Carolinas Writing Program Administrators

Call for Proposals – Labor of Learning: WPA Concerns for Working Conditions

September 14 – 16, 2015 | Wildacres Retreat Center, Little Switzerland, NC (Directions)

*Proposal deadline: Monday, August 31, 2015

Carolinas Writing Program of Administrators is accepting proposals for its Twelfth Annual Fall Conference at Wildacres.

Conference Theme and Design

This year we focus on labor and working conditions that impact WPAs and Writing Programs. We encourage proposals that focus on ways we are responding to working conditions at a state, regional, or local level. Projects in different stages—from manuscript-ready to collected raw data to seeds of ideas—are welcome. We ask that you identify how you will engage your Wildacres audience in helping you advance this project. Be prepared to discuss your work without AV equipment (Internet is very limited and we may not have access to projectors).

We will organize small breakout groups based on proposals so those presenting can work through their questions with attendees. John Warner from College of Charleston will provide a brief keynote address and facilitate a writing workshop that helps us to further consider the labor of writing program administration.

Conference Schedule and Format

The format of the conference will encourage full engagement of participants from a broad variety of institutions and programs. We will mix small, working group discussions with larger presentations/conversations about the work we do and the conditions of that work. Proposals will be accepted pending space.

Keynote Speaker and Workshop Facilitator

John Warner, College of Charleston

John Warner has worked as contingent faculty for fifteen years, teaching writing and literature at the University of Illinois, Virginia Tech, Clemson, and now, the College of Charleston. Since 2012 he has written the Just Visiting blog at Inside Higher Ed, frequently covering issues of labor and pedagogy inside the writing classroom, and advocating for improved equity for non-tenure-track faculty. He is the author of two works of fiction, the short story collection, Tough Day for the Army, and a novel, The Funny Man, as well as three other books, including the bestselling political satire, My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush. Since 2003 he has served in an editorial capacity with McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, first as editor in chief and now, editor at large. John also writes a weekly column forPrinters Row, the book supplement for the Chicago Tribune, and is an occasional contributor to Salon, Slate, and The Daily Beast, among other online outlets. A Chicago-area native, he lives in Mt. Pleasant, SC with his wife Kathy and their dogs, Oscar and Truman.

The conference will begin at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 14, and will conclude at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 16.

Proposals

We invite proposals from individuals or groups from schools across the Carolinas. Each proposal should be no more than 700 words and should contain the following:

One paragraph that describes a project you are currently working on or one you envision
One paragraph about your intended audience
A sentence or two about how the writing workshop might advance your project.

Provide the names and contact information (email, phone, professional affiliation) for each person associated with your proposal. Be sure to title your proposal and submit it via email to Tracy Ann Morse (morset@ecu.edu) and Collie Fulford (cfulfor1@nccu.edu) by Monday, August 31, 2015.

Titles and authors of accepted proposals will be included on the conference schedule as formal presentations or contributions. We hope this will open up travel funding from the institutions for all presenters.

NOTE: You do not need to present to attend the conference, but if presenting will help you secure funding, we hope you will consider submitting a proposal either individually or with colleagues from your institution.

Registration and Cost

The registration price of $185.00 includes lodging and five meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials. Registration is open. The registration deadline is September 11 with no refunds after September 7. Prior to September 7, you may cancel and receive a full refund.

Questions or Comments? Contact Tracy Ann Morse at morset@ecu.edu.

Election Results

Dear All,

I am writing to say thank you to everyone who voted on the constitution. The Carolinas WPA now has a solid constitution in place. Thank you, again!

Now would be a good time to remind everyone that my term as president of the organization is over on January 1, 2015. We have a great colleague, friend, scholar, and leader in Tracy Morse, the Director of Composition at ECU, ready to take over. The organization will be in good hands, and she will be an excellent president of our organization. As president-elect, she has been a strong and productive voice and I am both confident and pleased that Tracy will be our new president of the Carolinas WPA effective January 1, 2015.

I am excited to continue to work with Tracy on the board as I will remain on the executive board serving in an “immediate-past president” role.

Thanks to everyone who nominated such wonderful people for these open positions. Thanks, too, to those who so graciously were willing to sacrifice their time and serve in these very important roles on our executive board. Finally, thanks to all who voted in the election.

With that, congratulations to all of the newly elected board members! Your new board members and their positions are listed below.

President-Elect: Collie Fulford (NCCU)
North Carolina At-Large Member: Dana Gierdowski (Elon University)
South Carolina At Large Member: Rachel Spear (Francis Marion University

Congratulations!

To remember the duties and expectations of these and all board member positions please see the Carolinas WPA website: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/about-2/board/

@CarolinasWPA

Respectfully,

Tony

Anthony T. Atkins, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of English

UNC Wilmington

WPAs in Transition

Call for Proposals: WPAs in Transition

Courtney Adams Wooten, Jacob Babb, and Brian Ray, eds.

We seek proposals for an edited collection about WPAs transitioning into and out of administrative positions. Although scholarship has focused on a variety of WPA concerns – including assessment, identity, labor, faculty development, graduate education, and many other issues – the field has yet to turn its attention to WPAs during the times when they enter or leave a position. WPA positions typically represent a sort of transition between faculty or staff and administrative roles, but we are focusing on the particularly unstable moments of transition into and out of such positions. The editors have experienced how transitions into and out of such positions can be particularly fraught as WPAs and others in or linked to the program try to adjust to such changes. Building on the narrative structure used in Kitchen Cooks, Plate Twirlers, and Troubadours, this collection will provide portraits of WPAs in transition and contain starting points for considering how WPAs can best work through such often-difficult time periods.

We seek proposals from many kinds of WPAs, including first-year writing program administrators, writing across the curriculum administrators, and writing center administrators; from different types of positions, such as directors, assistant or associate directors, and graduate directors; and from people in different stages of their careers and at different types of institutions. Such variety speaks to the many kinds of transitions into and out of writing programs that those in our field experience and that become part of their professional identities. Proposals that focus on narratives of transitions as the basis for theoretical or practical propositions are particularly desired.

Possible topics could include (but are not limited to):

Links between WPA transitions and theoretical frameworks, including leadership transitions scholarship, queer theory, feminist theory, or postcolonial theory
Aspects of decisions to enter into or leave administrative positions (economic, curricular, personal, etc.)
Real or perceived effects of transitions on various people involved (other administrators on campus, instructors, students, the community, families, etc.)
Transitions between different types of programs or positions
Transitions into first administrative positions
Transitions out of final administrative positions

Proposals of 500 words should be submitted by January 31, 2014; include contact information and academic affiliation. Conditional acceptances will then be given by March 30, 2015, and complete essays of 15-20 pages solicited. Acceptance into the collection will be based on these drafts, which are due July 1, 2015.

Proposals Due: January 31, 2015
Conditional Acceptances: March 30, 2015

First Complete Draft due: July 1, 2015

Revised Drafts Due: October 1, 2015

Collection Submitted to Publisher: November 1, 2015

Prospective contributors may send proposals or queries to wpatransitions@gmail.com.

Call for Nominations Extended

The deadline for nominations to the Carolinas WPA executive board has been extended. We will continue to accept nominations through Friday, November 14, 2014.

Please see below for details.

*************

We have three open positions on our Executive Board for the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators: President-Elect, At-Large Member (SC) and At-Large Member (NC). Terms begin for these positions on January 1, 2015.

Before nominating we encourage you to ask or check with the person to ensure s/he is willing to serve.

Call for nominations ends on October 31. Friday, November 14.

Please read the full nomination process here.

All nominations should be sent to both Tony Atkins [atkinsa@uncw.edu] and Tracy Morse [morset@ecu.edu]. We look forward to receiving your nominations! Should you have any questions please feel free to contact Tony Atkins and Tracy Morse.

Learning to be Flexible: North Carolina State University’s Flexible Classroom

by Sarah Paterson

The word “flexible” brings a few things to mind. Yoga. Cirque du Soleil performers. Rubber bands. Rarely does “flexible” inspire thoughts of higher education. But NC State professor Susan Miller-Cochran and former NC State doctoral candidate Dana Gierdowski (now Visiting Senior Program Coordinator at Elon University) have designed and researched what they call the “flexible classroom,” which allows professors and students to restructure a classroom to fit different innovative day-to-day needs.

Gierdowski’s experiences as a teacher inspired her interest in classroom design research. For one first-year writing class, Gierdowski and her students were confined to a cramped, windowless, technology-free basement room. “I found that space really limiting in the types of activities I could do with my students, and I had to get really creative to try to overcome the cramped and sparse quarters,” she says. “Being in that room made me wonder if my students’ learning was affected as much as my teaching was.”

With this question in mind, Gierdowski and Miller-Cochran endeavored to create a space that made pedagogical variety possible. The flexible classroom includes many different technologies, like LCD screens, mobile whiteboards, and movable desks and ergonomic chairs. These technologies are meant to encourage students and faculty to use their spaces to their advantage and to break up the tradition of “lecture/transmission of knowledge” styles of teaching in university settings.

Miller-Cochran, who has taught courses in the flexible classrooms, has found that having different mobile and interactive technologies available affected her daily lesson plans. “The room was a variable in each lesson, and I found that if I didn’t consciously consider how to configure the room, we defaulted to a pod design that resembled the design of most of our fixed classrooms,” Miller-Cochran says. “I would say I consciously used the flexibility of the classroom about fifty percent of the time (one lesson learned was that I don’t have to do something remarkably innovative every single day).” Some of her more successful uses of the flexible classroom included group peer review using the LCD screens and “thesis gallery walks” where students would write thesis statements on the whiteboards and walk around to comment on what their peers had written.

In addition to the new lesson plan options that a flexible classroom provides professors, teachers that have worked in the classrooms have found that they shape the ways they teach in more traditional settings. “A number of them have commented that teaching in the flex room has helped them think about ways to ‘hack’ more traditional teaching spaces to make them work for more active, engaged pedagogies,” says Gierdowski, “and that’s really exciting to me.”

The flexible classroom has more than pedagogical benefits for professors. In surveys conducted by Gierdowski and Miller-Cochran, students reported that they felt a flexible classroom had a positive impact on their learning. These students also noted that the physical comfort they feel in a “flex” classroom helps them to pay attention and participate more.

Miller-Cochran and Gierdowski’s future research on the flexible classroom includes studies of its financial sustainability and experiences of diverse/ESL students in the classroom. They are also in the process of publishing an article about an ethnographic conceptual mapping method they use to study student perceptions of the classroom.

Sarah Paterson is an English major at Elon University with a concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric. She is completing an undergraduate thesis about multicultural rhetoric in adolescent slam poetry.

Call for Nominations: Executive Board At-Large Members & President-Elect

The Executive Board invites nominations for three positions: President-Elect, At-Large South Carolina Representative, and At-Large North Carolina Representative.

The Carolinas WPA serves as an affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. All Executive Board members should be members of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (or be willing to obtain such membership upon election to the board).

Nomination Process

To nominate someone or yourself, please review the open positions below. You may nominate someone with their permission for any of the positions listed below. You may, of course, nominate yourself for one of the available positions. Please note that those nominated will be asked to submit a brief biographical statement before being included on the ballot. Those newly elected are expected to attend our “Meeting in the Middle” (the meeting we have each February at UNC Charlotte.)

Please send an email indicating clearly the person’s name, status at their institution (Assistant Professor, Doctoral Student, etc.), their affiliation, and the position for which you are nominating. The nominating person should include a very brief paragraph as to why this person might be a good fit for the board/position and for the organization.

Once the deadline for nominations has expired, the board will develop a ballot to be sent via the CarolinasWPA Listserv where all who are subscribed to the CarolinasWPA list will have an opportunity to vote on the candidates nominated for each position. Once the voting has ended and the votes have been verified, the Executive Board will announce the new board members and their respective positions.

Please send all nominations to Tony Atkins atkinsa@uncw.edu and Tracy Morse morset@ecu.edu no later than Friday, October 31.

* Online voting ballots will be available approximately November 10 with voting ending on November 30.

Open Positions

1) President-Elect position.

This person will serve a term of two years in this role: January 1, 2015, until January 1, 2017, at which time this person will become President of the organization for a 2-year term beginning January 1, 2017, through January 1, 2019.

The President-Elect has two distinct roles. First the President-Elect is responsible for organizing the Meeting in the Middle (working with the host institution, developing the theme, inviting speaker/s, food, program, etc.) Second, the President-Elect will help in other capacities like contributing to the Annual Fall Retreat each year and organizing our Annual Conference on College Composition and Communication Recruitment Event. This person is also expected to move into the President role upon completing a term as President-Elect.

2) At-Large Position: South Carolina Representative

This person will serve a term of two years in this role: January 1, 2015-January 1, 2017.

At-Large positions on the board serve multiple purposes. One is to ensure representation from both states (NC/SC). Another is to conduct out-reach within the representative state to recruit other members from NC/SC and community colleges. At-Large positions help to organize both the Meeting in the Middle and the Annual Fall Retreat. At-Large positions are directly responsible for managing or otherwise putting together panels for conferences like SAMLA, TYCA, NCETA and/or NCEI. They may contribute in other ways as initiatives arise.

3) At-Large Position: North Carolina Representative

This person will serve a term of two years in this role: January 1, 2015-January 1, 2017.

At-Large positions on the board serve multiple purposes. One is to ensure representation from both states (NC/SC). Another is to conduct out-reach within the representative state to recruit other members from NC/SC and community colleges. At-Large positions help to organize both the Meeting in the Middle and the Annual Fall Retreat. At-Large positions are responsible for managing or otherwise putting together panels for conferences like SAMLA, TYCA, NCETA and/or NCEI. They may contribute in other ways as initiatives arise.

CarolinasWPA Constitution

The CarolinasWPA Board has developed and endorsed a constitution in order to maintain in good standing as an affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Members will vote to ratify the constitution in November 2014. To read the proposed constitution, visit: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/about-2/constitution/.

The proposed constitution largely reflects practices followed (and fine-tuned) by the organization since its founding in 2003.

If you have any questions about the proposed constitution, please contact a Board Member or current President, Tony Atkins.

Snapshots of the Fall Conference at Wildacres

Publishing What We Do: The WPA as Researcher – Fall Conference Agenda

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators 11^th Annual Fall Conference

Publishing What We Do: The WPA as Researcher

September 15-17, 2014

Wildacres Retreat Center

Little Switzerland, NC

CarolinasWPAFallRetreat2014 (PDF Version of Agenda)

Monday, September 15

4:00-5:30pm: Check-In | North Lodge Lobby |Light snacks will be available in the Canteen

6:30: Dinner | Cafeteria

7:45: Auditorium

Tony Atkins | Welcome & Opening Session

Mike House |“Need-to-know stuff” & the fascinating history behind The Wildacres Retreat Center

Featured Speaker: David Blakesley | “Researching and Publishing in the University”

As if the WPA’s job weren’t challenging enough! We also have the responsibility to ensure that our decisions are based on solid research from both internal and external sources, that our successes are public, and that we foster change with our results, both locally and in the WPA community at-large. How do we do it? I’ll tell the story of one dramatic institutional change in a time of crisis, how we approached the various problems faced by the writing program, and the university, and how we also pre-planned for publication of our story and the research that supported it. Jumping ahead, the presentation will then focus on the state of publishing in our field, how WPAs can find their niche, and what we need to do to ensure a bright future for research in the field.

Tony Atkins | Carolinas WPA President’s Report

9:00: Social/Networking | Canteen (South Lodge)

Tuesday, September 16

8:00am Breakfast |Cafeteria

9:00: Tony Atkins |Announcements & Agenda |North Lodge Meeting Room

Workshop Facilitator: David Blakesley: “Making Your Work as a WPA Public: A Workshop for the Carolinas WPA” (writing “charge” for the day)

The word publishing means “to make public.” For the long-term health of a writing program, there may be nothing more important than publishing your work as a WPA, as well as making the excellent teaching and writing of your instructors and students as public as they can be.

In this workshop, we’ll discuss the challenges of performing the public work of the WPA, opportunities and exigencies for publishing our own research and the writing of students and writing program faculty, the importance of managing our professional and programmatic identities, and of, in short and as Austin Kleon puts it, “showing your work.” Although it appears at first to be a daunting task, it needn’t be, and you’ll learn some secrets for building the profile of your programs, deepening the networks of collaboration in your university, and, in the end, making your job as a WPA easier and more rewarding.

10:00: Round-Table Discussions | Concurrent Session I (A&B)

Session A

Patrick Bahls | UNC Asheville| “WAC/WID on the move: Charting the Changeover from one General Education Writing Requirement to Another”
Gwendolynne Reid and Bridget Kozlow | NCSU | “Modularizing the Writing Program: Researching the Implications of the One-Credit WID Course”

Session B

Megan Hall | NCSU | Activist Mentoring and Collaborative Teaching: Reinventing a GTA Program across Tenure Lines
Jan Rieman | UNC Charlotte | “Assessment, Professional Development, and the Question of Expertise”

11:00: BREAK

11:15: Round-Table Discussions | Concurrent Session II (A&B)

Session A

Susan Miller-Cochran | NCSU | “Examining Multilingual Writers’ Perceptions of an Ideal Classroom Space”
Jessica Pisano | UNC Asheville | “Enhancing Connections: Two Service-Learning Based Approaches to Freshman Composition”

Session B

Aaron Weekes | UNC Wilmington (UG Researcher) | “Truth is Dead: A Comparison of Gorgias and Nietzsche on Language and Truth”
Collie Fulford | NCCU | “A Way Out of No Way: Program Development in Hard Times”

12:30pm: Lunch | Cafeteria

1:45: Workshop Facilitator: David Blakesley (Reading discussion) | North Lodge Meeting Room

2:30: Write/Hike/Retreat/Socialize |Carolinas WPA Board Meeting

6:00: Dinner |Cafeteria

7:15 Workshop Facilitator: David Blakesley: (Discussion of writing for the day) | North Lodge Meeting Room

9:00: Bonfire/Retreat/Networking/Music |Bonfire Pit: Below South Lodge

Wednesday, September 17

8:00am Breakfast |Cafeteria

9:00: Workshop Facilitator: David Blakesley |Final thoughts and discussion | North Lodge Meeting Room

Tony Atkins | Plans for SAMLA (2014/2015), MIM, Assessment Survey (2015)

10:00: Departures

11th Annual Fall Conference – Publishing What We Do: The WPA as Researcher

Mark your calendars!

September 15-17, 2014 | Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, NC (Directions) | $185 (includes 2 nights lodging and 5 meals)

*Proposal deadline: Monday, August 25, 2014

CarolinasWPA at Wildacres — Photo by Kerri Bright Flinchbaugh

Conference Theme and Design
Carolinas Writing Program of Administrators is accepting proposals for its Eleventh Annual Fall Conference at Wildacres. This year, we want to celebrate the research we do as WPA’s. We encourage proposals that allow participants to present their research in different stages—from manuscript-ready to collected raw data to seeds of ideas—and that will lead to discussion about future directions that work might take. We also encourage proposals that focus on balancing a research agenda with the demands of being a WPA. As part of the conference, David Blakesley from Clemson University will provide a brief keynote and facilitate a workshop to help us consider the work we do as research by illustrating the various avenues, methods, and methodologies of publishing. In addition, time will be allotted for small group discussion so those presenting can work through their questions with attendees.

Conference Schedule and Format
The conference will begin at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 15, and will conclude at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 17.

The format of the conference will encourage full engagement of participants from a broad variety of institutions and programs. We will mix small, working group discussions with larger presentations/conversations about who we are as writers, researchers, and WPA’s. Proposals will be accepted pending space.

Keynote Speaker and Workshop Facilitator

David Blakesley, Clemson University

David Blakesley is the Robert S. Campbell Chair in Technical Communication and Professor of English at Clemson University, where he also serves as the Faculty Representative to the Board of Trustees. He is the publisher and founder of Parlor Press (http://www.parlorpress.com), now in its twelfth year. Two Parlor Press books have won the Best Book Award from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, including the award this year for GenAdmin: Theorizing WPA Identities in the Twenty-First Century by Colin Charlton, Jonikka Charlton, Tarez Samra Graban, Kathleen J. Ryan, and Amy Ferdinandt Stolley. In 2014, he became an Adobe Education Leader. Prior to joining Clemson, he served as the WPA for Purdue University’s Professional Writing Program for ten years, and, prior to Purdue, as Director of Writing Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

He has authored, co-authored or edited six books, including The Elements of Dramatism (Longman), The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (SIUP), and Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age (Cengage). His articles have appeared in WPA: Writing Program Administration, JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Composition Studies, The Writing Instructor, First Monday, Kairos, and numerous other journals and anthologies. He is also a recipient of the Charles Moran Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field from Computers and Composition and the Distinguished Service Award from the Kenneth Burke Society.

Proposals
We invite proposals from individuals or groups from schools across the Carolinas. Each proposal should be no more than 700 words and should contain the following:

* One paragraph that describes a research project you are currently working on or one you envision

* One paragraph about your intended audience

* A sentence or two about how the research writing workshop might advance your project to submission

Provide the names and contact information (email, phone, professional affiliation) for each person associated with your proposal. Be sure to title your proposal and submit it via email to Anthony T. Atkins (atkinsa@uncw.edu) and Tracy A. Morse (morset@ecu.edu) by Monday, August 25, 2014.

Titles and authors of accepted proposals will be included on the conference schedule as formal presentations or contributions. We hope this will open up travel funding for all participants. NOTE: You do not need to present to attend the conference, but if presenting will help you secure funding, we hope you will consider submitting a proposal either individually or with colleagues from your institution.

Registration and Cost
Registration Fee: the fee of $185 includes 2 nights’ lodging and 5 meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials.

The registration deadline is Friday, September 5, 2015 with no refunds after Monday, September 8.

Questions or Comments? – Contact Anthony T. Atkins at atkinsa@uncw.edu and Tracy A. Morse at morset@ecu.edu