotel where I would present in the "social justice" strand on a project studying and
assisting food-and-housing-insecure residents of Indianapolis. As a Writing Center Administrator, I was
not only responsible for my moral decision in that moment, but also that of a student who would follow
my lead.<br /><br />The difficult questions posed by this moment, among others within Writing Centers,
will be addressed. The framework of the presenter-- a University that prides itself as a model of an urban
and written critical literacies center, but situated at a mostly-white, middle-class university in a poor,
mostly black urban center-- will serve as a jumping-off-point for these critical discussions. How, if at all,
can Writing Centers be authentic vehicles for social justice among communities? Participants will discuss
methods such as programs, like community writing centers-- shifts in perspective, like whose voice gets
representation in decisions-- and more. The presentation will introduce a concept based upon the
positioning of the presenter (provided in the description), and the situation (also detailed in the
description), and will incorporate significant discussion based upon that, and then the presenter's
decision and personal struggle with that decision. That decision, along with a bit more context, will be the
segue for the broader discussion of writing centers and writing center practitioners as vehicles for social
justice and disruption, or places of social reification and maintenance, based on the work of Boquet,
Grimm, Rosculp, Mitchell, as well as Corbett and Fikkert.However, the goal is that the bulk of the time will
be spent in discussion of the moral implications of our actions as Writing Centers, from how we respond
to people in our daily lives to the venues we choose for our conferences to the food we utilize in those
conferences to the ways we divvy out our time. Anything about writing centers theory and practice is
meant to be put out on the table for a critical eye.
Reflecting and Connecting: Inventing Shared Space for Student Reflection
Deeds Boardroom
Eric Van Hoose
Reflective practices have long been part of writing center work. While consultants and students reflect
differently and for different audiences and purposes (e.g., metacognition, transfer, personal insight,
confidence-building, and so on), these reflections are often private or semi-private documents seen only
by the students and/or consultants who create them and, possibly, by center administrators and, in some
cases, faculty members. This presentation details the process and outcomes of a small experiment I
conducted during my writing center consultations over the course of the Fall 2018 term at the University
of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, a two-year, open-enrollment institution serving a wide diversity of
students. Seeking to develop and disrupt common, mostly-private, and individualized reflective practices
and to expand the quality, relevance, and meaningfulness of students’ post-session reflections, I invited
students to reflect in a shared whiteboard space near my workstation in response to the question, “What
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advice would you give to future students?” Students’ responses—and their responses to others’
responses—offer insight into thepossibilities for public, collective reflection. As student writing
accumulated in this shared space throughout the semester, a kind of asynchronous community of
practice emerged. Students spent time reading others’ responses before adding their own. In these
moments, students sometimes asked questions about what others had written and offered their own
takes on the advice. These questions, in-turn, often expanded consultations in exciting ways. In this
interactive session, I will present my findings about the kinds of advice students offered when writing in a
public space. I’ll also share my experience of the effects this experiment had had on consultations. Next,
in the interactive portion of this presentation, participants will have the opportunity to think about the
aims and outcomes of reflection and to re-think, re-vise, and develop and share ideas for experimenting
with their own reflective practices. Some questions to consider: How do we define what makes a
reflection useful or “successful”? In what ways can reflection be incorporated into writing consultations?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of more public reflection? Finally, participants will leave with a plan
for experimenting with re-inventing their own reflective practices.
“Conceptions of ‘Progress’: What Does it Mean to Become a Better Writer?”
Deeds Boardroom
Scott Howland
As our mission statement says, the Write Place seeks to serve the UD community by recognizing “the
uniqueness of individual learners” as it works “with all students in their efforts to become better writers.”
Making progress as a writer is as unique a process as each individual student—no two paths will look the
same, and they will each lead to different destinations. As a doctoral student, I spend most of my days
reading and writing, and I plan to spend the rest of my career writing professionally. Understandably, I
have a certain vision of the type of progress I would like to make as a writer. This vision, however, is not
necessarily shared by the student writers with whom I work at the Write Place. This realization has been
an important one for me as a writing consultant—coming to understand that I must help students
cultivate and refine their own writing, rather than teach them to write as I do, has helped me to better
serve student writers here at UD. Nonetheless, I still have my own ideas about what it means to make
“progress” as a writer, and these ideas help shape the way in which I interact with students and their
writing. It is not necessary to remove all influence that stems from our own conceptions of “progress,”
but it is vital to recognize such influences so that we may learn from and use them to continually become
better writing consultants. The aim of this project is explore the various conceptions that writing
consultants, university faculty, and undergraduate writers have of “progress” in regard to their abilities as
a writer. I hope to find common themes among these groups’ understandings of “progress” that can help
the Write Place better develop tools with which we may guide students along their journeys to becoming
better writers.
Thinking Through the Use of Decolonial Methods in Global Collaborations: The Story of a North-
North-South-South Partnership
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M2225
Rachel Robinson, Michigan State University
Trixie Smith, Michigan State University
Katie Bryant, Carleton University
In the spirit of exploring new inventive pathways for writing centers, we propose a collaborative session
that discusses the challenges and rewards of developing a north-north-south-south partnership that
builds collaborations across the global north and south, particularly in southern Africa. Given the complex
history of North/South collaboration, as the Northern partners, we sought to deconstruct such power
imbalances by drawing on decolonial methods. We did this by employing the important tool of listening
to/for both the stated and unstated needs of our partner universities and viable solutions to these needs
that were specific to each collaborating institution’s context. From listening, we identified an array of
needs, such as building faculty members’ rhetorical and writing pedagogy capacities and
developing/expanding writing centre work across the partner schools. In addition to listening, our
decolonial methods included surveying collaborators about existing programs, needs, and desires before
making plans; arranging our partner work days to include time for each school to think and plan on their
own--focusing on their particular needs and strengths; then working as a group to brainstorm and
problem-solve across institutions; drawing on the varying backgrounds and expertise of all partners; and
building in time for community building and story sharing. As these partnerships continue to grow and
expand, we invite others to help us think about how to continually practice decolonial methods with our
global partners and to think about what these methods have to teach us about how we work with global
partners in our individual centers.
Evolving Technologies in Online Writing Center Work
M2265
Jenelle Dembsey
The potential for online writing center work is directly affected by available and evolving technology
platforms. At times, technology can limit what is possible. In other cases, technology can re-define online
consultations entirely. For example, collaborative technologies like Google Docs have introduced the
revolutionary idea that students can be present for and active in asynchronous appointments (Moberg,
2010; Schultz, 2010), blurring the boundaries between asynchronous and synchronous consulting
support. In a recent IWCA survey, respondents were interested in learning the pros and cons of different
technological platforms used for online writing center work. As a response to this need, this session will
engage attendees in conversations regarding the successes and failures of asynchronous and
synchronous technologies in their local contexts. This session focuses both as a roundtable for online
consulting platforms and as a special interest group for online writing center work more broadly. In
addition to discussion, attendees will be briefly introduced to the Online Writing Centers Community
(onlinewritingcenters.org) and invited to participate in shaping future resources and support.
Are Post-Session Student Surveys Useful?: An Examination of Self-Assessment and Gendered
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Language in Student Surveys
M2300
Zach Dwyer, Ball State University
Bethany Meadows, Ball State University
Many writing centers have clients complete post-session surveys about their experience in their tutor
sessions. In this panel of two tutor-scholars, we seek to examine how useful these surveys are for tutors
and writing centers. We explicate this through two different lens (abstracts below): tutor’s ability to use
the client surveys as reflection and how clients perceive gender differences in their tutors in the surveys.
Panel Part One: Post-Session Surveys and the Effectiveness of Praise. The struggle to determine the best
assessment practices in Writing Center spaces has been explored throughout our scholarship history
(Schendel and Macauley). As part of those separate attempts at assessment, centers have potentially
ignored a source of reflective feedback that can be used by tutors as useful self-assessment material and
as another source of qualitative assessment for the center itself: post-session client surveys. Researchers
have pondered the effectiveness of post-session surveys as assessment tools in the past as clients may
feel the need to be overly supportive or appreciative in the moment (Lerner). The question I hope to
answer, then, is two-fold: 1) can we, both tutors and Writing Center administrators, find within these
survey responses legitimate feedback that may apply to either tutor self-assessment or to assessment of
the effectiveness of the center as a whole, and 2) can (or maybe, should) these survey questions be
reframed to promote effective reflection and assessment? With the goal of constantly adapting and
improving the center and our tutoring practices in mind, I will attempt to find both praise and feedback
that provides opportunities for tutor growth within our center’s post-session client surveys as well as a
way to identify and showcase the strengths that allow our center to be successful. This will hopefully help
other centers consider the ways in which we may rely on our clients to promote better tutoring and
assessment practices as they may rely on the center to better understand good writing practices.
Panel Part Two: Conceptions of Gender in the Writing Center: An Analysis of Client Surveys. The question
of students’ perception of gender in their teachers and tutors has been widely analyzed in instructor
evaluations (Mitchell and Martin; Schmidt) as well as in student perceptions of their tutors (Hunzer;
Mudd). These works, however, have not adequately addressed the issue of how students perceive their
tutor’s gender. My presentation addresses the issue of how students give anonymous feedback in client
surveys about their tutors, based on the tutor’s gender. My project addresses the issue of how students
provide feedback for their tutors through studying if and how they use gendered language. Specifically, in
my project, I will look at five female and five male tutors’ client survey data and then code them for their
gendered language. I hope to discover patterns within the client surveys regarding gendered language
and stereotypes in order to reveal the connections between instructor evaluations, student behavior in
sessions based on their tutor’s gender, and how they will anonymously provide feedback about their
tutors. In summation, by closely examining client surveys, this project sheds new light on the rarely
acknowledged issue of gendered language in students’ writing center evaluations.
That’s Not Wright: Undergraduate Tutor Research as Resistance to Misperceptions of Writing
Center Work
34
M2320
Brent House, California University of Pennsylvania
Brittany Kach, California University of Pennsylvania
Autumn Benjamin, California University of Pennsylvania
Alexis Klaproth, California University of Pennsylvania
The Cal U Writing Center struggles with a misunderstanding between tutors, clients, and even professors
about its purpose, a struggle many writing centers encounter. Undergraduate tutors from the Cal U
Writing Center will discuss results from a survey that asked tutors, clients, professors, and students about
their perceptions of the Cal U Writing Center. This session will discuss the implications of these results
and our efforts to improve marketing and communication throughout campus to ensure that all members
of the college community are accurately informed about writing center work.This panel will also present
results from an additional survey of students’ perceptions of their struggles during the writing process.
Using the results of this survey, we will discuss possible approaches for facilitating knowledge transfer
with students who utilize the writing center for multiple courses. After analyzing the direct feedback of
returning clients and assessing writers’ needs, we’ll offer marketing plans for presenting the
comprehensive resources of writing centers and creating compelling reasons for writers to pay a visit.
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SESSION E: Friday (4/5) 3:15-4:15 PM
Ready (or Not) for Your Close Up?: Consultant Experiences with Video-Recording Tutorials
Alumni Boardroom
Alicia Brazeau, College of Wooster
Tessa Hall, College of Wooster
What can our consultants learn from video-recording and reviewing their sessions with writers? What
anxieties and concerns will they bring with them to the experience, and how will their mindset shape
both the assessment experience and culture of the writing center? This presentation will explore answers
to these questions by presenting lessons from a two-year, IRB-approved assessment project that
prompted student-consultants to record writing center appointments, and then review and self-assess
their consulting strategies. We will share the results of surveys and reflections completed by consultants
about their experience with capturing the tutoring process on film, giving particular consideration to
consultants’ reported emotional experience, beliefs about the reliability of recordings as an accurate
reflection of a “normal” session, and perspectives on what can be learned from this practice. Finally, we
will engage audience members in a consideration of the challenges and benefits of recording
appointments for review and assessment. In this facilitated discussion, we will offer our insights on
navigating consultant reactions and, more particularly, on using the assessment practice to cultivate a
culture of discovery in the writing center.
Turning Headwinds into Tailwinds: Assessing Student Dissatisfaction in the Writing Center
Alumni Boardroom
Natalie Delemeester, Saginaw Valley State University
In “Decisions…Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?” Lori Salem (2016) argues that writing
centers’ fundamental pedagogy, as well as stereotypes students hold about writing centers, create
barriers for students. She notes these barriers are often difficult to define or assess, since the students
who don’t come to the writing center seldom have the ability to voice their concerns about our work.
Despite this, Salem points out that, “there has been no meaningful investigation of the decision not to
come to the writing center.” This raises the question: how do we effectively assess students’
dissatisfaction or misperceptions about the writing center? To begin to answer this question, this
presentation will use our university’s writing center student exit survey data. Specifically, data from three
AYs (2016-2018) will be examined, which include almost 200 exit surveys in which the students ranked
the tutorial session as “fair” or “poor,” or the students reported feeling “unconfident” or “very
unconfident” about their ability to complete the writing assignment after the tutorial session. This
presentation will focus on factors such as students’ dissatisfaction and/or misconceptions about our
tutoring pedagogy/practices, as well as their concerns about interpersonal dynamics with their tutors.
Participants in this session will learn ways to assess—and potentially address—barriers which might
prevent students from using the writing center, turning old headwinds into new tailwinds.
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Investigating Writing Center Report Form Efficacy
Alumni Boardroom
Emily Stainbrook, University of Dayton
Romaisha Rahman, University of New Mexico
Session report forms are undoubtedly an important source of information for writing centers, but are
they actually completing the function set out for them by writing center directors? This study investigates
whether or not the session report forms collected at a specific university writing center are effective in
transmitting information about the sessions to their primary audience, the student’s instructors. The
researchers conducted a survey of instructors in order to develop training for the peer consultants who
work at the writing center. After three weeks, report forms were collected and analyzed to determine the
effectiveness of the training and whether or not the form needed to be modified in order to better serve
the primary audience. Finally, the researchers conducted an interview with three writing center directors
in order to determine the best approach to modifying the report forms to better suit their purpose.
Self-Esteem in the Writing Process
Auditorium
Rachel Epstein
Many students who have the potential to benefit from writing tutoring describe themselves as “bad
writers,” even “not writers.” Some might be so despairing about their abilities that they avoid writing
centers, seeing any association with institutionalized writing as inappropriate for them. This workshop
tests the idea that fostering students’ self-esteem as writers might be key to “getting them in the door” at
the writing center, as well as to inspiring them to return, with the end of nurturing independent writers.
Scholarship on motivational scaffolding in the writing center is helpful in formulating a methodology for
fostering self-esteem as part of the writing process. According to Isabelle Thompson and Jo Mackiewicz,
in particular, the verbal and nonverbal feedback we give is crucial in terms of motivation, serving as
support for students’ development. I am interested in focusing these techniques on global self-regard,
which can determine a long-term outlook encompassing discrete writing tasks and encounters. In the
workshop, I will introduce a methodology through the lens of my own self-assessment, facilitate a
reflective activity, and solicit ideas and anecdotes that speak to the role of self-esteem support in the
tutoring of writing. As tutors, what methods do we use to nurture self-esteem in writing? How do we
avoid “smothering” the student with affirmation? How can we foster self-esteem even before a student
walks in the door? And how do we gauge the impact of our efforts? Ideally we will collectively construct
tools we can all use in our practice.
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Learning to Fly: Student Leadership and Sustainable Growth in the Writing Center
Deeds Boardroom
Melissa Henry
Writing Center leadership often revolves around one beloved professor or director, to whom everyone
turns for advice and professional development. This model quickly becomes unsustainable as the center
grows and the complexity of challenges increase. When the Kent State University Writing Commons faced
growth beyond the capacity of our leadership structure, writing center literature was scant. We looked to
business management and higher education literature to answer questions such as: What should our
organizational structure look like? How do we prepare student leaders for these new roles? How do we
make this structure sustainable with the constant turnover characteristic of student employment? By
blending the literature of other fields with the unique and collaborative culture of writing centers, we
created a model that not only promotes student leadership as a vital element of management, but also
allows for sustainable growth despite employee turnover. Our new leadership model has allowed the
Kent State University Writing Commons to fly steady during turbulence and teach students leadership
skills that will help them soar into future careers.
Handouts in a Digital Age: How the Resources We Use Impact Student Agency
Deeds Boardroom
Kate Marquam, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
As writing center consultants, we promote our writers’ sense of agency over their work not through one
singular action, but through consistent awareness of how every area of our consulting impacts the way
writers view their role in a session. I have found that the resources we present to writers and way we
present those resources can either reinforce or dismantle the stereotype of writing centers as “fix-it
shops.” Resources can mean anything from websites like Purdue OWL to a handout created by a
consultant. When I started working at the writing center, we had an entire drawer full of handouts about
various topics. Many of these handouts were outdated and redundant. I witnessed consultants giving
students handouts to cover their own knowledge gaps or avoid uncomfortable conversations. Because
handouts were so often presented as a solution rather than as a tool to further understanding, I initially
wanted to completely eliminate them as a resource our center uses. However, in light of Nancy Grimm’s
writing about dismantling notions of “independence” in writing center sessions, I began to re-envision all
of our resources, handouts included, as a collaborative space. This presentation seeks to interrogate the
ways in which the resources we use affect the larger picture of our pedagogy. By discussing my writing
center’s journey and scholarship pertaining to student agency and the dynamics of peer consulting, I
hope to start a conversation about the resources we use in writing center sessions and the impact they
can have.
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The Citizen Model: Student Governance in the Writing Center
M2225
Rachel Carroll
Ragan Williams, Marian University - Indianapolis
This session will present and create a dialogue about the structure and function of the Student
Governance Model at our Writing Center through the Student Leader Board (SLB), Tutor Coordinators
(TCs), and committees. The Writing Center is “a collaborative and friendly profession, one that welcomes
members at all levels -- secondary school; college or university undergraduate or graduate; professional;
administrative” (Ryan and Zimmerelli 125), and we encourage all employees to take part in important
decisions that maintain and grow the center. The SLB sets an example of active citizenship in the writing
center by taking on many of the tasks that are traditionally the responsibility of the director, such as
hiring, running monthly meetings, and conducting semester reviews. The activities and visibility of the SLB
help encourage leadership among the student employees, and all employees are expected to take
initiative to enact their visions for the center, to present at conferences, and to lead during the daily
activities of the center. TCs keep up with tutors through daily secretarial and administrative duties to
increase efficiency in the center, as well as doing a large portion of the behind the scenes work.. Through
participation in committees, all employees have autonomy that allows them to determine how the
Writing Center is structured. By dictating the center’s events, appearance, and other details, the
committees become the backbone of the Writing Center and give students a chance to realize their idea
of what they want to make of the writing center.
Breaking Through Academic Barriers: Which Major Knows the ‘Wright’ Way to Write?
M2265
Amelia Lasbury, University of Indianapolis
Kara Wagoner, University of Indianapolis
Hannah Smith, University of Indianapolis
“How can you help me with this paper when you’re a _________ major?” Too often, tutors are faced with
a skeptical student who feels the tutor’s expertise is inadequate simply because they are not studying the
same major. Writing centers are commonly seen as a resource built for English or composition majors
because of their heavy focus on writing. Within this assumption, writing in science or other STEM courses
is overlooked, but there is just as much need for writing assistance in STEM fields as in humanities and
creative arts. Yet, it seems there is a general misunderstanding among writing center employees and
tutees alike that tutors of a different major than the tutee cannot offer assistance. We disagree and
instead argue that by employing tutors from diverse disciplines and encouraging them to tutor students
outside of their fields, writing centers can enhance the quality of assistance offered and allow the tutors
and tutees to reach new heights in their academia. This presentation will consist of a discussion of the
need for tutors from all majors and varying strategies that have succeeded in drawing in students from all
majors. We hope to leave the attendees with an understanding of the value of hiring a diverse staff and
the resources necessary to advise tutors in mentoring students from a wide range of disciplines. We also
hope to gain additional strategies and feedback based on similar writing lab programs.
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Listening Across Experience: A Cultural Rhetorics Approach to Understanding Power Dynamics and
Relationality within a University Writing Center
M2300
Varshini Balaji
Marilee Brooks-Gillies, IUPUI
Kelin Hull, IUPUI
KC Chan-Brose, IUPUI
James White, IUPUI
Our project looks to the lived experiences of consultants, the assistant director, and director of our own
University Writing Center (UWC) to conduct an institutional ethnography of our internal power structures
and their impact on the everyday practices within the UWC. The stories of individuals within our
community will provide us with a clearer understanding of the dynamics of our writing center, which can
be valuable for other writing center communities to consider. A few central questions that panelists will
discuss include: 1) How can we make visible the productive nature of power?, 2)How do we work with
and against institutional constraints to produce/create meaningful change?, and 3) How can the practice
of studying the power within institutions/organizations that we are a part of, shift or add to our
conceptualization of Writing Center work? In our project, we recognize that we come to the UWC with
different orientations to the work, which impacts how we conceptualize and engage in the work of the
UWC. In addition, we see our project as one that supports a re-imagining and re-making of administrative
structures and practices within the UWC (or, at the very least, making them more visible and relatable). In
this presentation, we will emphasize relationality and how it contributes to and disrupts the making of
community and WC work.
Comics and Fictional Conundrums: Art Drawn From and For the Writing Center
M2320
Abigail Wisser, Cedarville University
Caroline Clauson, Cedarville University
Our goal is to inspire other tutors to be more creative in communicating, educating, and enriching the
environment of the writing center. We hope other tutors will better internalize theory through art. In her
story "The Spirit Indeed is Willing", Carrie projected her experience in the writing center into a literary
form to better embody the complex relationship between the tutor and student, and to represent
heteroglossia in the writing center. Abigail, in writing "How to Tutor Reluctant Writers", sought to find a
new way to illustrate theories in practice. By embracing the relatively new form of the informal comic,
Abigail hopes to make theory more accessible and interesting. We believe our contributions are relevant
to this conference because they are artistic renderings, and are by nature innovative. As art pieces, these
contributions manifest the theories and practices discussed in writing center discourse.</p>
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SESSION F: Friday (4/5) 4:30-5:30 PM
Unconditional Positive Regard: TYC Writing Centers as Spaces for Self-Invention
Alumni Boardroom
Leah Bublitz
Students in TYC are uniquely diverse, and often their life experiences, values, and needs can differ from
“traditional” students attending four-year colleges. As TYC writing centers work with students to develop
an individualized process for writing and learning, so too do we find ourselves honoring their individual
perspectives, experience, and process of of self-invention. Humanist psychologist Carl Rogers provides a
definition of unconditional positive regard that emphasizes “permission for [the student] to have [their]
own feelings and experiences, and to find [their] own meanings in them.” (Rogers 283). In TYC writing
centers, we are in a position help to reinforce each student’s self-invention and act as a mirror for their
visions of their best futures. Writing Center spaces guided by and imbued with unconditional positive
regard can not only support students as they use their perspectives to analyze the world around them,
but also carve out a space where students perceive that their experiences and perspectives are
acknowledged and respected. This presentation will develop a framework for unconditional positive
regard in the Writing Center and provide participants an opportunity to consider how their own writing
centers provide a space for students to innovate their own stories.
Motivation and the Writing Process
Alumni Boardroom
David Harrington
Rachel Carroll, Marian University - Indianapolis
This study is relevant because it looks at how to engage those students who are too often disengaged
from the writing process. Many of us work with them every day in class rooms and writing centers and
know how difficult it can be to find a way to motivate the student to engage with the writing process. Our
work seeks to provide insight and tools to bring students willingly into the writing process.
Music in the Writing Center
Alumni Boardroom
Colton Wansitler
Nicholas Buonanni
With many studies being produced about the effects of classical music on studying, we felt that a similar
study should be completed over the effects of music in the writing center. We ran a study at the Michigan
State University Writing Center, which ran October - November. We solicited the satellite locations, as
well as a section of the central location, to participate in a controlled experiment. Over the span of four
weeks, we played predetermined playlists in the center covering various genres/eras of music (i.e.
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instrumental, choral, and popular/easy listening/rock). Data concerning the music was collected through
a survey, which the clients completed after their consultations. The survey gathered information on the
specific week/genre of music. After the completion of the of the project we collected the data from the
surveys to see if there was a specific type of music the clients enjoyed. Our hypothesis was that specific
genres of music will enhance their experience, while others may distract the clients during their
consultations. However, after collecting the data, we were surprised to see the type of music was not
really a deciding factor. The end goal of this project is to bring new information regarding music in the
writing center and encourage the addition of music in various locations. During our presentation, we will
outline the project, show the data collected, and present findings on what can be learned from the
experiment.
Exploring New Heights and Opportunities: New Literacies & the Writing Center
Auditorium
Megan Connor, Ashland University
Amber Cocchiola, Kent State University - Kent Campus
Writing has fundamentally changed since early days of writing centers when students brought in
handwritten or typewritten documents. Increasingly students are asked to create and communicate in
multimodal forms. We agree with Jackie Grutsch McKinney when she says, “Though I understand the
impulse as a writing center director to say, “Not one more thing! We do enough!,” to me, tutoring new
media is not another thing. Writing has evolved with new composing technologies and media, and we
must evolve, too, because we are in the writing business” (p. 49). The purpose of this workshop is to
explore how we can work with new literacies and how engaging in this work may open new opportunities
to collaborate with communities on and off campus. The presenters were both involved with establishing
a multiliteracy center at a STEM high school before moving on to more traditional writing centers at 4
year universities. In conversation with the scholarship on writing centers and new literacies, the
presenters will draw on their experiences to facilitate an interactive workshop. In the first half of this 60-
minute workshop, participants will engage in a writing-center style session with a multimodal project.
Participants will be encouraged to bring their own projects, but we will also have scenarios and projects
available for use. In the last half of the workshop, we will debrief this experience and discuss how
expanding our definition of writing beyond traditional alphabetic texts can create opportunities for
collaboration with communities on and off campus.
The House Challenge: Gamifying Development
Deeds Boardroom
Kyle Pratt, Ball State University
This poster will explore “The House Challenge” of Ball State University’s Writing Center. This house
challenge gamifies the professional development of the tutors and the staff within the center. “The House
Challenge” establishes the admin team as the quest givers, the tutors as the players, and the center as
the quest hub of the larger gaming universe that is the university itself. James Paul Gee, who establishes
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gaming as a mode for learning, and scholars such as Elizabeth Boquet and Lisa Zimmerelli who highlight
the writing center as a place of play, this game seeks to allow the staff/tutors to “play” their way through
professional development. Though this game is embedded in professional development, it also gamifies
team building and community outreach. With these important facets highlighted and incentivized the
center itself gamifies the development of its staff, and itself. Through analyzing the house challenge
boards tutors use to track their achievements, we at Ball State have seen a growth in community and an
increase in completed professional development tasks. These tasks/ quests open the door for tutors to
engage with the Writing Center field and pedagogy that help shape them as tutor-scholars.
The Other Side: Tutoring ESL Writers in ESL Classrooms
Deeds Boardroom
Anna Adams, Kent State University
Katlyn Thomas, Kent State University
This poster session will examine the needs of English as Second Language (ESL) writers from a different
perspective – the teachers. The two presenters are currently ESL teachers that will present their research
examining what writers with low English proficiency actually focus on during writing conferences (local or
global issues) with their teachers. The study will also examine whether writing conferences can increase
writers’ engagement, and, if so, whether levels of engagement lead to higher rates of revisions.
Engagement is studied through the three following components: cognitive, behavioral, and affective. The
study tracks several individual writers during three writing conferences with the same instructor (who
was a writing center tutor) during one writing course. For both teachers and tutors, engagement is an
important topic of discussion as it provides an understanding of writer’s revision process – whether they
understood the initial feedback, whether they actually use it to revise, whether writing conferences
actually help ESL writers, etc.… Even though these writing conferences do not take place in writing
centers, this study and this presentation will help participants understand the learning process of ESL
writers that are often unobservable in a normal tutoring session.
Writing Technologies and Active Learning Design in Writing Centers
M2225
Stephanie Meranda
At many universities and colleges, the introduction of Active Learning Design is dramatically increasing for
the support of student participation and comprehension of course content, leading to the creation of
new classroom designs and structures. Through the use of active learning pedagogies and technology
access, students are expected to develop skills and a clear understanding of content by collaborating with
peers and using a variety of technologies available within the classroom environment to support their
activities. While active learning is well-researched in the writing classroom, little is known about active
learning design within the writing center and the benefits that active learning technologies hold for the
support of writing center activities. For writing centers, the use of active learning technologies to support
consultations is important to discuss as these technologies become more prevalent in classroom design.
During this roundtable discussion, participants will identify and discuss technologies used in their writing
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centers to support their sessions. From this starting point, participants will be led to discuss the use of
active learning strategies during writing center sessions, with an emphasis towards the integration of
active learning technologies.
Confronting White Privilege: How Writing Centers Can Assist Students of Color in Meeting
Academic Requirements While Maintaining Their Voice
M2265
Tyrice Denson, University of Michigan-Flint
Angela Repke, University of Michigan-Flint
As writing centers we must ask ourselves, are we helping writers express themselves in a way that
accurately represents their true beliefs and intentions? Are we pushing writers to conform to academic
standards while asking them to sacrifice their voice? If we are pushing writers to conform to academic
language that is based in white privilege, are we then reinforcing this privilege? These questions were
posed to ignite a discussion at the MiWCA Conference in Fall 2018. As a result of this discussion a good
first step was achieved: acknowledging that white privilege exists in writing centers. This is monumental
as acknowledgment can prove to be a difficult task as Harry C. Denny (2010) illustrates in his book
<em>Facing the Center</em>. Still the question remained: How can writing center tutors enable students
to meet academic writing standards while also allowing them to maintain their voice? At ECWCA, we will
lead a roundtable discussion with the intent of finding viable answers. The presenters will initiate the
discussion by offering strategies gathered from research and scholarship. These strategies will encourage
new commitments, such as those taken on by the University of Washington-Tacoma; regarding language
usage, discussions surrounding racial issues, and assessments of writing center work. The group will then
respond to these suggested strategies and offer their own. The goal of this discussion is that attendees
will be able to develop strategies that best fit circumstances at their respective institutions and
implement them in the future.
Ready to Launch?: Preparing Tutors for Next Steps
M2300
Jackie Grutsch McKinney, Ball State University
Marilee Brooks Gillies, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Harry Denny, Purdue University
Kat Greene, Ball State University
The central question of this panel is: What responsibility do writing center administrators have for
preparing tutors for their post-writing center careers and lives and what would such preparation look
like? In recent years, writing center scholarship has touched on this issue (see Welsch 2008; Whalen
2009; Dinitz & Kiedaisch, 2009; Hughes, et al. 2010); this panel is extension of this scholarship by different
administrators at three different universities. Our panel discusses the difficulties and successes we’ve had
in shaping and in assessing professional/career development for our staffs based on the models and
suggestions in the writing center literature.
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How to Attract Graduate Writers? One Center’s Turbulent Attempts to Reach New Heights
M2320
Yvonne Lee, Kent State University - Kent Campus
Monique Brown, Kent State University - Kent Campus
Writing Center scholars disagree about how to tutor graduate writers. Some suggest encouraging
graduate writers to bring smaller writing projects, such as coursework, grants, articles, etc. to the center
instead of the larger thesis or dissertation projects (Mannon, 2016). Some argue that a focus on
sentence-level issues is acceptable because writing in graduate school is tied firmly to identity (Mannon,
2016; Cirillo-McCarthy, Del Russo, & Leahy, 2016 ). Still others argue that tutors working with graduate
writers need to be more aware of the differences between the genres of undergraduate writing and
those of graduate writing (Summer, 2016 ; Vorhies, 2015). No matter the approach, however, they all
agree that graduate writers benefit from interaction with their campus writing center. At the Kent State
Writing Commons, we see a fair number of graduate students in both face-to-face and online sessions.
However, we know there are far more out there who are not seeking our assistance, far more who may
be struggling through the sometimes darkened skies of the writing process without the beacon light of a
writing tutor trained to guide them through a successful flight. Thus, in the 2017-2018 academic year, we
started a project with a focus on attracting more graduate students to our center. This presentation will
provide our narrative of our own attempts to soar to new heights tutoring graduate writers. We will also
invite the narratives of others and hopefully begin a local discussion of best practices we can each feel
comfortable engaging in our home centers.
Benefits of Appointment Based Writing Centers for ELL/Graduate Students
M2320
Angela Stevenson, University of Dayton
Layne Hilyer, University of Dayton
Our paper will address the pros and cons of appointment based Writing center versus non-appointment
based writing centers. Particularly, we will investigate how appointments leave students with a sense of
personal agency in the writing consultation that allows them to be more receptive to advice given. In
addition, we will pursue whether appointment-based consultations are beneficial for Graduate and
ESL/ELL students, in an effort to efficiently set expectations for whom they are meeting and for how long
they are meeting. As well as providing a more clear perception of what is to be expected at the writing
consultation. As an offset of this appointment-based writing center, there can also be some leniency for
appointments to happen with students in the same academic discipline, especially for Graduate students.
We hypothesize that this can and will eliminate concerns from Graduate consultees about consultants
who are not in the same discipline and, as a result, not knowing the expectations from the field or the
professors. Ultimately, the goal of this project would be to find evidence around the benefits of
appointment-based writing centers in an effort to better serve Graduate students and ESL students.
Furthermore, exploring ways of communicating what would be expected of the student and allow them
to have agency in their writing.
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Respectful Alignment among Programs
M2320
Mary Murray, Cleveland State University
In Spring 2010, the CSU Writing Center agreed to offering tutorials for English 100 students--hundreds of
students were added to our plate! After great advice from colleagues here like Jeanne Smith, Jay Sloan,
and Kim Ballard, things stabilized, and the pass rates are consistent for five straight years at 95-100% for
students who came to all eight of the mandatory tutorials. Starfish software allows us to examine these
pass rates and now graduation rates. Alignment among programs is speculated as the reason these rates
are strong.
SOCIAL EVENT: Friday (4/5) 7:00-10:00 PM
Evening Social and Tutor Award Ceremony (beginning at 8:00 pm) at America's Packard Museum
America's Packard Museum (420 S. Ludlow Street, Dayton, OH, 45402)
Please join us on Friday evening for our off-site social event at America's Packard Museum, an authentic
Packard car dealership turned vintage car museum just a short drive down the road from the conference.
Enjoy a scrumptious dessert buffet, delicious handcrafted mocktails, and plenty of opportunities to
network with other writing center professionals while mingling among the Packard Museum's impressive
collection of vintage cars. See if you can find all of the cars owned by celebrities or featured in movies!
This event will begin at 7:00 PM and will end around 10:00 PM. The Tutor Award Ceremony honoring this
year's recipients of the tutor travel awards, the Tutor Leadership Award, and the Tutor of the Year Award
will begin at the Packard Museum around 8:00 PM.
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STATE DIALOGUE SESSION: Saturday (4/6) 8:00-9:45 AM
State Meeting: Neighbors and Friends
Alumni Boardroom
Not from Ohio, Michigan, or Indiana? Join the Neighbors and Friends special session during Saturday
morning’s state meetings! Led by an ECWCA Board Member, this session will offer opportunities to
network with other writing center professionals from across the region and beyond.
State Meeting: Michigan
Alumni Center North (Star Trek Room)
Are you attending the conference from Michigan? If so, join the Michigan special session during Saturday
morning’s state meetings! Led by an ECWCA Board Member, this session will offer opportunities to
network with other writing center professionals from across the state.
State Meeting: Ohio
Auditorium
Are you attending the conference from Ohio? If so, join the Ohio special session during Saturday
morning’s state meetings! Led by an ECWCA Board Member, this session will offer opportunities to
network with other writing center professionals from across the state.
State Meeting: Indiana
Executive Dining Room
Are you attending the conference from Indiana? If so, join the Indiana special session during Saturday
morning’s state meetings! Led by an ECWCA Board Member, this session will offer opportunities to
network with other writing center professionals from across the state.
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SESSION G: Saturday (4/6) 10:00-11:00 AM
Beyond English: Steps Toward Multilingual, Culturally-Sustaining Writing Centers
Alumni Boardroom
Keira Hambrick, The Ohio State University
Despite the fact that many writing centers today are housed outside of English departments, they are still
commonly perceived by students and faculty as places where students go for help in English courses and
the English language. The last 20 years have seen exciting new developments in multilingual and anti-
racist writing center missions. We still have more work to do if we hope to increase and sustain the
diversity of our consultants, clients, and communities. After briefly tracing the history of how writing
centers in the U.S. context have shifted out of English Departments, I will describe how the Writing
Center I directed for 5 years at a small, private liberal arts college in the whitest metropolitan statistical
area in the United States (according to the 2010 census) was able to leverage campus partnerships to
expand its mission, staff, and physical location to support a more inclusive and culturally sustaining vision.
Through individual and small-group activities, this interactive session will encourage attendees to
consider campus and community partnerships and recruitment methods to support more inclusive and
responsive writing center missions.
Tailoring Tutoring to Clients’ Native Languages and the Benefits of Code-Switching in the Writing
Lab
Alumni Boardroom
Gentry Lee
Spanish is the forth most spoken language in the world. Via 2017 US national statistics, over 41 million
people speak Spanish as their first language, and an additional 11 million people speak Spanish fluently as
their second language. This presentation focuses on the potential benefits of code-switching during
tutoring sessions and tutor training for patterned error identification based on the linguistic differences
between a client’s native language and English (Poplack, 1980). For the terms of this presentation, the
native language of comparison will be Spanish. With the ever increasingly global communities who are
now utilizing writing centers, there is a growing need for tutors who are able to identify and recognize the
ways in which our diverse backgrounds affect the way we use language (Lea & Street, 1998). Non-native
speakers of English make logical errors, based on the differences between the structure of their native
language and the English language, when they write in English. Second language English-speakers could
benefit greatly from working with tutors who already have an understanding and awareness of these
structural differences. Such understanding would help to foster respect and improved communication
between client and tutor as well as bettering the overall learning experience for the client. Learning in
one’s second language is a difficult task. This presentation, in line with the prior topic about fostering
respect and communication between client and tutor, will also touch on the potential benefits of using
code-switching during tutoring sessions.
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The Perspective of Multilingual Consultants: A Study of the Writing Center's Most
Underrepresented Group
Alumni Boardroom
Evelynne La
Despite the positive shift in perception regarding multilingual writers’ capabilities and their potential
contributions to writing centers or composition programs in recent years (Blazer, 2015; Grimm, 2009;
Horner et al., 2011; Lape, 2013; Ronesi, 2009), there is a lack of empirical research that focuses on
investigating their roles as writing center consultants. This presentation will provide insights into the roles
and experiences of multilingual consultants, especially those whose first language is not English.
Multilingual consultants often encounter unique challenges as they navigate between various
expectations that come from the students and administrators, the perceived authority of their positions,
and their “other” status. I will share the findings and the two surveys conducted with writing center
directors and multilingual consultants. Through providing specific directions on how attendees can
replicate this research at their own institutions, this presentation will encourage more scholarly
discussion about multilingual consultants in the writing center context.
Shifting Our Perspective: Disrupting Institutional Expectations Around Writing
Auditorium
Ayla Hull
As collegiate writing centers, we exist within institutions that privilege certain types of writers and writing.
Students come from a variety of writing backgrounds and therefore it may be difficult for them to alter
the way they think or write in order to adhere to the academic expectations set by their institutions. Most
institutions demand a certain mastery of “standard” English, which may put some students at a
disadvantage in terms of meeting the norms and standards set by the dominant academic system. Given
that there is often a set standard for “good writing”, what role do we, as writing centers, have in shaping
these expectations while attending to the needs of our clients? In this workshop, we will analyze
academic expectations around writing in our institutions using the work of Parker Palmer. Through his
work, we will explore the ways in which our writing centers, whether large or small, deal with relational
dynamics around learning and knowledge. Together, we will brainstorm strategies to redefine the roles
and responsibilities of our writing centers so that they can be transformed from “remedial spaces” into
spaces where we can engage in discussions around the possibilities of language and writing. We will talk
about a project we’ve undertaken in collaboration with our Critical Ethnic Studies department to broaden
the ways we think about, talk about, and teach writing on our campus. We believe that every writing
center can do the work of recognizing their role in shaping conversations around writing within their
institutions.
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Preparing to Fly: Adaptation & Diversity in Writing Centers
Deeds Boardroom
Destiney Phillips
Kristen Fallon
Writing Centers are a staple of college campuses; however, those campuses are becoming increasingly
more diverse each semester. With this diversity comes change, and that change needs to be reflected in
campus resources, such as The Writing Center. Writing centers are a place that welcomes and helps all,
but in order to soar to new heights writing centers must become equipped with resources and staff to
handle the challenges diversity brings. Being Writing Center Consultants, Fallon & Phillips recognize the
challenges of diversity in writing centers, the lack of non-native English speaker resources, and strive to
solve these problems. The inception of this project came from realizing a need to increase the resources
that The Writing Center and Indiana University Southeast has for non-native English speakers. By
partnering with Donna Dahlgren who is the curator of First Year Programs, Leigh Ann Meyer who is the
director of the Indiana University Southeast Writing Center, and IU Southeast’s Chancellor Ray Wallace
we have begun to create a Writing Center based ESL program that will include a First Year Seminar Course
focused on ESL needs and a one-on-one graduate tutoring program. The combined effort between the
faculty and resources listed above will build a solid foundation on which our program will fly. People who
attend this presentation will take away the template that IU Southeast has used in their writing center
and be able to adapt this template for use in other writing centers.
Evolving with Access: An Analysis of Accessibility in the Writing Center Community
Deeds Boardroom
Jenelle Dembsey
Over the years, several articles have questioned and considered how writing centers can better meet the
needs of students with disabilities. Unfortunately, many of these articles focus on accommodations for
individuals, rather than an evolution for writing centers. In addition, much of the literature discusses
disability in a way that “others” these students, omits their perspectives, and encourages consultants to
see and treat them as “more different” than everyone else (Hitt, 2012). Writing center staff must wade
through this literature and separate the problematic from the well informed. This takes both time and
knowledge of accessibility that many may not have. In addition, the larger writing center field has yet to
demonstrate what preparing for difference can look like.This individual presentation will overview a few
ways that the larger writing center field can evolve in regards to accessibility and disability. The presenter
will first overview past writing center literature on disability, providing and explaining examples of
problematic views and suggesting helpful, informed readings for attendees. The presenter will then use
these readings and examples from disability studies to analyze how writing center conferences and
publications can be more accessible to members with disabilities.
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Uncertain Horizons: Improving Accessibility in Writing Centers for Writers with Mental Disabilities
Deeds Boardroom
Andrew Appleton Pine
The Writing Center at Michigan State University has sought to open up the Writing Center to more
diverse kinds of writers by developing best practices around working with multilingual writers, basic
writers, and many other groups. But for an issue such as inclusion, the horizon is never fixed—our
conception of inclusion, of who must be included and how, must always change. Recent scholarship in
writing center studies has widened discussions around inclusion by bringing attention to writing center
users with disabilities. As writing centers become more concerned with accessibility, and frameworks
such as Universal Design are incorporated into writing center practice, the ‘horizon’ of disability is quickly
becoming fixed. Foundational work in disability from Leonard Davis and others, however, has emphasized
the contingent and flexible nature of disability by advancing non-essentialist conceptions of disability. This
paper will explore this tension in our responses to disability in writing centers by examining a current
accessibility initiative underway at the MSU Writing Center, which comprises a multi-stage research
project and capacity-building program that focuses on improving access for writers with what Margaret
Price and others have termed “mental disabilities;” specifically, with mental health issues and learning
differences. The presentation will document some of the difficulties in improving access for this
population, as well as problems in survey design and qualitative research methodology. It will also discuss
the implications disability studies on writing center theory and praxis by suggesting how other centers can
study accessibility for students with mental disabilities.
Fighting Racism and Navigating Burnout: Supporting Marginalized Consultants Doing Social Justice
Work in Writing Centers
M2225
Varshini Balaji, IUPUI
Bella Ramirez, IUPUI
People of color are expected to approach diversity work in a dissociated and intellectual manner by
overlooking our personal experiences with race on a daily basis. People of color embody messy and
antithetical roles in academia and Writing Centers, where we are both centered and marginalized, both
praised for calling out privilege and simultaneously silenced and policed, both conditionally supported
and institutionally challenged, both accepted and othered, both empowered and dehumanized. In this
roundtable, two women of color consultants will share their personal narratives of engaging in social
justice and diversity work in Writing Centers and will discuss the challenges they experience in these
deeply complicated roles.Through sharing their narratives, the presenters seek to illuminate the invisible
and emotional labor of doing social justice work as marginalized peoples in predominantly White spaces,
how we navigate silence and complacency that are often the responses to our work, and the burnout we
experience as individuals who are committed to the decolonial project, but constantly experience
systemic racism. To this end, the presenters will ask members of the Writing Center community to reflect
on what really the work of Writing Centers is and will engage with complicated questions of fetishized
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diversity, supporting marginalized consultants, and engaging in radical change. The presenters will also
briefly discuss the value of creating a space that supports marginalized consultants and how that
contributes to the decolonial project.
Stranger Than Fiction: The Training Program Couldn’t Prepare Me for This! M2265
Olivia Miller, University of Michigan Flint
Sarah Kenny, University of Michigan Flint
In this session, participants will begin by sharing stories and reflections of tutoring appointments that
were strange, challenging, or just plain uncomfortable. This is meant to be highly interactive, with the
presenters opening the discussion to everyone and asking not only for unique writing center stories, but
also opinions and options for how tutors could better navigate situations that are considered out of the
ordinary. For the rest of the session, we will switch to a research-based presentation of data collected
from a previous conference on the same subject. We will share our findings—including, but not limited
to, categorization of these sessions, the level of “strange” or odd most people experience, and the range
of tutor experience. We will then compare our findings to research in the field, establishing the position
of these kinds of sessions by the materials that either are or are not available to tutors when strange
sessions occur. We are hypothesizing that, although there is scholarship regarding many of the
uncomfortable situations that happen in writing centers, there is a “gray area” that the scholarship
doesn’t cover. Our session will be discussing how writing tutors can bridge the gap between the
scholarship and what actually happens in the writing center. By drawing examples from interdisciplinary
studies, training material, and other resources we will be outlining some of the ways that we can more
effectively train tutors to deal with strange and uncomfortable situations. We will seek possible solutions
to the questions discussed in the panel.
Considering Stakeholder (Mis)Perceptions of Writing Center Work
M2300
Libby Anthony, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
Dan Lawson, Central Michigan University
Essays about faculty, student, and administrator misperceptions are nearly as old as Writing Center
studies itself. Often these essays appear to assume that the problem is one of education or rhetoric
(North, Pemberton, Harris, Corino). That is, if confronted with a clearer or more persuasive case for what
writing center work is, stakeholders outside the center will adjust their perceptions in kind. This panel
discusses alternatives ways to examine perceptions regarding the center’s purpose and work. Speaker
One argues that rather than regarding misperceptions through an educational or rhetorical lens, Writing
Center representatives need to consider the issue as largely ideological. Accordingly, simply advocating in
terms of education or rhetoric can actually lead to an entrenchment of beliefs counter to writing center
practices. This Speaker thus considers what an ideological lens informed by scholars such as Jacques
Lacan, Thomas Rickert, and Marshall Alcorn can offer Writing Centers in terms of faculty outreach.
Speaker Two will consider the concept of perceptions/misperceptions by reflecting on her experiences
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during her first semester as acting Writing Center director. She will discuss how she and her staff
navigated the resignation of two tutors (out of a staff of four), and how this as well as nudging from
administrators, prompted her and her staff to reflect on their own perceptions of the center, including
the center’s role at the college and the center’s mission and values. She will examine the role of self-
perception in communicating a center’s mission and values to stakeholders outside the center.
Creative writing as a tool for identity expression and exploration
M2320
Brandilyn Worrell
In this session, an undergraduate writing center employee will build connections between research done
on creative writing in multiple areas and its ability to become a tool for identity expression and
exploration. Through this research and ongoing sessions with students, we will explore the use of creative
writing to facilitate vulnerability which leads to the examination and expression of personal identity and
development (Brown, 2010). Creative writing is shown to encourage growth in a wide range of writers
from primary school to medical school, equipping these individuals with the tools to cut through the
hesitations many carry when approaching identity and self-expression, as well as creating a space for
connections with other writers. Creative writing also has the potential to draw in individuals who might
otherwise not utilize writing, and therefore the writing center, as resource and an area for personal
growth. Virginia Cowen, Diane Kaufman, and Lisa Schoenherr conducted a study on the beneficial effects
of medical students participating in creative writing and found that it has the potential to positively
impact a variety of areas in their education including preventing burnout, revealing biases, and addressing
conflict within the program (316). Creative writing is an underused tool to facilitate reflection and
connection. Incorporating programs into writing centers that encourage creative writing will promote the
use of these centers and the growth of students from every area of study.
When Imagination and Metaphor Soar: Poets as Writing Center Directors
M2320
Julie Moore
Shanna Wheeler, Lycoming College
We, Julie Moore and Shanna Powlus Wheeler, as published poets and writing center directors, propose a
presentation in which we explore how we became “mindful of the relationship between creative work
and academic work” (Bouquet and Eodice 4). Using the relationship between Dayton neighbors Paul
Laurence Dunbar and the Wright brothers as inspiration, we will draw upon Wendell Berry’s argument
that science and art are not “inherently at odds with one another . . . [for] ‘science’ means knowing and
‘art’ means doing . . . Out of school, the two are commonly inter-involved and naturally cooperative
[even] in the same person—a farmer, say, or a woodworker, who knows and does both at the same time”
(124). As poets and administrators, we both <em>know</em> and <em>do</em>, so we will discuss how
we’ve applied the seven principles in Bouquet and Eodice’s framework for “[c]reativity and
[i]mprovisation” to devise imaginative approaches to our own writing center work. In particular, we’ll
explore how we disrupt “habit patterns,” construct standard practices that allow for “maximum
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flexibility,” and foster community and discourse, all while assessing competence and encouraging risk-
taking (8). Inspired by Wendy Bishop’s unique tutoring techniques and Severino and Mosher’s
“[i]nvitation and dialogue-based,” workshop-like writing center, we will explore how we integrate
disparate fields of knowledge to train our tutors and develop our centers in imaginative ways. To prompt
discussion among participants, we will share a couple of our poems about this vital work in liberal arts
education and solicit other creative ideas. April is National Poetry Month, so we will also be doing an off-
site poetry reading at Books & Co. at The Greene on Thursday (4/4) or Friday (4/5) evening along with
Greenville poet Myrna Stone. Shanna's first full-length book of poems, Evensong for Shadows, was
published in November by Wipf & Stock Publishers. My fourth collection of poems, Full Worm Moon, was
published in July by Cascade Books in its Poiema Poetry Series.
Progressing into the Future with Unity: A Mentor/Mentee Program for Writing Center Consultants
M2320
Abigail Woodward, Indiana University Southeast
Rebecca Von Allmen, Indiana University Southeast
While the training for writing center consultants is very important, sometimes there are gaps in the
transition from trainee to consultant. Indiana University Southeast offers a 300 level three credit hour
course that trains future employees in writing center theory, basic formatting in all disciplines, and
common grammatical errors. The course was missing a necessary smooth transition from class to the
actual job of a writing center consultant. This presentation will cover the implementation of a mentoring
program for incoming consultants through objectives, procedures, results, and plans for improvements to
continue the program.
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SESSION H: Saturday (4/6) 11:15-12:15
A Usage Study of the Write Place at the University of Dayton
Alumni Boardroom
Emily Stainbrook, University of Dayton
Over the last few years, Christina Klimo, the Director of the Write Place (WP) at the University of Dayton
(UD), has noticed a trend in the descriptive statistics of the WP. Undergraduate students, especially those
from disciplines other than English, stop visiting and utilizing the WP after their first two years. The WP
was designed to be a resource for the entire student body; if a portion of the student body feels that the
WP is not offering services they need, then the WP is failing its mission. Klimo and I came up with two
explanations for why students from disciplines other than English stop visiting the WP: it could be a
marketing problem—the WP may have difficulty informing students that it is a resource—and/or a
perception problem, each requiring a different remedy. A problem with perception exists when the WP’s
reality does not meet the student’s perception of the WP. The WP employs “generalist” peer tutors, who
are often unfamiliar with the content and academic discourse conventions of disciplines other than their
own. A student who expected a session with a specialist tutor may view the center unfavorably if s/he has
an unproductive session with a generalist tutor. This problem may combine with marketing shortcomings
to explain this phenomena. Because the WP does not possess data on any of these potential issues, my
assessment will have to determine if any of these problems exist and to what extent they influence the
answer to my research question.
Declassifying Writing Center Practices and Pedagogies
Alumni Boardroom
Rachel Carroll
Alyssa Chartrand, Marian University - Indianapolis
Ragan Williams, Marian University - Indianapolis
Therese Miller, Marian University - Indianapolis
Writing centers are often the subject of misunderstanding. Commonly, students and professors treat the
writing center as a place to fix “broken” essays (Murphy & Sherwood, 2011, p. 3) rather than a place for
mutually active work (Murphy & Sherwood, 2011, p. 9). This research which was completed through an
online survey focuses on showing the difference between the expectations and perceptions of students
and what the writing center actually does for its students. The study also gauges the writing center’s
levels of diversity. This presentation will explore the possible applications of this study using results from
both the current and previous year. In order to complete this study, Marian University students will be
contacted about their views on their writing center’s practices and pedagogies via email. The survey asks
questions that are aimed at identifying dissonance between student perception and the actual work of
the writing center. The information generated from the previous and the current research will be used to
establish a better understanding between the writing center and the rest of the campus. The researchers
believe this is necessary because theory has addressed that some students expect the writing center to
act as a “fix-it” (Murphy & Sherwood, 2011, p. 3) for their assignments rather than a collaborative
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learning experience. In order to uncover if this “fix-it” attitude or other problematic outlooks exist on the
Marian campus, an online survey will be designed and distributed to students. Questions involve
perceptions and experiences of the writing center. The results will be statistically analyzed and compared
to the results obtained last year. The findings and analysis will be presented in a panel to be presented at
the East Central Writing Center Association (ECWCA) annual conference in 2019. This research can be
used to assess students’ needs and satisfaction with the writing center as well as the expectations from
professors when referring students to the writing center. These areas are important to assess because
they determine the levels of collaboration between tutors and tutees (Lunsford, 1991, p. 3). The research
possesses the potential to be implemented in other writing centers regionally and internationally by
giving them a method for achieving a better understanding of the overall expectations from their
universities.
Plagiarism Grounds Our Writers; Let’s Provide Clearance and Ground Control to Keep Them
Aflight! Auditorium
Patti Tylka
This workshop examines the causes of unintentional plagiarism and recommends assignment design and
coaching practices that inhibit it. Participants will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion of
plagiarism experiences, explore suggested preventative measures, and analyze an assignment for its
strengths and weaknesses in plagiarism prevention.
Dropping Preconceived Ideas in Order to Help Writers Soar: Using Improv Techniques in Tutor
Training
Deeds Boardroom
Dawn Hershberger
As stated in Steve Sherwood’s article, “Portrait of the Tutor as an Artist,” tutoring requires a tremendous
amount of improvisation because tutors cannot be trained for every situation they will face. A tutor’s
ability to be in the moment and avoid making assumptions about clients’ papers can allow tutors to help
the writers to soar by leading them to more discovery, engagement, and confidence, but this practice can
be difficult for tutors especially in busier times of the semester when they are seeing clients more
frequently and when many of their clients may have the same assignment. Tutors may begin to make
assumptions about a paper based on similar papers they have seen and inadvertently hijack the client’s
paper. To help combat this mentality that grounds the clients instead of allowing them to soar, we began
to incorporate various improv techniques into our tutor training--particularly techniques that employed
active listening and staying in the moment. This presentation will discuss the multi-modal approach used
to integrate the techniques into training, some of the specific techniques used, and plans for future
training. It is my hope that participants will discuss similar techniques they use at their institutions, and
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we will talk about if/how some of the techniques we (or others) have tried could assist in their tutor
training.
Compulsory Friendliness: When Writing Centers Enforce Customer Service Emotional Labor
Deeds Boardroom
Amory Orchard, Indiana University – East
The term “emotional labor”, or processes related to employees managing their emotions to meet
organizational expectations (Hochschild 1983), has been increasingly applied to writing studies. Caswell,
Grutsch McKinney, and Jackson (2016) argue we must openly discuss emotional labor so that new
directors might better recognize and navigate their journeys as administrators. With that in mind, what
emotional display rules do other writing center employees abide by? Are tutors prepared for this type of
labor? Like flight attendants, tutors often smile and act friendly even when they might feel otherwise.
Supported by data collected from tutor textbooks, job ads, and personal experience creating writing
center promotional materials, this presenter finds that hiding negative emotions and displaying positive
ones is often regulated through training and observations. Apart from risking burnout, there are other
serious implications when writing centers demand customer service emotional labor: tutor bodies
become vehicles to “sell” the writing process as something that is fun and guarantees results. This
presentation encourages conference attendees to re-visualize a writing center narrative that embraces
discomfort during the writing process—as well as its joys and quirks. Regardless of whether they identify
as consultants or administrators, participants will leave with new ideas for approaching their training
activities and campus outreach initiatives.
References
Caswell, N. I., Grutsch McKinney, J., & Jackson, R. (2016). The working lives of new writing center directors.
Boulder, CO: Utah University Press.
Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Los Angeles: University
of California Press.
To Better Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk: The Evolution of a Peer Consultant Training Program
Deeds Boardroom
Claire Crane, Marietta College
Just as there are no cookie-cutter approaches to tutoring sessions, there are no cookie-cutter solutions to
the challenges of recruiting, hiring, and training peer consultants. When and how do we introduce our
peer consultants to talking the talk of writing center pedagogy, and how do we prepare them to walk the
walk in their sessions, implementing best practices and empowering student writers? Just as each
tutoring session involves accounting for the unique dynamic among writer, tutor, assignment, and the
context of the students’ institution of higher learning, each writing center’s peer consultant training
program negotiates the realities of its college or university’s culture around tutoring, student
employment policies, budget, and student and staff schedules, among other factors. Accordingly, writing
centers may elect to train their consultants through once-a-semester orientation days, workshops,
weekly or monthly staff meetings, credit-bearing training courses, and other methods. This presentation
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explores the evolution of training for peer writing consultants at Marietta College, specifically involving
how to effectively deliver College Reading and Learning Association training content while also promoting
long-term professional development and community among peer consultants. In reflecting upon this
evolution, grounded in an examination of the history, current circumstances, and future goals of the
Writing Center at Marietta College and a study of best practices in training programs at other institutions
of higher learning, this presentation aims to spur conversations about how each of our writing center
training programs can better serve our peer consultants and the student writers who will collaborate with
them.
Influence of warm and positive interactions on students’ sense of belonging and overall experience
in the writing center
M2225
Marie Freibergs, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
A writing center is much more than a facility where students receive tutoring. In our writing center we
also assist students in navigating our department and direct them to essential services provided by the
University. In this multi-faceted environment, we rely on professionalism and consistency in the execution
of administrative functions, and in particular the services we provide to students. We match tutors and
students based on their course, and at times personality to ensure students are comfortable with their
tutors. As manager of one of the writing centers, I recognized early on how critical it is, especially for first
year students, to feel a sense of belonging to support a smooth transition to college life. I theorized that
addressing these factors would allow students to focus on working to strengthen their critical analysis and
writing skills. To this end, I stress the significance of consistency and warm and positive student
interactions to my staff and tutors. This gives students the perception of a smooth flight which allows
them to focus on the primary reason they enrolled in tutoring—to work on their writing. It is in the
pursuit of elevating the student experience, of soaring to greater heights, while at the same time
adapting to accommodate growth of the student population which prompt this proposal to conduct a
café style ideas exchange. I believe this format will encourage an open dialogue among writing center
administrators. In small groups, we can discuss best practices, lessons learned, and together collaborate
on innovative ways to evolve organically in response to growth and continue to serve our students in a
manner which evokes images of smooth and effortless flight.
Slippage Across Narratives, Story as Theory, and Multiple Perspectives in our Peer Writing
Tutor/Consultant Research Project
M2265
Grace Rosenbarger, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Marilee Brooks Gillies, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
What does cultural rhetorics work look like in the writing center? As a writing center that has recently
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undergone leadership shifts, physical space moves, and all the other changes that come with existing in a
university, we remember that cultural rhetorics work means taking a step back to study the experiences
actually had in our writing center. Our project Peer Writing Tutor/Consultant Alumni Research Project
(PWTCARP) builds upon Kail, Gillespie, and Hughes’s PWTARP with data from a survey of and interviews
with former undergraduate consultants. Using former consultants’ stories as theories, we seek to answer
the questions “What experiences and skill sets do we foster?” and “How is writing center experience
transferable?”. Additionally, as researchers, we must ask “How do we study something in flux?” and “How
is this very work, of a tenure-track writing center director mentoring an undergraduate consultant in
research, related to the content we’re studying?”. During our roundtable discussion, we will share our
personal experiences as both researchers and participants in the community we’re studying. In speaking
about our findings from former consultants’ experiences, our own experience as research and community
members will be undeniably intertwined. We hope to facilitate a bigger conversation regarding transfer,
undergraduate research, mentorship, and cultural rhetoric work in the writing center.
Flying by the Seat of Our Pants: Conversations of Comfort, Motivation, and Building Safe Spaces at
an All-Male Campus
M2300
Zachery Koppelmann, Wabash College
Caleb Dickey, Wabash College
Jacob Riley, Wabash College
Dei'Marlon Scisney, Wabash College
Austin Hood, Wabash College
Joel Gunderman, Wabash College
Matthew Mosak, Wabash College
Historically, writing centers have occupied a “traditionally” feminine space. That very statement—while
paraphrased from multiple articles—is problematic and concerning, but went situated at an all-male
institute, it is downright confusing for new consultants. Aspects of this confusion played out in almost
every class session of the training course, so often that three points—comfort, motivation, and building
safe spaces—became a mix of lightning rods and touchstones, depending on the day and the reading.
Instead of simply accepting what has been written and said, the new consultant decided to start building
their own narrative. This panel is the first step. Each of panelists have selected a major point to discuss.
They hope to bring more voices into the room and to share their ideas and frustrations outside of an echo
chamber.
“Wright-ing / Writing / Righting the Way: A Tutor’s Reflective Journals on Her Work in a Regional
Prison”
M2320
Samantha Geffert, Saginaw Valley State University
As the number of community writing centers grow in the U.S., tutors are often asked to exchange the safe
space of their university writing centers for those of local schools, homeless shelters, community libraries,
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or prisons. In these settings, tutors uncover more information about the community—and about
themselves. After all, “[w]riting in, for, and with the community” (Deans, 2000) requires tutors to do
multiple things: to engage in the complex work of negotiating new communities of practice (Wenger,
1988); to consider issues of power, race, age, gender, and class; and to explore ways in which tutoring
writing in the community requires an emphasis on personal, not simply professional, connections. This
raises several questions: How do tutors perceive their work in these contexts? Do tutors experience a
“transfer of learning” (Zimmerelli, 2015) in these settings? And what can writing centers do to help tutors
engage in critical self-reflection about this work? Using her weekly reflective journals recorded for four
semesters, one tutor maps her progress co-facilitating her writing center’s “Writing from the Inside Out”
Prison Project, a program which brings creative writing workshops into a local correctional facility. She
tracks the evolution of the program in the Saginaw Correctional Facility, identifying how changes in the
curriculum—as well as her perceptions of her role—developed the writing of the program participants, as
well as her skills as a tutor, teacher, and person. Participants will learn about ways reflective journals can
write/right the way of these programs and the tutors themselves.
(Re)inventing Social Empowerment: A Writing Center Workshop Model to Promote Community
Engagement
M2320
Josh Cianek, Saginaw Valley State University
In Tactics of Hope, Paula Mathieu (2005) claims “Writing alone is insufficient to change the world, but in a
context of human organizing and community building, writing helps bring about and give voice to many
changes.” Here Mathieu argues that articulating the personal narratives of individual members of a
community is essential to revealing larger communal concerns. Because of writing centers’ unique
position within the university, centers have the potential to promote community engagement through
supporting individual students writing about their personal experience with larger social issues, thus
leading to larger narrative for their respective communities. This idea raises two questions: What kinds of
projects can writing centers create to engage students in the university to share their written narratives
which may articulate larger community concerns? And how might tutors, students themselves, be
instrumental in leading these projects? This presentation will explore how a tutor used their background
to create, fund, and develop a political letter writing workshop to our future Michigan Governor in
October 2018, prior to the election. This workshop model, along with assessments completed by the
participating students, will be shared. The presentation will discuss how tutors can use their personal
interests and backgrounds to create writing workshops designed to engage and empower students on
their own campus, thus (re)inventing writing centers as potential sites for social justice.
“’The Knack of Flying’: One Tutor’s Story of Coordinating Two Community Writing Centers”
M2320
Emma Kirsch, Saginaw Valley State University
Rhetoric of Respect, Tiffany Rousculp (2014), founder of the Salt Lake Community College’s Community
Writing Center, notes, “Engaging within a rhetoric of respect draws In attention to how we use language
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in relation to others: how we name and classify, how we collaborate, and how we problem-solve.” While
this concept is familiar to most of us in the field of writing center work, we learn this lesson again when
we engage with tutoring writing in the larger community: how words shape our experiences, and those
around us, in powerful ways. This presenter will explore how she has worked to classify, collaborate, and
problem-solve during her role for the past two years as the coordinator of two site-based community
writing centers in Michigan, the Bay Community Writing Center and the Saginaw Community Writing
Center, both supported through our regional university writing center. Specifically, she will explore some
of the challenges – and successes—she experienced over the lifetime of the centers, examining the role
of advertising the work of these centers, creating partnerships with various community organizations, and
tutoring people of different ages, backgrounds, and experiences outside of the university setting. The
audience will learn about the underlying ideas of community writing centers through her personal
narrative, where she has learned, as Ford says in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “The knack of flying …
is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
CLOSING LUNCH: Saturday (4/6) 12:30-1:30 PM
Riverview Cafe (Cafeteria Dining Room)
Please join us for our luncheon on Saturday in the Riverview Cafe dining room for a chance to reflect on
your conference experience and hear ending remarks to bring our time together to an official close.
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Thank you to all who helped to make us SOAR!
We would like to thank the many volunteers who brought the Marianist spirit of
the University of Dayton to this event.
We thank campus friends from the English Department, Office of Learning
Resources, and Write Place. Thank you to Fr. Ted Cassidy and Dr. Andy Slade for
their warm welcome at our luncheon. We also thank many students who were
willing to offer their time. This was a true collaborative effort.
In a very special way, we thank Joi Garret Scales, UD Housing and Residence Life,
for her guidance, support, and positive spirit—without her and her team, Mario
Rincon Recio and Caitlyn Stimson, this event would not have been possible!
And, what is a conference without sessions! Thank you to our distinguished team
of proposal reviewers: Marliee Brooks-Gillies, Shawn Casey, Joseph Cheatle,
Brittany Cook, Leigh Ann Meyer, Will Skelly, and Sherry Wynn Perdue. Thank you
to all our wonderful presenters: tutors who took a risk and participated in the first
ever Lightning Talks, the numerous students and administrators who spent time
researching and developing a message to share—thank you for your time and
commitment. A super-sized thank you to Mike Mattison, our Key Note Presenter!
His experience and energy is not only informative but inspiring.
Thank you to our Sponsors whose financial contributions helped enable us to
create a warm, engaging learning environment.
And, lastly, but certainly not least, we extend our gratitude to all our participants—
thank you for taking time out of your schedules and leaving your institutions to
participate in these conversations about the progress, breakthroughs, and new
ideas in writing centers. It’s our voices together that help make writing centers
SOAR.
With gratitude,
Stacie and Christina
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Thank You to our Sponsors!
Please let our sponsors know you saw their ad at ECWCA 2019!
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Stonemillandbrown.com
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Passenger List! Who SOARed AT ECWCA 2019?
HOME State/Province (not necessarily institution location) PASSENGER NAME ILLINOIS
Kessel, Ms Amy
Rosa, Ms Ixta
Molby, Dr Brandiann
Tylka, Ms Patricia
INDIANA
Andrews, Mrs Calla Meranda, Ms Stephanie
Baker, Ms Katherine Merryman, Ms Sarah
Balaji, Ms Varshini Meyer, Prof Leigh Ann
Bauman, Ms Ashley Miller, Therese
Brooks-Gillies, Dr Marilee Moore, Prof Julie
Chan-Brose, Prof Khirston Mosak, Mr Matthew
Chartrand, Ms Alyssa Orchard, Amory
Chesher, Mr William Pattengal, Ms Karrah
Denny, Dr Harry Phillips, Ms Destiney
Dickey, Mr Caleb Pratt, Mr Kyle
Dwyer, Mr Zachary Ramirez, Ms Sharde
Fallon, Ms Kristen Renguette, Dr Corinne
Frye, Ms Kristine Riley, Mr Jacob
Greene, Katherine Rosenbarger, Ms Grace
Grutsch McKinney, Jackie Saulmon, Ms Bayleigh
Gunderman, Joel Scisney, Mr Dei'Marlon
Hazelton Jones, Laura Smith, Ms Hannah
Hennessy, Mr Jake Swim, Mr James
Hershberger, Mrs Dawn Thomas, Olivia
Hood, Mr Austin Trepanier, Ms Taylor
Hull, Mrs Kelin Von Allmen, Ms Rebecca
Hylton, Ms Brynn Wagoner, Ms Kara
Koppelmann, Prof Zachery White, Mr James
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Lasbury, Ms Amelia Wilder, Mr Aaron
Lee, Ms Gentry Williams, Ms Ragan
Marquam, Katherine Woodward, Ms Abigail
Marshall, Dr Richard Worrell, Brandilyn
KENTUCKY
Cloud, Ms Allison Maynard, Mr Charles Hall, Ms Taryn Zuelke, Dr Karl Mast, Dr Eric
MICHIGAN
Aiken, Dr Suzan Lancaster, Ms Abbie
Appleton Pine, Andrew Lawson, Dr Daniel
Austin, Mr Jeffrey Lawton, Cassandra
Ballard, Ms Kim Marquard, Dr David
Blakeslee, Prof Ann Melendez, Jessica
Brady, Paige Mickevich, Mr Jason
Bublitz, Ms Leah Miller, Mrs Olivia
Carpenter, Ms EmmaRose Modey, Dr Christine
Cerku, Ms Ashley Nisley, Ms Abby
Cheatle, Joseph Pienta, Ms Drew
Cianek, Mr Joshua Pouncil, Floyd
Conte, Ms Joan Pregent, Ms Grace
Couch, Prof Lori Preston, Ms Hannah
Delemeester, Ms Natalie Raica-Klotz, Ms Helen
Denson, Mr Tyrice Ramcke, Ms Katherine
Douglas, Ms Reanna Robinson, Rachel
Fales, Ms Jessie Rodriguez, Angelica
Fales, Prof Jess Roman, Lisett
Finholt, Carsten Sabo, Beth
Fowler, Ms John Sanders, Nick
Geffert, Ms Samantha Shapland, Ms Anna
Giroux, Prof Christopher Shriner, Ms Emma
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Hanner, Ms Brittany Smith, Dr Trixie
Ibarra, Marie Taylor, Ms Kayla
Jackson, Ms Erika Wansitler, Colton
Kelly, Ms Kristen Weiss, Ashley
Kenny, Ms Sarah Wenner, Ms Eleanor
Kirsch, Ms Emma Williams, Teresa
Kodeski, Ms Samantha Wourman, Ja'La
Kuzava, Mr Benjamin Wynn Perdue, Dr Sherry
NORTH CAROLINA
Agosta, Ms Rebecca Rand, Dr Meaghan NEW JERSEY
Freibergs, Mrs Marie Loeb, Dr Jacqueline NEW YORK Dunn, Ms Taylor Hull, Ms Ayla OHIO
Aberl, Ms Jessica Kryzhanivska, Mrs Anastasiia
Adams, Ms Anna La, Ms Hien
Anand-Gall, Ms Kara Lee, Ms Yvonne
Anthony, Dr Libby Luftig, Mr David
Ashley, Ms Caitlyn Maciulewicz, Katie
Balaskovits, Dr Alison Mattison, Dr Mike
Blakely, Holly Mayeux, Isaac
Bourgeois, Ms Miriam McDonald, Dr Mary
Brazeau, Dr Alicia Meadows, Bethany
Brown, Ms Monique Miller, Mrs Maria
Buck, Ms Courtney Nagarajan, Ms Sachin
Carroll, Ms Rachel Nagpal, Mrs Manisha
Casey, Dr Shawn Nolan, Ms Emily
Chiarelott, Mr Clayton Oswald, Mr Eugene
Chrisman, Mrs Alyssa Parks, Erika
Clauson, Caroline Pinkerton, Ms Jessica
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Cocchiola, Amber Plungis, Ms Joan
Connor, Ms Megan Powell, Tina
Covington, Prof Stacie Ratliff, Ms Amanda
Coyle, Mr Mason Russell, Prof Denny
Crane, Ms Claire Sabatelli, Madison
Crichton, Ms Anna-Claire Sanders, Jacob
Daoud, Dr Julie Siriwardana, Lakmini
Dembsey, Ms Jenelle Sloan, Dr Jay
Fobean, Mr John Smith, Mrs Jeanne
Francis, Ms Kate Smith, Prof Suzanne
Gabel, Charles Spallino, Jamie
Gauder, Ms Heidi Stainbrook, Ms Emily
Giaimo, Dr Genie Stephens, Martine
Guthrie, MacKenzie Stevens, Mr Brandon
Hall, Ms Tessa Tabler, Mr Zacary
Hambrick, Ms Keira Turner, Ms Samantha
Hatfield, Ms Sally Tussing, Jill
Henry, Melissa Van Hoose, Mr Eric
Hentschel, Alexandria Waidelich, Mr Clay
Howland, Mr Scott Weaver, Ms Sydney
Kalan, Dr Amir Wenner, Ms Ellie
Kauza, Jacqueline Wilhoit, Mr Steve
Klimo, Christina Wisser, Abigail
Kohli, Samantha
ONTARIO
Bryant, Dr Katie PENNSYLVANIA
Benjamin, Ms Autumn House, Dr Brent
Bonner, Mr Cavan Kach, Ms Brittany
Epstein, Dr Rachel Klaproth, Ms Alexis
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Holderer, Dr Robert Wheeler, Mrs Shanna
WEST VIRGINA
DiBacco, Ms Brianne
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See you in Spring 2020!
