In 2010, Fairfield University, a Jesuit Carnegie Masters Level 1 University located in the Northeast, established its first doctoral -level program: the Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP). In a developing program such as the DNP, some of the most pressing concerns of current rhetoric and writing in the disciplines align and interact with the education of clinical nurse leaders — questions of transfer, ethical practice, reflection, assignment desi gn, and community engagement. Clearly, nursing scholar/practitioners and writing scholar/practitioners have much to offer and to learn from each other. In this article, we trace the initial action -research undertaken by the School of Nursing, the Writing C enter, and the Center for Academic Excellence to document, reflect upon, and support the reading and writing experiences of DNP graduate students as they negotiate the new curriculum.

Preview this article: Vignette: In the Mortar, between the Bricks, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/66/2/collegecompositionandcommunication26220-1.gif

Who doesn't love a good story?A tale of triumph or woe, of frustration or longawaited success.Such classic narratives are familiar to us all, and versions of them occur in the writing center with relative frequency.These stories we tell -whether of current successes or challenges, passed from veteran tutors to newbies, from directors to faculty and back again -teach us about our work, helping us to reflect on it and improve it.These stories are filled with compelling characters and recurring plots: the frustrated first-year student; the instructor's cryptic comments; the first scientific paper written for a major professor; the challenging task of figuring out the genre of the dissertation.These stock scenarios are familiar to us because they have all taken place in the relatively patterned institutions that host our writing centers, and these persistent patterns represent a script of sorts, one we can easily follow, whether we're the actors themselves or the audience listening to someone else's writing center stories.Patterns, of course, do get disrupted.In many ways, writing centers are in the business of disrupting patterns, working with writers to develop new approaches to writing tasks and changed relationships to their academic work.Those of us who work in writing centers must also be prepared to have our patterns disrupted, to hear how writers are really engaging with their texts: the English Language Learner who is not asking for proofreading assistance but who instead wants to know whether the evidence she presents in her argument is convincing; the chemistry student who comes in with a laboratory report, a genre often associated with arcane language and fill-in-the-blank templates, and turns the conversation quickly to her excitement over the research she is doing and the ways she might convey the essence of that research to a general reader; the returning student enrolled in an

This "From the Editors" segment, positioned in the text as a foreword, is in many ways a coda, concluding six years of our work together, twelve issues of this publication culled from 191 submissions from the field's many talented, dedicated teachers and scholars.In our initial "From the Editors" contribution (23.1), we quite literally looked forward -to a new look for the journal, to the authors and articles awaiting us, and to all we would learn about the field of writing centers, working on the inside of its knowledge-making process.True to our writing center roots and historical interests, however, we quickly looked back.Way back.By our second issue (23.2), we offered highlights from 100 years of writing center history, sampling from the work of Fred Newton Scott, E. L. Holcomb, Mickey Harris

Recently, we've been thumbing through back issues of WCJ in preparation for another project.

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.