Despite statistical evidence that a majority of faculty, students, and WPAs are impacted by trauma, the field has yet to establish a trauma-informed approach to writing program administration. As a result, WPAs are left to operate without evidence-based, field-specific, best practices as we remain mindful of our own trauma reflexes and careful with the trauma responses of our constituents. In an effort to help move the field forward, this article incorporates concepts of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma while unpacking data of the types of trauma impacting students, faculty, and WPAs. Moreover, this article proposes steps to take in order to (1) add our voices to the interdisciplinary field of trauma studies and (2) establish intersectional trauma-informed WPA leadership practices specific to higher educational settings.

This article looks closely at some of the lingering stereotypes that Composition Studies holds toward Web surfing and queries the resulting literacy hierarchy against our students’ reading and writing practices that take place online. This article claims that while good progress has been made in the way of revising twenty-first century definitions of (digital) composing, the academy has yet to fully revisit its boundaries of legitimacy surrounding (digital) reading. Additionally, this article contests the academy’s use of technology vis-à-vis email, Blackboard, or blogging as a placating attempt to integrate technology into the classroom without genuinely validating our students’ dominant literacies or their digital lives. This article leans on the theories of feminist composition pedagogy as it calls for the field to decenter its authority and revise curricula to incorporate critical digital literacies.