WPAs aren’t born; we’re made. When I arrived at Barry, there was no formal writing program. The two required General Education writing courses used common textbooks, but there was no curriculum, no faculty development, and no assessment. Students arrived underprepared and anxious, dedicated instructors did their best without guidance, and campus conversations about writing seemed bleak. I volunteered, and I’ve been learning how to be a WPA ever since. I love organizational strategy and problem solving, and I believe collaboration is fundamental to both.
Curricular Creation and Revision
Over 4 years, supported by generous administrators and instructors, I developed a FYW program that serves Barry’s diverse student body and liberal arts mission. Our curriculum connects students’ literacy development to social justice issues related to language, culture, identity, and power. Each course draws on students’ backgrounds and beliefs, provides scaffolding and strategies for growth, encourages critical reflection, and fosters community engagement. Faculty, including a multilingual pedagogy coordinator, share materials and conduct peer observations. It seems to be working, and we keep working on it.
Creative, Collaborative Assessment
One of my first tasks as Director was to connect FYW to the Learning Center, which houses both Developmental English and the Writing Center. I recruited a senior colleague to collaborate on a 2-year project of mutual assessment and development, funded by a competitive university grant. We gathered data from surveys, focus groups, and student writing and have been using that information to evaluate and improve our programs. As a result, there are now stronger ties, better aligned curricula, and new directions for faculty development.
Related Research
My (still in production) forthcoming “Roles and Relationships: Possibilities for Student Participation in Writing Program Administration” resulted from a practical question: How can I get students involved in program development? This survey of 20 years of WPA enabled me to build a schema of student participation in WPA work, which should be helpful for others asking related questions.
One piece of our assessment project asked students to tell the program about their relationship with writing in a “Welcome to FYW” essay. After reading and discussing the “WPA Outcomes Statement for FYW” and NCTE’s “Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing,” students wrote a brief response connecting their previous experience and future goals to these documents. The results provide details about Barry’s particular student body as well as a more general sense of how new college students negotiate the concepts and rhetorical situation of FYW. Paige Banaji and I have presented on this research at Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference and are co-authoring an article on the subject… while continually discovering new strands worth pursuing.
Writing Across the Curriculum
After 4 years as Director of FYW, I recently handed over the reins to a colleague and took on a new challenge: developing conversations about writing across campus. This is preliminary research, enabled by the relationships I’ve built through service and administration and designed to generate dialogue and interest. My hope is to integrate WAC into larger efforts to improve faculty development opportunities across campus.