East Central Writing Centers Association

Winter 2011

ECWCA
ECWCA, ECWCA & You
Making Connections to Make a Difference

Volume 1, Issue 1

Winter 2011 INSIDE

A Letter from the President of ECWCA

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Call for Conversation by Leah SchellBarber, Writing Center Director at Stark State College

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Call to update your centers status. Help the ECWCA redefine our region!

ECWCA is proud to announce the production and distribution of our very own newsletter, ECWCA. ECWCA will facilitate our organizations growth, relevance, and continued dedication to excellence by seeking to better meet the needs of those in our geographic region and by providing an outlet for important conversations between our members. This newsletter is our newsletter and is designed to avoid super-fixed formats by allowing for varied contributions and contributor ingenuity. ECWCA will be published twice an academic year with issues distributed in September and January. To make ECWCA a success, we need your help! We want to ensure all centers, tutors, and directors have access to this newsletter. To ensure you are on our mailing list, e-mail ECWCA at ecwcanewsletter@gmail.com.

Tutor Voices

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Though Ive left writing center work for now, I look back at . . . writing centers as the places where I was forged. -Dan Kenzie, Purdue University

Our First Issue: A Note from the Editor

This first issue is not the template but the idea of what our organizations newsletter can be. Inside, you will find sections weve begun to think of. You will not find sections only you can think of. We hope you will broaden the context, scope, and possibilities of this newsletter by contributing. In turn, we will better meet our organizations diverse needs. This first issue begins with a letter from our current president, Jay Sloan. Included are also sections entitled Call for Conversations and Tutor Voices. These sections are designed to meet the immediate needs of directors and tutors respectively. In Call for Conversations, Leah Schell-Barber of Stark State College kicks off what is sure to be a nice discussion on center leadership/unity. In Tutor Voices, four tutors discuss how writing centers have influenced their academic and professional lives. We hope future editions of this newsletter will also feature your work, voice, research, discussion, and more. Help us bring our conversation from the furthest corners of our region to this new outlet. Directors, encourage your tutors to contribute materials, ideas, and more. Tutors, encourage your directors to contribute the same. -Anthony Garrison

East Central Writing Centers Association

Letter from the President of ECWCA Jay Sloan

A frequent topic of conversation at the joint International Writing Centers Association Conference/National Conference of Peer Tutors of Writing in Baltimore last year was who was not there. She decided she couldnt afford IWCA this year. Hes going to CCCCs instead. In this era of shrinking, sometimes disappearing, travel budgets, many writing center professionals directors as well as tutorsfind themselves having to limit themselves to one academic conference a year, spreading opportunities for professional development even thinner. In such a financial climate, regional writing center organizations like the East Central Writing Centers Association become more essential than ever, offering more affordable, local opportunities to participate in the larger writing center community. As President of the ECWCA, I was heartened to hear that the IWCA Board has begun an initiative, exploring ways that they might enhance their connections to, and increase their support of, regional organizations like ours. Similarly, the Board of the ECWCA is mindful of the struggles of those tutors and directors who may find attendance at even a regional conference financially challenging. Currently, the ECWCA covers eight states: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and half of both Illinois and Pennsylvania, a relatively large region if youre the Writing Center Director at a small college in West Virginia trying to budget travel for yourself and five tutors to our annual ECWCA conference. In addition to working to keep our conference costs as affordable as possible, the ECWCA Board is very cognizant and very appreciative of the efforts of mini-regional organizations functioning within our area. Groups like the Michigan Writing Centers Association, the Northeast Ohio Writing Centers Association, and the Ohio Writing Centers Consortium actively work to provide affordable, even more localized, professional development opportunities for our members. And like the IWCA, the ECWCA Board needs to find ways to further support their efforts. As we gear up for our annual ECWCA conference to be held at Western Michigan University March 3-5, 2011, we are aware of the many struggles facing writing centers today. This years Conference Host, Kim Ballard, has made a timely choice of conference theme, for example: assessment.

We are rightfully proud of the many years our organization has worked to support the professional development of generations of writing center directors and tutors. At the same time, we look forward to the challenges in our future. To the next 32 years!

Continued on page 4

Updating our Status & Defining our Region: A Call for Participation
The time has come for the East Central Writing Centers Association to rearticulate who we are as an organization in terms of who we are as individual writing centers. And we need of your help! Please visit the link below to update your centers information and help us ensure each center in our region is recognized and represented by our organization and on our website. Part of our continued success is our ability to represent our region properly. In a few short seconds, you can help us do just that! Visit www.ecwca.org/update to complete the survey!

Update your centers profile at the link to the right!

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Winter 2011

Tutor Voices
Q. Looking back at your time as a writing center tutor, what is one thing you wish you had known sooner - and why? A. Nothing. If I knew then what I knew now, I might have taken a more direct route to get where I am, but the hiccups and foibles are what make the effort worth it. -Dane Kenzie Purdue University

Dan Kenzie

Q. Tell us a little about your time as a writing center tutor. A. I was hired by Kim Ballard at the Western Michigan University Writing Center when I was an English major with no idea what I was getting myself into. What started as a student job later became an appointment as an Assistant Director in the center and led to an instructorship in the Developmental Writing Program. Upon leaving Western, I was hired by Bill Macauley as the Writing Center Intern at the College of Wooster, where I worked for a year. Under Kim and Bills invaluable guidance, Ive just entered the graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. Though Ive left writing center work for now, I look back at those two writing centers as the places where I was forged, where I met the peopleclients, colleagues, and mentorswho would change my life profoundly. Q. Do you feel working in the writing center has set you apart from your peers academically or professionally? How so? A. More than anything, the Writing Center taught me how to collaborate: how to give and seek feedback, how to steer a conversation, and when to sit back and listen. That ability, combined with a comfort level for thinking on the fly and a familiarity with a wide range of writing contexts, has served me well as a professional and become a survival skill for me as a graduate student. Q. Thinking back to your time as a writing center tutor, can you describe a high point? A. The first time I saw my name on an acknowledgements page, I knew I was in the right line of work. This particular writer was also a tutor I had trained, which made it doubly rewarding. Q. There are hundreds of tutors who will read this piece. What advice might you have for those tutors preparing to graduate? A. Opportunities lead to more opportunities, so take advantage of them when they present themselves and seek them out doggedly when they don't. You never know which door will change your life

John D Chrisman
There are so many different styles and techniques for writing consultants, and there are so many skills that make up a good tutor that it is difficult to pinpoint or define just one best way to consult. However, my experience at the Western Michigan University Writing Center has reinforced some general ideas about helping students and has taught me some valuable lessons. Here are some tangible skills that consultants should find in themselves and develop if they want to be successful. The first, and in my opinion the most important, is natural curiosity. The best tutors are ones who genuinely take pleasure in knowing and learning and teaching. These are consultants who constantly seek ways to improve their own techniques and are willing to adapt, question or redefine their philosophy of tutoring. Writing centers are unique places where we not only get to help others see their writing but where we get to work with challenging and often times foreign topics; good consultants find this exciting. The second skill is flexibility. Consultants have to be willing to adjust to their clients needs: their clients writing needs, and their clients learning needs, their clients confidence needs. Another necessary skill for consulting success is communication. The most helpful thing Ive found for many students is talking about writing with someone they see as an experienced writer. Good consultants need to engage their clients in a dialogue about their writing, and that discussion should lead to better writing. Understanding yourself and your consulting style is skill number four. Be the person you would want to be tutored by.

Continued

East Central Writing Centers Association

(Continued)
Its that simple. The last point Ill make is really less of a skill and more a way of living, but it is crucial to success. Build strong relationships with your peers and mentors and take every opportunity that comes your way. Present at conferences. Make connections with instructors and other students. Apply for jobs. Get yourself out there as much as you can. Some of these skills come naturally, some are teachable, but I doubt any one of them is an absolute indicator of consulting success. In a big way, a lot of our success is generated by the people with whom we choose to surround ourselves. And I can say for certain that without the help of my peers and mentors I would not be writing to you today. -John D Chrisman Daytona State College Having been an English major with a focus on literature in my undergraduate education, my priorities put research over pedagogy, although inevitably I would eventually have to develop some teaching skills if I ever planned on getting a job. Luckily, I wound up working at my school's writing center during my junior and senior year, even though I wasn't completely sure where this experience would lead me. The uncertainty mostly resulted from my own state of confusion

Letter from the President (Continued)

Assessment touches a nerve for many writing center professionals finding themselves pressured to give account for their viability and effectiveness in these trying financial times, to defend themselves and their services against threatened funding and staffing reductions and eliminations. And yet, too, this is a moment of opportunity. We have the chance to help shape the kinds of assessment that speak most meaningfully to the work we do, to help harried administrators and faculty colleagues better understand and appreciate our efforts, but also, importantly, to gauge and rearticulate our goals, strategies, and impact for ourselves. Formed at Youngstown State University in 1978, the East Central Writing Centers Association is the oldest professional writing center association in the world, predating the National Writing Centers Association (which became the International Writing Centers Association just ten years ago). We are rightfully proud of the many years our organization has worked to support the professional development of generations of writing center directors and tutors. At the same time, we look forward to the challenges in our future. To the next 32 years! -Jay Sloan, Ph.D. Kent State University, Stark

Joshua Coblentz

about what possibilities were available to me after I graduated. Should I go to graduate school, join the Peace Corps, or dismiss academia altogether and try to find work in the private sector? These were the choices I had. I actually wound up doing all three, and in each case the experience I had at the Writing Center provided great preparation for all of them. Right after graduating, I found a retail job at Borders because the customer service experience looked good on my application. After a couple of months of that, I discovered that retail wasn't for me, and in applying to graduate school, the experience from working at the Writing Center complemented my good grades enough for acceptance. Finally, and most importantly, the Writing Center gave me the unique opportunity to interact with students from various cultures in an academic way, which is an extremely valuable experience as far as the Peace Corps is concerned. It is a volunteer position, but the application process is as competitive as some jobs. Undoubtedly, without the experience of working at the writing center, I would not have the opportunity I currently have of living and teaching English in Thailand from 2011 through 2013. No matter what you wind up doing, the experience of working at a Writing Center will always be a great stepping-stone to new and exciting prospects. -Joshua Coblentz Peace Corps

2010-2011 Board Members*

Past President: Jeanne R. Smith, Kent State University-Kent (OH) President: Jay D. Sloan, Kent State University-Stark (OH) Vice-President: Jackie Grutsch McKinney, Ball State University (IN) Secretary: Kim Pennesi, Seton Hill University (PA) Treasurer: Trixie Smith, Michigan State University (MI) Conference Host: Kim Ballard, Western Michigan University (MI) Student Representative: Ashley Hartfik, Western Michigan University (MI) IWCA Representative: Barb Toth, Bowling Green State University (OH)

At-Large Member: Anthony Garrison, Kent State University-Kent (OH) At-Large Member: Jo Ann Vogt, Indiana University (IN) At-Large Member: Kim Cole, Lansing Community College (MI) At-Large Member: Megan Ward, Northwestern Michigan College (MI)

*Board positions as of January 30, 2011

Winter 2011

Bethany Schlotterer

2010 Conference Review Trixie Smith

The ECWCA 2010 conference hosted by Michigan State University and Lansing Community College pulled approximately 280 writing consultants and center directors to MSU for a full program of concurrent sessions and events, including a keynote luncheon, a WAC/WID panel featuring faculty from LCC and MSU, and a Friday night reception at Michigan's Historical State Museum. Dr. Pam Childers, our keynote on Friday, gave an enlightening 40-year retrospective about the work of writing centers along with her predictions for the continued growth of centers and the partnerships they will make in the future. Feedback after the conference included these kinds of comments: I wanted to publicly thank and praise Jill Reglin, Trixie Smith, and Leslie Farris for hosting a great East Central Writing Center Association Conference this past weekend. There were great presenters, eager attendees, a fun bash at a local history museum, and good writing center talk all over the place. Hands down, the conference website and the conference program guide were the best I've ever seen. Anyone looking for a model for future conferences should really check out the site (http://writing.msu.edu/ecwca) and/or beg for a copy of the program from one of the hosts. -Trixie Smith, Ph.D. Michigan State University

I sat down at my computer to write this essay and instantaneously pulled up my Facebook, Twitter, and Email. I was immediately reminded of the Writing Commons, and the constant multi-tasking that is necessaryanswering the phone, checking email, helping writers as they come inand I realized just how much the Writing Commons has helped me learn skills that reach far beyond the four walls of our center. As a Managerial Marketing major, multi-tasking has become necessary for me. The business world requires constant attention at all times, as does my major. With social media at the forefront of marketing, the ability to communicate accurately and effectively with your consumers is becoming increasingly necessary. Just as we sit one-on-one every day in sessions, marketers now must be able to advertise and communicate with consumers on a more personal level. As we identify issues in sessions that writers do not even realize they need to work on, marketers must do the same with consumers. In addition to communication and problem solving, identifying a target market (audience) is one of the most important decisions a marketer can make. All other important decisions positioning, marketing mix, etc.are based off of the initial target market decision; just as a paper is initially based off of a writers intended audience. The marketer, just as the writer, needs to be aware of the background knowledge as well as the needs of the consumer to most accurately convey an idea or message, or ultimately, from a marketers perspective, increase sales. -Bethany Schlotterer Kent State University

Contribute to Tutor Voices

Interested in sharing your thoughts about tutoring? Sharing an idea? A success? Submit your piece to ecwcanewsletter@gmail.com by August 1, 2011. Submissions should be less than 400 words.

East Central Writing Centers Association

Winter 2011

Call for Conversation - Leah Schell-Barber

The Situation: Once upon a time, we were a small writing center at a community college. Then the recession hit in 2008 and our student population has since almost doubled. This increase led my small staff of 15 tutors to grow to 45 tutors working at the main campus, a satellite campus, and online. When our writing center was created in 2004, it was staffed with professional tutors. This move was made since we are a two-year college, and the logistics of training a new staff every two years seemed impossible for the first Director, a part-time employee. Currently, our staff consists of professional tutors who work up to 20 hours per week, adjunct faculty who work between 8 and 15 hours per week, and full time faculty who work one hour per week. The Development: With everyones hectic and dissimilar schedules, it became impractical to mandate regular staff meetings or require specific professional development activities. Weve tried several professional development activities in the past that have included message board article discussions, group projects, and individual goal setting. These activities were not only difficult for the staff to fit into their busy schedules, but they were difficult to maintain and oversee as the director, especially without regular staff meetings. With many tutors to manage (many of whom were brand new to our school), it became clear that I needed help in making sure everyone was trained on our writing centers policies as well as in managing professional development activities. Thus, our writing center mentoring program was born. Our mentoring program exists in order to help give both new and established members of our team a more clear idea of what our writing centers working theories are, to create unity and consistency among tutors, and to more clearly outline the duties and expectations of the tutors. Mentoring tutors are responsible for helping build an atmosphere where every member of our writing center is confident and knowledgeable about his or her abilities. Mentoring tutors have the freedom to adjust ideas as they see fit in order to suit the needs of their groups, and they are encouraged to keep their strengths and interests in mind as they develop ways to promote discovery within their groups. Mentoring tutors have to have worked in the writing center for at least a year and must maintain a 15-20 hour weekly shift. Each mentor will work at least once every week with the members of his or her group (generally, 5-6 tutors) but not necessarily at the same time. This makes it difficult for the groups to get together as a whole, but the mentors are quite creative in keeping lines of communication open between group members. Mentoring groups have developed Facebook profiles, collaborated on local conference proposals and presentations, and often used observations as a jumping off point for discussion. To make sure every group progresses, I hold monthly meetings with the mentoring tutors and require an informal end-of-the-semester report on their conversations and projects. Were hoping that as we continue to grow, we can also grow as a writing center, in numbers as well as professionals. So far, our mentoring program has not only helped me maintain lines of communication with my staff, it has also created a way for all tutors to engage in professional development activities that aid in their development as writing center tutors while taking into consideration tight schedules and other commitments to the college. The Discussion Point: By no means is our method of encouraging professional development perfect, but it seems to be working well, even as we continue to expand. Along with my peers within the ECWCA network, I would be interested to know what other writing centers in the area have developed to encourage professional development among their staff. I look forward to reading what you share! -Leah Schell-Barber

Contribute to Call for Conversation!

To contribute to this conversation or start a new one, e-mail ecwcanewsletter@gmail.com.

ECWCA is a newsletter published for the benefit of its members. Reproduction of its contents is permissible only for use by those writing center professionals in our geographic region. All other reproduction requests should be made via e-mail at ecwcanewsletter@gmail.com.

The Writing Lab Newsletter

The Writing Lab Newsletter (WLN) is a bi-monthly publication (September to June) for those who work in the tutorial setting of writing labs or centers (or in writing centers within learning centers). Articles focus on writing center theory, administration, and pedagogy. The website, http://writinglabnewsletter.org, contains an open archive of past volumes. Call for Papers: WLN invites articles, reviews of books relevant to writing centers, and revisions of papers presented at regional conferences. We also regularly include a Tutors' Column with essays by and for tutors. Recommended maximum length is 3000 words or less (including the Works Cited) for articles and 1500 words or less for the Tutors' Column. Please use MLA format. All submissions are peer reviewed. Send your manuscripts as attachments via e-mail to submission@writinglabnewsletter.org. For editorial questions, contact Muriel Harris (harrism@purdue.edu), editor, or Michael Mattison (mmattison@wittenberg.edu) or Janet Auten (jauten@american.edu), associate editors. Subscriptions to WLN are U.S.$25 per year for subscriptions mailed in the U.S. and U.S.$30 for subscriptions mailed to Canada. International and digital subscriptions are also available by contacting support@therichco.com. Please order WLN through our Web site: <http://writinglabnewsletter.org/index.html>.