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) *
My research interests in institutional critique—having attended a small liberal arts university and an R1 institution—brings an understanding that writing program administration work is postmodern and institution-specific. As the assessment research coordinator, I have networked with graduate students, adjuncts, and full-time non-tenure track and tenure-track faculty on a variety of assessment and programmatic agendas. I have also worked with Purdue’s Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Effectiveness and Center for Instructional Excellence in creating our assessment initiatives. Most importantly, I have developed an assessment committee composed of important stakeholders that is in charge of promoting a grassroots culture of assessment. These experiences have provided me with the groundwork to advance the goals of WPA-GO and my proposed initiatives (see below) with both graduate students and scholar-professionals. I believe that my institutional experiences also allow me to communicate across institution types and develop working relationships to promote an understanding of institutionality.
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) *
There are various forms of support I value as a graduate student because they provide me with invaluable experience for my future research and career. For example, the monetary support that many organizations offer to graduate students is priceless because many graduate students, like myself, are limited in their funding opportunities and cannot attend all conferences that speak to them. Because of this lack of funds, I find it crucial to create a travel grant for graduate students, who are first time attendees to CWPA, and have limited or no other forms of institutional support. By networking with our sponsors and membership, we could create such a grant that honors one or two graduate students per year.
In addition to the monetary support, I find networking with fellow graduate students and scholar-professionals exhilarating. These networking opportunities provide many benefits because I am able to discuss how other writing programs are able to address their stakeholders’ needs. These conversations allow me theorize how these solutions may or may not work in other institutions. Therefore, creating a mentoring group between graduate students and two or three writing program administrators from different institution types would be beneficial. The differing institution types, I believe, would provide graduate students with a better understanding of how institutionality affects how writing programs are administered, especially when entering the job market. Through a collaborative blog or vlog, this mentoring could be shared with our membership and thereby help the organization create an awareness of institutionality.
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) *
As a graduate student who has attended a small liberal arts university (i.e., The University of Findlay) and a large R1 institution (i.e., Purdue University), I have had two distinct experiences with how writing is administered. Factors such as labor, administrative structure, student population, etc. all affect how institutions carry out their writing programs. Institutional status, consequently, will remain a key writing barrier to our research and outreach if we do not address the diverse needs of each institution. Emily Isaac’s Writing at the State U, for instance, is an invaluable piece that provides insight into state comprehensive universities and how writing is administered. As a discipline, we must further Isaac’s work to include Hispanic Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, small liberal arts institutions, etc. If elected to WPA-GO, I would promote this research in two initiatives: 1) Institutional Representation Initiative and a 2) Pedagogy Initiative.
First, I would develop an Institutional Representation Initiative that invites underrepresented institutions and their scholars (e.g., Hispanic Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, etc.) to our WPA-GO Graduate Committee and WPA Executive Board. I would start an exploratory committee that provide seats to underrepresented institutions and their scholars so that we diversify our knowledges, policies, membership, and practices. This diverse board could create a repository of job market resources for graduate students or a database for scholars who seek to know more about institutional writing programs. Key WPA practices such as labor, curriculum, budget, etc. from select institutions could be transparent in this resource. As I will be actively researching diverse institutions in my dissertation and having attended two distinct institutions, I know that I could contribute to this initiative extensively. My dissertation, “Writing Cultures: Institutionality, Faculty Beliefs and Attitudes, and Student Perceptions,” investigates how writing is administered at writing across the curriculum (WAC) institutions and non-WAC institutions in three different categories: small liberal arts colleges, state comprehensive universities, and R1 institutions. My goal is to better understand how faculty’s epistemological beliefs and attitudes as well institutional practices (e.g., labor, curriculum, etc.) impact the creation and/or stagnation of cultures of writing at these institutions.
Second, I suggest we engage our students in the type of thinking I am promoting above through a Pedagogy Initiative that houses teaching strategies for inclusion and diversity. My CWPA presentation, “A Turn Towards Pedagogy,” proffers such a strategy in that adopting an intersectional lens has the opportunity to foster diverse ways of thinking in our students. An intersectional lens thereby promotes a more robust research and teaching agenda that considers institutionality and how students, researchers, and writing’s identities coexist–positively or negatively–with these institutional structures. I will begin this conversation at CWPA in Baltimore, but also work to create a collaborative space for these initiatives as a WPA-GO Committee member. By implementing these initiatives in a partnership between WPA-GO and CWPA, we would promote deeper research into writing, institutionality, student diversities, and pedagogy, and subsequently provide space for diverse institutions’ scholars.
