The EWCA Summer Institute 2023 is the EWCA’s second ever summer institute. Deemed a massive success by all who attended the first EWCA SI in Viadrina, the second SI in the American University of Armenia in Yerevan promises to be just as good if not even better.
The SI traditionally is a time for folks to get away from day-to-day responsibilities and to gather as a cohort, and while the extent to which you get away from mundane matters is up to you, this yearâs cohort will enjoy the opportunity to virtually connect with writing center professionals across the globe. Just like in years past, participants can count on the experience to include a generous mix of:
Workshops
Independent project time
One-on-one and small group mentoring
Connecting with cohort members
Special interest groups
Other engaging activities
The EWCA SI is for anyone who is:
Interested in or already providing writing support in learning centres, language centres, academic support centers, or writing centers
Starting up a new writing centre or interested in doing so
New to directing or working as professional staff a writing center
Looking for new direction for their writing center
Planning or expanding a writing center career
Interested in learning and sharing with writing center and writing support colleagues
Ready for more sustained discussions about writing support and/or writing centers than conferences offer
Please, keep the dates free. Come to Yerevan in May, 2023. There’ll be lots of interesting talk and activities. Come hungry and bring your dancing shoes (just in case). đ
European Writing Centers Week is an excellent opportunity for the writing center professionals to connect virtually and celebrate writing centersâ important roles in academic contexts.
Hosted online by the writing center of the University of Graz (Austria), the theme of the European Writing Centers Association 2022 Conference was âWriting Centers as Spaces of Empowermentâ, as pointed out by conference host Doris Pany (Graz) in the conference Call for Papers, âHigher education is widely perceived as a promise of empowermentâ. Certainly, the romance of writing center work is that we foster competency, and thereby participation, in not only academic discourse but in the wider conversations unique to the democratic process that have consequences for how we govern ourselves, are governed by others and the extent to which we have access to those that govern. We strive to help those who come to us to become better writers, and in an academic context, that means more informed, critical thinkers, in short, good scientists: honest, trust-worthy, fair/balanced and respectful, leading by example, responsibly sustaining standards necessary to the maintenance of the integrity of oneâs self as a citizen and a scholar and to the maintenance of the integrity of those institutions of which we regard ourselves as members.
The consensus was that the conference was a great success, probably exceeding everyoneâs expectations given that events conspired in the eleventh hour to force what had been a long-anticipated live conference to become what may have understandably been perceived by many as another dreaded online conference. Endless thanks go to Dorisâs Conference Organizing Committee: Lisa Wurzinger, Franziska GĂŒrtl and Lukas Georg Hartleb, as well as those less visible but none-the-less diligent Sigrid Schneck and Katharina Deman. The conference ran so flawlessly, it was easy to forget that it was totally online. It was a wonderful experience. The idea of utilizing an online networking app at the end of the day was just icing on what was already a rich, satisfyingly flavourful cake.
The flawlessness of the delivery only made the quality of the content more apparent. For three days, 3 keynote presentations, 38 presentations, 5 workshops, 6 roundtables, 3 networking sessions and a number of Pecha Kuchas and posters addressed the empowerment of students, tutors, subject specialists, writing center directors, writing centers themselves and even the empowerment realized by retired writing center directors. All these sessions were attended and carried by 165 international participants including 48 students. The many approaches and strategies for the achievement of empowerment presented in these various forms of engagement are testament to the accuracy of Brad Hughesâ categorical breakdown, in his keynote presentation, of the writing center expertise and commitment on which writing centers are built. Approaches and strategies for empowerment included academic literacies approaches, other linguistic approaches, genre analysis, social strategies such as writersâ groups and retreats, collaborative writing, contrastive language strategies, translingual approaches, âsmall-teachingâ and âworking allianceâ approaches and the use of actor-network theory and âwriting as liberationâ. Equally impressive and edifying were the number of marginalized groups treated: international students, other language learners, at-risk students, first-year/transitioning students, multilingual students and neuro-diverse students. Empowerment through the engagement with the emotional labor of writing, an often-neglected area, was addressed as was tutor-led writing centers, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and Peer Assisted Learning programs as agents for empowerment of both subject specialists and students. Finally, the issue of sustaining pedagogical integrity, particularly in the face of the corporatization of higher education, and Brad Hughesâ talk on âconnectivismâ spoke to the empowerment of writing centers themselves. Beside this variety of perspectives on empowerment, the conference also engaged with the very future of the EWCA itself. In the general assembly the EWCA members discussed their goals for the upcoming years and elected a new Executive Board for the period 2022-2024.
It is our hope that as we move away from our experience of the EWCA 2022 Conference toward the next biennial conference in 2024, those who heard Bradâs presentation will reflect on his ethical stance on writing centers, that they should be pedagogical workshops, continually experimenting, challenging unexamined assumptions, adapting to new contexts for writing and for teaching writing, engaging in plenty of âepistemic trespassingâ.
Thank you all, members and non-members alike, for your patience, participation, comraderie and encouragment.
Hi! Our writing center is located in Hisar School, Istanbul, Turkey. We have a big room in the middle of our school with a cozy vibe to it. Our center is run by high school students trained by our center directors. We aim to benefit middle schoolers and other high school students who wish to work with their peers on their various assignments. We have three different elective courses for three different levels of writing consultants. It separates the first, second, and third years, allowing each consultant to have a more fitting experience for their level.
When students come to our writing center we hope to better not just their writing or assignment, but also the writer and to leave permanent improvements they can apply to their writing of choice. When we receive a submission from a student, we prepare for their session beforehand, finding specific positives and parts that the student can work on. During the session, we keep the student motivated by using âandâs instead of âbutâs, while also leaving the decision-making to the writer, creating an equal environment between consultants and clients.
When we give feedback, we also take some feedback regarding the tutor session. Here are some of the student-written feedback about our sessions. The feedbacks are important to our improvement as well, telling us specifically how we helped them and how we can better ourselves making the sessions more beneficial.
âI fortunately got very good feedback about my essay and I definitely needed a second eye to read it.â
âEverything was good. Now I know what to fix and I also got some ideas on what to write about.â
Working at the writing center benefits the tutor, as well as the writer. The environment created in the center helps the tutor work on their writing, improves their critical thinking skills and enables them to look at their writing in a more objective way. In my personal experience, I felt like it helped me with my IELTS exam as a foreign English speaker. It helped me better my skills like thinking on the spot and empathy.
Our aim as the writing center, especially by having high school students as tutors, is to create collaboration among students and inspire them to explore their writing and bring out their whole potential.
WRITING CENTER Yazma Becerileri Merkezi HÄ°SAR OKULLARI GöktĂŒrk Merkez Mahallesi Ä°stanbul Caddesi No: 3 34077 GöktĂŒrk – Ä°stanbul Tel: (+90 212) 364 00 00 Ext 333 www.hisarschool.k12.tr
On behalf of the members of the European Writing Center Association (EWCA) community,
The board of the EWCA joins with its members and our colleagues in EATAW in standing in solidarity with all Ukranians, colleagues or otherwise, at this harrowing time. We join EATAW, and many other academic and state bodies throughout Europe, in wholeheartedly condemning the Russian governmentâs denial of Ukraineâs right to exist, the subsequent unprovoked invasion and what can only be construed as an attempt to mercilessly eradicate those who dared to call themselves Ukranians, the free, peaceful, hopeful people of a promising, forward-looking nation.
Many EU institutions, political, civil and academic, are offering some form of refuge for the people fleeing the barbarous, inhumane and illegal Russian violation of their sovereign homeland. Some of these opportunities, relevant to EWCA members, and to academics in Ukrainian educational institutions in general, are listed below.
It is our hope that everyone remembers that to be Russian is not to be Putin or his cronies, and that many Russians throughout the world are sympathetic and grieving with Ukraine; many courageously take a high risk by resisting and speaking up against the war. If our colleagues in Ukraine have questions about how to avail of any of these opportunities or have questions about how to take refuge in any of our member countries, please contact us, and we will do our best to get you the information that you need.
We encourage EWCA members to add to this list below by adding and reposting this message.
Introducing SKRIB, an international peer-reviewed, open access journal that facilitates intercultural dialogue around the development of writing programming and pedagogy in post-secondary institutions of higher learning around the world.
Developed by an international group of founding editors in response to the largely unidirectional flow of writing centre & composition program models outward from the United States, SKRIB calls for examinations of:
in-country development and operation of writing programs and pedagogy;
writing programs & pedagogy as cultural artifacts; cultural framings & histories of writing, rhetoric and their teaching;
the past, present, and future of Western (especially US) linguistic, epistemic, institutional hegemonic forces;
English as a commodity and colonizing force.
SKRIB invites critical approaches to scholarship that foreground relevant issues of colonialism, globalism, capitalism and neoliberalism, racism, ableism, as well as issues relating to patriarchy and gender inequality.
SKRIB is now accepting submissions to its inaugural issue, which will be published on a continuous basis over the course of 2022.
As an inaugural issue, we are looking to SKRIB’smission as a guide for submissions as well as explorations of different understandings of critical sustainability in writing programmes and writing centres.
Critical sustainability is an emerging interdisciplinary concept that brings environment, ecology, politics, and sociality into conversation. According to Rose and Cacheline (2018) socio- cultural approaches to critical sustainability call for system reformation through praxis that “undermines, subverts, and offers alternatives to existing systems” (p. 519). Ferreira (2017) centres critical consciousness development in this work, encouraging practices that acknowledge authoritarian socio-cultural tendencies and underpinnings. We invite authors to engage with this interdisciplinary concept to take a critical approach to the study of writing programmes and writing centres in local, transnational, and global contexts.
Please review author guidelines for information about journal sections as well as house style.
Join the SKRIB community! Serve as a peer reviewer and/or translator. We are looking to build a multilingual and international list of peer reviewers and translators, so please spread this invitation far and wide!
Interested translators, reviewers, and contributors can contact the journal editors at skribjournal@gmail.com.
In eager anticipation of your submissions,
Stevie Bell and Brian Hotson,
SKRIB Co-editors-in-Chief
On behalf of the SKRIB Editorial Board:
Co-editor-in-Chief
Stevie Bell,
Associate Professor, York University, Canada
Co-editor-in-Chief
Brian Hotson,
Independent scholar, Canada
Violeta Molina-Natera,
Directora de departamento, Departamento de ComunicaciĂłn y Lenguaje, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana â Cali, Colombia
Lawrence Cleary,
Director, Regional Writing Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland
Pamela Nichols,
Associate Professor, Wits University, South Africa
