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). 🙂
Our Board met recently to talk about whether we should cancel or postpone the conference or whether we should try to hold an online conference. After a long and serious deliberation, the EWCA Board has made the difficult decision to postpone the Conference 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The date of the conference is too close, and we still cannot assure that it can go forward. Also, it is difficult to have a synchronous online conference as participants and members are from all over the world.
We feel very sorry, and we are also sad. We’ve been very much looking forward to welcoming all of you to Graz and to create a space for our community to come together, to talk, to discuss and to celebrate.
We are planning on holding the conference in Graz in 2022. We considered holding the conference in 2021, but with everything so up in the air, it is not possible to predict whether everyone concerned would be in a position to travel by summer 2021. We intend to keep the same topic as was announced for the 2020 conference, so everybody who already had an abstract accepted is welcome to join us and to deliver their presentations, workshops or roundtables in 2022, exact dates to be confirmed. Others who were unable to submit for various reasons will have the chance to answer a call for papers that will be forthcoming by the end of 2021.
How to keep in touch?
We are a community of practice, and our community is very international. I fondly remember all the beautiful conferences and meeting people from all over the world. Meeting friends and sharing our knowledge, ideas and questions.
We have not met for a long time, so we are thinking about how we can keep in touch until we meet again.
We have the listserv, and we will soon open a new the Facebook group and we have our blog https://www.ewcacircular.eu/. These are our digital instruments for keeping in touch.
We would like to invite everybody to present their writing center and to tell us a bit about your writing center and the challenges you are facing during the coronavirus pandemic. Please write a text for our blog, videos and pictures are also welcome to hand in. We will publish you story on our blog.
Finally, the postponement of the conference poses another issue that we would like to address in this announcement. As you all may know, the election of the board traditionally happens every two years at the EWCA Conference. However, because we have not met since 2016 at the conference in Łodz, our Board and our Chair have are already been in office for four years . As we are unable to hold elections for the EWCA Board and EWCA Chair until 2022, we decided to work without a Chair, working as a unit instead as an ad interim committee (Lawrence Cleary, Franziska Liebetanz and Doris Pany) and we are also thankful to have Elif Demirel and Annemieke Meijer with us.
Warm regards, Franziska Liebetanz, Doris Pany an Lawrence Cleary
Back Row: Íde O’Sullivan, Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, Birgit Huemer, Doris Pany-Habsa, Franziska Liebetanz, Shareen Grogan, and Lawrence Cleary. Front row: Pam Bromley, Katrin Girgensohn and Annemieke Meijer. The man with the very long arms is Mario van de Visser.
On the 21st and 22nd of June, 2018, in an effort to move our association toward greater sustainability, three members of the EWCA board, the current EWCA Chair Franziska Liebetanz, Center for Key Competencies and Research Learning (ZSFL) Writing Center Head, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany; Doris Pany-Habsa, Head of the Writing Center, University of Graz, Austria; and Lawrence Cleary, Educational Developer and Co-Director of the Regional Writing Centre, University Limerick, Ireland met with Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, Head of Centre for Academic Writing, Coventry University, EATAW ex-officio board member and editor of the Journal of Academic Writing (JoAW), the journal of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing); Íde O’Sullivan, Senior Educational Developer and Co-Director Regional Writing Centre, University Limerick, Ireland;
University Limerick straddling the River Shannon, Limerick, Ireland
Birgit Huemer, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching (Academic German) University Luxembourg Language Centre; Shareen Grogan, Director, Writing and Math Centers at National University, San Diego, California and past President, IWCA; Alison Farrell, Teaching Development Officer in the Centre for Teaching and Learning and Head of the University’s Writing Centre, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland; Pamela Bromley, Assistant Director of College Writing and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations, Pomona College, California; Mario van de Visser, Instructor Division Academic Support Language Center coordinator of the Scriptorium, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Annemieke Meijer is a lecturer and academic tutor at University College Utrecht, and the coordinator of UCU’s Writing & Skills Center, University College, Utrect, The Netherlands; and Katrin Girgensohn, Center for Key Competencies and Research Learning (ZSFL) Head, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, past Chair Together, we developed a plan for the future with very concrete steps: EWCA and current Advisory Board member to the EWCA.
EWCA Board opening the conversation
We had very good and helpful presentations about the EWCA, the IWCA (International Writing Center Association), the EATAW (European Association of Teaching Academic Writing) and the Writing Center Journal, and we had lovely Pecha Kuchas about the writing centers of all the contributors.
We spent two very productive and fruitful days thinking about our European Writing Center Association. We would like to say thank you to those who came all this way to Ireland to make contributions.
All those attending contributing to making the EWCA a more sustainable organisation
Together, we developed a plan for the future with very concrete steps:
In 2019, we will have an EWCA Summer Institute for writing center people at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Details will be announced soon.
We will continue our dialogue with the EATAW Board to collaborate on common issues and the needs of our members.
We will create a really simple website, which will also include the revised text of our Mission Statement.
Lastly, we would like to announce that our EWCA Board will be supported by Annemieke Meijer (Writing Center coordinator, University College Utrecht).
Back Row: Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, Birgit Huemer, Doris Pany-Habsa, Franziska Liebetanz, Shareen Grogan, Mario van de Visser and Lawrence Cleary. Front row: Pam Bromley, Katrin Girgensohn and Annemieke Meijer
We look forward to moving forward with our objectives and to communicating further through our listserv and in the coming weeks and months.
