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(2002). Review of Writing Centers and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Building Interdisciplinary Partnerships. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 476-478.

Writing Across the Curriculum places considerable demands not only upon the students in writing intensive courses, but also on the writing center staff to whom they go for help. This paper looks at some of the problems raised by tutors in this situation, and presents a case study in which such problems are negotiated in the course of a consultation between a student and a tutor. The kinds of revision resulting from this process are explored for the light they can throw on the relationship between language and content, as well as the relationships among discipline teachers, tutors, students, and the students’ texts. One aim of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement is that every teacher should be a writing teacher. However, while WAC assignments provide opportunities to write, the work of helping students to do it often falls to tutors in writing centers; and both tutors and teachers have expressed uneasiness about such consultations for a number of reasons. First, WAC assignments can challenge the tutors’ priority of respecting students’ ownership of their texts. What does it mean to own your text if you are writing on a topic set by somebody else, drawing on other people’s ideas, and conforming to conventions of structure and voice imposed by a discipline? Conventions of one sort or another have always surrounded writing, and even students’ “personal” writing is often largely a matter of reproducing commonplaces (see, e.g., Bartholemae). However, it is in the context of writing for unfamiliar disciplines that students and tutors are forced to confront these issues, identify the constraints and opportunities peculiar to writing in each discipline, and work within them. This brings

Discusses general issues related to attitudes towards writing, which may be of interest to those working with English-as-a-second-language students, especially students coming from educational settings where writing is not traditionally taught. Presents the practice of the Writing Center at Central European University, one of the few centers in Eastern Europe, in dealing with students' attitudes towards writing

Published on 01/01/02

On a blusteiy morning, the two of us sat together in Neal's office on the MIT campus-back issues, manuscripts, announcements, subscriber lists, and budget sheets strewn about-editing our first issue.Up until now, our meetings have consisted of frequent phone calls and even more frequent email messages (most of which with attachments).Thus, we feel grateful to be able to do this work face -to -face, and we feel grateful to the WCJ editors, all 10 of them (3 pairs, a trio, and our one beloved lone wolf, Dave Healy), who have shaped the Journal over the past 2,2, years.We are especially thankful, of course, to Joan Mullin and Al DeCiccio, not only for their inspired vision of the directions writing centers might be taking-two of our favorite issues in this regard being the "Where are We Going?Where Have We Been?" issue ( 2,0.2, , Spring/Summer 2000) and the international issue (22.2,Spring/Summer 2002)-but also for their advice and assistance during this transition period.If you've been receiving WQ J for awhile, one of the first things you'll see about our inaugural issue is a new look.In its 22 -year history, WCJ has undergone three different design changes.We wanted to introduce a fourth, updating the look of the journal to reflect its seriousness as an academic publication but also to increase its accessibility and attractiveness.

I use this term [contact zones] to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today. (Pratt 34) When Maiy Louise Pratt applied her thorny idea of the contact zone to literacy communities, she raised a complicated challenge for writing centers to move beyond the usual paradigm. Certainly writing center pedagogy is radical, envisioning ( la Bruffee) peers meeting to share writing in process, thus replacing hierarchy with collaborative learning.

The frustration level at a recent writing center staff meeting rose with the first mention of tutoring non-native -English-speaking (NNES) students.

Statement on Professional Concerns," by Jeanne H. Simpson, which outlined ideal conditions for writing enter directors and sought to "encourage a trend toward graduate programs that

The editors of this long-awaited volume have aimed "to open, to formalize, and to further" the writing center research dialogue in order "to encourage and guide other researchers," as well as to present the "new knowledge that has resulted from the studies it reports" (back cover). They have succeeded.

survey data Christopher Ervin provides in the September, 2002, edition of The Writing Lab Newsletter. Ervins survey reveals that of 194 writing center directors polled, only 46% reported having held their positions for more than five years, and, of the remaining 54%, roughly 12% had held their positions for less than one year. We've known all along that the writing center community is characterized by a large pool of transient student staff, but these data reveal that it is also characterized by an overwhelming percentage of relatively inexperienced, and perhaps transient, administrators as well.

Published on 01/01/02

Offers reflections and descriptions of three teaching associates on their experiences in the pilot year of the Guilford Technical Community College Faculty-in-Training Program. Discusses beginning the program, the varied student populations, faculty involvement, and program components (including the observation process, writing center, distance learning, conferences, weekly seminars, and camaraderie).

I examine my involvement with writing centers as an example of how we can look at the choices we’ve made within our areas of expertise to see why they attract us. In my case, the flexible, collaborative, individualized, non-evaluative, experimental, non-hierarchical, student-centered nature of writing centers is an excellent fit. An earlier version of this article was delivered as the Exemplar’s Address at the Fifty-first Annual CCCC in April 2000.

It’s a cloudy Thursday morning in November, and the university writing center is humming. A peer tutor sits at a table near the center of the room, listening to a sophomore explain her essay assignment for a recreational therapy class while a second tutor helps a freshman fine tune his thesis statement for a research paper. In the far corner, a third tutor works at a computer, responding to an on-line submission from a student in a local high school’s creative writing class. The director is conferring with a member of the mathematics department on ways to include meaningful writing activities in an advanced calculus class. It’s a typical day at a college-level writing center, but it raises a question for educators. Are similar scenes occurring in our public secondary schools? As an awareness of the importance of writing as a means of learning has grown, the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement has gained momentum on college campuses. One response to this increased focus on the importance of writing in the learning process has been the establishment of writing centers at hundreds of colleges and universities. These centers are designed to serve the needs of both students and faculty and aim to support learning in all fields. While these programs have flourished in many post-secondary settings, formal WAC programs in general and writing centers in particular still seem to be something of an exception in secondary public schools; however, interest in these practices appears to be growing there as well. A number of publications show an increasing integration of WAC philosophy and strategies into secondary public school settings. Pamela Farrell’s The High School Writing Center: Establishing and Maintaining One not only provides practical information on designing and running writing labs in secondary schools, but also illustrates the variety of forms

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The Presentation of Technical Information. 3rd ed. Reginald Kapp. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, UK: The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, 1998. 136 pages. User‐Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. Robert R. Johnson. Albany: SUNY P, 1998. 195 pages. Ethics in Technical Communication: Shades of Gray. Lori Allen and Dan Voss. New York: Wiley, 1997. 410 pages. The Dynamics of Writing Review: Opportunities for Growth and Change in the Workplace. Susan M. Katz. Vol. 5 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1998. 134 pages. Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse: Methods, Practice, and Pedagogy. Ed. John T. Battalio. Vol. 6 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1998. 264 pages. Outlining Goes Electronic. Jonathan Price. Vol. 9 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1999. 177 pages (including bibliography and indexes). Wiring the Writing Center. Ed. Eric H. Hobson. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP, 1998. 254 pages. Inventing the Internet. Janet Abbate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 264 pages.

The Writing Center Journal, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2000 quality of teaching; the teacher’s insights improve the quality of the learning. For writing centers to continue to be en(viable), those who teach and learn there must exploit the uses of the margins. They must claim their institutional space within the academy as well as their connectedness to the periphery, to the areas and spaces outside. They must find ways to build alliances within the university, while continuing to open its doors to those who have traditionally been excluded from university life. Writing centers must take advantage of the contradictions on which their work depends. In that way they can remain en(viable), while defining in new ways what it means to be viable. Preparing to Sit at the Head Table: Maintaining Writing Center Viability in the Twenty-First Century

most people associated with writing centers have devoted most, if not all, of their time and energy to keeping their programs alive and healthy. But in the future we predict that writing centers will assume a more prominent role in researching not only writing and writers but also more general undergraduate research issues, such as retention and assessment. It is our hope that writing centers will also increasingly be viewed and valued as sites for research. We sincerely believe that writing centers are poised to assume a more prominent role in the institutions and communities in which they exist. Increasingly, writing centers are no longer seen as supplementary but as programs that are central to the mission of the school and essential to its being competitive in terms of attracting and retaining students. Opportunities for fund-raising, grants, and community involvement frequently accrue to writing centers. Some writing centers have begun literacy projects that might, with concerted effort, lead to a network similar to the National Writing Project. Thus, in the future, writing centers could have a synergistic effect on literacy nationwide. Clearly, our vision of the future of writing centers is optimistic, but we believe it can be a reality. The years of existing in the margins, struggling to survive, may not be completely over for every writing center, but certainly most writing centers are now enjoying the fruits of those early years of labor. Writing Center Work: An Ongoing Challenge

myth was well established in our minds and embedded in our job descriptions. Then, with typical irony, we punched our own ticket by using hard won, added on research to validate our service role. Let me put it another (only slightly exaggerated) way: as Writing Center Director my priorities are teaching, service, service, service, and then research—on our service. One step to develop the potential for systematic research in writing centers, as distinct from occasional research about writing centers, is to attempt to renegotiate the writing center statement of purpose, rewrite its myth of origins, so that research is a featured character, not a walk-on part. That might make for an interesting situation. It might mean, for instance, that research output, not the number of students served, would be the primary justification for writing center viability. It might mean that writing center directors would carry research appointments, and research budgets to go along with them, and job descriptions that have high expectations for publication in exchange for job security and promotion. It might mean that writing center training and procedures and environment would all change to meet the needs of research and publication. Is such a “renegotiation” desirable or even possible? Another way to get at this same issue is to ask, are we, the readers of The Writing Center Journal and The Writing Lab Newsletter, the research community to which we want to remain a viable contributor? Or is the research community that we seek to influence larger, more diverse, and less interested?

When most writing centers in the United States were being founded and developed, colleges and universities had very few entities they labeled “centers.” Today, however, centers are cropping up with increasing regularity. At our own institutions, we have (between us) Centers for Humanities, Centers for Advanced Materials Research, Centers for Cognitive Studies, Centers for the Study of First Americans— even a Center for Epigraphy. It seems worth pausing to consider this phenomenon: Where are all these centers coming from, and why are they proliferating so rapidly? One strong possibility: Centers create spaces for the kind of work that needs to be done in higher education, work that is difficult or impossible to do within traditional disciplinary frameworks. In almost every case, for example, the previously mentioned centers allow for interor cross-disciplinary research and scholarship, and at their best they encourage highly productive forms of collaboration. Furthermore, they often initiate projects designed to bring college and community closer together. In short, these new centers seem to us one of the major signs of stress on old ways of taxonomizing and creating knowledge. Their growing popularity signals, we think, one institutional response to changing educational demands, populations, budgets, and technologies. We are well aware that these are difficult times at most community colleges, colleges, and universities, and that faculty and staff in many writing centers must spend an inordinate amount of time struggling to provide basic services. Nevertheless we wish to emphasize those opportunities that we believe are available to writing centers, even those that are in various ways marginalized on their campuses. The opportunities that we will discuss involve four potentials that we see for institutional refiguration: the refiguration of institutional space, of concepts of knowlWork Cited

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what Lerner and Gillespie point out is at the heart of the writing center conference—dialogue—and explains the importance of the Guide for new and continuing writing center workers. We believe that these articles and reviews will present a new line of discussion among those of us in the field. We lament the fact that one of the most important contributors to that discussion is no longer with us. Robert J. Connors, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of the Writing Center at the University of New Hampshire, died this summer. For those of us in the field, the loss is tremendous, as Bob had so much more to provide the larger field of rhetoric and composition and the writing center field of which he has worked so hard to be a part. We have many memories of Bob Connors: in all of the major journals, in many texts, at NEWCA conferences, at UNH conferences on rhetoric and composition, at URI summer workshops, and at CCCC. In all of these, we remember his keen insights and helpful suggestions for conducting important research in the field and for practicing effective pedagogy in the classroom or in the writing center. While we will certainly miss Bob Connors, we will continue to value his ideas and to implement his suggestions for placing rhetoric, composition, and writing center work at the heart of the institution. When Hard Questions Are Asked: Evaluating Writing Centers

Like many in our field, I rose up “through the ranks” to my present position as a director of the Writing Center at a small, private college of pharmacy and health sciences. My career path started while I was pursuing an M.A. in English, where I tutored in the university’s Writing Center. Then, when I was back in school to complete a doctorate in education, I once again was given the opportunity to tutor in the university’s Writing Center, and, eventually, to study that Center as the subject of my dissertation. I graduated in the spring of 1996, and by the fall of that year I was hired by my current college to start its Writing Center. Four years later, I am a faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences and hold administrative responsibility for the entire writing program, as well as for a new initiative on first-year student experience. What a smooth path that narrative above seems to indicate, a path of increasing professional opportunities, from “novice” to “expert,” from tutor to director, from student to faculty member, a “transformation” of sorts that is easily the script that we would write for many in our field. But here is another way of telling that story: My first writing center job came during my second semester of pursuing an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and a high school teaching credential. I would have preferred to be a TA and teach composition in the classroom, but most of my fellow graduate students were experienced teachers and gained the coveted TA positions. Instead, I tutored in the university’s Writing Center for $7 per hour, a rate that did not change in the three years that I worked there. I worked primarily with basic writing students, who came to the Writing Center as a course requirement and who were made to sift through a grammar/usage workbook, completing exercises on modals and subject/verb agreement and nouns and antecedents (which still happens, though now these exercises are computer Sherwood, Steve. “How to Survive the Hard Times.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 17.10 (1993): 4-8.

In writing centers, technological progress requires collaboration among stakeholders who have varying degrees of expertise with pedagogical applications of instructional technologies. In “Cyberspace and Sofas: Dialogic Spaces and the Making of an Online Writing Lab,” Eric Miraglia and Joel Norris share an impressive list of individuals who collaborated to create and implement Washington State University’s OWL: Bill Condon, Writing Programs Director; Gary Brown, Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning; Lisa Johnson-Shull, Director of the Writing Lab; Norris, Assistant Director of the Writing Lab; Miraglia, Learning Technologies Specialist for the Student Advising and Learning Center; Toby Taylor, an undergraduate student with expertise in graphic design; and Pete Cihak, an undergraduate who focused on North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46 (1984): 433-46.

Considers how allowing developmental students to incorporate some of their language and culture into their writing helps them become more proficient writers. Suggests that the best way to teach basic writers is through both process and a respect for the social discovery that ensues as one composes.

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Describes the Writing Center at Johnson County Community College as an institution that implements democratic ideals in its staffing and teaching; and where all voices are heard, encouraged, and validated. Describes three things necessary to achieve a writing center with a democratic nature: a peer-tutor program including formal tutor training; financial support from the college; and college-wide support.