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 year’s 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). 🙂
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 government’s denial of Ukraine’s 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 Comunicación y Lenguaje, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana – Cali, Colombia
Lawrence Cleary,
Director, Regional Writing Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland
Pamela Nichols,
Associate Professor, Wits University, South Africa
Rose Richards,
Faculty, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Christiane Donahue,
Faculty, Dartmouth (Université de Lille, France), US
This was addressed to the board, but may be of interest to some of our members. This was posted to the EWCA board on January 15th, much too late for any savings from early registration or for calls for papers. Seems the main message was that the AWP has advertising space for sale, which might be of interest to some of you. Please, take a look. Some of you may be interested in attending.
Greetings from AWP—the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. We are the US’s professional association of creative writers and writing programs and represent over 50,000 individual writers, 550 academic creative writing programs, and 150 writers centers and conferences. I am reaching out to you today about our annual conference and bookfair, the largest annual gathering of creative writers in North America.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year AWP is moving forward with all-virtual conference, 3-7 March 2021. This offers the opportunity for writers from around the world to participate. Our keynote speaker is US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. The conference will feature 250 readings and panels and over 20 featured events.
Held annually since 1973, AWP offers artistic exposure, professional development and access to opportunity for writers and teachers of writing at all stages of their careers. For example, in 2019, writer Jasmin Iolani Hakes was able to attend her first AWP conference. “AWP changed my life,” she writes, “I got an email about submitting a general query to the agents that would be there through Writer to Agent. I figured it would be good practice. Three agents requested a meeting, and the third ended up being my unicorn. My novel sold at auction in the fall and comes out with Scribner next spring!”
This year, we’ve identified an exceptional online platform to bring the AWP experience into the virtual space. One opportunity of our new virtual reality is the ability to connect across great distances, and we very much hope writing organizations like yours might encourage participation from your members, building bridges between international writing communities.
I’ve attached the #AWP21 sponsor guide (find here:
which details packages that offer marketing benefits, cost effective registration packages, and exhibit spaces. We’d also like to offer you and/or your members access to special sponsorship packages developed for our institutional members that offer the ability for a large number of your students or staff to attend at a very reasonable cost. These are outlined below:
Sustaining Benefactor
$3,000 Package:
30 Registrations
Sponsor Listing on AWP’s website & conference platform
Sponsor listing in 4 issues of The Writer’s Chronicle
Additional 3 months post-conference access through 3 June 2021
Option for evening virtual reception
Sustaining Sponsor
$4,500 Package:
50 Registrations
Sponsor Listing on AWP’s website & conference platform
Sponsor listing in 4 issues of The Writer’s Chronicle
Additional 3 months post-conference access through 3 June 2021
Option for evening virtual reception
$950 Student-Only Add-On
25 Registrations
Additional 3 months post-conference access through 3 June 2021
As an AWP attendee over many years, I can’t tell you what an enriching and rewarding experience this unique conference of creative writers truly is. Please look over the sponsor guide and let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.
In the difficult times we are all facing, AWP is very excited to have the opportunity to bring the international literary community together for four days of extraordinary learning and exchange. Here is a link to the schedule of accepted panel events:
We will also be offering some VIP sponsor events and look forward to sharing those details.
I hope you will consider how your organization and/or members might join us, and please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or if I can be helpful in any way.
With all best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.
Professor Chris LeCluyse at Westminster College, Utah, is organising mentors for writing centre staff interested in publishing articles about the work they do in the Writing Center Newsletter.
Professor of English at Westminster College, Utah
Chris writes: The WLN mentor match program is intended to bring writers working on articles for WLN together with experienced mentors who know a thing or two about writing center work and publishing. Mentors give feedback to writers submitting to WLN to help them develop articles for publication. Mentors actively engage in goal-setting with the mentee.
Mentors also work with writers who may be interested in writing but aren’t sure what to write about or where to begin. In other words, a WLN mentor does much the same work as tutors in a writing center.
If you would like to be a WLN mentor, please fill out the online application form at http://bit.ly/WLNMentorApp.
Writing centers are popping up worldwide. As more and more institutions of higher education see the need to support writers, writing and writing to learn, they are opening writing centers. However, those tasked with trying to establish writing centers, most often have to learn their business by doing and in relative isolation.
To provide professionals and academics within Europe who are seeking to develop writing centers a sustained opportunity for professional development, the European Writing Centers Association offered its first Summer Institute August 19th-23rd at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany, directly at the German-Polish border. Thirty participants from 16 different countries participated. They were invited and accompanied by five experienced Writing Center leaders from Germany, Ireland, and the USA.
Because a central aspect of writing center work is the philosophy of collaborative learning, the Summer Institute was designed to be a truly interactive and participatory learning experience. All topics were delivered to allow all participants to share knowledge and experiences with each other. Together with their leaders, they enhanced their understanding of the following topics:
. Peer writing tutor education . Working with faculty and administration . Demonstrating impact: Writing center assessment and more . The Writing Center budget . Grant writing for writing center projects . Possible exchange programs (e.g. Erasmus) . Working with multilingual students . Writing center research and publication . Writing center sustainability
Participants also had ample time to network and to socialize as they walked together to our lodgings in a student hotel across the lovely Oder River that marks the border between Germany and Poland. They shared snacks from their home countries during our daily coffee breaks and spent time each day in small mentoring groups.
Collaboration on writing centre work
To celebrate our hard work at the closing of the Institute, participants created and staged writing circus characters in a Writers‘ Circus, “a very creative and great way to end our time together”, as a participant expressed it.
The feedback of participants was overwhelmingly positive and many expressed how they were looking forward not only to going back to their writing center work, but also to continuing the networking informally and through future summer institutes. The Summer Institute, one participant summarized, “showed me the incredible connections you make with people from all around the world, because we have that one thing in common: The love for writing – and writing consultations and centers!”
Annual
Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Writing Research
Save
the dates! July 26 – August 7, 2020
Hanover,
NH, USA
“The
Summer Seminar was one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my
career.” (previous participant)
A detailed announcement and the
seminar application will be available by October 1st – applications due
December 15th 2019—but here is a preview:
The 2020 Dartmouth Summer Seminar
for Writing Research is designed for writing faculty from all types of higher
education venues and contexts who are beginning to work on data-driven research
about writing in a variety of higher education contexts, and who would like an
intensive, high-powered two weeks to work on that research, review approaches
and methods, consult directly with experts, and network long-term with a cohort
of other researchers from around the world. Guided interaction about
participants’ projects is offered in the months leading up to the Seminar. The
Seminar itself offers a quiet, resource-rich environment, coursework,
small-group discussion and exchange, individual consultation with Seminar
leaders, time to work alone or in groups on research projects, and a concluding
presentation to the group with feedback from team leaders.
We encourage both individuals and
research groups or teams to apply.
The Seminar coursework covers a
range of topics, including data segmenting and coding, statistical analysis,
effective literature reviews, research ethics, and so on. Special-interest
topics are presented based on participants’ projects.
If you’ve been asking yourself any
of the following questions, this is the seminar for you:
•
How do I turn an interest into a viable data-driven investigation?
• I
am very comfortable with my usual research approach, but would like to develop
new data-driven research abilities; can you help?
•
What data do I collect for my research study? How do I collect them?
•
What should I look for when I analyze the data? What is the deeper phenomenon I
am looking for? What is a good site for investigating it?
• I
would like a writing research group within which to work—how can I find that?
•
Everyone seems to be talking about “coding” these days—how can I learn more
about it?
•
What methods are the best for the questions I would like to answer?
•
Where can I learn more about how to select a sample, how to create a worthwhile
survey or interview, and how to calculate statistical significance?
•
Should I conduct a pilot study first? What are the advantages and disadvantages
of a pilot study (including funding)?
•
Why does my research question keep changing?
•
What’s the best way to present and publish my research?
