The Writing Center is Closed Until September 4!
As we transition from our summer schedule into our fall hours, the Writing Center will remain closed until September 4, 2018. Our satellite locations will re-open on September 9th.
The 2018 EWCEA was my first ever writing center, and first university level, academic conference. Going into it, I didn't know what to expect in terms of what would be presented. Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to see the variety of topics that were being discussed at all of the different breakout sessions. I went to presentations that discussed emotional labor in the Writing Center, how to deal with language and identity in writing, and informational guides on how to set up cross-cultural connections in your own center. The experience was overwhelmingly positive, and being surrounded by people sharing their work only inspired me to further my own.
One particular session that stuck with me was "If A Brown Girl Speaks in the Writing Center does She Make a Sound?" by fellow MSU colleagues. Their session was honest, well-crafted, and thought provoking to everyone in the room. They sparked a dynamic discussion regarding POC, more specifically, woman of color in the writing center, and questioned how the writing center functions and whom it benefits. This presentation in particular stuck with me because it asked outside-of-the-box, and hard to answer, questions to consider about writing centers, and required its audience to think critically about the proclaimed inclusivity of writing centers in general. Overall, my experience at this session was great because I had the opportunity to think and discuss with others what we could do to better a writing center space for all of its consultants. This discussion also would have been harder to foster if not for the set space that the ECWCA conference provided.
My experience at ECWCA was a positive one. It was refreshing to be in an environment were people could speak passionately about their work, and share innovative thoughts for others to process and apply to their own practice. As relatively new writing consultant, I had no idea that there was such a wide spread network between writing centers at other universities. It was beneficial for my own consulting to learn about what other centers are doing or what resourced other centers have that my own might not. My biggest takeaway from the center was learning about inclusion initiatives other writing centers have in place to make writing centers a better experience for both clients and consultants. I found it interesting that there were a lot of conversations happening about what could be done for supporting consultants that are minorities or have invisible disabilities.
I am glad I was able to experience the conference as both an audience member and a presenter. My presentation anxiety was subdued once I realized the friendly and productive atmosphere ECWCA has. My session on how consultant bios might effect consultations resulted in an insightful discussion that gave my group a lot to think about after. Post-conference, I feel very confident in the feed my group received and am looking forward to finishing our research. Overall, I'm happy that I was able to experience ECWCA and do my part in contributing to the growth of my own writing center as well as others.
The 2017 IWCA Conference was a conference of firsts. For the first time in the history of this conference, the Keynote speaker was and African American woman. Since much of my own research focuses on writing center theory, race, and pedagogy, I center this response to IWCA2017 on the Keynote speech of Neisha Ann-Green. Her speech used personal stories from her time as a writing center director to articulate and nuance the various instances of racism she experienced at the institution where she worked. These instances included rotten bananas being thrown at black students or hung from nooses with the name "Harambe" written on them.
Confederate flags hung around campus with cotton stuck to them while they all sat collectively at a formal townhall to talk about the new antiracist center. The pain of racism and the work of undoing it are commodities for which the institution profits. However, the symbolism of an antiracist institution situated on a campus that allows confederate flags, bananas in nooses, etc. expose the dissonance between seeming antiracist, while ensuring racist iconography remains on campus—a perfect metaphor for neoliberalism (a space to promote freedom of speech, while we "consider" both sides, staking a stance on neither). It is from this point that Neisha asked that we not be allies who set up separate, and at times, segregated spaces where Colored bodies go to express their concerns of racism to Chief Diversity Officers hamstrung by limited resources and institutional policies. Neisha called on us as writing center directors, consultants, staff, etc. to not be allies, but to be an accomplice in undoing both systemic racism in education and individual racism that occurs on college campuses. To be an accomplice is to call out racism or racist acts; it's to explain to family and friends why racism and racist rhetoric should neither tolerable in private nor public spaces; it's to do the work and not just creating monuments to those who have done the work.
Her keynote asks questions not only relevant to writing centers, but to institutes of higher education: how do we become accomplices to historically marginalized populations and how do we ensure that the facilities we build for them work towards their intended goals?
Being a first year MA student, there are still many firsts that I'm experiencing in the academy. One of those was IWCA, which was my first international conference. Incidentally, it was also the first snowfall of the year. The new snow and old friends made for an incredible environment full of love, learning, and laughter.
I didn't know what to expect for my first presentation at an international conference, but what I learned was that everyone was so immediately intimate, ready to participate, and ready to listen. I presented a round table with three of my colleagues about how, as peer tutors, we do emotional labor in every single session, emotional labor that we aren't necessarily prepared or trained for. We talked through scenarios that most tutors grapple with like disengaged students, students worried about grades, students dealing with grief, and students whose anger towards school becomes channeled at us. We discussed how we dealt with those students and how we wished we would have dealt with them knowing what we know now. Ultimately, my colleagues and I decided to create a workshop that administrators can use to train tutors on emotional labor, especially in online sessions, where we don't have the affordance of face to face intimacy.
A part of the conference that I wasn't prepared for was the deconstruction of an over enthusiastic mindset I had. I went into the conference thinking I would attend every single session on every single day, attend all the Special Interest Groups, and still have time to relax in a beautiful city with my friends from all across the country. What I quickly learned was that conferences are not designed that way. I learned that the sessions I was most interested in weren't the same sessions that my friends were interested in. I went alone to the sessions that were most important to me and I made new friends. And most importantly, I spent dinners pouring over what my friends learned in their sessions and growing emotionally and intellectually with them.
While I have worked in the Writing Center part time for a few years now, this was the first year that I attended a writing center related conference when I went to IWCA in Chicago, IL. I presented some of my thoughts about our Lyman-Briggs Studio program and was impressed by the positive and constructive feedback I received, even from a small crowd on the last morning of the conference! However, the best thing about this conference was what I learned from other writing center directors and staff who are practicing studio sessions in several exciting ways!
In a particularly compelling Sunday session, Michelle Marie from Oregon State talked about her center's full switch to a studio model in their new library space. She described the way that students come into the center and are encouraged to make their own goals and use the space to actually write while tutors check in and offer feedback where desired. She also talked about the ways that her brave tutors were working to retrain themselves to step back, set short-term writing goals, and allow their clients the space or assistance that they wanted. I see in this practice emphasis on writing practice and the fluidity that comes with the writing process, which I find exciting when thinking about unique ways to use a writing center space. I hope that I can carry some of these ideas with me in our own tutor trainings and practices!