Call for Proposals

AWAC-Sponsored Panel, European Writing Centers Association Conference
Graz, Austria
July 8-11, 2020

The International Collaborations Committee of the Association for Writing
Across the Curriculum (/) is issuing a call for
proposals for an AWAC-sponsored panel at the European Writing Centers
Association conference to take place in Graz, Austria, from July 8-11, 2020.
Please see the EWCA conference website for more details and information about
the overall conference theme, “Writing Centers as Spaces of Empowerment”:
https://europeanwritingcenters-2020.uni-graz.at/en/

Writing Centers and WAC: Relationships Between Students and Faculty/Academic
Staff

The mission of writing centers typically supports both the improvement of
students’ writing projects and the more general enhancement of their writing
abilities through face-to-face and online tutorial consultations, workshops
and seminars, and visits to classes for brief presentations on tailored
topics. Indirectly, faculty/academic staff learn about students’ writing
challenges from these consultations and visits, and may adjust their own
assignment design or other aspects of their pedagogy from this knowledge. But
it is not usually in the main purview of writing centers to work
systematically and transformationally with faculty/academic staff across the
curriculum on deeper areas of writing support, such as the creation of
learning-based writing activities; support for the development of larger
projects such as the inclusion of student peer review or the scaffolding of
writing stages; or the development of clear, principled evaluation criteria.
Such faculty-development work is normally in the province of writing-across-
the-curriculum (WAC) or writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) programs, which are
designed to enhance writing pedagogy through the support and intervention of
the instructors themselves.

This panel will bring together scholar-educators to discuss current and
potential interconnections between student-facing writing centers and WAC/WID
programs, or potential expansions of writing centers to include significant
work with faculty/academic staff for their increased and enhanced involvement
in the development of their students’ discipline- or course/module-specific
writing abilities. In particular, we seek presentations that might address the
following questions, but these are by no means exhaustive:

· What role do writing centers play in the enhancement of discipline-based
faculty/academic staff to intervene in and support their own students’ writing
processes, activities, and development?

· How might or do existing WAC/WID programs partner effectively with writing
centers to help an institution develop a “culture” of writing rather than
locating writing support in specific units?

· How can writing centers create a more equitable balance between their own
student support and the support needed from instructors within specific
courses/modules?

· What theoretical and practical challenges do leaders of writing centers and
those who work in them face when they identify shortcomings in the way that
faculty/academic staff assign, support, or evaluate their students’ writing?
What programmatic efforts might work effectively between the writing center
and the instructors to help reduce these challenges?

Proposals can be theoretically or empirically driven and should:

·      Be approximately 300 words
·      Include a title for the presentation
·      Clearly address the focus of the session
·      Be grounded in existing literature relevant to the topic
·      State potential or demonstrated significance for the field
·      Be inquiry- and evidence-based
·      Identify the speaker(s) and their affiliations
·      Include contact information (email, phone, address) for the lead or solo proposer
·      Include 3-5 keywords

Please note that the preferred language of the conference is English but that
in the interest of inclusivity, the EWCA welcomes those who would feel more
comfortable presenting in another language, in which case, please provide an
English translation of your proposal. Proposals will be evaluated by the co-
chairs of the International Collaborations Committee and a member of the EWCA
Board.

Please submit proposals as attached Word files via email, with the subject
line “AWAC-Sponsored Panel EWCA 2020,” NO LATER THAN JAN. 25, 2020, to:

Chris Anson: ude.uscn@nosna_sirhc
Federico Navarro: lc.hou@orravan

Upon acceptance, panelists must be AWAC members in good standing.