News

AWAC Colleagues,

The Mentoring Committee is excited to announce our first fall virtual workshop, “Turning the Page: Notes Towards Mindfulness, Motivation, and Meaningful Work at HBCU Writing Centers and Programs,” Friday, September 30th at 12 p.m. U.S. Eastern/11 a.m. U.S. Central/ 10 a.m. U.S. Mountain/ 9 a.m. U.S. Pacific, presented by Dr. Kendra Mitchell, Dr. Robert Randolph, Jr., and Amber Lunderman.

Workshop Overview

Drawing upon their award-winning 2018 International Writing Center Association keynote address, the presenters will discuss the strategies and techniques they employ in their writing programs to promote mindfulness, motivation, and meaningful work at HBCUs. They are exploring this meaningful work of mindful motivation in the HBCU writing centers as makerspaces. First, they will talk about practical mindfulness techniques that help to decrease anxiety, track intentionality, and promote reflection. Then, they will discuss the intersections of African American Language (AAL) and Edited American English (EAE) to provide students with a sense of agency and motivation. Lastly, they will speak about how writing ecologies, including writing centers, help promote a sense of meaningful work that extends beyond writing assignments.

For more information and to register, visit the Events page on the AWAC website.

Speaker Bios

Kendra Mitchell (she/her), is Director of Composition at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, where she has taught composition, literature, and historical linguistics. She serves as an Executive Committee member for NCTE and was also appointed to the NCTE Committee for Change, a social justice-driven committee. Her research interests include the intersections of translanguaging, writing center studies, and Black ways of knowing. Dr. Mitchell’s writing center scholarship can be found in the Writing Center Journal, Praxis Journal, and several book collections. Her current scholarship includes mapping geospatial, social, and multimodal circulation of Black identities and culture at/as HBCUs found in her forthcoming co-edited special issue in the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, Transdisciplinarity @HBCUs: (Re)Writing Black Futures beyond the Margins, and her forthcoming HBCU writing center co-edited collection, Makin’ A Way Outta No Way: HBCUs, Writing Centers, & Antiracism.

Robert Randolph, Jr., PhD (he/him), is Director of The Writing Center at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. His research and teaching interests include 20th- and 21st-century African American literature and cultural production, socio-cultural foundations of education, and Black feminist and queer rhetorics and pedagogies. His notable publications include “The Queer Poetics of Social Justice: Literacy, Affect(ion), and the Critical Pedagogical Imperative” and “Shifting the Talk: Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Feminism at HBCUs.”

Amber Lunderman (she/hers) is a Fall 2021 graduate of Florida A&M University with a bachelor’s degree in English. She currently works as a tutor in the FAMU Writing Resource Center and as a Marketing Assistant for Anhinga Press in Tallahassee. During her senior year, Amber was a student editor for FAMU’s literary Journal, CaKe, an experience which inspired her to want to pursue a post-graduate degree in Publishing. She will be attending Rosemont College in spring of 2023 where she will be on a quest to obtain a double degree in Publishing and Creative Writing. Amber is a lover of fantasy, sci-fi, magical realism, and historical fiction.

Questions? Please contact AWAC Mentoring Committee Co-Chairs Lindsay Clark (lclark@shsu.edu) and Amy Cicchino (cicchina@erau.edu).

The Association for Writing Across the Curriculum and the WAC Clearinghouse are pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Exemplary WAC Program Awards. The Exemplary WAC Program Awards series recognizes the extraordinary achievements of WAC directors and/or administrative teams to establish, maintain, and sustain programs that foster and facilitate exemplary engagement with writing across the curriculum at their institution, as well as institutional commitments to support these achievements. Please join us in celebrating the 2022 winning programs in the following categories:

The 2022 Exemplary Emerging WAC Program (1-5 years) is

Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Arizona 

Director, Aimee Mapes

The 2022 Exemplary Established WAC Program (6-10 years) is

Writing Across the College, Salt Lake Community College 

Director, Tiffany Rousculp

The 2022 Exemplary Enduring WAC Program (11+ years) is

The Howe Writing Across the Curriculum program at Miami University 

Director, Elizabeth Wardle 

These programs are all doing more than supporting writing across the curriculum; they are making shifts to the culture of writing on their campuses and beyond—having impact at a broad scale. Their applications exemplify the expansive energy that fosters exemplary-ness, and this energy is what we hope these winning programs encourage and inspire among other WAC programs.

You can learn more about the awards program and view profiles for the winning programs (forthcoming) online at https://wac.colostate.edu/community/awards/programs/

All the best,

Mike Palmquist, WAC Clearinghouse publisher

Doug Hesse, AWAC chair

Save the date!

The 16th International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference

Theme: WAC for Transitions: The Next 50 Years

Date: June 14-17, 2023

Location: Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Details:

• Call for Proposals released: July 2022.
• Proposals due: September 2022.
• Registration: January 2023.
• In-person and virtual attendance options.
• Competitive grants are available for part-time and contingent faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students.

For more information: https://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/iwac-2023/

Email: iwac2023@gmail.com