This article describes graduate mentorship experiences at the Writing, Information, and Digital Experience (WIDE) research center at Michigan State University and offers a stance on graduate student mentorship. It describes WIDE’s mentorship model as feminist and inclusive and as a means to invite researchers with different backgrounds to engage in knowledge-making activities and collaborate on projects. Additionally, the article explains how WIDE enables growth for its researchers, teachers, and leaders. To illustrate these ideas, the authors provide multiple perspectives across faculty mentors, former graduate students, and current graduate students in order to discuss how WIDE researchers practice mentorship and how this mentorship prepares students for future work as scholars and researchers. Finally, the article suggests ways other research centers can adapt WIDE’s approach to their own institutional context.

Our experiences as part of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center have led to a complete break with the notion that we are concerned with the effective communication of idea to an audience or even with the related idea that we design technologies for that purpose. At least this is the stance that we take in this very short essay.

Do programs in technical communication thrive when administered in English departments or in other configurations of administrative units? This article examines the variations in professional, technical, and scientific communication programs at four universities across the north central U.S. The first three programs have histories that led them to be housed at increasing distances from their universities' English departments. The fourth is a nascent program emerging in its university's English department.