Month: June 2010

First-Year Writing Programs in NC and SC

As you might remember, the Carolinas WPA website once listed basic information about several first-year writing programs in the Carolinas. Jessie Moore, the Carolinas WPA Web and List Manager, currently is working to re-launch an improved version of that resource as the first of several Carolinas WPA web resources on writing programs in NC and SC.

Please help make this resource as comprehensive as possible by completing the First-Year Writing Programs in NC and SC survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CWPAfirstyearwriting or by forwarding it to the first-year writing program administrator at your school.

While this initial survey focuses on first-year writing programs, future surveys will address writing centers, writing across the curriculum programs, undergraduate writing majors, and graduate writing programs. Information from each survey will be posted one month after the survey is released; the surveys will remain open, though, with updates added to the corresponding web resource twice a year.

Thank you for your help making this a valuable resource for Carolinas WPA members!

Fall 2010 Conference CFP – Writing Program Assessment

Call for Proposals

CWPA Fall 2010 Conference

Writing Program Assessment: Accountability and Enrichment

Proposal deadline: Friday, July 16th

Conference Theme and Design

More than ever, Writing Program Administrators, Writing Center Directors, and teachers and tutors of writing at the post-secondary level are feeling the pressure of Accountability: we are required by external bodies (such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a.k.a. SACS) to study and document the impact of our curricula and, subsequently, to revise our programs in response to what we learn. Many of us are in the middle of SACS reaccreditation; many of us have just finished the process; and many of us are soon to begin that process. The process is confusing, intimidating, and enormous, particularly for many of us who haven’t had a lot of training in assessment design and implementation.

Often, external pressure leads to “assessment dread”—the assessment process becomes another hoop to jump through or another way in which our work becomes vulnerable to attack by administrators and outsiders who don’t understand what we do. Lost in this scenario is the promise of assessment—the ways in which assessment can be used to enrich our courses and to improve the work we do on behalf of our students. It is easy, too, to lose sight of the fact that program assessment can perform important research and lead to significant publications in the field of composition and rhetoric.

In response to the pressures, and sometimes dread, that surrounds the topic, the Fall 2010 CWPA Annual Meeting at Wildacres Retreat Center in Little Switzerland, NC will focus on “Writing Program Assessment.” More specifically, the meeting is intended to foster conversations about topics such as

  • Current research on practices of writing assessment,
  • Assessment terminology,
  • Assessment design for external (satisfying accreditation requirements) and internal (improving curricula, advancing research) purposes,
  • Assessment implementation (logistics and getting program instructors “on board”),
  • Assessment reporting (presenting assessment results in rhetorically effective ways for different audiences).

Conference Schedule and Format

The format of the conference encourages full engagement of participants from a broad variety of institutions and programs. We will mix small, working group discussions with individual and roundtable presentations about writing program assessment.

The conference will begin at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 20, and will conclude at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 22.

Read Full Call for Proposals

Download Registration Form