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 experiences first as writing faculty and now as a doctoral student means that to some degree, I have a foot in both worlds, a position from which I can work effectively to advance WPA-GO’s goals. As a former writing instructor, I have insight into what resources, experiences, and professional development opportunities may benefit my fellow graduate students, and I look forward to working with WPA-GO to make these opportunities happen. Yet as a current graduate student, I also appreciate the financial and social realities which often bar us from taking advantage of these opportunities. I am committed to working with WPA-GO to fund graduate students’ service and professional development. I also hope to identify alternative avenues for development, such as peer mentoring groups among graduate students, virtual conferences, and online resources to guide our administrative and pedagogical work. I am excited to think creatively with WPA-GO about workable, relevant ways to support graduate students in their professional development.
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) *
I bombed my first semester teaching first-year writing as a master’s student: half my students earned a C or lower in my class. After that disastrous experience, I taught myself to teach: I read books about teaching, invited fellow graduate students into my class for informal peer reviews, and solicited student feedback mid-semester. Today, I am an effective writing teacher passionate about helping first-year students succeed. Yet while I’m proud of what I accomplished, I’m committed to making sure that fellow graduate students have access to the teaching and scholarly resources I lacked. This means connecting graduate students with mentors: senior graduate students and active WPAs who are committed to taking the time to answer tough, personal questions about teaching, writing and publishing, and navigating the job market. I hope to strengthen mentoring opportunities available through WPA-GO by:
- Forging informal, cross-institutional mentoring relationships among graduate students, to foster collaboration and mutual support
- Connecting women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals with mentors who share that identity and can provide specific support, and
- Continuing to foster online relationships via email or Zoom, to lower financial barriers to mentoring. My commitment to providing support for other graduate students also means I am eager to make open-access resources on writing research teaching, and administration available online to WPA-GO members, along with online avenues for engagement, such as virtual reading groups. Taking such steps will enable WPA-GO members to easily locate and engage with information that will contribute to their professional success and personal well-being during graduate school.
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) *
Most of my students at Emmaus Bible College were evangelical. I am not. As a result, I worked hard to design classes that navigated the gulfs among our diverse viewpoints and sparked out-of-the-box thinking without inappropriately challenging my students’ religious identities. As I did so, I realized that my students’ thinking changed most when they were willing to listen to research and stories besides their own. Listening to others is a crucial step towards equity in writing studies. Sadly, it is a step taken too infrequently, and our refusal to listen to each other bars equitable writing research and pedagogical practice(s). Members of racial minorities, LGBTQ individuals, women, and teaching assistants frequently have their expertise and standpoints ignored. When their input is not valued, injustice persists. CWPA publicly commits to inclusion and diversity; given this, we have an ethical obligation to listen to those who inhabit marginalized spaces and act on what we hear, in order to break down the barriers to equity in research, teaching, and administration. With WPA-GO, I want to make it possible for people who are too often unheard, to be heard and valued. Specifically, I want to invite people to share their expertise and experience in three ways:
- Working with WPA-GO to support and build safe spaces for discussion, both online and in-person. WPA-GO can make sure members know about the excellent spaces which already exist, such as the Next-GEN listserv. WPA-GO can also support more personal connections by hosting local and national meet-ups and arranging mentoring between senior and junior graduate students. Making sure members have places where they are taken seriously is a crucial way to support their research and teaching, and help them thrive during graduate school.
- Supporting research into inequity in composition scholarship, teaching, and administration. I see WPA-GO serving as a hub where graduate students doing this research connect with each other and locate conference and publication opportunities; WPA-GO could potentially even sponsor a conference panel on inequity in writing studies. I also hope to work with WPA-GO to make available research guidelines on how to design research that invites input from overlooked stakeholders in writing programs, such as first-year students of color or TAs.
- Sponsoring opportunities for members to share their expertise via channels besides conferences, which often come with logistical barriers. WPA-GO could (for instance) sponsor a group blog where members share graduate school advice and swap teaching tips, or make open-access articles and videos, especially by people of color and LGBTQ individuals, available to members. WPA-GO can additionally (continue to) highlight members’ conference presentations and publications, so that members can learn from each other and, applying what they learn, work towards equitable writing practices and pedagogies. Ultimately, I am convinced that when writing studies listens to and learns from its diverse stakeholders, the field thrives, and I look forward to working with WPA-GO to make opportunities for that listening to happen.
