Registration and CFP for the 2025 Meeting in the Middle now available!

Our 19th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person from at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, February 7, 2025. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present using this Google Form (TBA) and submit a payment by visiting this web page.

Call for Proposals: Carolinas Writing Program Administrators – Meeting in the Middle 2025

When: February 7, 2025, 9:00am registration, 9:45am EST to begin (full schedule to come)

Where: Younts Conference Center, Furman University 2005 Rugby Rd, Greenville, SC 29613

We cordially invite you to Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference, and we’ve got some BIG news to share. We’re moving venues for this conference.

We’ve long wanted to host events in South Carolina, since our membership reflects both of the Carolinas, and this year, the opportunity presented itself. And while it’s not quite in the middle, our hope is you will still consider joining us in Greenville, SC at the campus of Furman University.

Conference Theme: “The Power of Praxis: Notes from the Field”

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” – Paulo Freire

“Education as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn.” – bell hooks

Over the last several years, academia has responded to external factors that feel wildly outside of our control: global pandemics; elections and constant legislature changes with direct impacts on DEI, Title IX, recruitment, budgets, and education; the rapid spread of generative AI; FAFSA debacles that wreaked havoc on enrollment; and then, most recently, Hurricane Helene’s ravaging of our mountain counties in North and South Carolina. We white-knuckled our way through the past several years as we’ve responded to stressors that have placed significant constraints on our work.

And yet.

What endures, despite the ever-changing external landscape of our industry, is the praxis of teaching. The things we do in service to the profession we love persist beyond any external constraints. Teaching is the heart of what we do. Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that narrate, question, uplift, illustrate, workshop, reflect on, and propose ideas related to the practice of teaching.

During our annual retreat at Wildacres, we reflected on the work we do and named several “hubs” of interests, considerations, and concerns. We invite you to consider ideas that could fit into these subthemes. We’ve listed some ideas for each subtopic, but that list is not exhaustive.

Value, Worth, Sense of Belonging: What we do matters; work/life balance; the value of writing studies in the institution; labor and compensation; networking as a vital practice.

Leadership in Justice & Ethics: DEI initiatives in the face of state politics; state and national elections; the age of misinformation and disinformation; AI; diversifying and decolonizing our teaching; linguistic justice; digital literacy; writing as an agent of change.

Joy as Exigence: Do less better; writing as joy and liberation; the joy of teaching; sustaining practices; professional friendships and collaborations; creating margin and avoiding burnout; new teaching tools and tricks.

Praxis of Hope & Compassion: Mindfulness and wellbeing; pedagogy of kindness; rhetorics of compassion; self-reflection as a practice; assessment with real purpose; writing to heal and process.

Keynote Presentation: Play and the Conditions of Invention

In its invitation to consider praxis, this conference invokes Paolo Freire and bell hooks, reminding us of the impulse toward creativity and freedom at the heart of why so many of us have dedicated our lives to the teaching of writing. Freedom, though, is not simply the absence of restriction – our relative sense of freedom to create, to invent, and to reinvent comes out of the conditions in which we write and work, conditions which inevitably include boundaries, expectations, and limits. Some of those limits actually help us to create, and some of them restrict to the point of stifling us. As educators, it’s our task to design conditions for our students such that they will feel capable and, hopefully, freer to invent. This talk will use play as a framework for understanding the relationship between freedom and structure as a relationship between risk and safety, and will invite attendees to consider how our teaching practices set the table for our students to do meaningful, difficult, and joyful intellectual work.

Al Douglass is the Director of the Writing Center at Wofford College, where she teaches courses in composition and American cultural studies. She has previously served in writing program roles at the City University of New York, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Midwestern State University. Her scholarly interests are in queer theory, play, and humor. Douglass studies playful forms of cultural production, including games, comedy and improvisational performances, especially from LGBT+ communities, and she applies theories of play and humor in the classroom. Her hobbies are sewing, hand embroidery and bird watching. She has two cats, Elvis and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Call for Presentations:

We welcome individual, paired, or group proposals in the following formats:

Traditional presentations: Presenters share their work, research, ideas, experiences. These presentations typically include visual slides or handouts. 45-60 minutes; including time for Q&A and discussion (time will be decided based on the number of Presentation proposals accepted; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).

Workshops: These are more hands-on experiences where presenters facilitate some whole-group discussion or reflection. Attendees are asked to participate more actively (through writing prompts, group discussion, brainstorming or ideation, completing worksheets, etc). 45-60 minutes (time will be decided based on the number of Workshop proposals accepted; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).

Roundtable discussions: More relaxed in their setting, roundtable discussions may solicit feedback for ideas, assignments, programs, concepts the presenter(s) want to try out in the classroom or work through a scenario playing out at the programmatic or institutional level. Presenters may or may not have presentation materials or handouts, but will lead discussion. 30-45 minutes (time will be decided based on the number of Roundtable Discussions selected; you will be notified of the timeframe upon acceptance).

Please communicate any equipment needs (ie: access to monitor, wifi, AV, etc.)

New this Year! Book club! Based on the survey we sent out in the fall, we will hold a 60 minute book club discussion on the book A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial. This session will be facilitated by board members Megan Busch and Shawn Bowers. If you can’t get the book read in time, no worries – please still feel free to join us.

Deadline: 11:59pm, January 24, 2025

We’re excited to offer graduated pricing levels this year to help those without institutional funding attend at the lowest registration cost possible. Prices below include annual membership in Carolinas Writing Program Administrators, registration, lunch, and parking at Furman University. (Click on this link to submit payment for registration.)

Attendees without Institutional Financial Support: $45

Attendees with Some Institutional Financial Support: $60

Attendees with Full Institutional Financial Support: $75

Additionally, if you would like to invite and bring someone new to the organization, we’re pleased to offer their registration at our lowest cost: $45.

Is funding still a hurdle for attendance? Please let us know (robin.snead@uncp.edu).We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee.

More information about the event and the Carolinas WPA organization can be found at https://www.carolinaswpa.org; Questions about the event can be sent to President, Robin Snead at robin.snead@uncp.edu. Questions about registration/payment/invoices can be sent to Megan Busch at mbusch@csuniv.edu.

New Venue! New Shirts! We will have shirts for sale at Meeting in the Middle if you didn’t snag yours at Wildacres this past fall. If you would like to preorder a shirt ($20 each), please use the following link: Carolinas WPA T-Shirts (2024) – Carolinas Writing Program Administrators

Maps and more details about travel to follow.

Call for Proposals and Registration Now Available for Carolinas WPA Fall Conference 2024 at Wildacres

Photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

We are proud to announce that the 17th Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will take place September 16-18, 2024 at the Wildacres Retreat Center, centering on the theme We Are the Storytellers (more below).

Click here for a call for proposals and more information about the conference. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please complete this form.

Proposals are due by 11:59pm on Monday, August 26, 2024.

You are entirely welcome to attend without presenting, but those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda. This may help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals.

Registration and Cost. The registration fee of $240 for full-time tenure track faculty and $220 for other faculty and graduate students includes 2 nights’ lodging in double occupancy rooms, and 5 meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials and annual voting membership in Carolinas Writing Program Administrators.

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://forms.gle/oypGZyeggTAS3T5b9

Deadline. Conference goers must register by the end of day on Friday, August 30th, 2024.

Plans changed? Registration will be fully refunded if we are notified by 8 am on September 2, 2024.

LOGISTICS:

Please visit https://wildacres.org/ to get a sense of the location, which truly is serene. All meals are provided at the conference center. Please note below or email Shawn with any dietary needs or restrictions that we should be made aware of. Lodging is dorm style accommodations with private bathroom. Each room has two beds, a private bathroom. Spaces have common areas to hang out — both indoors and out. If you have a roommate preference, please indicate so on the form.

Questions can be sent to President Shawn Bowers Buxton (bowerss@queens.edu).

We Are the Storytellers

Last year marked our return to Wildacres, a place that is deeply connected to the story and identity of CarWPA. In the fall of 2023, we rooted into the notion of place and how it can serve to renew us and our pedagogy. Last fall was a return “home” in many ways, when the veil of the global pandemic finally lifted enough for many of us to “normal,” except we didn’t know what normal meant anymore or if we wanted to even go back to normal. And so, to understand where we want to go, as educators and as a community, we realized we needed to revisit our origin story. In the spring of 2024, at our annual Meeting in the Middle, Wendy Sharer (and Tracy Morse in absentia) shared that story and invited us to consider our key values and what the future of this beloved organization might look like.

Stories and storytelling are important tools in knowledge-making (Legg & Sullivan, 2018) and stories are critical to community organizing practices (Goldblatt, 2010). Indeed, as Wendy and Tracy shared with us back at MitM, “Storytelling is the discursive form through which we translate our values into the motivation to act.” (Ganz, 2001, p. 279).

With this in mind, we invite you to the mountains this fall to participate in storytelling, to engage in the work of collective dialogue that enunciates communal values we can usher forward as an organization and bring to our respectives campuses and programs. What stories guide our work? What values inform our practices and pedagogies? And: What stories (“lore”)––about writing program administration, students, the teaching of writing, higher education in the Carolinas, our work more generally––do we need to respond to in our work? Consider stories about policy, programming, faculty feelings, practicalities, politics, pedagogies, diversity and inclusion, scholarship and research, advocacy, archive, collaboration. We want to share stories about the bright and important work we’re doing in our classrooms and schools, and we want to create plenty of space for storymaking and brainstorming.

Conference Schedule and Format. The conference begins at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 16, and concludes at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 18. On Monday evening, we will host a collective brainstorming session about the stories we want to collect and write. Tuesday will follow with a slate of workshops and presentations, but also with open-ended sessions to allow for networking and ideation. These sessions might be organized in conversation with the conference proposals we receive, but we hope to weave them around ideas of storytelling and rhetorical empathic listening. As always, we strive to create pockets of unscripted time, too. Our time will conclude with a closing session Wednesday morning, where we hope to share some reflections – and maybe even leave with some “story” we started . All meals are provided.

Wildacres Retreat is a low-tech, informal setting conducive to relaxing, collaborating, and learning with friends and colleagues across the Carolinas. We welcome teams or solo participants from across our region. The main lobby area has wifi, as do some of the classroom meeting spaces, but presentations at Wildacres tend to be projected slides (think PowerPoint or downloaded Canvas slides) or good ol’ paper handouts.

Monday Evening Plenary Session: What Are Our Stories?

This relaxed session will be loosely moderated. Our hope is that members will share their stories – how did you first learn about CarWPA? Who invited you? Why does CarWPA matter? What role does CarWPA serve in the greater community of writing educators and program administrators? We will build off the values Wendy and Tracy shared with us at Meeting in the Middle to consider what values direct our work.

Tuesday Morning Plenary Session: What Stories Sustain Us?

Using Monday evening’s discussion as a springboard, we’ll spend some time Tuesday morning identifying “hubs” – areas of interest or engagement to create some space to have story circles.

Hubs might focus on issues that came up from our 2024 MitM (i.e.: documenting and sharing our origin stories, meaningfully engaging DEI in our programs, addressing generative AI in our writing programs, formalizing mentoring/buddy networks, creating collaboration spaces for SOTL and writing studies work). Hubs might also be inspired by 4C’s presentations or reflections.

Plenary sessions will be facilitated by members of the CarWPA board.

Registration and CFP for the 2024 Meeting in the Middle now available!

Our 18th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person from at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, February 9, 2024. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present using this Google Form and submit a payment by visiting this webpage and selecting the “BOGO” option.

Registration is $30 and, as in years past, this is a “Buy One/Get One” cost, covering two persons’ conference registration and membership in Carolinas WPA.

Call for Proposals: Carolinas Writing Program Administrators – Meeting in the Middle 2024

When: February 9, 2024, 10:00am EST (full schedule to come)

Where: UNC Charlotte, Dubois Center, 320 E 9th St., Charlotte, NC 28202

We cordially invite you to Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference which will be held at UNCC’s uptown campus in Charlotte.

Keynote Presentation: “Then & Now”

Almost always, you need to know where you’ve been in order to know where you’re going. In 2023, Carolinas WPA celebrated twenty years of existence, twenty years of fostering mentorship, support, continuing education, allyship, and friendship for writing program centers, programs, instructors, and students. It’s been a long journey, and now is a good time to revisit our past in order to re-envision our future.

This call extends the work begun at Wildacres this past fall. Nestled in the cocoon of the Blue Ridge mountains, we considered what it means to renew ourselves in the context of our profession and explored how the places we abide change as we change. So then, how has Carolinas WPA changed over time and how can we ensure this space continues to be a place of invention, invigoration, and support?

We can think of none better to lead on this introspective look than Tracy Ann Morse and Wendy Sharer. They’re both a fundamental part of this organization. Drawing on their article, “The Affiliate as Mentoring Network: The Lasting Work of the Carolinas WPA,” which was co-written with Carolinas WPA co-founders Meg Morgan and Marsha Lee Baker and published in WPA: Writing Program Administration (2020), Tracy and Wendy will share a history of the organization and point to the many gaps it has filled for WPAs and writing instructors across North and South Carolina over its twenty-year history. They will also guide us in discussions about how the organization can grow and change to meet the current and future needs of members and their writing programs.

Keynote Speakers:

Tracy Ann Morse is the Director of Writing Foundations at East Carolina University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric and composition. Her research focuses on disability studies and writing program administration. Her recent work has been published in Composition Studies, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and College English. Along with Patti Poblete and Wendy Sharer, she currently edits the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She served as President of Carolinas WPA from 2015-2017.

Wendy Sharer teaches writing and rhetoric at East Carolina University and specializes in feminist rhetorics, the history of rhetoric, and writing program administration. Along with Tracy Ann Morse and Patti Poblete, she currently edits the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She is also the Immediate Past President of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CFSHRC). She has previously held the positions of Director of ECU’s Quality Enhancement Plan, “Write Where You Belong” and Director of Writing Foundations in the Department of English. Additionally, she has served as President of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators (2009-2012), as a member of Executive Committees of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and as the Associate Editor for Peitho (the peer-reviewed journal of the CFSHRC). Her current research project is a study of writing instruction in the camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s.

Conference Theme: In a post-pandemic world, the spaces and places where we learn and teach have drastically changed. Hybrid, in-person, synchronous online, asynchronous online – these modalities have extended the classroom in far-reaching ways, which necessitates new lenses in the profession we hold so dear.

Blueprints & Visionboards:

How do we bring the lens of place, especially as place has changed so much, as a way of mindfulness in our teaching?

In order to move forward, we might have to deconstruct and reconstruct the blueprints of our classroom spaces. What is the essence of what we do? What pillars of our pedagogy stay essential, regardless of the evolving context; what changes are necessary? How has technology, new approaches to the work we do, and emerging research make us better teachers and administrators? How have our students, and their shifting experiences as learners, impacted the ways we approach our work as we attempt to create invitational spaces for teaching?

Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that address this evolving landscape alongside the immovable foundations we squarely root into. We invite reflections of this topic, the sharing of ideas and insights that inspire us to process new visions of our classrooms.

We welcome proposals for traditional presentations, where presenters share pedagogies, ideas, experiences from the field. These individual or group/panel presentations are slated for 45-60 minutes total.

Returning this year will be roundtable discussion proposals–you might not have material to present in a traditional sense, but you might be interested in leading. , or at least starting, a conversation about a particular issue relating to this question. We’re planning to organize the day based on conceptual groupings for discussion.

To help with considerations for potential discussion concerns, we’ve provided a few broad topics/ideas, but you’re more than welcome to suggest your own. Roundtable discussions are expected to run for roughly 45-60 minutes.

How can I incorporate location – where might I situate learning beyond my physical or digital classroom?
“I’d like to create a more inviting LMS for my students and would love to share ideas!”
“I’ve made the switch to upgrading, but hitting some road bumps. . I’d love to talk shop with others and trade strategies.”

Deadline: 11:59pm, January 31, 2024

We are excited to offer BOGO registration this year for all participants: $30 for two attendees: the registration fee for the paying applicant also covers the cost of annual membership dues for both attendees. To register for the conference, please complete this registration form (including the names of all registrants) AND THEN visit the following page, where you can select the “BOGO” registration for a pair of registrants: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/join-carolinas-wpa/. (If you are registering more than two persons, please be sure to submit a BOGO payment for each pair of registrants.)

Want to bring a TA or graduate student? We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee. Please email bowerss@queens.edu to inquire about this offer.

More information about the event and the Carolinas WPA organization can be found at https://www.carolinaswpa.org; Questions about the event can be sent to Shawn Bowers at bowerss@queens.edu. Questions about registration/payment specifically can be sent to Kevin Brock at brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.