How would your studies and / or your professional experiences advance the goals of WPA-GO? These goals may be found in the About Me section of WPA-GO’s website: http://wpacouncil.org/wpa-go (no more than 150 words) *

As the assistant director of my university’s writing program, I’m involved especially in coordinating special events and professionalization activities, communicating program news to faculty and students, supporting incoming graduate assistants, and maintaining the program website and faculty resource site. These activities have strengthened my commitment to transparent administration and to being one who seeks the development, success, and overall well-being of others. My research interests in online writing instruction, writing transfer, and writing program administration are all based on a desire to promote better systems—writing instruction that is more inclusive, effective, and programmatically supported. I believe that these motivations, combined with my experiences overseas and my work as an assistant director of a writing program, would advance the goals of WPA-GO.

What kinds of support do you value as a graduate student and how would you further those forms of support for others through WPA-GO? (no more than 250 words) *

As the assistant director of my university’s writing program, I’m involved especially in coordinating special events and professionalization activities, communicating program news to faculty and students, supporting incoming graduate assistants, and maintaining the program website and faculty resource site. These activities have strengthened my commitment to transparent administration and to being one who seeks the development, success, and overall well-being of others. My research interests in online writing instruction, writing transfer, and writing program administration are all based on a desire to promote better systems—writing instruction that is more inclusive, effective, and programmatically supported. I believe that these motivations, combined with my experiences overseas and my work as an assistant director of a writing program, would advance the goals of WPA-GO.

CWPA pledges to “foster inclusion more generally; promote research into student diversities; promote policies that increase diversity in our membership and in the population of people who administer writing programs; and explicitly act against the structures that cause injustice today,” and WPA-GO is dedicated to supporting this mission. How will your selection to the WPA-GO Graduate Committee advance these goals? Please answer this question by choosing one barrier you identify to meeting these goals in writing studies. How would your work within WPA-GO specifically address this barrier? (no more than 500 words) *

We know that writing is for everyone, that it is a social activity that pervades both the public and the private, the professional and the casual. Writing studies and writing programs, then, should contain some of the greatest diversities—whether in terms of class, race, research, religion, life experience, or any other category. But we’re not there yet. One reason for this, one of the barriers in the way of greater inclusion and broader diversity in writing studies and program administration, is perceived qualifications. Like the rest of academia and professional environments, writing studies and programs still have work to do to attract people with more diverse backgrounds and experiences. One path for this work is in minimizing the marginalizing ways we define our field and do its work, ways that cause would-be writers, would-be teachers, and would-be administrators to think they wouldn’t be qualified to do this work. Writing is for everyone, but many of our students think it’s only for those who know and use the right words. Writing is for everyone, but we’re still engaged in efforts to make that known. Writing is for everyone, but our programs don’t fully represent that fact. I know that part of joining any community involves becoming enculturated through language and actions. The way I speak and write is different now that I have worked as a student, teacher, and administrator of writing. I fight impostor phenomenon and embrace the changes. But I also resist them, not only to be me but also to show others that writing is for everyone. Writing studies and programs do need qualified teachers and administrators, but we also need to do what we can to keep those who might join us from perceiving implied qualifications, demands on identity and action that don’t (or shouldn’t) exist. I intend to show those who might be interested in our work, but who think that they don’t have anything to offer—or who think that we would ask them to change too much—that we need them, that we want them.