17.3 Well-Being in the Writing Center

PR AXIS a writing center journal

17.3 Well-Being in the Writing Center

VOL. 17, NO. 3 (2020): WELL-BEING IN THE WRITING CENTER TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS From the Editor: Well-Being in the Writing Center Tristin Hooker & Fiza Mairaj Laboring in a Time of Crisis: The Entanglement of Wellness and Work in Writing Centers Genie Giaimo

FOCUS ARTICLES Emotions in the Center: Supporting Positive Emotional Development in Writers through Tutorials Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center?: Acknowledging Impressions and Misimpressions of Writing Center Services and User Demographics Aaron Colton

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns Justin Hopkins Replication of a Tutor-Training Method for Improving Interaction Between Writing Tutors and STEM Students

Laura Hazelton Jones, Corinne Renguette, Ruth C. Pflueger, Robert Weissbach, Brandon S. Sorge, Danielle Ice, Jon Meckley, Matt Rothrock, and Annwesa Dasgupta The Importance of Intention: A Review of Mentoring for Writing Center Professionals Maureen McBride and Molly Rentscher

BOOK REVIEW Review of Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education, edited by Stephanie Kerschbaum, Laura Eisenman, and James M Jones Cat Williams-Monardes Review of Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, by Laura Greenfield Debbie Goss

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Aaron Colton, PhD is the Assistant Director of the TWP Writing Studio and a Lecturer in Writing Studies at Duke University. Previously, he was an Assistant Director of the Communication Center and a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to his research in writing center studies, he is currently developing a book project on the politics of writer’s block as it is represented in 20th- and 21st-century US fiction.

Annwesa Dasgupta, PhD is a postdoctoral researcher with the STEM Education Innovation and Research Institute. Her primary role at SEIRI is to facilitate the SEIRI seed grant program (SSG) that serves as a grant competition for innovative pedagogical implementations by STEM faculty at IUPUI. Her research interests include biology education as well as integrated STEM research.

Dana Lynn Driscoll, PhD is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Kathleen Jones White Writing Center and teaches in the Composition and Applied Linguistics doctoral program. She currently serves as Co-Editor for the open-source first-year writing textbook series Writing Spaces, which offers free readings and instructional materials for composition courses. She has published widely on writing transfer, learning theory, writing centers, and research methods and has offered plenary addresses and workshops around the globe. Her co-authored 2012 article with Sherry Wynn Perdue won the IWCA’s Outstanding Article Award.

Genie N. Giaimo, PhD is Assistant Professor and Director of the Writing Center at Middlebury College in Vermont. Along with Yanar Hashlamon, she is the special editor of a recent WLN issue on wellness in writing center work. She is the editor of the digital edited collection Wellness and Care in Writing Center Work (forthcoming late 2020, early 2021). Her research has been published in journals such as Praxis, Journal of Writing Research, The Journal of Writing Analytics, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Kairos, and Research in Online Literacy Education, as well as in a number of edited collections (Utah State University Press, Parlor Press). She is currently writing a monograph on wellness, labor, and care work in writing centers. Her research utilizes quantitative and qualitative models to answer a range of questions about behaviors and practices in and around writing centers, such as tutor attitudes towards wellness and self-care practices, tutor engagement with writing center documentation, and students’ perceptions of writing centers.

Debbie Goss teaches first-year composition and also serves in the Writing Center at Soka University of America. She teaches ESL at Saddleback and Coastline Community Colleges and is a PhD candidate in Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include global citizenship education, WAC, social justice, first-year composition, and writing center studies. She is an editor for Inspiring Pedagogical Connections and has a piece forthcoming in Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments.

Laura Hazelton Jones, MS received a BA in English from Butler University in 2008 and an MS in Technical Communications from IUPUI in 2019. She was a peer writing tutor while earning her BA and MS degrees, and presented writing center research at the ECWCA 2019 conference during her time as a graduate student researcher at IUPUI. She is a medical editor in the Indianapolis area.

Justin B. Hopkins, PhD is a Teaching Professor and Assistant Director of the Writing Center at Franklin & Marshall College. Justin received his MA in International Performance Research from the Universities of Warwick, England, and Tampere, Finland, and he completed a PhD in Composition/TESOL at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has published in Praxis before, as well as in Qualitative Inquiry: “Coming Home: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Third Culture Kid Transition” (November 2015). His MA thesis, “Abstract and Brief Chronicles: Creative and Critical Curation of Performance,” appears in the online journal Liminalities (2012), and he has reviewed over 40 productions for Shakespeare Bulletin, Cahiers

Elisabethains, Theatre Journal, and other periodicals. Justin's book Autoethnography in Undergraduate Writing Courses is scheduled to be published in 2020 by Peter Lang Press.

Danielle Ice, MS has a B.S. in Technical Communication and an MS in Technology from the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. She has been a technical communicator for various companies and continues to exercise her skills and keep up on technical communication topics. She has authored and coauthored various articles in the field and looks forward to being a part of the new generation of technical communicators.

Maureen McBride, PhD is the current Director of the University of Nevada, Reno Writing & Speaking Center. She has worked in writing centers for the past 10 years and with first-year writing programs for the past 16 years. Maureen has been a member of IWCA for several years and is currently the Nevada state representative to the Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Association. Maureen has served as an IWCA Mentor since 2017. Her writing center research focuses on agenda setting, affective dimensions of writing center work, peer-to-peer collaborative models, and writing assessment.

Jon Meckley, MS holds associate and bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering Technology and a BS in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Erie in 1990. Jon has a master's degree in Plastics Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Jon worked at Penn State Erie’s Plastic Technical Center doing solids modeling and running a Stereolithography machine. From 1992 to 1994, Jon was a design engineer and co-owner of Innovation Design Services, Inc., a computer-aided engineering consulting firm for the plastics industry. From 1994 to 1998 Jon has worked for Penn State Erie’s Plastic Technology Deployment Center as a project engineer. Since 1999 Jon has taught at Penn State Erie in the Plastics Engineering Technology as an Associate Professor and is Department Chair. He is a Past Chair of the Blow Molding Division of SPE and Past President of the Northwest Pennsylvania SPE Section.

Ruth C. Pflueger, MFA is the Director of the Learning Resource Center and an Affiliate Instructor of English at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. She received the MFA. degree in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Plainfield, VT, USA, in 2001. She has worked in business and industry. Her research interests include improving the efficacy of tutoring services, particularly in writing. She has been an Investigator on two NSF-STEM grants.

Corinne Renguette, PhD is Program Director, Associate Professor of Technical Communication, and director of the Technical Communication Writing Center in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. She holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics and certificates in technical communication and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She has designed and taught a variety of face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses in English for specific purposes, applied linguistics, and technical and scientific communication. Her interdisciplinary research interests include intercultural technical communication, usercentered design, evaluation and assessment of educational technologies, and inclusion across the curriculum, especially in STEM education.

Molly Rentscher is the Graduate Writing Support Coordinator at University of the Pacific where she directs the Graduate Writing Center. She has worked in writing centers for the past 10 years as an undergraduate writing fellow, graduate student administrator, and writing center director. Molly has been a member of IWCA for several years and was a mentee in the IWCA Mentor Match Program from 2017 to 2019. Her writing center research focuses on tutor education, second language writing, and developing core principles for writing centers.

Matt Rothrock is Student Success Coordinator at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus (IUPUC).

This role includes oversight of campus writing assistance. Matt received his bachelor’s degree from IUPUI in English language and literature in 2008 and his master’s degree in Applied Communication Studies from IUPUI in 2019. Tutoring, supplemental instruction, and gateway course supports are his principal work foci.

Brandon H. Sorge, PhD is an Assistant Professor of STEM Education Research in the Department of Technology Leadership and Communication at IUPUI. His research interests include all aspects of STEM education, especially the development of a diverse and civically minded STEM literate workforce. More specifically, his research has focused on K-12, discipline-based education research (DBER), and corporate social responsibility.

Robert Weissbach, PhD received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida in 1987, his MSEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1990, and his Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 1998. Prior to pursuing his doctoral degree, he worked on the design and construction of turbine generator sets for General Dynamics Electric Boat Division. From 1998 – 2016 he was a faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology at Penn State Behrend in Erie, PA. Since 2016 he has been the Chair of the Department of Engineering Technology at IUPUI in Indianapolis, IN. His research interests are in renewable energy, energy storage and engineering education. Dr. Weissbach is a registered engineer in Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Wells, PhD is Director of Writing at New College of Florida, the State University System of Florida’s designated honors college. She is the co-author of Beyond Knowledge and Skills: Writing Transfer and the Role of Student Dispositions (2012) and the co-editor of The Successful High School Writing Center: Building the Best Program with Your Students (2011). Currently, she is working on a manuscript for WPAs about the Walt Disney Company’s approach to human resource management.

Cat Williams-Monardes is a doctoral candidate in Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she works as an Assistant Assessment Coordinator in the English Department. Prior to teaching college composition, she worked as a grant writer in the DC Metro area. Her research focuses on Disability in the writing center, mental illness in the composition classroom, and social justice in the context of classroom and programmatic assessment.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020)

FROM THE EDITORS: WELL-BEING IN THE WRITING CENTER Tristin Hooker University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com We here at Praxis are proud to present our summer 2020 issue. For us, as for many of you, this spring and summer have been a time of immense changes, reevaluations of our work and our working conditions, and re-imagining what we need to be and how we need to work going forward. The issue we present this summer includes pieces that address the ways we take care of our staffs, our tutors, our colleagues, and ourselves during this time. Some pieces were written during the global pandemic, some were revised in light of it, and some present concerns that have become all the more pressing as broader conversations about labor, wellness, and justice have taken center stage in public discourse. All of these cultural conversations come to life in the daily work of the writing center.

Praxis has always hoped to be part of and to facilitate such conversations, and we hope to do so in these strange—and now even more digital, for many of us— times.

In honor of our continued work during this time, we begin with Genie Giaimo’s column, “Laboring in a Time of Crisis: The Entanglement of Wellness and Work in Writing Centers.” Written near the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns in April, 2019 and updated after several months of experience with the pandemic, Giaimo offers reflections on the way our work has changed, and suggestions for establishing and maintaining a culture of wellness in our shared working conditions.

In “Emotions in the Center: Supporting Positive Emotional Development in Writers through Tutorials,” Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells also consider well-being, but from a student perspective.

Driscoll and Wells consider the power and effectiveness of dealing with students emotions in the writing center, as well as the connection between work with emotion and the established idea that writing centers tutor “the whole person.” As with Giaimo’s column, the authors have updated their study with special consideration for the effects of the global pandemic on students and writing centers working in a time of crisis.

Our look at maintaining students’ well-being, particularly in terms of creating a diverse and inclusive atmosphere, continues with Aaron Colton’s “Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center?:

Fiza Mairaj University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com Acknowledging Impressions and Misimpressions of Writing Center Services and User Demographics.”

Colton examines how professionals may consider students’ impressions of writing centers—and those who use the centers—in advertising and outreach.

Through a quantitative study of undergraduate students at Georgia Tech, Colton demonstrates how introducing anti-racist pedagogies and philosophies may not be a sufficient strategy that writing centers employ towards becoming more inclusive. Indeed, writing centers should also consider their outreach strategies to cater to the marginalized and underrepresented groups on campus.

Justin Hopkins continues to investigate writing center policy with an eye to inclusion with “By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns.” This mixed methods study examines the effects of the writing center’s policy of asking for students preferred personal pronouns. By combining practical assessment and RAD research, Hopkins’ study aims to help centers improve their policies regarding personal pronouns. Overall, the study shows that students visiting the writing center appreciate being asked for preferred pronouns.

In “Replication of a Tutor-Training Method for Improving Interaction Between Writing Tutors and STEM Students,” Laura Hazelton Jones et al. turn our attention to the importance of training tutors for genre awareness, particularly for tutors working with STEM students. Ultimately, they find, such training can boost tutor confidence and student engagement.

Maureen McBride and Molly Rentscher then draw our attention the ways writing center workers are professionalized, examining the history, overview and importance of mentoring for writing center professionals in “The Importance of Intention: A Review of Mentoring for Writing Center Professionals.” They document the benefits of professional mentoring in other disciplines and show that there exists a significant gap in research on mentoring for writing center professionals. They argue that the complex and sometimes isolating nature of writing center labor requires an organized effort to support writing center professionals by developing a formal mentoring program.

Well-Being in the Writing Center • 2 Our issue closes with two book reviews. First, Cat Williams-Monrades reviews the collection Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education, edited by Stephanie Kerschbaum, Laura Eisenman, and James M. Jones, finding it to be a valuable resource for writing center professionals hoping to develop spaces, practices, and ethics of inclusion. We then end with Debbie Goss’s review of Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, by Laura Greenfield. Praxis did, in fact, run a review of this book in our previous issue. However, we chose to run a second review not only because Goss’s perspective on the text differs so greatly from our first reviewer’s, but also because the text is so timely to consider after the events of summer 2020, in the wake of protests and conversations born of the Black Lives Matter movement, the police violence that prompted it, and the ongoing problems and tensions resulting from the global pandemic and its associated economic, labor, and educational crises.

Finally, we here at Praxis want to moment to thank our readers and our most brilliant and diligent review board for their continued support, especially in these uncertain times. On a more personal note, I (Tristin) must also take a moment to say goodbye. I have been serving as a Praxis editor since 2017, and, with this issue, am reaching the end of my term. I have been so proud and grateful to be with the Praxis team, and to be part of all of the wonderful conversations we’ve had here, on our website, and in person. I certainly hope to continue those conversations, even as I step down from editing this journal, itself. In the fall, my wonderful co-editor, Fiza, will continue, and our incoming editor will introduce themselves to you to begin he next phase of Praxis. We’re all so grateful to be here with the writing center community, and we thank you all for being part of it, too.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020)

LABORING IN A TIME OF CRISIS: THE ENTANGLEMENT OF WELLNESS AND WORK IN WRITING CENTERS Genie N. Giaimo Middlebury College ggiaimo@middlebury.edu Like many of you, I found the Spring 2020 semester to be a whirlwind, and not in the usual way. COVID-19 fundamentally changed many aspects of daily living, from how we work and attend school to how we shop for groceries and connect with our families. Our lives shifted swiftly, with little forewarning, and, in many respects, may never be quite the same again. I write these words at the beginning of April on a sunny spring day from my kitchen. Light filters into the room as I type. I hear birds singing and the backyard work of my neighbors: the growl of lawn mowers, the piercing drone of sawing, the percussion of stapling. From where I sit, in my relatively quiet corner of the world, life seems to be going on. People walk their dogs. They order curbside pick-up. They say hello to their neighbors.

Of course, this is a privileged space. In New York City, the city of my youth, my family and friends live and labor under very different conditions. The National Guard has been deployed to set-up temporary hospitals and testing sites around the city and the state. Mobile morgues have been set up in the streets. Assisted living and nursing homes have been put under strict lockdown. Most everyone with roots in the City knows at least someone—likely more than one person—who has the virus. I listen to Cuomo. I call my parents. I text with my friends. I read the social status updates about who’s sick, who’s recovering, and who’s not. Who’s been deployed and who’s volunteering. Who’s working and who’s out of work. In a time of crisis, I am split between many spaces—the relative comfort of my Midwestern home, the epicenter of the pandemic in America, the campus paths in rural Vermont that I recently walked with colleagues and with students. Academic life can already be so liminal, as many traverse great distances for their jobs and

live apart from their partners. Right now, my self is more fragmented than usual.

In that fragmented state, many of the discussions I am having lately revolve around work: who has it and who doesn’t, who is working from home and who cannot, whether it is safe to work or not. The connections between labor and wellness have never been clearer to me. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, work (like many other regular activities), can be a path to security and “salvation,” but it can also be hazardous in the immediate sense of the word. Working can literally kill.

Though I have thought a lot in the last decade or so about labor, injustice, and advocacy, my realization that work can kill became real for me when my mom—a single mother who has prided herself on going to work sick, who has taken off no more than a few days at a time for years, who is willing to brave dangerous weather, physical illness, and emotional hardship for her work—told me she that is unwilling to die for her job. I know this sentiment might seem mundane or otherwise melodramatic to some, but to witness this woman draw so stark a line by refusing to go into the office despite pressure to do so because a shelter in place order was issued for the state in which she works, was nothing short of miraculous. My mother broke the spell of normalizing bad behavior that was circulating in the early days of this pandemic, and laid bare the lengths that corporations, and some workers, are willing to go to skirt laws that are put into place for the safety and well-being of its citizens. This illustrates a refusal from a blue-collar worker, who has otherwise been dutiful and diligent her entire life, to endanger herself for her work. Right now, COVID-19 is laying bare the stark realities of capitalism and the ways in which human labor is exploited and discarded in this economic system, but it is also revealing a zeitgeist in which workers

Laboring in a Time of Crisis •

are demanding security and safety and are refusing to work if these things cannot be guaranteed.

Labor and wellness are inextricably bound. In an ideal situation, our work would be • Meaningful • Engaging • Stable • Safe • Ethical • Fairly compensated In addition, OSHA notes that workers have the right to • Work in conditions that do not pose a risk of serious harm.

• Receive information and training (in a language and vocabulary the worker understands) about workplace hazards, methods to prevent them, and the OSHA standards that apply to their workplace.

• Review records of work-related injuries and illnesses.

• File a complaint asking OSHA to inspect their workplace if they believe there is a serious hazard or that their employer is not following OSHA’s rules.

• Exercise their rights under the law without retaliation, including reporting an injury or raising health and safety concerns with their employer or OSHA. Even during a pandemic, employers must take steps to mitigate or remove identified hazards.

COVID-19 is showing us that our labor is far more precarious (and interconnected) than we would like to think. It is also showing us that issues of labor are issues of wellness. One cannot be well if one labors precariously. All of that precarity is turned inward into physiological symptoms such as stress, malnourishment, cognitive fatigue, mental health crises, chronic health issues, etc., and all of that precarity is externalized through risk taking behaviors, poor executive functioning, poverty, and other kinds of human suffering. Among those who labor precariously, are, unsurprisingly, minorities and minimum wage workers. In early April, the CDC considered and subsequently loosened guidelines for essential critical workers exposed to COVID19 so that they can return to work more quickly if

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they are asymptomatic. Among those are many minimum-wage employees, such as grocery store clerks. Of the 700,000 jobs that have been eliminated, at the time of writing this, nearly 60% have been held by women. Minority and immigrant workers in poultry factories are becoming infected and dying at alarming rates, and healthcare workers are being disciplined and fired for speaking out about their own hazardous working conditions.

Meanwhile, our field is having a reckoning of its own. While many of us have moved online and, for now at least, are trying to finish the semester and plan for summer and fall terms, precarity lies just around the corner. Higher-education institutions are taking different approaches to supporting, articulating, and understanding how we labor. Some are asking staff (and sometimes faculty) to track their daily remote work hour-byhour and even minute-by-minute. These same institutions (and many more) are requiring workers to sign remote work contracts. Others are guaranteeing wage continuity only through the end of June. Institutions are responding to the financial fallout from the pandemic crisis in other ways, including salary cuts, adjunct cuts, hiring freezes, etc. At the same time, many institutions are bombarding their workers with faux or shallow wellness advice. Some in the field are wondering if COVID-19 will signal the death knell of higher education as we know it, which only contributes to the stress we are experiencing at our home institutions.

In this time of great uncertainty, what can our community of writing center professionals do to help? At the moment, writing center folks are doing what we know how to do best: supporting students and supporting one another. In the last month, a wellspring of resources, webinars, workshops, discussions, and resource repositories have emerged to support WCAs in the transition to online tutoring platforms. An attendant set of resources have been developed to support our wellness and care. In early April, I offered one such resource—a workshop and discussion on wellness and care in writing center work. I initially responded to our campus’s going remote— accompanied by attendant feelings of isolation in the first year of my new job—by starting to work

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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on my manuscript on wellness and care in writing centers. I realized quickly, however, that in a crisis of this scale there is simply too much lag time between now and then for a book. My colleagues want and need wellness advice and support now.

And I can’t blame them. While I am the type of person who is always waiting for the other shoe to drop (chalk this up to living in NYC during 9/11 and in Cambridge during the Boston Marathon bombing), I too have been seeking out ways to understand and place this current moment within the larger framework of both personal and professional experiences. It is no surprise that I first turned to research and government guidelines to theorize how WCAs can respond during a protracted world-wide crisis.

The CDC guidelines for “getting your workplace ready for pandemic flu” (2017), recommend the following: • Plan before the pandemic.

• Take action during the pandemic.

• Follow-up after the pandemic.

Planning Before the Pandemic In my book project, I discuss at length how to develop emergency operations plans but, suffice it to say, there is simply no way to create a plan for every emergency. When I worked at a community college, we had back-to-back Nor’easters for five weeks, a gas leak, and a bomb threat, all of which closed our schools and writing centers with little forewarning. When I worked at The Ohio State University, we sheltered in place during an active “shooter” (stabber) event. Now, while at Middlebury College, we are facing a worldwide pandemic that has brought many lives and economies to a grinding halt. Although there are many possible scenarios that we can envision that may affect our work, I want to reassure you that not foreseeing this crisis was not your fault.

However, going forward, developing even a general emergency plan (perhaps one that maps out short-term, middle-term, and long-term crises responses) would be a good standard practice for most every writing center. While many of our colleges and universities have their own emergency operations plans, we know that one size simply does not fit all in these circumstances.

Collaborating with campus emergency planning

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committees or departments is recommended as you develop your plan. FEMA also has a set of resources for emergency planning in higher education. Once you develop your plan in concert with whatever campus entities are connected to emergency planning and response, I suggest you share it with your staff and dedicate time to talking it through. You might even want to workshop it with your staff as additional concerns might arise from them as they relay their lived experienced working in the center.

Taking Action During the Pandemic

By the time you are all reading this, however, you likely have taken significant action in response to the pandemic. Many of you have moved your courses and your writing centers online. You have trained tutors in synchronous and asynchronous tutoring. You have helped troubleshoot technology and settled on standard practices for your writing centers on how to deliver remote and virtual tutoring. Bravo!

In the early weeks of movement to online education models, many colleagues crowdsourced training materials, marketing materials, and user guides to programs such as WCOnline, Zoom, Google Hangouts etc. One thing to do, if you have not done so yet, is to register for the WCenter listserv, SLAC WPA (if you are part of a SLAC or have interest in it), and the Facebook group “Directors of Writing Centers,” where colleagues share resources freely and frequently.

Recognize that you do not need to labor alone— there are resources out there that, with some modification, are useful for training and onboarding tutors in virtual (and other) environments.

Continuing to Act During the Pandemic Once the move to online and remote work is complete, once the tutors are, at least, nominally trained, and the dust has settled on the keyboards and tablets, as it were, where then do we turn our attention? How do we labor with wellness and care in mind?

Many Writing Center Administrators (WCAs) I have spoken with have noted that there are multiple barriers that both tutors and students face as they try to engage with the writing center. Many

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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WCAs are reporting that tutors are withdrawing from their work, students are struggling with motivation and time management, writing center numbers are down. They are also reporting the wide differences in technological and spatial access affecting both staff members and clients. I know how hard it is to see all this precarity laid bare for us. Many think that college—especially residential college—is somehow an equalizer and, were these students back on campus, these barriers to learning would be mitigated significantly. In reality, our students and staffs labor under precarity all the time and this crisis is just pushing the unseen out into the open. Many college students, we know, face issues of homelessness and food insecurity. Many students do so much work outside of school, in addition to caregiving, that they struggle with keeping up with schoolwork, even in a regular semester. One outcome of the COVID-19 crisis, I hope, is that we nuance how we understand access and inclusion—both for our staffs and our students— and that online pedagogical models become normalized across all kinds of institutions of higher education. I also hope that we discuss scaffolding and prioritization of learning goals, as many of us have had to pull back on our course material (and grading models), perhaps to positive rather than negative effect.

For the moment, however, WCAs can assess the level of access students have to internet and quiet space by asking them. At Middlebury, we added a set of questions (Appendix A) to the appointment form through WCOnline. These questions allow tutors to adjust the kinds of support they provide to clients and to prepare themselves for providing support through the chat/audio/video functions of the program.

Similarly, these questions can also help with technology support, as WCOnline’s synchronous tutoring platform doesn’t work well on cell phones.

Provided students need asynchronous support because of access issues, responses from these questions justify the inclusion of other kinds of tutoring services, such as asynchronous tutoring via WCOnline, email, Zoom, or phone. Finding out as much as you can about your clientele and their needs can help to shape the kinds of services

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writing centers pivot to offer. These questions can also be posed to tutors and shape how they are trained and the kinds of tutoring they provide.

Of course, many of the suggestions I am making right now require a kind of “agility” that is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and i insensitive to the current crisis. To that point, I am not so sure that a single-minded focus on sustaining “business as usual,” despite the extreme circumstances we currently face is what we need right now. In the same discussion that I had with WCAs, many pointed to behaviors, such as withdrawal, lack of motivation, feelings of isolation and depression, that signal tutors (not just clients) are also facing crisis. We know that many college students face mental health concerns in a regular semester and that these trends track with adult Americans’ experiences of mental health concerns. At the moment, nearly 50% of respondents in a survey noted that their mental health was being affected by COVID-19, according to findings released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. This suggests that mental health concerns are on the rise for Americans; college students (and tutors) are likely no exception to this trend.

This is where issues of wellness and care come in. We have an opportunity to make wellness and care a central part of our training and support for writing center tutors. Of course, sharing resources with tutors on wellness, labor advocacy, and other pertinent resources (see Appendix B) is a relatively quick way of doing this. Other more time intensive activities include establishing online forums for tutors to share their daily experiences while living and tutoring under shelter in place orders, as well as scheduling online synchronous discussions about the emotional challenges that tutors are currently facing with their work (and in their broader lives), if they are willing to share.

The resources I share (Appendix C) define the symptoms of burnout as well as ways to mitigate those symptoms through practices that increase self-awareness, such as reflection and mindfulness activities (Sanchez-Reilly, et al.). These practices lead to increased job engagement, compassion, self-care, and outcomes for our clients.

Conversely, clinicians who possess lower levels of self-awareness have a greater likelihood of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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compassion-fatigue and burnout. Critical to engaging in “care” work, then, is the development of a toolkit of practices and activities that facilitate healthy work practices and care practices. While building community in an online environment is challenging, much of what makes up our daily lives has disappeared or changed significantly in a short amount of time. Writing centers, then, can provide much needed community, including socialization and reflection opportunities. We always talk in our field about how writing centers are a community of practice (Geller, et al.). Now we have the chance to reimagine different ways of practicing community in online environments to explicitly include mindfulness and reflection practices.

This is also the time, however, for WCAs to deeply consider how they advocate for their staff.

For example, in the dizzying moments after students left campus, I was given conflicting information regarding student workers. At first, I was told students could not continue working.

Then I was told students who are currently based in the US and have access to online technology could work. In the interim, I was vocal in noting that without student workers, we would not only have almost no academic support in writing (not to mention all other disciplines), but we would also effectively be putting hundreds of students out of work during a financially precarious time. I am not saying that my arguments were the only factor in changing the policy, but writing center directors occupy a critical position in terms of speaking up for workers—student, professional, faculty—especially during a crisis. Asking to be at the table during decision-making processes— especially during emergencies—is one way to be a proactive advocate. Additionally, reviewing institutional accreditation guidelines is a useful way in which to advocate for tutoring, since many accreditation boards consider learning resources to be mission-critical.

Of course, in the long term, the stress of remote learning, coupled with the financial and emotional toll of quarantine, may affect the emotional and mental health of our staff. In this case, we need to advocate for mental health support for our staffs. Of course, if our centers are staffed by peer tutors, one might argue that we

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point them to student counseling services; however, as para-professionals and professionals, our tutors are on the front lines of educational work, which has been made more stressful by the sudden move to online learning. We need to advocate for mental health support that recognizes the dual roles our peer tutors hold as both students and workers, and we need to ensure that our professional tutors—many of whom may be part time—have access to affordable counseling.

This means advocating for the extension of employee assistance programs (EAP) to part time workers and demanding an extension of the amount of care provided through these programs.

If no such EAP program exists at your institution, advocate for it. It might still not be enough support, but it is a start. Conveying to our institutions that writing center work is part of the helping professions, and that our tutors may suffer increasingly from burnout as they labor under extraordinary stressors, is critical to this endeavor.

Additionally, developing group support, such as a group yoga session, a group therapy meeting for tutors, and other community-oriented care activities will help to continue to build community and establish support structures where many have been taken away during this pandemic. As we know, the success of our work—of the project of learning—depends on the emotional wellbeing of our workers.

There are also moments where we need to simply say that enough is enough. We may be subtly pressured to perform through coercive Pollyannaish stories our institutions highlight featuring employee “grit” and “resilience.” We may be overtly threatened with dire predictions about the fates of our centers and hiring prospects. We may simply not be able to hold onto tutors this semester because they quit.

Similarly, our clients may drop off and be incapable of seeking out our services—already a common observation among WCAs on message boards. In these instances, the gospel of productivity—alluring as it may be—ought to be ignored. Reportage for this semester ought to look very different from previous semesters. IWCA ought to issue a statement about performance and assessment metrics in writing centers during a crisis. Generally, requests for adding more support,

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Laboring in a Time of Crisis •

more programming, more interventions, ought to be met with skepticism and reluctance. Try not to give into the cult of academic productivity.

Recognize that while some of us might be in relative comfort working from home, millions around the world are struggling; therefore, we WCAs ought to be scaling back as we calibrate what is meaningful, equitable, and manageable work. We are not simply working from home; we are working from home during a worldwide crisis and so are our employees and our clients.

Following-up After the Pandemic

I cannot tell you when the pandemic will abate. There may be multiple waves of infection and a need for further quarantine. Some worry that this cycle will become the new normal.

Whatever happens, I recommend following up with one another after shelter in place orders have lifted—or even after the first or second semester online has passed. The experience of a collective trauma is one that sticks with us for a long time after the fact. Processing this experience together, perhaps with a counselor present or at-hand, is important to healing.

In the meantime, I want to end on a positive note. We are currently on the cusp of a lot of exciting research and thinking in the fields of wellness and labor advocacy, both within and outside of our field. Some suggest a new protest movement focused on labor rights is emerging.

Many writing center workers are thinking about and attempting to enact fair working conditions during this extraordinary moment. Part of this advocacy work—a lot of it—ought to be focused on meaningful and impactful wellness interventions as well as advocating for our workers’ rights. The growing interest in this topic among WCAs suggests that we are moving into what might be a sea change in how we prepare our workers for labor in writing centers. The next step, however, requires acknowledging that we can only do so much in terms of wellness if the environments we labor in are themselves unwell.

As the national drama plays out in a fundamental tension between the safety of our populace and the re-opening of our economy, I urge us to think beyond our day-to-day work and interrogate what writing centers are in a time of crisis; work and

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wellness do not need to be at odds with one another. However, when we inevitably return to some kind of “new” normal, work that tethers wellness to labor is critical.

As for me, well, I am taking it day-by-day. I work within my limits. I check-in on my students, tutors, colleagues, family, and friends. I take long walking breaks multiple times a day. I try to eat as well as I can, and sleep as much as I can, which hasn’t been all that much lately. I also have been engaging in meaningful creative work outside of my job; this is a luxury, I know. While the balance of my work priorities—in all their diversity and complexity—were beginning to shift before COVID-19, they have suddenly banked hard towards prioritization. I know not everyone can do what I do; this is the alluring unreality of the rhetoric of self-care, there are too many selves who have too many different levels of access to care; it takes a community. I hope this piece has introduced possibilities for how we re-think our labor, fundamentally, within a wellness framework.

We owe it to ourselves, to our staffs, to our clients, and to our community of practice

Postscript Of course, publication timelines cannot fully match the breakneck speed with which a crisis like COVID-19 evolves. Since writing this piece in early April, a lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. While most parts of the country have reopened, we are still seeing an alarming rise in new cases in a number of places in the United States. Even while this is happening, many colleges and universities (including my own) are planning to welcome students back to campus in the fall, despite some very clear barriers to achieving a safe in-person semester. Financially speaking, despite jobs rebounding in June, and a stock market rally, colleges and universities seem to be accelerating austerity measures they started imposing fairly early on in the crisis, such as cuts to compensation and staffing. People on our listservs are discussing how these cuts have impacted their teaching and administrative loads, summer stipends, and staffing budgets. In the years to come, I hope that our field grapples with how quickly and to what extent institutions cut support for writing centers. Perhaps the larger

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conversation that is taking place in higher education (and is mirrored in our national rhetoric) in which the prioritization of money over the safety of workers (among others) will come to our field and we will see this as a clarion call to engage in more intentional labor advocacy and wellness support for our practitioners. For now, however, I hope that WCAs (and tutors) will consider the very real downstream effects of returning to in-person tutoring in the fall and will plan accordingly with remote offerings.

By the time you are reading this, of course, the situation will have changed even further.

Decisions about the fall semester, and attendant budgetary projections for the new fiscal year, will likely be finalized. Similarly, planning the next academic year will likely be in full swing, particularly for writing centers. As you plan, please consider the safety and well-being of your workers and, in particular, your workers of color.

I want to end this piece on labor and advocacy by talking about race. We need to do more, especially to recruit and support people of color, and particularly Black people, in writing centers.

Another flashpoint during COVID-19 are the recent protests that are part of the established Black Lives Matter movement that have erupted around the world. While many of us were sheltering-in-place, Black men and women were murdered by the police. The systematic and historical oppression of Black people isn’t a new phenomenon, yet what does seem to be new is the widespread engagement with BLM, especially in small rural predominately white towns, as well as among some educational, government, and corporate entities—though one might argue that these are opportunistic in their own right. Taking all of this into account alongside the fact that COVID-19 disproportionately affects and kills people of color, matters of advocacy and wellness must also be informed by anti-racism. These protests are yet another clarion call that I hope our field explicitly answers through evaluating our hiring practices, our engagement with institutional and local police departments, our training models, our values and mission, and our support (financial, emotional, professional or otherwise) of people of color—especially Black people—in doing writing center work. This fall, we face many challenges

9

(some of which are largely out of our control) but what is in our control is how we position and carry out writing center work during a time of crisis.

This is a moment to reconceive our field and to develop anti-racist models of wellness and labor advocacy.

Works Cited “Access to Higher Education for Students Experiencing Homelessness.” National Center for Homeless Education. https://nche.ed.gov/highereducation/ Achenbach, Joel. “Coronavirus is Harming the Mental Health of Tens of Millions of People in U.S., New Poll Finds.” Washington Post, 2 April 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/corona virus-is-harming-the-mental-health-of-tens-ofmillions-of-people-in-us-new-pollfinds/2020/04/02/565e6744-74ee-11ea-85cb8670579b863d_story.html “Campus Emergency Management Resources.” FEMA Emergency Management Institute. https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/cemr.aspx CBS News. “CDC Set to Loosen Back-to-Work Guidelines for Some Who Self-Isolate, Pence Says.” CBS News, 18 April 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronaviruscdc-guidelines-back-to-work-self-isolate/ Duarte, Fernando. “Black Lives Matter: Do Companies Really Support the Cause?” BBC World Service, 12 June 2020. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200612black-lives-matter-do-companies-really-supportthe-cause “FAQ: What is an Employee Assistant Program (EAP)?” US Office of Personnel Management. https://www.opm.gov/faqs/QA.aspx?fid=4313c6 18-a96e-4c8e-b078-1f76912a10d9&pid=2c2b1e5b6ff1-4940-b478-34039a1e1174 Farzan, Antonia Noori, et al. “Nine States Hit Record Highs for Covid-19 Cases as Pence Calls Fear of Second Wave ‘Overblown.’” Washington Post, 17 June 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/0 6/17/coronavirus-live-updates-us/ Featherstone, Jared, et al. "The Mindful Tutor." How We Teach Writing Tutors: A WLN Digital Edited Collection, edited by Karen G. Johnson and Ted Roggenbuck, 2019. wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection1/ Geller, Ann Ellen, et al. Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. UP of Colorado, 2007.

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Gallagher, Dan and Aimee Maxfield. “Learning Online to Tutor Online: How We Teach Writing Tutors.”

How We Teach Writing Tutors: A WLN Digital Edited Collection, edited by Karen G. Johnson and Ted Roggenbuck, 2019. wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection1/ “Get Your Workplace Ready for Pandemic Flu.” US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. April 2017. https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceuticalinterventions/pdf/gr-pan-flu-work-set.pdf He, Laura and Anneken Tappe. “Dow Rallies into the Close after Soaring More than 800 Points.” CNN, 16 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/investing/glo bal-stocks/index.html “Helping Professions.” APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/helping-professions.

Horsley, Scott. “Women Are Losing More Jobs in Coronavirus Shutdown.” National Public Radio, 8 April 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/829141182/w omen-are-losing-more-jobs-in-coronavirusshutdowns Jordan, Miriam and Caitlin Dickerson. “Poultry Worker’s Death Highlights Spread of Coronavirus in Meat Plants.” New York Times, 9 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/coron avirus-chicken-meat-processing-plantsimmigrants.html?action=click&module=Top%20S tories&pgtype=Homepage Kavadlo, Jesse “The Message is the Medium: Electronically Helping Writing Tutors Help Electronically.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol.

10, no. 2, 2013. http://www.praxisuwc.com/kavadlo-102 O’Hehir, Andrew. “Protest in a Small Town: Black Lives Matter Comes to Rural America—And It Matters.” Salon, 15 June 2020. https://www.salon.com/2020/06/15/protest-ina-small-town-black-lives-matter-comes-to-ruralamerica--and-it-matters/ Perry, David. M. “For Some Colleges, Missing the Fall Semester May Be Just the Tip of the Iceberg.”

CNN, 15 April 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/opinions/coll eges-and-higher-ed-COVID-19-changesperry/index.html Sanchez-Reilly, Sandra, et al. “Caring for Oneself to Care for Others: Physicians and Their SelfCare.” The Journal of Supportive Oncology, vol. 11, no.

2, 2013, pp. 75–81.

Scheiber, Noam and Brian M. Rosenthal. “Nurses and Doctors Speaking Out on Safety Now Risk Their

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Job.” New York Times, 9 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/ coronavirus-health-workers-speakout.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories& pgtype=Homepage Steinberg, Laurence. “Expecting Students to Play It Safe if Colleges Reopen Is a Fantasy.” New York Times, 15 June 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/opinion/ coronavirus-college-safe.html Subbaraman, Nidhi. “How to Address the Coronavirus’s Outsized Toll on People of Colour.”

Nature, 18 May 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-02001470-x Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. New York Times, 13 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/ protest-social-distancing-covid.html Vegas, Emiliana “School Closures, Government Responses, and Learning Inequality around the World During COVID-19.” The Brookings Institution, 14 April 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/research/schoolclosures-government-responses-and-learninginequality-around-the-world-during-covid-19/ Wamsley, Laurel. “White House Announces New Guidance For How Critical Employees Can Return To Work.” National Public Radio, 8 April 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviruslive-updates/2020/04/08/830310903/whitehouse-announces-new-guidance-for-how-criticalemployees-can-return-to-work “Workers’ Rights.” US Department of Labor: Occupational Safety and Health Administration. https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3021.pdf

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Appendix A

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Appointment Form Questions That Assess Students’ Access to Technology and Space

Check the box that best describes your technology access Access to a computer Access to a tablet Access to a smartphone, only Other (text form) Please check the box that best describes your internet connection Internet connection that supports streaming video and audio Internet connection that supports audio only Internet connection that does not support video or audio Please check the box that best describes your current space situation Access to a private space Access to a quiet shared space Access to a louder shared space

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Appendix B

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Resources for Online Learning and Tutoring in the Pandemic

Labor Advocacy and Policy Resources: • • • • • • • • • • •

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceuticalinterventions/pdf/gr-pan-flu-work-set.pdf Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHAFS-3747.pdf OSHA preparedness: https://www.grainger.com/know-how/industry/public-sector/kh-will-yourcampus-be-ready-should-osha-come-calling American Association of University Professors: https://www.aaup.org/about-aaup Precarity in the Academy: https://universitybusiness.com/COVID-19-how-adjuncts-are-impacted Practical and Legal Issues for Employers during a Pandemic: https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/publications/2020/03/pandemic-coronaviruspractical-and-legal US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/pandemic_flu.html Workplace Pandemic Preparedness and the Americans with Disabilities Act: https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/pandemic_flu.html Responses to Lack of Workplace Safety: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/11/872856822/thousandsof-workers-say-their-jobs-are-unsafe-as-economy-reopens Taking a Stand in the Workplace: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/taking-a-standin-workplace.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage Can Faculty be Forced Back on Campus? https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-Faculty-BeForced-Back-On/248981

Selected Wellness Resources: • • • • • • • • •

American College Health Association Video on Mental Health in COVID-19 Era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCMtggCLX2Q&feature=youtu.be CDC Guidelines for managing stress: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-lifecoping/managing-stress-anxiety.html Jared Featherstone (personal website, meditation resources): https://www.jaredfeatherstone.com/meditation Mindful Tutor Article: https://wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection1/Featherstoneetal.html Psychology Today Therapist Directory: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists Therapy Matcher: https://therapymatcher.wordpress.com/contact/ Yoga breathing technique, 4-7-8 breath, Dr. Andrew Weil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz4G31LGyog Yoga for Writers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWwWaWXPS0 Journaling how-to: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/11/875054593/not-sure-what-youre-feelingjournaling-can-help Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Selected Online Tutoring Resources: • • • •

Laboring in a Time of Crisis • 13

DePaul University Tutor Handbook (chapters 5 and 6 on asynchronous and synchronous tutoring best practices): https://condor.depaul.edu/writing/tutors-handbook.html “The Message is the Medium: Electronically Helping Writing Tutors Help Electronically” (Kavadlo): http://www.praxisuwc.com/kavadlo-102 “Learning Online to Tutor Online: How We Teach Writing Tutors” (Gallagher and Maxfield): https://wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection1/GallagherMaxfield.html Another Word University of Wisconsin Blog: https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/the-online-writingcenter-is-about-equity-for-students-and-for-you-too/

Free Internet and Other Resources:* • • • • • •

• •

FCC agreement stating that providers will waive late fees, not cut-off service for lack of payment, and open hot spots.

Charter Free Internet offer for 2 months Comcast COVID-19 response: offers free WiFi for 2 months to low income families plus all Xfinity hot-spots are free to the public during this time Altice/Suddenlink response: offers 30 MB internet to any new subscriber free for 60 days. No late fees or terminations for existing customers AT&T COVID-19 response: offers open hot-spots, unlimited data to existing customers, and $10/month plans to low income families Sprint COVID-19 response: provides unlimited data to existing customers, and, starting Tuesday, 3/17/2020, will allow all handsets to enable hot-spots for 60 days at no extra charge, also follows FCC agreement.

T-Mobile COVID-19 response: unlimited data to existing customers, and will allow all handsets to enable hot-spots for 60 days at no extra charge, also follows FCC agreement.

Verizon COVID-19 response: no special offers but following the FCC agreement.

*This information comes from UCI’s Coronavirus information page, which has an excellent section covering Student FAQs.

Online Security Guidance: • •

• •

Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) updates: https://www.cisa.gov/coronavirus CISA Insights on Risk Management for COVID-19: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/20_0306_cisa_insights_risk_management_for _novel_coronavirus.pdf FBI Guidance on Zoom: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/boston/news/pressreleases/fbi-warns-of-teleconferencing-and-online-classroom-hijacking-during-COVID-19-pandemic FTC Information regarding scammers: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/coronavirus-scamswhat-ftc-doing

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Appendix C

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Wellness Topics and Discussion Prompts Burnout—Notice the Signs “Burnout is defined as a “progressive loss of idealism, energy, and purpose experienced by people in the helping professions as a result of the conditions of their work.”1 It is further defined by 3 key characteristics” (Sanchez-Reilly et al., 2013): 1. physical and emotional exhaustion 2. cynicism 3. inefficacy Activity—Reflect and Articulate: • •

Check-in—How are we doing? Are we experiencing any of the characteristics of burnout?

Articulate/develop a self-care plan to mitigate burnout feelings.

Advocating in a Time of Crisis Activity—Discussion: •

How are we advocating for ourselves, for our tutors, for our colleagues, for our clientele?

Developing Self-Awareness “The importance of developing self-awareness deserves particular attention as a realm of self-care. Self-awareness, defined as a clinician's ability to combine self-knowledge and a dual-awareness of both his or her own subjective experience and the needs of the patient, has been identified in the field of psychology as the most important factor in the psychologists' ability to function well in the face of personal and professional stressors. Greater self-awareness among clinicians may lead to greater job engagement and compassion satisfaction, enhanced selfcare, and improved patient care and satisfaction. Conversely, clinicians who possess lower levels of self-awareness have a greater likelihood of compassion fatigue and burnout. Data support mindfulness meditation and reflective writing as 2 methods of enhancing self-awareness” (Sanchez-Reilly et al., 2013).

Activity—Brainstorming: Brainstorm how we might develop self-awareness and encourage its development in our colleagues, our tutors, and our clientele.

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Appendix D: Selected Wellness Bibliography

Laboring in a Time of Crisis • 15

This list is drawn from my personal website, where I will update and provide further resources: https://geniegiaimophd.weebly.com/ Baker-Bell, April. Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge, 2020.

Concannon, K., Morris, J., Chavannes, N., & Diaz, V. (2020). Cultivating Emotional Wellness and Self-Care through Mindful Mentorship in the Writing Center. WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, 44(5-6), 10-18.

Degner, H., Wojciehowski, K., & Giroux, C. (2015). Opening closed doors: A rationale for creating a safe space for tutors struggling with mental health concerns or illnesses. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal.

Emmelhainz, N. (2020). Tutoring Begins with Breath: Guided Meditation and its Effects on Writing Consultant Training. WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, 44(5-6), 2-10.

Giaimo, Genie, (ed.). Wellness and Care in Writing Center Work. Digital Edited Collection: WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. Forthcoming, early 2021.

Green, N. A. (2018). Moving beyond alright: And the emotional toll of this, my life matters too, in the writing center work. The Writing Center Journal, 37(1), 15-34.

Jackson, R., McKinney, J. G., & Caswell, N. I. (2016). Writing Center Administration and/as Emotional Labor. Composition Forum (Vol. 34). Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition.

Mack, E., & Hupp, K. (2017). Mindfulness in the Writing Center: A Total Encounter. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal.

Parsons, K. (2020). Tutors' Column:" Just Say 'No': Setting Emotional Boundaries in the Writing Center is a Practice in Self-Care". WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, 44(5-6), 26-30.

Perry, A. (2016). Training for Triggers: Helping Writing Center Consultants Navigate Emotional Sessions. In Composition Forum (Vol. 34). Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition.

Sanchez-Reilly, S., Morrison, L. J., Carey, E., Bernacki, R., O'Neill, L., Kapo, J., Periyakoil, V. S., & Thomas, J. (2013).

Caring for oneself to care for others: physicians and their self-care. The journal of supportive oncology, 11(2), 75–81.

Simmons, Erik, Miller, Laura K., Prendergast, Caroline, and Christiana McGuigan. (2020). “Is Tutoring Stressful?: Measuring Tutors' Cortisol Levels.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 44, no. 5-6, 2020, pp. 18-26.

Wooten, Courtney Adams, Jacob Babb, Kristi Murray Costello, Kate Navickas, editors. The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration (forthcoming Utah State University Press, August 2020).

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TUTORING THE WHOLE PERSON: SUPPORTING EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN WRITERS AND TUTORS Dana Lynn Driscoll University of Pennsylvania dana.driscoll@iup.edu Abstract This article explores and challenges the traditional position that writing centers have had with working with emotions in writing center contexts. After reviewing challenges to mental health on college campuses, we demonstrate through previous research the important role emotions and emotional regulation has in writerly development. Drawing upon this work, we offer key suggestions for writing centers to “tutor the whole person” including training tutors in emotional intelligence, tutoring using metacognitive strategies, and tutoring using mindfulness practice. The article concludes by considering the role of self-care and emotional labor in writing center work, offering strategies and suggestions.

The fact that college students are grappling with emotions that can impede their academic success is not news to anyone teaching in the university today. Yet, at the time when we were making final revisions of this article, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States, illustrating even more critically the intersection of well-being and educational achievement. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the limits of students’ emotional resilience—not to mention those of faculty, staff, and student tutors—and has surfaced the urgency of attending to emotions in our courses, workplaces, and writing centers.

In 2017, the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment surveyed 40,000 students in a nationwide study. Results indicate that 52.6% of students experienced anxiety; students felt their anxiety had impacted their learning and performance, with 26.4% of reporting that it caused lower grades, required them to drop courses, or to take incompletes (46)1. Further, research suggests that students are seeking more emotional support services on their college campuses than in the past. The Center for Collegiate Mental Health’s Annual Report describes the increase in students’ use of counseling services around the US as rising between 20-30% in a five-year period and reports that anxiety and depression were the top reasons for seeking emotional support or mental health services. This reporting all predates colleges moving completely online, residential students being abruptly moved off campus, hundreds of thousands of students losing jobs, and the networks that many students rely on for support being upended.

While peer reviewed published research is not yet available due to the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 crisis, in an IWCA-sponsored webinar hosted by Dana

Jennifer Wells New College of Florida jwells@ncf.edu on self-care in writing centers, over thirty directors and tutors shared their experiences relating to the challenges faced as part of the pandemic: lack of focus, increased anxiety, decreased productivity, and increased emotional labor demands (Driscoll, 2020). After making the transition to fully online tutoring at both Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and New College of Florida, tutors in both writing centers expressed concern about a growing number of student writers suffering from high levels of anxiety and lack of focus. At the same time, tutors at New College noted that students reported seeking online writing appointments because they provided social and emotional support as much as academic support. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that students have been seeking writing center support all along because it is a place where both types of needs can be met.

Emotional development is never separate from intellectual and academic development, yet it is still the case that, in “business as usual” times, most college campuses treat these facets of their students’ development separately. Counseling and wellness centers are for emotional support, and the classroom and other academic centers, including writing centers, are for intellectual growth. Yet, as Daniel Eisenberg, et al. argue, this bifurcation is a missed opportunity, College represents the only time in many people's lives when a single integrated setting encompasses their main activities—both career-related and social—as well as health services and other support services. Campuses, by their scholarly nature, are also well positioned to develop, evaluate, and disseminate best practices. In short, colleges offer a unique opportunity to address one of the most significant public health problems among late adolescents and young adults. (3) Eisenberg, et al. further argue that “gatekeeper programs” where students interact with trained peers or other non-mental health professionals are key in reaching populations who might not seek out professional services. Complicating this picture is that not all campuses have well-funded counseling services and faculty may not have any training and professional for supporting students’ emotional distress.

In our writing centers, sessions that impact or are impacted by strong emotions occur every day. Every

tutor can tell stories about one of those sessions: the distraught student who is upset because of her professor’s comments and how she been given a C and had never gotten one before. The extremely frustrated student who has worked himself into writer’s block and it takes most of the forty-five-minute tutorial to break through his frustration. The confused student who has no idea what to do and spends the first part of the session overwhelmed with his head in his hands saying “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” These are common, everyday experiences for writing tutors not only because college can be emotionally taxing, but also because writing centers may be perceived as places students can go to feel better as often as they are perceived as places to get help with writing. Two recent studies at New College of Florida found that writing center visits reduced student anxiety. This is how the magic of the writing center happens: the upset student calmed and on track, the frustrated student moving forward, the overwhelmed student leaving with an outline and a smile. While these kinds of sessions frequently end with more relieved, focused, and grounded writers, the work of handling a session like this can take a serious emotional toll on tutors. At the end of this kind of session, or several of these sessions, or a whole day of these sessions, tutors may feel emotionally drained. One embedded tutor working in Dana’s writing center described this emotional labor this way: “as though all of the negative emotion of my basic writers transferred to me.”

While we are not arguing that writing centers should be places to offer professional counseling, we do argue that writing centers are uniquely positioned to help promote a holistic approach to education by focusing on tutoring the whole person. That is, tutors can support the positive emotional and intellectual development of their student visitors. While this approach is needed in “business as usual” times, it is particularly urgent in times of crisis, either local or global.

Therefore, this article engages with ways that we can promote emotional resilience and writerly growth in writing center settings. In order to accomplish this goal, we explore writing centers’ troubled relationship with emotions and set the stage for a shift from avoidance to recognition that emotions are inherently part of writing center tutoring. Using a broad body of writing development research, we argue against the idea that helping students manage writing-related emotions is somehow secondary or less important than the other aspects of tutoring writing. Finally, we explore and address the emotional labor involved in working with tutees’ emotions and ways tutors might effectively manage emotional sessions—and their own

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self-care—by drawing upon the professional literature from other “caring” professions like nursing, social work, psychology, and education.

The Challenge with Emotions in the Writing Center A review of tutor training manuals suggests writing center tutors should not address emotions in tutorials but should dismiss emotions as quickly as possible to get to the “real work” of the session. Noreen Lape and Daniel Lawson have both explored writing center training materials’ relationship with emotions through analysis of books and articles in the field. Lape analyzes popular tutor training manuals and finds that manuals often present emotions in negative terms and finds that emotionally charged sessions as “threatening to sabotage both the tutor’s and the writer’s efforts” (2).

Lape reports that manuals offer tutors suggestions and strategies for dealing with such emotions but from the perspective of getting writers’ emotions out of the way as soon as possible to get to the real work of the session—the writing.

Lawson, following up in 2015, sought to extend Lape’s work and perform a systematic content analysis on articles from the WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship (1976-2015) and the Writing Center Journal (1981-2015) to understand how scholarly discussions in writing centers have handled explicit discussion of emotions and other affective dimensions of tutorials.

Lawson found three articles in WCJ and 20 articles and 4 tutor’s columns in WLN. Similar to Lape’s findings, Lawson found that scholarly discussions of writing centers focus almost entirely on “disruptive” emotions and their associated behaviors (20) and use problematic metaphors to describe students’ emotions (24). Positive emotions, as Lawson notes, are rarely discussed in a writing center setting. Second, emotion was viewed by the scholarship as “disruptive” to tutorials; he notes that “emotion disrupts the ostensibly intellectual work of the session” (23). Third, he notes that the literature sees “reason and emotion are mutually exclusive states” that are externally held by the tutee and the tutee should be able to “shift” between them (24).

Finally, he notes that emotions are framed as something we possess or carry, like baggage (24).

Given that manuals and scholarly work seem to suggest dismissing or minimizing student emotions, it follows that tutors have been advised to not engage with their tutees’ emotions, or, if they do, to do so only as a last resort. Writing center scholars, such as Tracy Hudson and Kristie Speirs, have argued that tutorials are not therapy sessions. Yet, many tutor training books and manuals suggest tutors wear what Ryan and

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Zimmerelli call the “hats” of tutoring; tutors can wear many hats such as “writing expert” “collaborator” or “coach” but also sometimes put on the hat of “counselor.” Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli describe the counselor hat as follows: “Often, other issues and concerns interfere with completing the assignment.

Sometimes you may find yourself playing the role of counselor” (31). Tutors may wear the counselor hat, but only if the emotions are “interfering” with the session. Christina Murphy and Melissa R. Weintraub both argue that tutors are sometimes put into the ‘unofficial’ counselor role and concede that this is necessary but not ideal. This body of work suggests a larger consensus in the writing center community about the unwanted role that emotions may play in writing center tutorials. While we believe that this consensus is starting to change, evidenced by recent themes and presentations at writing center conferences described below, we still have much work to do. One aim of this article is to help jump start that conversation.

Given this history, it is not surprising that tutors may often perceive emotions as negative in the writing center setting. In 2016, Jennifer Follett conducted a mixed methods study of how tutors at one institution engaged with negative achievement emotions in tutoring sessions. Follett collected surveys from 28 undergraduate and graduate writing center tutors, tutors’ written reflections, and audio recordings of tutorial sessions. The majority of Follett’s tutor participants believed that negative emotions were damaging to student writers (90), and that tutors frequently found themselves engaging with students’ emotions—mostly negative—surrounding writing in tutorial sessions (91). Ninety percent of tutors reported anxiety being felt by half the students visiting the writing center (92). The “negative” emotions often expressed in tutoring sessions included anger, anxiety, hopelessness, frustration, and boredom.

The picture seems clear: writing centers are frequently a place where students manifest emotions, often negative emotions (Follett; Hudson; Speirs).

Some writing center scholarship and tutoring manuals advocate responding to these emotions in dismissive ways and portray emotions as something we need to overcome to get to the real work of writing (Lape; Lawson).

Both Lape and Lawson see this negative framing of emotions in the writing center as problematic. Lape called for the WC community to revise and reframe the discourse around emotions. As Lape writes, If [article] writers characterize an entire range of human experience in overly simplistic metaphors, those very metaphors may limit our ability to

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meaningfully engage that experience: “emotional” writers will continue to be “difficult” or “disruptive.’” If, on the other hand, we continue to cultivate and critically examine metaphors as shorthand to positively frame and identify the work of emotion, we may find new and exciting ways of conceiving that work. (26) The way that we frame emotions in writing center practices and the language we use certainly influences the tutoring that we offer as well as the support and effectiveness we can provide student writers.

Emotions are at the core of writing center work, and not only because helping students manage them is a frequent part of tutoring, but also because emotions have serious implications for writerly development and transfer over time. We now turn to the literature surrounding emotions and writing development to explore how learning to manage and navigate strong emotions also can make better writers.

Why Emotions Matter: Emotions, Learning Transfer, and Writerly Development Emotions matter, not only to self-development, but to writing development. In the broader field of composition, and increasingly in writing center work, researchers are starting to pay attention to the myriad factors that influence writing outside of the writing process. For example, the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) program offered over twenty-five sessions or posters on affect, emotions or emotional labor and in 2016, Composition Forum published a special issue on emotions. Likewise, the 2017 International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) program offered 9 sessions or posters on emotions or other affective dimensions; the East Central Writing Centers Association (ECWCA) focused on emotions and emotional labor as part of the theme for the 2018 conference. From these recent events, it appears that conversations and scholarship are starting to shift to pay attention to the “whole person” as part of the writing and tutoring process.

One reason we believe that so many of these conversations are taking place now is that research is showing that writing doesn’t happen without a writer.

As more studies explore how students transfer learning and how they develop long-term as writers, these things become clear: writing happens in the context of lived experience, emotion, prior experience, dispositions, and many other factors (Devet; Yancey, et al.; Nowacek; Driscoll and Wells, Herrington and Curtis). Thus, developmental writing research is resoundingly demonstrating that these “person” based

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aspects are deeply influential on writers’ processes, written products, and long-term development. Further, as our earlier work in 2012 explored, students’ dispositional qualities, including self-efficacy (belief in being able to accomplish a task), value (how much a writing task was worth to a writer), or attribution (who is responsible for success), influenced students’ ability to transfer writing knowledge into new situations and grow as writers (Driscoll and Wells). This growing body of research shows that individual aspects, as much as writing knowledge and skills, are critical to learning and growth.

Researchers from cross-disciplinary fields explored the relationship between educational outcomes and emotion. Learning research, such as that from Scherer and Efklides, and Volet suggests that students’ emotional connections to the material and instructor constitute a critical factor for success. Further, Pekrun shows that negative emotions are detrimental to learning outcomes. Within writing studies, Jack L. Powell and Alice G. Brand and Susan McLeod have explored how positive emotions can have a positive impact on learning to write. Previously, in 2016, Dana and her co-author, Roger Powell, explored the role of emotions in both short-term writing gains and in longterm writerly development. We now turn to this study to further explore the role of emotions in writing.

As part of a larger study, Driscoll and Powell explored how emotions impacted the short-term writing gains and long-term transfer and learning development of thirteen students over five years using interview research and writing sample analysis. They found that students’ emotions functioned in three primary ways: ● Generative: Emotions that benefited a student’s writing process and/or end product.

For example, a student enjoys her writing process and professor and starts early, ending up with a well-developed paper. Most frequently occurring emotions in this category included like, confidence, and enjoyment. ● Disruptive: Emotions that were detrimental to a students’ writing process and/or end product. An example of a disruptive emotion is when a student hates the course/teacher and delays engaging in a writing process. They arrive at the writing center two hours before the paper is due with a skeleton of a draft. The most frequently occurring emotions in this category included boredom, hatred, and fear. ● Circumstantial: Emotions that appeared “negative” in the short run, but could end up being beneficial for longer-term writing

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development. These are frequently emotions that tutors deal with in the writing center, for example, the frustrated student who can’t find sources for a paper may come to the writing center, have a productive session, reduce the frustration, and end up producing a good quality paper. Their top emotions in this category included frustration, anxiety, and confusion.

As Driscoll and Powell found, certain emotions had both short-term and long-term outcomes for writers. A short-term outcome would include success of a particular writing assignment or the grade in a course.

A long-term outcome included the ability to grow as a writer, develop a new writing strategy, and the ability to transfer writing knowledge to new circumstances.

Some emotions in the study were always generative in the short and long term (confidence, enjoyment, fun, passion, pride), others were always disruptive in the short and long term (boredom, fear, hate, dislike), and a rather large category of emotions we often see in the writing center could were circumstantial. It is to these circumstantial emotions that we now turn.

The circumstantial emotions that Driscoll and Powell describe are the same emotions that Follett reported were a regular part of writing center tutorials: frustration, anxiety, and confusion. What Driscoll and Powell found was that even when circumstantial emotions had a short-term detrimental effect (procrastination, lack of progress, frustration), if a student was able to successfully transform circumstantial emotions and achieve success, this transformation had a considerable long-term impact on facilitating learning transfer and helped shape students as reflective and productive writers. This is critical: writing-based emotions could function generatively or disruptively; that is, these emotions can lead to both short term writing success and long-term writing development—or not. It really depended on how a student used them, experienced them, and most importantly managed them. This means that these socalled emotions that writing center tutorials want to move out of the way and see as disruptive are actually central to long-term learning outcomes.

In the short term, managing these very common circumstantial emotions is likely key to the success of a specific paper or project. This is where the writing center tutor can intervene, and usually it’s the shortterm benefit that students are concerned about when they seek writing center services. In the long-term, developmental aspects also matter and can help writing centers develop in North’s terms—the “writer” not just the “writing.” These long-term developmental outcomes can include everything from how students

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transfer and adapt their prior writing knowledge across different courses (Yancey, et al.; Devet,; Hill; Nowacek), their growing writerly self-efficacy and confidence (Driscoll and Wells), and how they develop their expertise as writers (Beaufort).

As the above research suggests, tutoring the whole person, including emotions and intellect, is critical for two reasons. First, these findings suggest that writing processes, products, transfer, and development are all heavily shaped by the emotional state of students. But second, as we discussed in the opening, a holistic approach to supporting students’ emotional development on college campuses is necessary given the current mental health climate broadly and certainly, in the event of crises like COVID-19.

Tutoring the Whole Person: Strategies for Writing Centers In the first part of this article, we’ve explored colleges’ challenges with student emotion on their campus, writing centers’ challenged relationship with emotions, and research that demonstrates why emotions and emotional management matters for developing writers and their writing. In the second half of this article, we explore ways that writing center practitioners can shift writing centers into a more productive relationship with student emotions and emotional health. We do this by drawing upon research in other fields and offer specific examples from our two writing centers and peer tutoring courses. We conclude by acknowledging the role that emotional labor plays in this work.

Supporting the emotional well-being of students can begin with tutor education and can be grounded in the recognition of the importance of tending to both cognitive and emotional domains in writing center tutorials. Tutor education could develop tutors’ emotional intelligence as well as offer explicit tutoring strategies that teach and model for writing center clients metacognitive emotional management. Lastly, it could also include the promotion of practices such as mindfulness and self-care for both tutors and students.

We now consider each of those areas in turn.

Tutor Education: Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tutors The development of “emotional intelligence” is a key aspect of tutor professional development sessions to help tutors manage emotion-rich tutorials.

According to Nicola S. Schutte and Natasha M. Loi, emotional intelligence is defined as “perception, understanding, and managing emotions effectively in the self and others” (134). Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence describes five key components of emotional

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intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills (37).

Emotional intelligence is well known in the caring professions (nursing, psychology, social work, etc.) and is something that is taught explicitly through courses, training, and research. For example, in the nursing profession, Lubica Ilievová, et al. discuss how the nursing profession recognizes the dual professional competencies of emotional intelligence and cognitive competence as part of core nursing practices. They argue that a “lack of emotional intelligence competencies becomes a restriction in actual application of not only expert knowledge but also intellectual abilities” (21); in other words, effective nurses must manage both their cognitive knowledge and emotional intelligence in order to serve patients best. Within the business world, Schutte and Loi articulate the clear link between emotional intelligence and workplace “flourishing,” or what they call “higher. . . mental well-being, social support, mental health, and work engagement” (137). Likewise, Daniel Goleman, et al. recognize the critical importance of emotional intelligence as necessary for business leadership. These diverse fields agree: emotional intelligence is necessary to practitioner competency and effectiveness.

If tutors can further develop their own emotional intelligence, they can not only manage emotion-rich sessions effectively but develop a key skill that will make them better tutors and that will transfer to workplaces or life settings. To directly teach emotional intelligence to tutors, writing center practitioners may start with the work of Alan Mortiboys. While Mortiboys’ book is designed to cultivate emotionally intelligent teachers, there is enough similarity between tutoring and teaching practice to make use of many of the strategies for tutoring sessions. Mortiboys describes emotionally intelligent teaching as follows (emphasis ours): Teaching with emotional intelligence entails a shift in priorities. For example, the emotionally intelligent teacher seeks to have confidence not just in their content and materials but also in their flexibility and readiness to respond; they put energy into planning a teaching session but also into preparing to meet the learners; they see their self-development as emphasizing not just subject expertise but also the development of their selfknowledge. (9) Further, he describes personal qualities of empathy, genuineness, and acceptance as core qualities of emotionally intelligent teachers (10). These same qualities are those to be fostered in tutors who are ready to help writers manage emotions surrounding writing. Adapting his approach and activities to tutor

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education sessions might involve any of the following, whether in a single professional development session, a part of ongoing tutor education, or through a peer tutoring course: ● Tutors can be encouraged to create lists of the qualities of emotionally intelligent tutors and develop an “action plan” for their own tutoring (10-12) ● Tutors can identify examples of times when using emotional intelligence would be prudent (Dana has taught this in a peer tutoring development course using scenarios drawn from real tutoring situations). ● Tutors can reflect upon their existing use of emotional intelligence in tutoring sessions (Dana used this strategy to help support tutors during the COVID-19 crisis). ● Tutors can create an “action plan” for how to develop their own emotional intelligence as part of their tutor development and reflect regularly on their goals. ● Tutors can discuss of scenarios based on real tutoring challenges that tutors face and talk through (Dana has used this both in peer tutoring courses and in training for the COVID-19 crisis).

Mortiboys also offers a host of active listening strategies that are directly useful to tutoring sessions and can be practiced with role-playing prior to being added into sessions: ● Recognizing that learners have feelings ● Recognizing that it is ok for learners to express those feelings ● Being ready to accept those feelings ● Being ready to respond on a cognitive as well as an emotional level (75).

Specifically, rather than trying to get beyond the emotions that a student brings to a session, tutors can learn to recognize them, accept them, and then teach students emotional management strategies that will help them engage in a productive writing process in the short term and foster long-term growth. By being willing to engage with learners’ feelings, Mortiboys stresses that learners will, “feel valued; it helps you to develop a fuller relationship with them; it aids their learning; . . . and shapes a positive environment.” (76).

In teaching emotional intelligence, Dana has found it most productive to talk with tutors about situations that have arisen in their tutoring and engage in reflective practice on these issues as part of ongoing professional development. For pre-service tutors who are in a tutoring course, scenarios and tutorial observations offer such opportunities.

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Teaching emotional intelligence also gives tutors a set of tools to identify the difference between when emotions can be worked with productively in a writing center setting and when counseling or mental health services are needed. Part of training in emotional intelligence should include inviting tutors to understand what resources on campus may be available to help students and when they should encourage students to seek those services. Tutors, then, can have information ready about the university’s counseling center, how to manage anxiety or other stressors, and other campus resources. For example, during the COVID-19 crisis, given the heightened emotions in tutorials, Dana offered her tutors additional formal training in referral services and emotional intelligence, as well as “open” online sessions where they could talk through emotional issues that came up in tutorials.

Finally, emotional intelligence is a lifelong skill that will certainly serve tutors in their lives beyond writing center work and can be yet another “soft skill” that they carry with them, such as the many skills reported as part of the Peer Tutoring Alumni Project (Huges, et al.).

Within the Tutorial: Metacognitive Strategies for Emotional Management As Lape notes in her content analysis of tutor training manuals, writing center practitioners have few explicit strategies for how to successfully manage emotional sessions. We offer one such researchsupported set of practices rooted in research in writing development and writing transfer through the practice of metacognition. Returning to the Driscoll and Powell study, the authors identified “emotional management” as a key aspect of both short-term success and longterm writerly growth. These strategies are directly useful in a writing center setting and tie to the “emotional intelligence” features we described above.

Driscoll and Powell saw that successful students demonstrated a host of metacognitive “emotional management” strategies that helped student writers avoid negative emotional states or overcome them— and these are the kinds of strategies that tutors can model and share during emotional tutorial sessions.

Metacognition is defined by the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing as a “habit of mind” that allows one to reflect and intervene on one’s own thinking— and feeling—processes. For students in their study, emotional management was a conscious and deliberate effort to more effectively manage themselves and their emotional reactions to writing.

Driscoll and Powell identify four primary metacognitive strategies assisting learners with their

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own emotional management, originally described in the work of Brianna M. Scott and Matthew G. Levy and expanded by Gwen Gorzelsky, et al. We offer these strategies adapted to the writing center context: metacognitive planning, metacognitive monitoring, metacognitive control, and metacognitive evaluation.

Metacognitive Planning The first emotional management strategy is metacognitive planning. Students in Driscoll and Powell’s study described engaging in direct behaviors to avoid heavy emotional situations like frustration, being overwhelmed, and feeling anxious. These strategies included planning out their week to maximize their time, organizing their research notes, finding quiet space where they could focus. We would add working with a tutor to outline prior to beginning writing or helping a student get on track and manage their time. Planning was largely used as an avoidance strategy by students—students specifically noted that they worked hard to avoid unpleasant emotional situations where they would be stressed or overwhelmed. Engaging in deliberate planning behavior allowed students—in increasing capacity as they moved throughout their four or more years as undergraduates—to successfully avoid these situations.

It is likely the case that writing center tutors are already having these discussions about planning, and small changes to post-session tutoring report forms or conference summaries can help these become more visible and explicit. For example, at New College of Florida, tutors complete a narrative post-session report form, but also check from a list of options to indicate what the foci of the session were. The addition of a “time/workload management” box helped the director see that nearly 25% of sessions involve a discussion of planning. Knowing that these discussions are happening in the session can give directors a sense of whether tutors would benefit from learning more strategies themselves (so that they can model how these use strategies for others) or how to share these strategies directly with their clients. It can also help directors see if a demand for these strategies exists and if so, they can choose to promote the center as a place where students can get help in managing their workload—something many students may find useful.

Depending on the campus, additional programming in time, planning, and workload management through workshops or other resources may be beneficial.

Yet, even the most effective planning cannot solve frustration, confusion, and other common emotions students deal with regularly in college-level and high stakes writing. For in-the-moment issues, which are common in writing center sessions, two other

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metacognitive strategies are useful: metacognitive monitoring, and metacognitive control.

Metacognitive Monitoring Driscoll and Powell found that students can consciously and carefully monitor their own emotions (rather than be overwhelmed by them); doing so leads to long-term gains and learning transfer. Monitoring is simply the conscious recognition of what is happening.

Students know something is going “wrong” and that they are feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Tutors talking to students about recognizing their own challenges can be a good first step. Tutors may also help students observe their reactions and point out how subconscious actions or feelings may be driving their reactions.

Metacognitive Control Metacognitive control refers to taking direct action as a result of metacognitive monitoring; according to Gorzelsky, et al., control is sometimes associated with monitoring. Sometimes, a student can recognize a problem (monitoring) but not do anything about it (which would require control). And so, control is the ability of writers to consciously and carefully control their own emotions using specific strategies; we recommend simple phrases such as “stepping back,” “stepping away,” or “taking a break.” Tutors can help writers overcome these kinds of issues—the key from an emotional management perspective is offering them these as tools that aren’t just one-time solutions, but tools they can use anytime the writer finds themselves in this kind of situation. These tools include seeking help, working through a problem step by step, stepping back from the problem, getting another perspective on the problem, or planning out a revision process.

For example, at the IUP Writing Center, tutors use a repeating back strategy to help students self-monitor and evaluate. Thus, a tutor supports the development of monitoring with “I hear you saying that” and responding by “when this happens to me I. . .” or “How about we do this. . .” Tutors at New College of Florida are equipped to offer a menu of options to students when metacognitive control is needed, including common strategies like putting plans on a whiteboard or having the student make an appointment with other campus resources, as well as less-common strategies such as offering students use of the center’s meditation cushions in a quiet corner or offering the option to take the tutoring session outside and go on a walk around the plaza in front the of writing center. Sometimes those walks can be used to help a frustrated student relax; other times, those walks can be used to stimulate creative thinking (Oppezzo

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and Schwartz). These options are presented as options, never one solution, and so the student is able to choose a strategy that feels comfortable to them.

After a tutoring session concludes or a writing process ends, a final metacognitive strategy can be useful to student writers: metacognitive evaluation.

Metacognitive Evaluation Students can use reflection in the form of metacognitive evaluation to consider how they could have handled a particularly intense writing moment differently. Tutors can help students engage in metacognitive evaluation, especially if they save a few minutes at the end of the session to reflect on what was learned and think about how to use that knowledge in the future. These questions might take the form of a five-minute reflection at the end of the session that engages students in conversation: “I know this paper was difficult for you because of the time management issues you’ve shared. Is there something we talked about today you might want to try next time?” Creating such an action plan helps promote forward-reaching transfer (Salomon and Perkins). In Dana’s former embedded writing specialist program at Oakland University, where developmental writing students were required to visit the writing center multiple times, tutors working with developmental writers built metacognitive evaluation into the tutorial sessions, asking students to reflect on their success and struggles with each paper and creating an action plan for how to accomplish their current writing project, and planning for the future.

Metacognition is a developmental process for student writers; teaching students about these processes and giving them emotional management tools can aid them as writers in the long term. Driscoll and Powell demonstrated that as students gained more experience and maturity as writers over the course of their college career, and as writing tasks grew often increasingly more complex, students in their study engaged in the above metacognitive strategies more frequently. As a college freshman, writers had metacognitive strategies, while the same college writers, four years later, routinely drew upon all of the strategies described above. If tutors are well versed in these metacognitive strategies, they can intervene in students’ emotional moments, and turn them from unproductive and stressful moments of learning to productive and long-term developmentally generative moments of learning, perhaps helping writers achieve more emotional management earlier in their time at college.

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Within and Beyond the Tutorial: Mindfulness Techniques for Tutors and Students Metacognition offers us one strategy that can help students with emotional management rooted in attending to and directing one’s thinking. A second thinking-based strategy, currently being explored throughout higher education, is the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness practice, which is focused on cultivating awareness on the present moment, also seeks to foster self-acceptance, self-compassion, and a non-judgmental or non-attachment stance (Zamin).

Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered mindfulness practice at the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979, and since that time, mindfulness has been used in a variety of settings in higher education and beyond. Many universities are starting to offer training in mindfulness. Nadia Zamin’s recent dissertation found that mindfulness-based approaches were useful for helping high stakes dissertation writers manage negative emotions and produce more writing. Writing centers, likewise, are a logical place to integrate this health-focused practice to support student writers as well as tutors engaged in writing center work. Mindfulness practices are wide ranging, and there are hundreds of specific strategies that can be used. In the next few paragraphs, we describe practices that Dana used in a tutoring course.

One practice is the “three-minute breath.” This is a simple mindfulness practice that can be modeled during a tutor professional development session to help tutors reduce stress, ground, and focus. The strategy is simple: in the first minute, the facilitator asks each person to breathe and focus on a question (for tutor development, “how am I feeling as a tutor right now?”). In the second minute, the participants are told to simply pay attention to their breath. In the third minute, participants are asked to focus on both their breath and how their body feels. After this short introduction, the professional development session can move into discussing tutors’ experiences, student writing, or another topic. This same practice can be employed by tutors in a writing center session with simple modifications, one minute of “how do I feel as a writer right now?”; one minute of breathing and calming; and a final minute focusing on their breath and body before getting into the writing. We also note the productive use of this strategy to start tutor education sessions during a crisis situation. This particular strategy is useful both for tutorials and for tutor education exercises.

A second useful mindfulness practice is a controlled breathing technique called “three deep breaths.” If a student is particularly upset or emotional, the tutor can encourage the student to take three deep

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breaths with them. Controlled breathing, or inhaling slowly, briefly holding the breath, and exhaling slowly, can counter the fight or flight response that triggers anxiety, mental fogginess, rapid heart rate, and more (Stahl, et al.). This again can be modeled in tutor education and used by tutors and students in sessions.

Third, offering tutors these mindfulness “stances” can also be helpful to aid tutors in helping students overcome stress and anxiety. These same stances can also aid tutors in addressing the challenge and emotional labor in dealing with difficult sessions: These stances, described by Bob Stahl, et al. are ● Intention: being willing to overcome anxiety (the goal here is simply getting a student to acknowledge that desire) ● Beginner’s mind: asking the student to try to see the situation from a different perspective (how will you feel about this next week?) ● Self-compassion: accepting where you are in the moment and being kind to yourself. This is particularly useful for students who are upset that they are upset; it is encouraging them to be with their emotions, rather than shove them aside. ● Self-reliance: encouraging students to trust themselves to handle their feelings (especially when combined with metacognitive strategies above).

To train tutors in these stances, tutors can learn the stances through practicing each one of them (encourage them to work with the stances over a oneweek period, for example), discussing the stances in the context of recent tutorials, and employing them in sessions and reporting back to the group. The stances also are helpful as tools for tutors themselves, both after sessions and in managing stress in life.

Finally, mindfulness practices can also be built into larger writing center structures. At New College of Florida, one tutor who had integrated mindfulness practices into his own writing process asked if he could offer the same in his own tutoring sessions. Other tutors were interested in this as well, so the tutor offered training in mindfulness techniques for some of the other tutors in a professional development session.

Then, the center director made the decision to have the tutors who had completed the extra training put an “M” next to their names on the online schedule. At the top of the schedule, there is a note that reads, “Interested in a more mindful approach to writing? Try a SWA with an “M” next to their name!”2 For more resources to integrate mindfulness into a writing center setting, we specifically recommend Stahl, et al.’s A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for

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Anxiety; Jennifer Block-Lerner and LeeAnn Cardaciotto’s The Mindfulness-Informed Educator” Building Acceptance and Psychological Flexibility in Higher Education; and Holly B. Rogers’ The Mindful Twenty-Something: Life Skills to Handle Stress...and Everything Else. The first two books are useful for integrating mindfulness practices into the writing center as a workplace and as part of a writing center philosophy, while the third offers a number of key mindfulness strategies geared toward traditional-aged college students.

Recognizing Our Work: Emotional Labor in Writing Center While the above strategies are useful and productive for writing center tutors and the student writers they serve, educating tutors and engaging in this kind of work requires the acknowledgement that the labor of managing emotional challenges is a different kind of labor, known as “emotional labor.” Emotional labor was first defined by Arlie Hochschild in the late 1980s to describe the emotional work that she observed people in service professions, such as flight attendants, as required to perform as part of their work. She recognized that while in personal life, emotions might serve to establish and maintain personal relationships, in a professional setting, they were simply another kind of “labor” that was part of employees’ training and performance. Since Hochschild’s The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, the concept of emotional labor has been expanded to many other service professions: nursing, social work, psychology, and teaching.

In the last few years, this term has also begun to be discussed in writing center settings, such as through the work of Rebecca Jackson, et al., who looked at the emotional labor of writing center directors, and Alison Perry, who explored emotional labor and tutoring. As Perry writes, Emotional labor in a writing center setting is recognizing that emotional management is often part of a writer’s process. Tutors engage in emotional labor when they recognize the emotional needs of the students and work with students to productively manage and channel emotions surrounding the writing process.

Perry argues that we need to “actively work to train our staff to be as responsive to clients’ emotional needs as they are to their academic ones.”

The concern here is that most people who are in writing centers, either as directors or tutors, come to writing centers out of an inherent desire to “help” others. This helping behavior makes very good tutors with a high level of empathy and directors with passion

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and enthusiasm, but this high level of empathy and passion can lead to burnout, as is the case in other helping professions such as nursing (Penphrase, et al).

Even if tutors are better trained and more prepared to engage in emotional labor and help students manage emotions, this labor—especially unacknowledged—can take a deep toll on those who perform it. However, if emotional labor is acknowledged as another form of labor that is part of tutoring practice, directors can educate tutors about it, which benefits not only the writers served, but also tutors’ professional development. Because the concept of emotional labor is only beginning to be considered in writing center scholarship, writing center practitioners can take cues from the “caring” professions, like nursing, social work, education, and psychology, who recognize and engage in direct training. We now turn to several methods of acknowledging and supporting emotional labor in writing centers.

Create Supportive Spaces for Talking about Emotional Sessions and Self-Care.

As part of developing emotional intelligence and metacognitive awareness among tutors and students, it is useful to consider the role the writing center plays as a “supportive space” for students, tutors, and faculty.

In “Training for Triggers: Helping Writing Center Consultants Navigate Emotional Sessions,” Perry describes tutors’ responses to emotional sessions and offers brief suggestions for how writing center administrators might create structures to help their tutors perform this labor: staff meetings and open discussion, creating a supportive WC environment where staff are not overburdened, and partnering with counseling and wellness centers and other support resources on campus. Hillary Degner, et al. offer similar advice, and advocate for writing centers as being “safe spaces” for tutors who were struggling with mental health challenges. Given the work of these scholars, writing centers can be designed intentionally for offering this kind of environment. This might be done more informally between tutors and directors, or in a more formal tutoring professional development session where open space is dedicated to processing work. We now consider some specific ways for creating supportive and welcoming spaces to help address emotional labor.

Physical Space The field of environmental psychology and its subfield interior design psychology have explored the ways in which physical spaces can impact an individual’s emotions. For example, studies on lighting have revealed that workplaces that are too dark or too

Tutoring the Whole Person • 25

bright can negatively impact the mods of those working in them (Kuller, et al.). Thus, the physical space of the writing center can be analyzed for its impact on tutor (and student) emotions. Many writing centers seek to have a welcoming, comfortable, and safe space for students and tutors. A tutor break room, a self-care corner, a welcoming space with coffee and cookies—these kinds of spaces can continue to be cultivated for both students and tutors. For example, when Jennifer was hired at her institution, the writing center was sparsely furnished with a mix of cast off furniture from other offices at the college. Though the room was large, the drab, sterile space was not inviting to students or peer tutors. Jennifer negotiated funds for refurbishing the center as a part of her job offer and was able to redecorate the center by creating distinct “rooms” within the larger space. New furniture included a sofa, front porch style rocking chairs, brightly colored bookshelves, artificial greenery, as well as coffee pot and electric kettle for the “bistro” corner.

Recent additions include meditation cushions and noise-canceling headphones. As a result of these changes, students noted that the space felt welcoming and cozy, as one student said, “It makes me happy just to walk in here.” We also note the importance of creating physically accessible spaces for students with disabilities—accessible spaces can benefit all students.

Self-Care Techniques for Tutors and Students Beyond the physical space, another way to help tutors manage difficult emotional sessions is through the practice of self-care—recognizing the need for it, training in how to do it, and de-stigmatizing self-care practices. In the field of psychology, for example, selfcare is seen as critical to what Janet S. Coster and Milton Schwebel call “well-functioning” or the idea that a professional can engage in a practice over a long period of time and not be quickly burned out by their work. As Jeffrey E. Barnett et, al suggest, self-care practices are now being widely recognized as necessary not only for professional competency for ethical reasons, including in composition studies (Driscoll, Leigh, and Zamin). And while the self-care practices that psychologists use to address emotional challenges on a day-to-day basis are likely more than writing center tutors need, some of their suggestions can easily be adapted to writing center settings.

In her peer tutoring course and tutor education, Dana uses the following strategies to teach and model self-care strategies to tutors, particularly when engaging in difficult sessions: ● Acknowledge the different kinds of labor of tutoring and the need for self-care; recognize

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the broad number of professions who see this as part of professional work (caring professions). ● Discuss self-care strategies that have “worked” for tutors in other aspects of their life; get a list on the board for discussion. ● Have each tutor create a “self-care plan” for the semester and report back on the plan at the end of the term. ● Model self-care strategies informally; set a good example of time management, taking time off, and taking care of oneself, and talk openly about it in class and in staff meetings.

At Jennifer’s institution, discussions of self-care are not uncommon, so in their writing center tutors frequently share their own self-care strategies with students. The Assistant Director and Director also occasionally remind the tutors they need to take their own advice. Modeling behavior can be an extremely effective way of encouraging tutors to engage in selfcare practice.

Conclusion: Narrative

Changing

the

Dominant

In this piece, we have argued that creating a supportive climate throughout campus includes considering how we might “tutor the whole person” and attend to writers’ emotional states to support their writerly growth. We’ve explored the ways in which the writing center dominant narrative has traditionally resisted addressing students’ emotions, and yet, we also recognize its inherent importance, not only in creating a campus-wide, emotionally supportive climate, but also in supporting writers in their short term writing products and long-term writing development. We note that while these issues are always of relevance, they are of particular relevance in crisis or high stress situations for individuals, communities, or cultures. In tutoring the whole person, we recognize two distinct aspects that need to take place, both of which we have begun to consider in this piece. First is the need for developing training materials and a body of research that considers the role of emotional intelligence and emotional management in the practice of tutoring.

Second is the need to recognize this work as emotional labor and to create safe spaces for tutors to be supported. While our article has attempted to provide research-supported practices and descriptions of these steps in our own centers, we recognize the “newness” of considering these issues, and therefore encourage future researchers, directors, and tutors to further investigate, assess, and develop new training methods specific to writing centers. As next steps in this work,

Tutoring the Whole Person • 26

we see not only a need for more discussion of the “tutoring the whole person” in writing center settings, but also research-supported practices that are rooted in writing center spaces.

Considering the role of the “whole person” in the writing center allows us not only better writing center practitioners, help writers produce better writing, but also helps us produce better writers and better people.

Emotions, emotional labor, and self-care practices are certainly critical to the work writing centers do—and we encourage the field to think about some of this work as part of the professional core of our practice.

By attending to some of these “whole person” issues, the writing center is poised to be a hospitable space for all.

Notes 1. Daniel Eisenberg, et al. noted that it isn’t possible to determine whether there are more students with mental health challenges now than before because comparative studies don’t exist. The increase in students reporting mental health diagnosis mirrors the same increase in the general population, so it may be that the slow but ongoing de-stigmatization of mental health issues means that more people are seeking treatment 2. We note that we’ve provided three strategies that we’ve used in our centers and professional development—but many other strategies for aiding students with emotional management exist. These may include learning to read body language and other stress management techniques.

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Mixed-methods Study of How Writing Center Tutors Address Emotion. Indiana U of Pennsylvania P, 2016.

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Hudson, Tracy. “Head ‘Em Off at the Pass: Strategies for Handling Emotionalism in the Writing Center.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 5, 2001, pp. 10-12.

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32, no.2, 2010, pp. 12-46.

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WHO (ACCORDING TO STUDENTS) USES THE WRITING CENTER?: ACKNOWLEDGING IMPRESSIONS AND MISIMPRESSIONS OF WRITING CENTER SERVICES AND USER DEMOGRAPHICS Aaron Colton Duke University aaron.colton@duke.edu Abstract This article analyzes the results of a spring 2019 survey of Georgia Tech undergraduates on their understandings and impressions of the services that the Georgia Tech Communication Center provides and the students the center sees most frequently. By comparing such understandings across participants’ self-reported demographic and academic information—including race, gender, GPA, acquisition of English, first-generation status, transfer-student status, and center-user status—the article examines particular misimpressions within the Georgia Tech undergraduate community. In doing so, the article demonstrates how centers may consider students’ own impressions of writing centers and center users in advertising, outreach, and communications. Consequently, I suggest that as centers shift away from non-directive pedagogies and implement inclusive and anti-racist philosophies and practices, those transformations alone may not counteract pervasive misimpressions about which students writing centers tend to privilege. I therefore argue that changes in center policies and practices must be combined with outreach efforts tailored to institution- and demographic-specific misimpressions.

In “Decisions…Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center” (2016), an article following her study of the Temple University Writing Center’s user demographics, Lori Salem concluded that the nondirective pedagogies often treated as orthodoxy in writing centers risk betraying the needs of centers’ predominant users: “women, students of color, English language learners, and students with less ‘inherited merit’” (160). Whereas non-directive methods may hone the skills of students “who already have a pretty good idea of what kind of text they are expected to produce” (163)—typically a function of privilege and historical access to higher education—Salem found that for students unfamiliar with the norms of collegelevel writing, such methods yield few benefits. In light of these findings, Salem also challenged the tendency of researchers in writing center studies to attend primarily to students who do, at some point in their undergraduate or graduate education, visit their institution’s writing center. “It is a peculiar feature of writing center research,” Salem wrote, “that there has been no meaningful investigation of the decision not to come to the writing center” (151). The advantages of such investigations, Salem posited, might help to allay the same deficits produced by non-directive pedagogies, including: an “accounting of the needs and

experiences of students who do not come to the writing center,” “new, and perhaps better, ways of talking with students about [center] services,” and data that might “help us shape our services to make them appealing to students who don’t currently visit” (161, 162).

If a significant number of US writing centers do, in fact, act counter to the needs of the students they most often serve, then to what degree are the students who do not visit writing centers aware of that incongruity?

And could a center’s commitment to non-directive pedagogy contribute to students’ decisions, whether intentional or unintentional, not to use a writing center? As I considered these questions in the fall of 2018, it struck me that they were each permutations of a more foundational question: what do students think that writing centers do?1 As Salem notes, the institutional history of writing centers has long been a history of fighting against misperceptions, and chiefly against impressions of writing centers as “remedial” resources.2 Survey a writing center’s website, and one is likely to find a prominently placed list of services that a center does not provide, with “editing” often the first entry.3 Given the commitment writing centers have thus demonstrated to conveying what Jackie Grutsch McKinney calls the “writing center grand narrative”—that writing centers are “comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing” (3)—it becomes necessary not only to deconstruct that narrative (as McKinney has in Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers [2013]), but also to assess the ways in which that narrative’s successful or unsuccessful dissemination affects the likelihood for students to become writing-center visitors.

Further, if it is true that non-directive pedagogies cater to high-performing, white, multigenerational college students, then do students see writing centers as used primarily by students of that background? And if historically underrepresented students in particular perceive centers as geared toward users unlike themselves, are they any more or less likely to avoid writing centers? While much headway has been made since Anis Bawarshi and Stephanie Pelkowski’s 1999 article, “Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing

Center”—in which the authors critiqued writing-center pedagogy as an instrument of acculturation “into the cultures of the university” (44)—it remains unsettled whether students have come to view writing centers as multilingual, multicultural, anti-racist, or “postcolonial” in any meaningful sense. I argue, then, that researchers in writing center studies might consider the following questions: what do students think that writing centers do? Who do students consider the typical “writingcenter user”? And how do those impressions correspond to students’ own propensity for use?

Survey Design and Distribution It was these questions that guided the design and distribution in the spring 2019 semester of an anonymized, online survey on the services and user demographics of the Naugle CommLab at the Georgia Tech Communication Center. The CommLab is a center staffed by both undergraduate and Ph.D.holding consultants, who work alongside undergraduate and graduate students on communication-based projects in individual and multiple modalities. In the 2018-19 academic year, the CommLab held 1,921 consultations. Of the 1,798 individuals who visited the center (including those reserving the center’s presentation- and interviewrehearsal spaces), 81.6% were undergraduates; 14.8% were graduate students; and 3.5% were faculty, postdoctoral fellows, university staff, or others in the Georgia Tech community. Among visitors to the center, approximately 51.3% were male and 45.6% were female, and 59.1% were non-white minority students. 27.9% of visitors self-reported that English is not their first language. Given the CommLab’s user demographics and its service to a STEM-focused institution, as well as the moderate sample size of this study (103 responses), the inferences presented in what follows are limited to a specialized case study and are intended to provide grounds for future examinations within and across institutions.

To discern the relationship between undergraduates’ impressions of CommLab services and users, the survey was divided into two sections. The first queried the accuracy of students’ understandings of center services through three multiple-choice questions. It asked students whether there is a fee for having an appointment at the CommLab, which kinds of projects students may bring to a consultation, and which kinds of feedback a CommLab consultant might offer (e.g., editing; feedback on prewriting and outlining; and feedback on grammar, content, structure, and conventions) (see Appendix A, Q1-Q3).

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 30

Responses of “Yes” and “I’m not sure” to Q1, and responses of “Tutors at the CommLab will edit my work” to Q3, were coded as “misimpressions” of the center. (Responses to Q2 were saved for internal research into the genres of communication that students considered appropriate for consultations.) In the remainder of the first section, respondents were asked to approximate the user demographics of the CommLab, categorized in terms of academic performance, acquisition of English, and gender and race in comparison to Georgia Tech’s overall undergraduate population (see Appendix A, Q4-Q8).

No questions on the survey required answers, and participants could exit the survey at any time.

The survey’s second section inquired into respondents’ own demographic information. In addition to gender, race (assessed by whether respondents identified as persons of color), acquisition of English, and academic performance (assessed by current GPA), the survey also asked respondents to report their current year at Georgia Tech, their major, whether they identify as first-generation college students, and whether they had transferred to Georgia Tech from another institution. The second section also posed a series of questions on respondents’ use of the CommLab, use of other academic services (on campus and off), and familiarity with writing centers in general.

It queried whether respondents had ever had an appointment at the CommLab, if they had ever heard of a writing center before enrolling at Georgia Tech, whether their high school had a writing or communication center, which resources aside from the CommLab they had used for their own academic success (with a dropdown menu listing various resources on and off campus), and, if they had never visited the CommLab, their reasons (with a dropdown menu of twelve common explanations and an optional text-entry box) (see Appendix A, Q9-Q27).

In order to coincide with a time in which undergraduates were likely to have developed impressions of the CommLab, the survey was distributed to undergraduates, following IRB approval, on April 2, 2019. The survey closed on May 31, 2019, roughly three weeks after the conclusion of Georgia Tech’s spring semester. According to this timeframe, first-year students would have had almost one full academic year to acquire information (or misinformation) about the CommLab. The survey was distributed voluntarily via email by academic advisors (some of whom also serve as professors in various departments), instructors of pre-freshman summer courses, instructors of GT1000 (a one-credit course introducing university resources and foundational study skills), and instructors in the School of Literature,

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Media, and Communication (including instructors of business and technical communication). Participants could take the survey on the device and in the location of their choosing.

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 31

first-generation self-identification, person-of-color selfidentification, gender self-identification, and nativeEnglish-speaker self-identification.6

Findings

Participants A total of 103 undergraduates responded to the survey. Of those who answered questions about their own demographic information, 57.9% were first years, 7.9% were second years, 14.5% were third years, 17.1% were fourth years, and 2.6% were fifth years. 53.3% of respondents identified as male, 45.5% identified as female, and 1.3% identified as non-binary.4 23.4% of respondents reported that English was not their first language, and 16.9% identified as first-generation college students. 11.7% of respondents identified as transfer students, and 31.2% identified as persons of color. The most prominent reported majors (n > 4) were biomedical engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering, computer engineering, computer science, industrial engineering, and mechanical engineering.

Methods As previously stated, responses to Q1 of “Yes” and “I’m not sure,” as well as responses to Q3 of “Tutors at the CommLab will edit my work,” were coded as misimpressions of center services. Given the multiple ways in which center practices, philosophies, or “grand narratives” may be described, misimpressions that center services carried costs were designated as the only misimpressions suitable for analysis. The finding that only 15.6% of respondents to Q3 marked “Tutors will edit my work‚” whereas 36.3% of respondents to Q1 marked either “Yes” (1) or “I’m not sure” further supported this position (see Table 1 in Appendix C).5 Qualtrics analysis tools were used to evaluate demographic information and perceptions of center services and users. Perceptions of those who reported having never visited the CommLab were also compared against the perceptions of reported visitors; and impressions of center services and costs were compared by reported user demographics. Those demographics were further subdivided and compared by reported center use (e.g., the impressions of women who reported having visited the center were compared to the impressions of women who reported never having visited the center). Self-reported demographic markers compared by way of center use were: academic performance (reported GPA ≤ or > 3.0, with 3.0 widely considered a subpar GPA by Georgia Tech undergraduates), transfer-student self-identification,

A significant portion of participants carried misimpressions of CommLab services, with 36.3% of respondents to Q1 marking “Yes” or “I’m not sure” (see Table 1 in Appendix C). Students who reported never having visited the CommLab (“non-visitors”) were significantly more likely to hold this misimpression, with 47.4% of non-visitors responding “I’m not sure” to Q1. 100% of students who reported having visited the CommLab (“visitors”) responded “No” to Q1 (see Table 1 in Appendix B).

Respondents saw the CommLab as used predominantly by students who struggle in writing- and communication-based courses and not used by men in a proportion exceeding that of the overall student population at Georgia Tech. In response to Q7, 71.3% of participants guessed that CommLab users are “less than 62% men.” In response to Q4, 60% of participants guessed that most undergraduates who visit the CommLab struggle in courses that emphasize writing and communication. At the same time, 49.4% of respondents to Q5 selected 3.5 or 4.0 as the average GPA of a CommLab visitor, complicating the factors through which Georgia Tech undergraduates may view the center as remedial (potential factors may include grade inflation, institution-specific impressions of a “good GPA,” and how students understand the effects of “struggling in courses that emphasize writing and communication” on GPA at an institution where students typically take few such courses) (see Table 1 in Appendix C).

Non-visitors were more likely than visitors to see the CommLab as mainly serving students who struggle in courses emphasizing writing or communication.

64.9% of non-visitors marked “Yes” in response to Q4, as compared to 45% of visitors (see Table 2 in Appendix B). While falling short of statistical significance, non-visitors also marked the average GPA of an undergraduate CommLab lower than did visitors, with 53.6% of non-visitors estimating that GPA at 3.0 or lower, versus 40% of all visitors (see Table 3 in Appendix B).

Views on CommLab users’ acquisition of English were comparatively mixed, as were views on users’ race. 30.4% of respondents to Q6 guessed that the CommLab mostly holds appointments with native English speakers. 27.5% of respondents to Q8 guessed that the CommLab user base is greater than 49% white (see Table 1 in Appendix C). Non-visitors understood

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the CommLab as gendered and racialized at roughly the same rates as visitors, and visitors were less likely than non-visitors to hold the view that CommLab users are primarily native English speakers. In response to Q6, Q7, and Q8, 35.7% of non-visitors saw the center as holding appointments mostly with native English speakers (versus 15% of visitors), 8.8% of non-visitors saw center users as more than 62% men (versus 5% of visitors), and 26.3% of non-visitors saw center users as more than 49% white (versus 25% of visitors) (See Tables 4, 5, and 6, respectively, in Appendix B). Neither non-native English speakers nor non-visiting non-native English speakers were more likely than their comparative native-English-speaking demographics to view CommLab users as mostly native English speakers, holding that view at 22.2% and 28.6%, respectively (See Table 4 in Appendix B).

In comparing the impressions of demographic groups filtered by visitor status, several outliers emerged: • 85.7% of non-visiting non-native-Englishspeaking students marked that they are unsure whether there is a fee for visiting the center (as compared to 34.9% of nonvisiting native-English-speaking students), as did 66.7% of transfer students, versus 30.9% of non-transfer students (see Table 1 in Appendix B).

• Compared to 60% of all respondents, non-visiting women (72%) and nonvisiting students of color (70.6%) were the most likely to believe CommLab users struggle in courses emphasizing writing and communication (see Table 1 in Appendix C, Q4).

• Compared to 50.6% of all respondents, non-visiting low-performing students (61.1%), non-visiting first-generation students (66.7%), and non-visiting transfer students (62.5%) were the most likely to guess that the average CommLab user’s GPA is 3.0 or lower (see Table 1 in Appendix C, Q5).

• Compared to 30.4% of all respondents, groups most likely to see center users as mostly native English speakers were nonvisiting first-generation students (75%) and non-visiting men (45.2%) (see Table 1 in Appendix C, Q6).

• Compared to 27.5% of all respondents, groups most likely to see the CommLab’s user base as greater than 49% white were non-visiting transfer students (55.6%) and

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 32

non-visiting students of color (41.2%) (see Table 1 in Appendix C, Q8).

The following outliers also emerged in comparing reported reasons for not visiting the CommLab between non-visitors and different non-visiting demographics (see Table 2 in Appendix C for all): • Compared to 47.3% of non-visitors, 77.8% of non-visiting transfer students, 57.1% of non-visiting non-native-Englishspeaking students and 54.2% of nonvisiting women marked that they had not visited the CommLab because they were unaware of it.

• Compared to 27.3% of non-visitors, 44.4% of non-visiting first-generation students marked that they had not visited because they did not have time.

• Compared to 23.6% of non-visitors, 33.3% of non-visiting transfer students, 33.3% of non-visiting first-generation students, 32.3% of non-visiting men, and 31.3% of non-visiting students of color marked that they had not visited because they usually do not complete their work early.

• Compared to 20% of non-visitors, 33.3% of non-visiting first-generation students marked that they had not visited because they use other resources.

• Compared to 12.7% of non-visitors, 33.3% of non-visiting first-generation students, 33.3% of non-visiting transfer students, 28.6% of non-visiting nonnative-English-speaking students, and 18.8% of non-visiting students of color marked that they had not visited because they do not know how to make an appointment.

Discussion While Salem’s 2016 findings challenge the prevailing attitude that writing centers ought actively to “correct” impressions of writing centers as remedial resources, the results of this survey add that, in the case of Georgia Tech undergraduates, such impressions have never been easily resolved. For all but one demographic group included in the survey, greater than half (and for most groups, greater than 60%) of respondents indicated that most CommLab users struggle in writing- and communication-based courses.

Singularly exempt from this trend were students who reported having visited the center. Visitors to the center visit were 15% less likely than respondents

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overall, and 19.9% less likely than non-visitors, to hold this view, seeing center-users as struggling in writingand communication-based courses at a rate of 45%.

Similarly, visitors were 13.6% less likely than nonvisitors to mark the average CommLab user’s GPA at 3.0 or lower, with 40% or visitors holding that view, versus 53.6% of non-visitors (see Table 1 in Appendix C). While demonstrating only a correlation, these data ostensibly suggest, unsurprisingly, that attending an appointment at a writing center registers among the most powerful forces in cultivating impressions of center services and users more accurate than those of non-visitors.7 These results indicate not only that students who visit the center are less likely to view the center as a remedial space—even while 45% of visitors do—but also that visitors are less likely to view the center as a space catering to male and native-English-speaking students. While only a minority of respondents (10%) viewed the center as serving male students at rate greater than 62%, visitors were half as likely (5%) to hold to this view (see Table 1 in Appendix C).

Likewise, reported visitors were about half as likely to view CommLab users as mostly native English speakers. While 35.7% of non-visitors held this view, visitors did so at a rate 15% (see Table 4 in Appendix B). Given the significant portion of CommLab appointments that are held with self-identifying nonnative English speakers—and that 45.6% of appointments are held with women—these findings indicate a correlation between visiting the CommLab and obtaining a more accurate view of the CommLab’s services and user demographics, a point also corroborated by the fact that 0% of reported visitors were unsure whether there is a fee, or believed that there is a fee, for having an appointment at the CommLab. By filtering responses according to visitor status and self-reported demographic information, the Georgia Tech undergraduate demographics most likely to view the center as remedial, racially biased, catering to high-performing students, and used predominantly by native English speakers also emerged. Selfidentifying non-visiting women (72%) and non-visiting students of color (70.6%) were both more than 10% more likely than respondents overall to see center users as struggling in courses emphasizing writing and communication. Similarly, low-performing non-visitors (61.1%), first-generation students (61.5%), non-visiting first-generation students (66.7%), and non-visiting transfer students (62.5%) were all over 10% more likely than respondents overall (50.7%) to guess that the average CommLab visitor’s GPA is 3.0 or lower.

Contrastingly, non-visiting students of color were over

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 33

6.9% less likely than respondents overall to mark the average CommLab user’s GPA at 3.0 or lower, doing so at a rate of 43.8% (see Table 1 in Appendix C).

At first glance, these data present contradictory attitudes; while non-visiting students of colors largely viewed CommLab users as students struggle in writingand communication-based courses, they also were among the least likely to estimate the average CommLab user’s GPA as below 3.0. One way to reconcile this contradiction would be to suggest that non-visiting students of color differ from other student demographics in their average numerical impression of a “struggling” student’s GPA. But it is also plausible that these views are not reflective of a single attitude but instead point to a complicated understanding of CommLab users’ academic performance, one in which an intuitive feeling that “the writing center is not a place for me” may override students’ impressions of who does, in fact, visit the center. In either case, these conflicting data indicate that for center administrators seeking to evaluate the equity and approachability of their sites and services, no single survey question is likely to yield results that bring to light the entirety of a respondent group’s views. And further, it may in fact be contradictory answers such as these that underscore the demographic groups and topics most salient for subsequent, likely qualitative, investigations into equity and inclusivity at particular institutions.

On the subject of language, non-visiting men (45.2%)—as well as first-generation students (50%) and non-visiting first-generation students (75%)—were the most likely to understand CommLab users as mostly native English speakers, a view held overall at 30.4%. On CommLab users’ race, non-visiting students of color (41.2%) and non-visiting transfer students (55.6%) were both over 10% more likely than respondents overall (27.5%) to guess that CommLab users are on average more than 49% white (see Table 1 in Appendix C). So while Georgia Tech undergraduates see the center as skewing remedial—and not used predominately by high-performing students, white students, men, or native English speakers—students who do not visit the CommLab may be more likely to view the center as visited chiefly by those unlike themselves. Specifically, self-identifying first-generation students were the most likely to see the CommLab as monolingual, and non-visiting transfer students and non-visiting students of color (who were also more likely on average to see users as high academic performers) were the most likely to see the center as serving white students.

Findings that transfer students and students historically marginalized in or excluded from higher education were more likely to see the CommLab as

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geared toward white and native-English-speaking students were complemented by findings that the same demographic groups had a higher propensity to misunderstand the costs of center services. Lowperforming non-visitors (47.4%), non-native English speakers (66.7%), non-visiting non-native English speakers (85.7%), non-visiting women (56%), nonvisiting first-generation students (55.6%), and nonvisiting transfer students (66.7%) were all over 10% more likely than respondents overall (36.3%) to report that they believe or are unsure whether there is a fee for visiting the CommLab (see Table 1 in Appendix C).

One possible explanation for the disproportionately high rate of non-native English speakers unsure or misinformed of appointment costs is confusion between the CommLab and the Georgia Tech Language Institute, another campus resource that does charge students a fee for enrollment in Englishlanguage courses. Nonetheless, pervasive confusion regarding the cost of center services (or lack thereof) was not anticipated given the large percentage of CommLab users that non-native English speakers constitute.

Problematic but counterintuitive impressions such as these—combined with the aboveaverage confusion on fees exhibited by students from every non-visiting demographic surveyed—indicate that even if a center’s user base is relatively multilingual, multicultural, or multiracial, that fact alone does not guarantee an accurate understanding among the student body of a center’s services or the diversity of its users. Even among the historically underrepresented student demographics that typically constitute the majority of a center’s users, misimpressions are likely.

In a broader sense, the data gathered in this study suggest that the factors that contribute to students’ complex understandings of language, power, and acculturation in the academy does not necessarily follow the work that takes place in writing centers, where grappling with academic norms is not merely permitted but frequently encouraged. Echoing Geller et al.’s contention that “writing centers are situated within institutions which are themselves implicated in the power structures that wittingly or unwittingly foster racism” (92), the present study emphasizes the pervasive influence that a writing center’s institutional context, and the multiple ways that different student demographics experience that context, bears on students’ impressions of writing-center services and users. So if, as Frankie Condon argues, it is the responsibility of writing centers to “deepen anti-racist commitments and to effect institutional transformation” (22), then it becomes imperative for centers implementing anti-racist and transformative

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 34

efforts to first inquire into the beliefs and knowledges that specific student populations hold about language and power in the academy and their home institutions.

Otherwise, without capturing students’ specific and often divergent impressions, centers risk neglecting particular student demographics even as they attempt to foster inclusivity. In this study, for example, while non-visiting students tended to view the center as a space used predominately by students struggling in writing and communication, self-reporting students of color (both visiting and non-visiting) diverged in viewing the average CommLab user as having a GPA above 3.0 (see Table 1 in Appendix C). This finding implies that while the CommLab might communicate more effectively that the center does not solely work with students struggling in writing and communication, it must concurrently consider how such a message will be received by the students of color who already view the center as biased toward high-performing students.

In this light, perhaps the major implication of this study is that in engaging with dissimilar impressions of center services and users, multiple lines of outreach and advertising, targeted to the dissimilar impressions of varying student demographics, are necessary.

The findings of this study also suggest that when it comes to encouraging newly enrolled students or nonvisitors to make their first appointments at a writing center, centers should consider adjusting longstanding logistical policies and practices, especially on matters such as appointment-making and scheduling. Consider, for example, the variations in reasons for not visiting the CommLab between Georgia Tech undergraduate demographics. Non-visiting first-generation students (44.4%) were approximately 15% more likely than nonvisiting students overall (29.3%) to report that they had not visited the CommLab because they don’t have time. Non-visiting men (32.3%), non-visiting students of color (31.3%), non-visiting first-generation students (33.3%), and non-visiting transfer students (33.3%) were all approximately 10% more likely than nonvisitors overall (23.7%) to report not visiting because they do not complete their work early. Further, nonvisiting non-native-English-speaking students (28.6%), non-visiting first-generation students (33.3%), and non-visiting transfer students (33.3%) were all over 15% more likely than non-visitors overall (12.7%) to report not visiting because they do not know how to make an appointment (see Table 2 in Appendix C).

Not only do these findings demonstrate a need to communicate appointment-making procedures better across institutional offices and services (or even to alter those procedures), they also reveal the pressures faced by students that centers must acknowledge when determining appointment-making policies. While I

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concur with Nancy Grimm’s vision of the writing center as a “plac[e] where the academic community actively recruits new members” and “welcomes the creativity of those with multimemberships” (91), the present study indicates that such recruitments must also account for center policies that may seem far afield from matters of inclusion, such as whether or not to meet with students who bring assignments due the day of their appointment. This study suggests that to hold same-day appointments would be instrumental to making the center accessible to nontraditional students, who, compared to various non-visiting subdemographics, were among the most likely not to visit the CommLab for reasons of time.

To return to the subject of center pedagogy, this study makes clear an imperative not only to examine, as Salem has, how a center’s pedagogy may privilege traditional students while neglecting the needs of a center’s user base, but also to complement such examinations with outreach and advertising efforts that recognize students’ impressions, whether accurate or inaccurate, about privilege in writing centers. Put otherwise, an inclusive center pedagogy—which may counteract what Harry C. Denny calls the “everyday oppression” often staged in writing centers—is not only a matter of preparing staff to attend to situations where students “don’t know what they don’t know” about writing” (Salem 163), but also of realizing that what students don’t know pertains to writing centers themselves and varies widely.8 In the case of the CommLab, a center considered monolingual by only a minority of visiting and non-visiting students, there are deviations that must be acknowledged, such as the 75% of non-visiting first-generation students that saw center users as mostly native English speakers.

Revising center pedagogy is therefore not merely a matter of enabling consultants to engage both directive and non-directive pedagogies—or pedagogies that, as John Nordlof writes, simultaneously “hol[d] together both directive and nondirective models” (59)—but also of communicating in general and targeted outreach that such changes have been enacted. While shifts in pedagogy are instrumental to building inclusive, antiracist writing centers, those shifts alone appear unlikely to resolve pervasive and particularized understandings (or misunderstandings) of whom writing centers privilege.

A future expansion of this study, ideally multiinstitutional, would thus inquire into the relationship between specific student demographics’ impressions of writing center pedagogy and the propensity of those demographics either to visit or not to visit writing centers. While this study finds that understandings of center policies and user demographics vary in degree

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 35

between undergraduates who do and do not visit centers, it has yet to be determined whether the pedagogies engaged in writing centers—as well as the formal and informal communications about those pedagogies—are themselves actively discouraging students from returning to centers or from visiting in the first place. So, while it is imperative to implement pedagogical practices adaptable to the diverse users of writing centers, it is also negligent to attempt to do so without also examining how center pedagogies come to be known by students and affect the likelihood of different student demographics to visit writing centers.

I therefore encourage new investigations into how various visiting and non-visiting student demographics understand center practices (and whom those practices privilege), how non-visiting students come to develop those views, and how those views affect the likelihood for students to visit writing centers for the first time or to become recurring visitors.

Acknowledgement This study was designed and implemented during my two years as a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech and as a professional consultant and assistant director at the Georgia Tech Communication Center. Keely Mruk, a senior peer consultant at the Communication Center, lent an expert hand in designing the survey for this study. I also owe much to Dr. Karen Head and Dr. Brady Ball Blake for their feedback on survey design, as well as to the Communication Center’s 2018-2019 staff of professional consultants, including Dr. Jeffrey Howard, Dr. Leah Misemer, Dr. Chelsea Murdock, Dr. Alok Amatya, and Dr. Maria Chappell.

Notes 1. This inquiry follows Genie Giaimo’s 2014/2015 study of students’ impressions of the Bristol Community College Writing Center (BCC WC), in which Giaimo queried: “What do students know about the writing center? What makes them likely to be attracted to its services? Are students developing as they attend sessions, and, if so, at what point in the visitation cycle?” (55).

2. On the institutional history of writing centers, see Boquet. See also Carino.

3. As with Salem’s argument that writing centers should acknowledge that “[t]he idea of a ‘remedial’ writing center serving ‘underprivileged’ students is alive

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and well” (164), researchers including Young-Kyung Min have argued that “‘No-Editing’ polic[ies] should be re-examined when it comes to ESL tutoring sessions” (21) in order for writing centers to support language acquisition.

4. The 1.3% of respondents identifying as non-binary reflected the answer of one participant. The size of this demographic category rendered it inapplicable for analysis in this study.

5. During survey distribution, Communication Center staff also began discussions regarding the discontinuation of anti-editing language from center communications, which complicated whether responses to Q3 would, in fact, indicate misunderstandings of center services.

6. In referring to writers who speak more than one language, the CommLab uses the term “multilingual.”

To reflect responses to Q6 as accurately as possible (see Appendix A)—and to invoke the historical marginalization students who do not speak English as their first language have faced in US higher education—this article instead differentiates between non-native and native English speakers.

7. Giaimo found similarly that “[t]he average student who goes to the WC at least once a semester […] has a higher knowledge score for the practices and location of the WC as compared with those who never use the BCC WC” (57).

8. Denny describes his observations of everyday oppression in writing centers as “natural and exercised without effort: wealthy (white) graduate students from elite undergraduate institutions stunned at the low ‘quality’ of urban students, faculty complaining about illiterate immigrants, instructors responding in offensive and abusive ways on papers, students parroting hate speech as effortless stock rhetoric, and tutors complaining about the hygiene of clients” (21).

9. ENGL 1101 and 1102 are required, semester-long courses in multimodal communication for all undergraduates at Georgia Tech. Students receive automatic credit for ENGL 1101 if they enroll with a score of 4 or 5 on the Advance Placement Exam in English Language and Composition or English Literature and Composition.

10. Data for survey questions involving demographic breakdowns of the 2018-19 Georgia Tech student body were gathered via Georgia Tech Enterprise Management’s LITE website. See LITE.

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 36

Boquet, Elizabeth H. “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions.”

College Composition and Communication, vol. 50, no. 3, 1999, pp. 463-482.

Carino, Peter. “Early Writing Centers: Toward A History.”

The Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, 1995, pp. 103115.

Condon, Frankie. “Beyond the Known: Writing Centers and the Work of Anti-Racism.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 2007, pp. 19-38.

Denny, Harry C. Facing the Center: Toward and Identity Politics of One-To-One Mentoring. Logan: Utah State UP, 2010.

Geller, Anne Ellen, et al. The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice. Logan: Utah State UP, 2007.

Giaimo, Genie. “Focusing on the Blind Spots: RAD-Based Assessment of Students’ Perceptions of a Community College Writing Center,” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 55-64.

Grimm, Nancy. “Retheorizing Writing Center Work to Transform a System of Advantage Based on Race.”

Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Ed. Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan. Logan: Utah State UP, 2011. 75-100.

Grutsch McKinney, Jackie. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. Logan: Utah State UP, 2013.

LITE – Leading Insight Through Empowerment. Georgia Tech Enterprise Data Management, Enrollment, 20182019, https://lite.gatech.edu/. Accessed 10 Jan 2019.

Min, Young-Kyung. “When ‘Editing’ Becomes ‘Educating’ in ESL Tutoring Sessions.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 21-27.

Nordlof, John. “Vygotsky, Scaffolding, and the Role of Theory in Writing Center Work.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, 2014, pp. 45-64.

Salem, Lorrie. “Decisions…Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?” The Writing Center Journal, vol.

35, no. 3, 2016, pp. 147-171.

Works Cited Bawarshi, Anis, and Stephanie Pelkowsi. “Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, 1999, pp. 41-58.

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Appendix A

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 37

Select Survey Questions (Q1) Is there a fee for having an appointment at the CommLab? o Yes o No o I’m not sure (Q2) Which of the following can you work on at the CommLab? (select all that apply) o Science and engineering reports or proposals o Essays and other humanities papers o Resumes and cover letters o Internship, job, or graduate school applications o Individual and team presentations o Posters, videos, and other audio/visual projects (Q3) Which of these statements are true? (select all that apply) o Tutors at the CommLab will edit my work o Tutors at the CommLab will offer feedback on prewriting and outlining o Tutors at the CommLab will offer feedback on my work’s grammar, content, structure, and conventions (such as citations and formatting) (Q4) If you had to guess, do most undergraduates who visit the CommLab struggle in courses that emphasize writing and communication (like ENGL 1101/1102)?9 o Yes o No (Q5) If you had to guess, what is the average GPA of an undergraduate CommLab visitor? (round to closest) o 4.0 o 3.5 o 3.0 o 2.5 o 2.0 o 1.5 o 1.0 (Q6) If you had to guess, does the CommLab mostly hold appointments with native English speakers or students whose first language is not English? o Mostly native English speakers o Mostly students whose first language is not English o About 50-50 (Q7) About 62% of GA Tech undergraduates identify as men. If you had to guess, CommLab users are:10 o More than 62% men o Less than 62% men o About 62% men (Q8) About 49% of GA Tech undergraduates identify as white. If you had to guess, CommLab users are: o More than 49% white o Less than 49% white Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

o

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 38

About 49% white

(Q9) What is your current year at GA Tech o 1st o 2nd o 3rd o 4th o 5th (Q10) Which gender do you identify as? o Male o Female o Nonbinary (Q11) Is English your first language? o Yes o No (Q12) Are you a first-generation college student? o Yes o No (Q13) Did you transfer to GA Tech from another institution? o Yes o No (Q14) Do you identify as a person of color? o Yes o No (Q15) What is your major? o [dropdown list including all majors offered at GA Tech omitted for brevity] (Q16) What is your current GPA? (round to closest) o 4.0 o 3.5 o 3.0 o 2.5 o 2.0 o 1.5 o 1.0 (Q20) Have you ever had an appointment at the CommLab? o Yes o No (Q21) Had you ever heard of a writing or communication center before enrolling at GA Tech? o Yes o No (Q22) Did you high school have a writing or communication center? o Yes o No Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 39

(Q24) What resources aside from the CommLab have you used on- or off-campus for academic success? (select all that apply) o Parents or family o Classmates or friends o Faculty office hours o Paid tutoring o Georgia Tech Language Institute o OMED (Minority & Education Development) o Center for Academic Success o I don’t usually seek feedback on my schoolwork o Other (please fill in) (Q25) If you have not visited the CommLab, why not? (select all that apply) o I don’t have time to visit o I was not aware of the CommLab o I do not share my work o I usually do not complete my work early o I use other resources o I don’t know how to make an appointment o I don’t know if the CommLab will review my work o The CommLab is at an inconvenient location o The Commlab is not accessible to me o I do not feel like my work needs to be reviewed o I would not feel welcome or comfortable at the CommLab o I have heard about negative experiences at the CommLab o Other (please fill in) (Q27) If you have a second major, what is it? o [dropdown list including all majors offered at GA Tech omitted for brevity]

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Appendix B

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 40

T-Test Tables p ≤ 0.05 considered statistical significance; 0.06 ≤ p ≤ 0.1 considered marginal statistical significance; data rounded to the nearest tenth Table 1: Student responses to “Is there a fee for visiting the CommLab?” (Q1) Student Group

N

Visitors

Percent Answering “Yes” or “I'm not sure” 20

SD

0.00% 0.50

Non-Visitors

57

47.40%

0.58

Non-NativeEnglish-Speaking Non-Visitors Native-EnglishSpeaking NonVisitors Transfer Students

14

85.70%

0.48

43

34.90%

0.36

9

66.70%

0.50

Non-Transfer Students

68

30.90%

0.47

T-Test Finding p = 0.00 Non-visitors are statistically more likely to believe that there is a fee for having an appointment at the CommLab. p = 0.00 Non-native-English-speaking non-visitors are statistically more likely to believe that there is a fee for having an appointment at the CommLab. p = 0.03 Transfer students are statistically more likely to believe that there is a fee for having an appointment at the CommLab.

Table 2: Student responses to “If you had to guess, do most students who visit the CommLab struggle in courses emphasizing writing and communication (like ENGL 1101/1102)?” (Q4) Student Group

N

Visitors

Percent Answering “Yes” 20

SD

45.00% 0.51

Non-Visitors

57

64.90%

0.48

T-Test Finding p = 0.07 Non-visitors are marginally statistically more likely to believe that CommLab visitors struggle in courses emphasizing writing and communication.

Table 3: Student responses to “If you had to guess, what is the GPA of an average undergraduate CommLab Visitor?” (Q5) Student Group Visitors Non-Visitors

N 20 57

Percent Answering GPA ≤ 3.0 40.00% 53.60%

SD

T-Test Finding

0.50

p = 0.13 There is no statistically significant difference between visitors and non-visitors.

0.50

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Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 41

Table 4: Student responses to “If you had to guess, does the CommLab mostly hold appointments with native English speakers or students whose first language is not English?” (Q6) Student Group

N

Visitors

20

Percent Answering “Mostly native English speakers” 15.00%

SD 0.37

T-Test Finding p = 0.03 Visitors are statistically less likely to guess that the CommLab mostly holds appointments with native English speakers.

Non-Visitors

57

35.70%

0.48

Non-Native English Speakers

18

22.20%

Native English Speakers

59

32.80%

0.43 p=0.19 There is no statistically significant difference between non-native English 0.47 speakers and native English speakers.

Non-NativeEnglish-Speaking Non-Visitor Native-EnglishSpeaking NonVisitor

14

28.60%

0.49

43

38.10%

0.47

p = 0.26 There is no statistically significant difference between non- and native-English-speaking non-visitors.

Table 5: Student responses to “About 62% of GA Tech undergraduates identify as men. If you had to guess, CommLab users are” (Q7) Student Group

N

Visitors

20

Non-Visitors

57

Percent Answering “More than 62% men” 5% 8.70%

SD

T-Test Finding

0.22

p = 0.55 There is no statistically significant difference between visitors and non-visitors.

0.29

Table 6: Student responses to “About 49% of GA Tech undergraduates identify as white. If you had to guess, CommLab users are” (Q8) Student Group Visitors Non-Visitors

N 20 57

Percent Answering “More than 49% White” 25% 26.30%

SD

T-Test Finding

0.44

p = 0.91 There is no statistically significant difference between visitors and non-visitors.

0.44

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Appendix C

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 42

Percentage Responses Table 1: Student responses to Q1, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7, and Q8 Student Group

Unsure or believes there’s a fee (Q1) 36.25%

Users struggle in writing/comm (Q4) 60.00%

Users > 62% men (Q7)

Users > 49% white (Q8)

50.65%

Users mostly native Eng. speakers (Q6) 30.38%

10.00%

27.50%

0%

45.00%

40.00%

15.00%

5.00%

25.00%

Non-visitors

47.37%

64.91%

53.58%

35.71%

8.77%

26.32%

Low performer (GPA ≤ 3.0) Low performer NV Non-native English speaker Non-nativeEnglish-speaking NV Native English speaker Native-Englishspeaking NV Men

39.13%

56.52%

59.09%

27.27%

8.70%

30.43%

47.37%

57.89%

61.11%

33.33%

10.53%

26.32%

66.67%

55.56%

52.94%

22.22%

0%

11.11%

85.71%

57.14%

53.85%

28.57%

0%

14.29%

25.40%

61.02%

49.15%

32.76%

10.17%

30.51%

34.88%

67.44%

53.50%

38.10%

11.63%

30.23%

31.71%

56.10%

50.66%

35.00%

7.32%

29.27%

Men NV

40.63%

59.38%

56.26%

45.16%

9.38%

28.13%

Women

40.00%

62.86%

44.12%

25.71%

8.57%

22.86%

Women NV

56.00%

72.00%

50.00%

24.00%

8.00%

24.00%

POC

29.17%

66.67%

47.83%

33.33%

0%

33.33%

POC NV

41.18%

70.59%

43.75%

35.29%

0%

41.18%

Non-POC

37.74%

56.60%

50.95%

28.85%

11.32%

22.64%

50%

62.50%

57.50%

35.90%

12.50%

20%

Gen 1

38.46%

61.54%

61.53%

50.00%

0%

30.77%

Gen 1 NV

55.56%

66.67%

66.66%

75.00%

0%

33.33%

Transfer (all NVs) Non-Transfer

66.67%

66.67%

62.50%

25.00%

0%

55.56%

30.88%

58.82%

48.53%

30.88%

8.82%

22.06%

Non-Transfer NV

43.75%

64.58%

52.09%

37.50%

10.42%

20.83%

All respondents Visitors

Non-POC NV

User GPA ≤ 3.0 (Q5)

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Who (According to Students) Uses the Writing Center? • 43

Table 2: Select student responses by percentage to “If you have not visited the CommLab, why not?” (Q25) Student Group

I was not unaware of the CommLab

I don’t have time to visit

Non-visitors (NV) Low performer (GPA ≤ 3.0) Non-Native Englishspeaking NV NativeEnglishspeaking NV Men NV

47.27%

27.27%

I do not feel like my work needs to be reviewed 29.09%

47.37%

26.32%

21.05%

57.14%

21.43%

43.90%

I usually do not complete my work early 23.64%

I use other resources

20.00%

12.73%

I do not know if the CommLab will review my work 7.27%

26.32%

15.79%

10.53%

10.53%

21.43%

21.43%

14.29%

28.57%

7.14%

29.27%

31.71%

24.39%

21.95%

7.32%

7.32%

41.94%

29.03%

32.26%

32.26%

22.58%

9.68%

6.45%

Women NV

54.17%

25.00%

25.00%

12.50%

16.67%

16.67%

8.33%

POC NV

37.50%

25.00%

18.75%

31.25%

12.50%

18.75%

12.50%

Non-POC NV Gen 1 NV

51.28%

28.21%

33.33%

20.51%

23.08%

10.26%

5.13%

33.33%

44.44%

22.22%

33.33%

33.33%

33.33%

11.11%

Transfer NV

77.78%

11.11%

0.00%

33.33%

22.22%

33.33%

11.11%

NonTransfer NV

41.30%

30.43%

34.78%

21.74%

19.57%

8.70%

6.52%

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

I do not know how to make an appointment

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020)

BY ANY OTHER NAME: THE VALUE OF USING CORRECT PERSONAL PRONOUNS Justin B. Hopkins Franklin & Marshall College justin.hopkins@fandm.edu Abstract This article proposes that by articulating their values, writing centers can have meaningful impact on issues of cultural significance: specifically, in this case, the use of correct personal pronouns. The article presents a study of one writing center’s policy of asking tutees for their personal pronouns. The policy has practical and ideological implications. It is intended to help tutors correctly represent all tutees in reports written about tutoring sessions and to show support for individuals who identify differently from the traditional gender binary (he/she). The study combines practical assessment and RAD research to help the center improve its policy, as well as contribute to a larger and growing cultural conversation. Surveys and interviews solicited tutee reactions to the policy. The data suggest that though there are exceptions, reservations, and suggestions for changes, overall, students share the writing center value of using an individual’s correct personal pronouns.

This article reports on a study of one writing center’s policy to ask visitors for their personal pronouns. Identifying individuals by using their correct personal pronouns is an issue of great cultural importance and currently the subject of much discussion. For example, in 2018, the International Writing Center Association (IWCA) explicitly stated its position on the matter: One way that academic spaces inflict violence is through linguistic marginalization or exclusion surrounding gender, particularly through pronoun usage. It is time for professional organizations, especially those committed to teaching, to challenge the deep-rooted structures that have been used to uphold a binary that denies access for entire communities. (Position statement) This study adopts the IWCA position, asserts the value of asking for and using an individual’s correct personal pronouns, and shows how such a practice can be enacted, as well as how that practice may be perceived.

Again, the conversation about the value of correct personal pronouns is not new to the writing center community. The same year of the IWCA statement, Travis Sharp and Karen Rosenberg published an article asserting that centers (or centres, given their Canadian context) should seriously consider the implications of pronoun usage, especially for those individuals who do not conform to the traditional gender binary of “he/she.” Sharp and Rosenberg consider that binary restrictive, denying individuals their choice of how to

express their identity, and they conclude with a resolution: “to operate alongside minoritized subjects on our campus, the writing centre must acknowledge the necessary role disidentification plays in their lives and experiences” (224). Here Sharp and Rosenberg seem to echo concern about a value expressed earlier

by Mandy Suhr-Sytsma and Estelle Brown: “how can tutors better identify and challenge the everyday, often subtle, language of oppression in their own discourse and in that of other tutors and writers in the writing center?” (13-14) Though their focus is not specifically on pronouns, Suhr-Sytsma and Brown nonetheless recognize writing centers’ potential to have an impact on these issues of linguistic identification.

Actually, writing centers may be an ideal space for examination and articulation of this value. Harry Denny et al. suggest so: “writing center practitioners must engage in dialogue involving the ways in which tutors, writing center administrators, and writers can most productively and effectively navigate personal or public issues that involve identity” (4). The use of the imperative “must” and the conditionally superlative “most” emphasizes the urgency and significance of this particular writing center value. Harry Denny, on his own, staked a similar claim: writing centers are sites par excellence where these issues [of identity] are worked through in ways that wider composition studies and teaching across the disciplines can learn from. Writing centers make local, material and individual all the larger forces at play that confound, impede, and make possible education in institutions. (Facing 6) Here Denny broadens the impact beyond even writing centers and into the wider composition and education communities.

While Sharp and Rosenberg’s promotion of correct personal pronoun usage prompts vital reflection, this article follows Ellen Schendel and William Macauley’s guidelines for practical writing center assessment, as well as Dana Lynn Driscoll and Sherry Wynn Perdue’s calls for RAD research, to add empirical evidence to the conversation. Specifically, this article presents a qualitative study of response to the Franklin & Marshall College Writing Center’s policy of asking tutees for their preferred personal

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 45

pronouns, to use in the reports written about tutoring oppression in order to create meaningful educational sessions. These reports, a long-standing part of the experiences and to promote agency for social justice” center’s recordkeeping practice, are also sent, with (11). To take part in these conversations is both a students’ explicit permission, to the appropriate privilege and a responsibility. professors.

However, with privilege and responsibility also It is important to note that since beginning this comes risk. Suhr-Sytsma and Brown (2010) realize the research, I have come to understand that the term potential good and the potential damage in how words “preferred” pronouns itself is not preferred by all, and are used when they write about “the ‘everyday language I have minimized my use of the term throughout this of oppression’ [that] is subtle as well as essay. However, “preferred” was the term in use during ubiquitous…[and] often goes unnoticed” (15). The the implementation of the policy under discussion, and (mis)use (or not) of personal pronouns is an example throughout much of the research, so I have used it in of such oppressive language. While Suhr-Sytsma and the text where necessary to reflect the policy and the Brown mention pronoun usage not in a gendered research with accuracy. context, it is not hard to see a gendered significance The policy, which was tutor-initiated, was intended when they recount a tutor’s statement, “Pronouns say a to help tutors correctly represent all tutees in reports lot!” and the authors’ agreement: “They do, and the written about sessions and to show support for habit of using them in ways that exclude certain readers individuals who identify differently from the traditional is hard to break” (26). Suhr-Sytsma and Brown know gender binary of he/she. Thus, there is both a practical the task of breaking such habits is considerable: “It will and an ideological component: a desire to be right take local as well as large scale efforts to challenge (linguistically, that is), and to do right (ethically, that is). systematic oppression” (18). But they also know it is This desire reflects the writing center values articulated possible: “Tutors can indeed productively address by the IWCA, Sharp and Rosenberg, Suhr-Sytsma and structural oppression by carefully attending to the Brown, Denny, and Denny et al. Hopefully, this work actual words of individuals in their writing centers” will encourage other centers to consider adopting (18). Here, Suhr-Sytsma and Brown identify a similar practices, while also acknowledging the problem—oppressive language—and an ambitious challenges such practices pose. goal of change.

Embracing the challenge of change, however hard, is necessary. It is imperative, if writing centers are to Background avoid reinforcing what Denny calls “structuring Although the study presented here began as binaries” and “dominant codes” (“Queering” 41, 48) assessment of one writing center’s practice, more and instead to raise awareness of and sensitivity to significantly, the work answers Schendel and them, much less resist or subvert them, as he also Macauley’s call “to show how the writing center urges. To do so, however, individuals in the center contributes to established values and best practices in must inform themselves first. How can centers higher education” (85). The value under discussion complicate binaries or break codes if they remain here is the importance of writing centers exploring unaware of the implications of oppressive language? It issues of gendered and sexual identity: specifically, the would then be impossible to push back on what Rihn use of correct personal pronouns. and Sloan call “an unconscious ideological bias toward In their call for more queer scholarship from and heteronormativity [that] has dominated writing center about writing centers, Andrew Rihn and Jay Sloan scholarship.” assert that a center can be “a distinctive institutional That bias is far from limited to writing centers, of site for the study of sexual identity.” Denny concurs: course.

It is the subject of a much larger and growing “Our classrooms and writing centers, like any space cultural conversation in academia, and beyond. That where people interact, are terrains where people must conversation is marked by a rising frustration with the come to terms with (or are coscripted into) positions status quo, as well as uncertainty about how to that dovetail with mainstream, dominant expectations challenge it. In 2011, for example, Dean Spade offered of roles” (Facing 94). Much more than merely helping “guidelines for referring to students by their preferred writers to correct comma usage, or to address highernames and pronouns” (57). Spade suggested that order concerns like organization and argumentation, instead of the traditional roll call, reading from the writing centers can offer a safe and helpful space for institutional roster and risking misidentifying students, the better understanding and articulating of identity. one could ask students to self-identify. This practice Denny et al. directly charge centers to “make urgent could help avoid “incorrect pronoun assumption” (57), conversations on the complexity of identity and of instead “providing a safer space in the classroom” (58).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 46

The “pronoun go-round” has since been adopted by intellectual communities, and better citizenship, many educators (myself included), but recently Jen whether on campus or beyond. (Facing 111) Manion challenged Spade’s suggestions, asserting that Writing center administrators and tutors can either while such practices were once “a valuable exercise in reinforce the received wisdom or question convention, visibility and solidarity,” their “practicality…has run its hoping to lead to positive change. There is a choice to course.” Manion argues that “the gesture of be made: compulsory pronoun reporting” can come across as We determine whether our centers will be inclusive merely performative and can put unwelcome pressure or exclusive and whether they’ll exist as spaces in on individuals unprepared to self-identify in such a which we can find ways to talk about the range of public way. uncomfortable realities and public controversies Spade quickly answered Manion’s argument. Spade that too often remain “out there” and not in our recognizes the legitimacy of the anxiety Manion centers—the controversies that give shape to expresses, calling it “thoughtful and provocative,” and twenty-first-century life and create potential for a acknowledging that the pronoun go-round cannot future that offers more socially just possibilities. possibly address the whole complexity of identity.

(Denny et al. 245) However, Spade reaffirms the practice’s value and This study contends that articulating the writing center offers suggestions for reducing potential pressure. value of using correct personal pronouns is a step Spade provides an example of a possible introduction towards creating just such a space, inclusive and ready to the pronoun go-round, explaining its purpose and to engage with issues of great cultural and personal framing it as an invitation rather than a requirement: significance.

“We want everyone to participate here, and we want everyone to know how to refer to each other Methodology respectfully.” Spade’s suggestion may satisfy some, but This study combines practical assessment with likely it will not satisfy all, and it is worth noting that in RAD (replicable, aggregable, data-supported) research any situation of self-identification, there is a methodology. Ellen Schendel and William Macauley fundamental element of vulnerability; avoiding all have exhorted writing center administrators to conduct possibility of pressure, whether applied intentionally or and share careful and rigorous assessment: “when we not, is simply impossible. When self-identification is make decisions about what information to gather and requested or required by a teacher or a tutor, the how to gather it—we engage in larger conversations undeniable power imbalance affects the interaction, about what writing centers value” (xvii). Beyond selfand students’ agency can be compromised, as well their improvement, assessment can serve as a contribution anxiety intensified. However, Spade insists, while some to a broader discourse about issues that matter, to us anxiety may be inescapable, the pronoun go-round and to others. According to Dana Lynn Driscoll and challenges the assumption that “we know what Sherry Wynn Perdue, RAD research offers writing someone goes by just by looking at them.” Such a centers the means to participate in that discourse: “If challenge is valuable, and if handled carefully, it can writing center researchers are to better represent the make a step towards creating a space that is inclusive efficacy of our practices, and if we are to influence the and welcoming. way that we teach and talk about writing across the Once again, the writing center can be such a space disciplines, we must speak a common research and can help spread awareness of this important issue. language” (35). By adopting that language, hopefully, As Denny puts it: “the writing center obviously cannot this work can contribute to a growing cultural speak in the conventional sense, yet its visibility and conversation about an important issue: the use of reputation on campus articulate and inscribe meaning” correct personal pronouns. (“Queering” 59). That meaning may transcend matters This study builds on an IRB-approved pilot study of grammatical or analytical proficiency, making deeper conducted by myself and previously reported in Praxis. impact on individuals and communities. Denny The context of both studies is the writing center of a describes the opportunity: small, residential, liberal arts college: Franklin & By making conferences potential spaces to Marshall College. The pilot study consisted of a survey challenge what’s natural or not, conventional or and interviews of visitors to the writing center during not, received wisdom or not, our pedagogy makes the first half-semester of the pronoun policy (spring possible and internalizes widely transferable critical 2016). Guidelines were followed for qualitative thinking and active-learning, both of which lead to research provided by Floyd Fowler and Herbert and stronger, more engaged staff and students, vibrant Irene Rubin. The initial survey was short—just six Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 47

questions—and the interview questions were mostly The next survey question was about how the opportunities to elaborate on survey answers. Only 59 policy had affected the respondents’ visits. Most out of 336 tutees completed the pilot survey, yielding a (86.4%) indicated that the policy had no effect on their less than ideal response rate of 17.5%. Five tutoring sessions. Very few (2.1%) indicated it had a respondents volunteered to be interviewed. negative effect, and of those, almost all indicated their Following the pilot study, the director of the objections were practical rather than ideological—only campus research center was consulted in an effort to one person indicated feeling offended, and no-one improve the response rate. Adjustments and indicated feeling pressured. Of the minority (11.4%) expansions to the original survey questions were made, who indicated the policy had a positive effect on their reducing the open-ended questions and including more tutoring sessions, most indicated either that they closed-ended questions, to avoid respondents growing personally felt welcome at the center, or pleased that bored or frustrated and abandoning the survey before the center welcomed all visitors. Few indicated that the completion. An incentive was added: entry in a drawing question had any positive practical effect. to win a $50 Amazon gift card to all who completed The next three questions were almost the same as the survey. in the pilot study survey, with just minor wording Again, with IRB approval, the new survey was sent adjustments. Respondents indicated how comfortable to all visitors of the writing center during the 2016they were being asked for their pronouns, how well 2017 academic year. (See Appendix A for survey they understood the reason for the question, and questions.) Again, respondents were invited to whether they thought the overall effect of the policy participate further in an interview (earning another was more positive or negative. Responses to these entry into the gift card drawing). The response rate this questions can be usefully compared with the responses time was substantially higher: 30.9%. Of the 223 to the pilot survey (see table 1). respondents, 14 volunteered to be interviewed.

The majority of respondents felt either somewhat Still, sample size is one limitation of this study. comfortable (8.7%) or extremely comfortable (45.7%) Another is the possibility of self-selecting sample bias, being asked for their pronouns. Few felt somewhat since tutees who approved of the policy might be more (9.8%) or extremely (3.8%) uncomfortable. Compared likely to respond. Another limitation is the wording of with the previous year, there was a shift to more questions, especially given the complexity and subtlety neutral responses: many more respondents felt neither of the topic. For example, the questions both in comfortable nor uncomfortable (32.1%, up from surveys and interviews about whether respondents 11.9%). understood the reason for the policy could have been Similarly, more respondents than the previous year more precise and clearer. Was the focus on understood the reasons for the policy moderately well understanding of the ideological reason for the policy (9.8%, up from 1.7%). Fewer respondents understood (i.e., making students more comfortable) or for the the reasons slightly well or not well at all (4.4%, down practical implications (i.e., the mechanics of correct from 5.1%). Fewer respondents understood the pronoun usage), and did “understanding” imply reasons extremely well (52.7%, down from 67.8%), but approval of either or both? Further research should more understood the reasons well (28.8%, up from take these kinds of nuances into consideration.

20.3%).

Fewer respondents indicated a neutral overall response (18.5%, down from 27.1%). Many more Results respondents indicated a somewhat positive response Answers to survey and interview questions show (33.2%, up from 6.8%), while fewer respondents tutees’ response to the policy. This data is of interest in indicated either extremely positive (44%, down from itself, and it is also instructive when compared with 54.2%) or extremely negative (1.1%, down from 8.5%) results from the pilot study. responses.

Overall, a slight shift to more neutral and Surveys moderate responses was evident, but still with much The survey began with several questions that have more weight on the positive than the negative side. no relevance to this study. Then respondents were The following questions asked the importance of asked if they had always or ever been asked for their the issue of pronouns, whether the respondents had pronouns. Most (75.7%) had always been asked. Some participated in the study the previous year, and if so, (17.2%) had never been asked, and for those, the how their response had changed. On the first question, survey was over. respondents were almost evenly split between not at all or slightly important (31.5%), very or extremely Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 48

important (34.8%), and moderately important (33.7%). other students might feel uncomfortable (“I On the second question, most of the respondents understand that not all students feel that way”). One (85.9%) had not completed the survey the year before. pointed out that it is already difficult for some to share Of the few who had, most (73.1%) thought the same their writing, and the double vulnerability of then of the policy. Others (26.9%) thought better. None sharing this aspect of their identity might be too much. thought worse.

Did you understand the reason that you were being asked The final question on the survey asked for for your preferred pronouns? Why or why not? Although for suggestions for improvements to the policy. Of those some there was a bit of initial confusion (“not sure who answered, some (29.3%) indicated they had no what to answer”), most respondents indicated they suggestions, and others (26.8%) explicitly indicated that either immediately or quickly understood the reasons they believed the policy was already being well for the policy: an attempt to make students feel more implemented. Some (23.2%) suggested moving the comfortable, to show respect, and to identify question online only, and a minority (14.6%) suggested individuals correctly. Several said that the reasons were stopping the policy altogether. These answers were obvious (“intuitive”), but several others said they consistent with responses to the question on the pilot needed the tutors to explain. One did not understand, survey, in which 22% had indicated they had no indicating that because tutors only use “you” in suggestions, 25% had suggested moving the question conversation during session, there seemed no need at online (which had already been done, though not all for third-person pronouns. eliminating the in-person asking), and 12% had Overall, what effect do you think the Center’s policy has suggested stopping the policy. Some of the specific had? Most respondents indicated positive effects, either suggestions will be shared in the discussion section. on individuals (“I feel like it might actually have created more safe space…just knowing that people Interviews here are aware of preferred pronouns can establish a As in the pilot study, interview questions were better relationship with the tutor”) or on the mostly opportunities for respondents to elaborate on community (“the more we do it on campus, the more their answers to the survey. The specific questions normal it becomes…the less it becomes weird or follow, accompanied by a summary and select taboo”). Again, a minority demurred, emphasizing the examples of the responses. policy’s nobility (“I think it’s definitely wellWhat was your initial reaction to being asked for your intentioned”) but also its inefficacy (“more of a gesture preferred pronouns? What did you think/feel? Why? Mild than a significant action”). surprise (“a little startled”) was a recurring response.

How might you suggest improving the policy? Most of the For some it was the first time they had been asked. suggestions were to improve efficiency. For example, Others had encountered the question before, on several suggested tutors refer to the preferred campus or elsewhere. Most had positive reactions pronouns already indicated in previous sessions to (“nowadays, it’s kind of an important thing to know avoid asking any individual multiple times. One noted, about a person”), but a minority considered the however, that if being asked again is “the largest question unnecessary, inconvenient, or even inconvenience in my day, that’s a good day for me.” impertinent.

Other suggestions included making it the tutee’s Did your thoughts or feelings about being asked for your responsibility to self-identify or not using pronouns at preferred pronouns change at all? If so, how and why? If not, why all, but rather referring in reports to “We” and “the not? Most opinions had not changed. Most tutee” or the tutee’s name. reemphasized the potential positives, including the normalizing of such questions (“it’s on its way to make Discussion it more accepted”), possible learning (“opportunity for Several recurring themes emerge from the great cultural learning experience”), and creating a responses to survey and interview questions. These welcoming space (“It’s a good thing to establish when themes can be represented by imperatives articulated you’re meeting someone new and you want to be explicitly in the qualitative data and reinforced by respectful of who they are and what they want to be quantitative results: called.”)

1. Stop asking for pronouns.

Were you comfortable being asked for your preferred 2. Ask for pronouns online. pronouns? Why or why not? Although some were slightly 3. Explain the policy better. surprised (“caught off guard”), most were comfortable, Each theme will be discussed below, with reflection on or at least not uncomfortable (“I’m not upset about the practical and ideological implications and how they it”). However, several did indicate concern that some Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 49

show the similarities and differences between what the approach might satisfy those who wish to avoid asking writing center values, and what its visitors value. for a tutee’s pronouns, but there are several problems.

First, this style flies in the face of the long-established Stop Asking for Pronouns convention of pronoun usage in English language The least common theme, it is nonetheless an writing. Furthermore, this impersonal style would be important one to address. It is also important to note challenging for many tutors to adopt, and beyond a that quantitative responses were less negative than the sentence or two, it would probably be awkward to pilot study, and negative qualitative responses did not read. Finally, and most importantly, while referring to reach the intensity of some of the comments in the the tutee only by their first name seems reasonable, it is pilot. There were no prophecies of the destruction of also reasonable to consider a person’s pronouns part of the English language, nor any explicitly hateful their identity; to ignore or actively reject that part of rhetoric, as there had been in the pilot. However, there their identity is to deny what the IWCA calls “the full were some strong statements of disapproval, and these humanity of all who work with and in writing centers.” opinions should be acknowledged as contrasting with Again, such a denial is inconsistent with writing center writing center values. values.

For example, it is not consistent with writing On the other hand, it is a valid concern that asking center values to place the responsibility on an for pronouns could counterproductively create individual to self-identify without prompting. One pressure and anxiety for some individuals. One respondent insisted: respondent indicated: Don’t ask, it’s annoying and unimportant. If I’d honestly suggest doing away with the system someone has an unassumed gender pronoun they altogether… if the goal is to make everyone feel would like to be called they should be confident welcome, it might be better not to raise a question enough to say so without everyone having to be that makes people feel different. asked.

This was the concern that was voiced most often in the Expecting someone to self-identify puts pressure on survey and interviews. This is also the concern voiced the individual and reinforces the perception of the

by Jan Manion, addressed earlier. It cannot be denied abnormality of anything other than the traditional that there is a fundamental power imbalance in any gender binary. Denny et al. acknowledge that “not tutor-tutee interaction, and for the tutor to ask such a everyone who walks in the door of a writing center personal question of the tutee can make the tutee even wants a liberatory education” (244), and for those who more vulnerable than they already are, potentially are not interested in issues of identity, questions about diminishing their agency. pronouns may be obnoxious, or even offensive.

Yet another reason suggested for stopping the However, Denny et al. also assert, policy altogether was the time it takes and its lack of everyone deserves support that both empowers impact on the quality of the actual tutoring taking them and mitigates their experiences in relation to place. Over 86% indicated the questions had no impact societal, cultural, and political systems that render on the session, and one respondent pointed out: “the the institutional conditions of learning and entire (tutoring) conversation uses ‘you,’ so why waste teaching as always fraught (244-45). the time asking for pronouns?” Those are compelling To balk at offering that support just because it is, to numbers and a valid question. However, while not some, “annoying and unimportant” does not reflect wholly irrelevant, whether or not asking for pronouns writing center values. explicitly and directly improves the tutoring session— It is also far from ideal, as one respondent and some (11.4%) said it does—is beside both the suggested, simply to write about sessions without using practical and ideological points, and in tension with pronouns at all. Technically, a report could be writing center values as articulated by Denny et al.: constructed referring only to “the tutee,” or to the Often, the writing center serves as a space for tutee’s first name. Additionally, the report could be individuals to come out, to reveal or uncover their framed using only the collaborative “we.” For example, identities to relative strangers—consultants or one could write: “Sam brought in a rough draft, and we writers who might be working with them to worked on improving its organization. The tutee also develop ideas for compositions but who in doing wanted some help with punctuation, which we so travel down conversational rabbit holes to addressed.” This kind of gender-neutral reporting is explore key facets of identity and the tensions that viable and an available option in the F&M Writing accompany them. (6) Center; tutors are prepared to write this way if tutees Here Denny et al. confirm the possibility of inefficient prefer not to be referred to by pronoun. Such an “conversational rabbit holes,” but for them those Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 50

apparent digressions are not wasted time or effort, but asking might take only a few seconds, depending on valuable opportunities. any follow-up questions tutees might have.

Furthermore, pronouns actually are solicited online, Ask for Pronouns Online both when students register for WCOnline and each Many respondents suggested moving the question time they use the scheduling system to make an about pronouns online, either additionally (that is, appointment. Tutees are given the following choices before asking in person) or exclusively (that is, instead (in the following order) on a drop-down menu: of asking in person). Reasons split between improved • zi/zir efficiency and a desire to avoid making anyone feel • they/their uncomfortable—familiar concerns from the small • she/her contingent of suggestions to stop asking altogether.

• he/his For example, one respondent suggested: “When • prefer not to say students sign up for a writing center appointment • other online, have a button to insert their preferred Given these (minimum) two required encounters pronouns but make it optional.” These concerns and with the question, it is a bit odd to find suggestions like suggestions require careful consideration because they this: “Maybe students should put in their pronoun are not incompatible with the writing center values that online when they make the appointment.” Unless they the policy represents. select “prefer not to say,” they do. At least one First, as mentioned above, avoiding making people respondent knew so, and factored the online uncomfortable is a good goal. It would be a shame to component into their suggestive question: unintentionally create anxiety for anyone who is not You ask for pronouns when we register for a prepared to identify pronouns—a potentially private session and then again when we arrive, if you don’t matter—in what is, essentially, a public space. Again, go off the forms response then why ask when we this was a frequently voiced concern, and it is a valid register? and serious one. It would be a sad irony if trying to The answer to this valid question, and to the more show sensitivity and support instead only pushed an direct suggestions to keep the policy online only, is that agenda at the expense of individuals’ feelings, asking online only is simply not sufficient, for several reinforcing inequitable power dynamics. But the bulk reasons. First, individuals may express their identities of the data does not indicate that is the case. The differently in different circumstances. They may use majority indicated they felt comfortable (54.4%), or at one set of pronouns for filling out an online form, and least not uncomfortable (32.1%), being asked for their another for interacting with their peers in person, and pronouns. Only a small minority (13.6%) indicated yet another for being written about in a report sent to they felt some degree of discomfort. Also, it is their professors. Also, use of pronouns may change important to remember that visitors do in fact have the over time. What one used at the beginning of the first option not to provide their pronouns. Tutors are ready semester may not be the same by fall break, or by the to write reports without referring to pronouns at all, a next day, or by senior year. Trusting that tutees would necessary, if rarely applied aspect of the policy. Writing proactively note any changes in their usage may seem a centers should make every effort, within reason, to challenge to an individual’s agency, but it is an unsafe ensure the safety of visitors to what is, after all, a public assumption, given the high stakes (i.e., risking “outing” space. It may be less public a space than the someone). Always asking in person, confirming the classrooms discussed in Manion and Spade’s debate, current correct usage, is crucial to demonstrating the but even a one-on-one peer tutorial deserves practical and ideological value of correctness and care. consideration of an individual’s comfort level and Anything less is just not enough, and while perfect agency in revealing such personal information. adherence to this ideal may be practically challenging— The second concern, that of efficiency, may not be or even impossible, as I will discuss further below—it sufficient to warrant ending the policy, but it merits is worth the attempt. consideration of adjusting how the policy is applied.

For example, one suggestion emphasized the Explain the Policy Better inconvenience of repeated questions for return visitors: Some respondents suggested tutors explain the “I don’t think it’s necessary to ask EVERY time, policy better. How, better? Suggestions ranged from especially when the tutor has met with the person adding information to the website to having the tutors multiple times before.” Wasting time is certainly to be explain more, or less, or more formally, or less avoided. However, first, the time taken can and should formally. Balancing these competing suggestions would be minimal. The F&M Center’s current instructions for be challenging, but again, worth the consideration.

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By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 51

First, a brief description of the policy was already they/their—shall I use those pronouns in the report I available on the writing center website, including the write about this session?” This distinction was made ideological and practical reasons. The description is on following feedback on the pilot study, with the the page that tutees must access to make an intention of decreasing any potential pressure and appointment at the center. However, it is not clarifying and emphasizing the practical purpose of the surprising that some tutees made appointments policy: to use the correct pronouns in reports written. without noticing the description. It’s hard to imagine Given the number of comments in the second study how to make tutees read the description, without evidencing confusion on this purpose (e.g., “It seemed belaboring the point and frustrating visitors. It could unnecessary to me. The tutor usually says ‘your’ be a requirement when one signs up for the paper/’your’ draft anyway”), it seems this language is appointment that one signs off on having read the inadequate, or that it is being inadequately applied. description, like a software update user agreement, but More and better explanation may be necessary to fully it is common knowledge how rarely those kinds of convey the value of asking for pronouns. agreements are actually read.

Another potentially beneficial addition to the script It is intriguing that there was conflict between might be for tutors to share their own pronouns with preferences for more or less explanation, and more or tutees. Although he is not referring explicitly or less formal explanation. Some thought it was best just exclusively to pronouns, Denny suggests that the to move briskly through the question, not drawing inherent vulnerability in discussing sensitive aspects of attention to it and maybe not explaining at all unless identity “can be mitigated if tutors themselves engage the tutee had questions. For example, one respondent in a sort of coming out, thereby fostering a said, transactional dialogue in which knowledge is I think the current policy is the most practical shared…not one sided” (“Queering” 58). The website method of carrying out the current policies. It’s MyPronouns.org also advises mutuality: “First make not perfect, but it can’t really be improved without sure that you have shared your own pronouns. Doing adding too much fluff to the process. so is the best way to encourage other people to share Another concurred: “straight up asking for tutees for their pronouns, to help make them more comfortable their preferred pronouns is great. There is no beating to share their pronouns with you.” Such a practice around the bush and making things awkward for no might serve to soften the fundamental power reason.” The reasons for this perspective appeared to imbalance inherent in this policy. be efficiency and a desire to further normalize the question—that is, business as usual. On the other Conclusion hand, those who thought it was best to take a little time The study presented in this article assessed setting up the question in a more conversational way response to the Franklin & Marshall College Writing wanted more opportunity for discussion. One Center policy of asking tutees for their personal suggested, “Giving a short statement about the policy pronouns. According to Schendel and Macauley, beforehand,” and another, “Require an explanation or assessment can and should prompt change, both require [tutors] to ask the tutee if they understand why locally and beyond: “Think of assessment not only as they’re being asked.” As with offering alternative ways an opportunity to learn about your work but as a of answering the question, these seem valid means of generating interest and energy around that suggestions, but once again, consistency is preferable, work” (54). Particularly when blended with RAD and simplicity seems more likely than complexity to research practices, assessment allows for interesting lead to consistency. Currently, the F&M tutor and energetic contributions to cultural conversations handbook does not give exact instructions on the beyond a single campus context. This approach, as manner or extent to which explanation is offered, Denny puts it, “places a premium on viewing writing though it does suggest that if the tutee has questions centers as sites for activism and change” (Facing 26). about the policy, the tutor should either explain or Here is a chance for a writing center to share what it suggest the tutee contact an administrator (see values.

Appendix C).

In the case of this study, it appears that what the One potentially beneficial change to the handbook F&M Writing Center values and what the Center’s language would be to add even more emphasis to the visitors value are not far apart. While there were those distinction between asking a tutee bluntly “what are who objected, and there were suggestions for your pronouns?” and some variation on “When you adjustments, and those objections and suggestions scheduled your appointment [or registered for were the dominant themes addressed in the discussion WCOnline] you indicated you use the pronouns Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 52

here, it is important to remember that most responses correctness and embrace the error. I like the opento the pronoun policy were positive. Many respondents endedness of the imperative, and I hope it presages, enthusiastically praised the policy, explicitly endorsing albeit unconsciously, the lack of an end to our policy, both the practical and ideological reasons that and to the value of change it represents. Because it is motivated it. However, I hope and believe that even if the right thing to do, I hope we will indeed keep the response had not been so predominantly positive, asking. the policy would not have been discontinued. After all, Denny et al. point out the potential value of writing Works Cited centers challenging controversial perceptions and practices: Denny, Harry C. Facing the Center. UP of Colorado, [Centers] can and should be spaces in which the 2010. tensions of communities can and do manifest. And ---. “Queering the Writing Center.” Writing Center these tensions become most legible when the tidy Journal, vol. 25, no. 2, 2005, pp. 39-62. operation of tutoring genre, argument, Denny, Harry C., Robert Mundy, Liliana Naydan, development, sentence clarity, and grammar gets Richard Sévère, and Anna Sicari. Out in the Center: upended by perceptions, preconceived notions, Public Controversies and Private Struggles. UP of and power dynamics—by compelled disclosure of Colorado, 2018. identity formations such as those that accents or Fowler, Floyd. J. Jr. Survey Research Methods (5th ed.). belief systems represent. (5) Sage Publications, Inc., 2014.

Discomfort and disagreement are not necessarily bad, International Writing Center Association. “Position and as gratifying as the affirmation may be, the statement on the use of the singular ‘they.’” 2018 purpose of the policy was not to be popular, but to be http://writingcenters.org/wpcontent/uploads/201 and to do right. The purpose of the study was not to 8/06/IWCA_Singular_They.pdf. Accessed 14 May decide whether or not to continue the policy, but to 2019. gauge how better to continue, as well as to contribute Manion, Jan. “The performance of transgender to the cultural conversation surrounding this important inclusion.” 2018 issue. http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/11/theHopefully, other writing centers will consider performance-of-transgender-inclusion/. Accessed adopting similar policies, as appropriate to their 27 Nov. 2018. specific contexts. Both from the literature reviewed MyPronouns.org. “Sharing your Pronouns.” 2017, and the results received in this study, it seems that https://www.mypronouns.org/sharing. Accessed using correct pronouns can have the kind of 14 May 2019. meaningful impact on individuals called for by Denny, Rihn, Anrew and Jay Sloan. “‘Rainbows in the Past Denny et al., Sharp and Rosenberg, Suhr-Sytsma and Were Gay’: LGBTQIA in the WC.” Praxis: A Brown, and others. This is a matter of great urgency, Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 2013. according to Denny: Rubin, Herbert. J., and Irene S. Rubin. Qualitative The automatic functioning of mainstream gender Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data (3rd ed.). Sage and sexuality identity politics, the seemingly Publications, Inc, 2012. effortlessness of expressions that appear normal, Schendel, Ellen, and William J. Macauley, W. J. Building even natural, of course begs their very question. As Writing Center Assessments That Matter. UP of we mark who we are, we signify the operation of Colorado, 2012. social and cultural forces upon us. (“Queering” 88) Sharp, Travis, and Karen Rosenberg. “The Grammar The world around us—from our local campuses to the of Social Justice: Gender Non-binary Pronouns global communities we all occupy—is changing in how and the Writing Centre.” Canadian Journal for Studies the experience and expression of identity are in Discourse and Writing/Redactologie, vol. 28, 2018, recognized. Writing centers can, and should contribute pp. 212-226. to that change by enacting policies that show what we Spade, Dean. “Some Very Basic Tips for Making value.

Higher Education More Accessible to Trans I will close by sharing one last response. The final Students and Rethinking How We Talk About survey answer recorded, to the request for suggestions Gendered Bodies. Radical Teacher, vol. 92, 2011, pp. of how better to implement the policy, was “Keep 57-62. asking”—without a period. Although I suspect the lack ---. “We Still Need Pronoun Go-rounds.” of punctuation was an oversight, in this case I must put http://www.deanspade.net/2018/12/01/we-still-needaside the writing center value of grammatical pronoun-go-rounds/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018 Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 53

Suhr-Sytsma, Mandy, and Estelle Brown. Theory In/To practice: Addressing the Everyday Language of Oppression in the Writing Center.

Writing Center Journal, vol. 31, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1349.

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By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 54

Appendix A Table 1: Compared Quantitative Results

Appendix B Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 55

Survey Questions •

•

•

•

How often, approximately, have you visited the Writing Center this year? o

Once or twice

o

Three or four times

o

Five or more times

What did you work on during your Writing Center visit(s)? (Check all that apply.) o

Brainstorming

o

Rough draft

o

Close to final draft

o

Oral presentation

o

Understanding the prompt

o

Organization

o

Argumentation/analysis

o

Grammar

o

Style

o

Citations

o

Other ____________

Who referred you to the Center? (Check all that apply.) o

Professor

o

Friend

o

Tutor

o

Academic Advisor

o

Residential Advisor

o

Other ___________

How satisfied were you, overall, with your Writing Center experience(s)? (Likert Scale 1-5)

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•

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 56

Did the Writing Center tutor(s) always ask you for your preferred pronouns at the beginning of each of your visits? (Y/N)

•

If no, did the Writing Center tutor(s) ever ask you for your preferred pronouns at the beginning of any of your visits? (Y/N)

•

If no, thanks very much, end of survey!

•

If yes, how did the question affect your subsequent session(s)?

•

o

Negatively

o

Not at all

o

Positively

If negatively, why? (Check all that apply.) o

It was a waste of time.

o

I thought my preferred pronouns should be obvious.

o

I was offended.

o

I felt pressured to reveal personal information that should be private.

o

I believe using pronouns different from traditional norms has a negative effect on the English language.

o •

Other ____________

If positively, why? (Check all that apply.) o

It made me feel personally welcome in the Center.

o

It made me feel like the Center welcomes all students, regardless of how they identify.

o

It contributed to a more effective tutoring session.

o

Other ____________

•

Overall, how comfortable were you with being asked for your preferred pronouns? (Likert Scale 1-5)

•

Overall, how well did you understand why you were being asked for your preferred pronouns?

(Likert Scale 1-5)

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•

By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 57

Overall, do you think the Center’s policy to ask tutees for their preferred pronouns is more positive or negative? (Likert Scale 1-5)

•

Overall, how important is the issue of identifying preferred pronouns to you? (Likert Scale 1-5)

•

Did you complete the similar survey about this policy that we sent last year? (Y/N)

•

If yes, how has your perception of the policy changed since then?

•

o

I think better of the policy.

o

I think worse of the policy.

o

I think the same of the policy.

What suggestions do you have for how better to implement the policy of asking tutees about their preferred pronouns? ________

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By Any Other Name: The Value of Using Correct Personal Pronouns • 58

Appendix C Tutor Handbook Excerpt In an effort to recognize and show support for individuals who identify in ways different from traditional gender binaries, the Writing Center will continue the policy of asking tutees for the pronouns they prefer we use in writing about them in our Client Report Forms.

Tutees will indicate their preferred pronouns (e.g., they/their, ze/zir, she/hers, he/his) when registering with WCOnline and when booking any appointments. However, because choices may change, it is also important to confirm with tutees that the pronouns they indicated online should be used in Client Report Forms for each individual session.

It is also important to emphasize that the question is not meant to be invasive, but just as a matter of everyday record-keeping. To avoid potentially putting pressure on individuals to identify themselves in what they may feel is too personal and/or abrupt a manner, rather than asking “what are your preferred pronouns?” ask some version of the following example: “When you scheduled your appointment [or registered for WCOnline] you indicated a preference for the pronouns they/their—shall I use those pronouns in the report I write about this session?” [It would probably be good to follow this question up with the question about sending the report to the professor. We must be careful not to “out” students who may identify one way with you and another with their professors.]

You need not use these exact words, but do make sure to connect the question to our record-keeping practice as well as the pronoun preference tutees indicated online. You can show tutees the relevant lines on the Blue Sheet to illustrate that the questions are a part of our official record keeping.

If the tutees seem confused, or ask questions, do your best to explain our policy, but also feel free to suggest that the tutee contact the director or assistant director for further clarification. If you have any questions or concerns about the policy, please contact the director or assistant director.

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REPLICATION OF A TUTOR-TRAINING METHOD FOR IMPROVING INTERACTION BETWEEN WRITING TUTORS AND STEM STUDENTS Laura Hazelton Jones Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis laurahazeltonjones@gmail.com

Corinne Renguette Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis crenguet@iupui.edu

Ruth C. Pflueger Penn State Erie, The Behrend College rcp1@psu.edu

Robert Weissbach Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis rweissba@iupui.edu

Brandon S. Sorge Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis bsorge@iupui.edu

Danielle Ice Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis dmmcdoug@iu.edu

Jon Meckley Penn State Erie, The Behrend College jam135@psu.edu

Matt Rothrock Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus mcrothro@iupui.edu

Annwesa Dasgupta Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis adasgup@iu.edu

Abstract The improvement of tutor training programs can impact the important work of writing centers. Tutors often feel less comfortable tutoring in genres different from their own discipline.

A previous study introduced an assignment-specific tutor training model to improve writing center tutoring sessions between engineering students and writing tutors. The results of the previous study indicated a valuable addition to the resources available for engineering students. This model has now been replicated at two universities to assess the potential for wider dissemination.

Preliminary data analysis suggests a relationship between initial tutor rating of student work, student perceptions of tutoring, and tutor perception of student engagement in the tutorial. Plans for future research include continued replication and expansion to test larger sample sizes, analysis of impact within and adaptations for other STEM areas, and continued study of the impact on tutoring team projects.

Introduction The improvement of tutor training programs can have an impact on the important work of writing centers. The issue of a tutor’s ability to help students across disciplinary boundaries has come under scrutiny as writing center lore is evaluated to establish a pedagogical foundation for the writing center.

Practitioners have voiced their concern that there is not a firmly established set of standard practices for writing tutors (Nordlof, 46), there is a lack of replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research within the field of writing center studies (Perdue & Driscoll, 186-187), and that tutors may lack sufficient training to work with students from disciplines outside their own area of study (Devitt, 216217; Dinitz & Harrington, 81; Kohn).

In 2014, Sue Dinitz and Susanmarie Harrington stated that “some of the problematic moves of the tutors lacking disciplinary expertise could perhaps be

mitigated through targeted tutor training” (95).

Targeted tutor training can take many forms, however, and further study remains to discern exactly which practices will effectively improve tutor confidence as well as the quality of individual sessions, regardless of subject matter.

This study examined the early replication of a tutor training method designed to improve the ability of tutors to work comfortably with students outside their own area of expertise (Weissbach & Pflueger, 214-215).

This study directly addresses the need for writing tutors to effectively tutor engineering students and to receive targeted training in order to be able to improve their genre transfer skills. The assignment-specific training can improve tutors’ abilities to provide effective writing instruction to students from other disciplines. Additionally, it begins to examine research that is lacking in the writing center field, which, ideally, will contribute to the continued development of a system of practices within writing center pedagogy, as discussed in the following literature review.

Literature Review Brief Background of Writing Centers The concept of the writing center has been a standardized product of student collaboration since the 1970s (Kail, 595). Despite becoming more popular, the role of writing centers has not been formally established within all institutions of higher education, and they have often been forced to fight for space and resources and have sometimes even been eliminated (Boquet, 471-472). However, in the institutions where writing centers do exist, they are a valuable service for students.

The writing center occupies a unique space on a campus, both in its physical location as well as its utilization within the institution as an entity. Assisting students across disciplines is one of the writing center’s trademarks and strengths, appealing to students (and sometimes faculty and staff) across the university who may be looking to improve their communication skills.

The “physical or time constraints of the traditional classroom” (Turner, 45) are limitations that can be removed by student utilization of the writing center.

The crucial role that a writing center may play in the communication abilities of its tutees spans the campus in a metaphorical sense, but the location of the center itself may span the campus in a literal sense.

“The writing laboratory of the early 20th century was conceived of not as a place at all,” states Boquet, “but rather as a method of instruction” (466). Therefore, the pedagogical methods utilized within the physical space of the writing center are separate from any class a student may take. A writing center can provide a service that is not found within the classroom itself— the ability of students to work with peers, rather than their professors, in order to improve their writing.

Writing centers have proven themselves to be an invaluable service, earning recognition through professional organizations and publications (Perdue & Driscoll, 186).

Writing Center Pedagogy The pedagogical theory behind writing centers is rooted in inquiry. Classical Socratic questioning is at the core of the peer tutor’s approach when helping a student. Platonic heuristics can also be utilized as an effective method of helping students develop their own process of looking at their writing with a critical eye (Raign, 32-33). These methods have been developed further in more recent years using the educational practices of scaffolding rather than routine correction (Nordlof, 56-59; Haider & Yasmin, 170).

These pedagogical methods, among others, reinforce the idea that current best practices include using instructional methods such as scaffolding and nondirective assistance to guide tutees with their writing.

Historically, writing center tradition has suggested that any method of direct instruction be avoided within the tutoring session (Nordlof, 48). As writing center pedagogy evolves, however, it becomes more apparent that tutors can adjust the amount of directive tutoring that they provide each student. This combined approach of using both directive and non-directive approaches is especially useful in situations where the tutor is not familiar with the subject matter being discussed and may need to ask questions before

Replication of a Tutor-Training Method • 60

offering more direction. Utilizing both directive and non-directive approaches with scaffolding methods can assist writing center tutors in providing more effective instruction to students while also enabling them to teach themselves better writing practices.

Scaffolding In a study of peer tutors’ questioning behaviors, Inneke Berghmans, et al. states that “scaffolding implies effective questioning behavior” (705). Using a scaffolding method in the writing center involves asking the student high-level questions about their writing, in the style of Socratic questioning intended to help students come to their own conclusions and find their own answers. Peer tutors are often instructed in their training to use this approach, although there have been many studies that show a gap between theory and practice (Berghmans, et al., 704-705; Nordlof, 46).

While peer tutors are often trained to avoid direct instruction and use questioning methods within sessions, sessions do not all follow this formula. Tutors regularly and effectively integrate their knowledge of genre and writing conventions between Socratic questioning (Carino, 98).

In addition, Isabelle Thompson’s study of verbal and nonverbal tutoring strategies examines the communication methods an experienced tutor uses during the course of one tutoring session, recommending a combination of cognitive and motivational scaffolding (444-447).

Cognitive scaffolding provides support to the student using questioning tactics, pushing the tutee to discover the solution. Motivational scaffolding utilizes verbal praise and affirmation to keep students focused and engaged with the tutoring session. This approach of questioning and praise is reminiscent of Kathryn Raign’s recommendation for tutor instruction using Platonic heuristics (32-33). However, the amount of cognitive and motivational scaffolding that a tutor uses should be considered within the recommendations of directive vs. nondirective tutoring. Effective scaffolding requires more directive tutoring in initial sessions, decreasing as the student progresses (Nordlof). The scaffolding recommendations made by Berghmans, et al., Thompson, Raign, and John Nordlof inherently contain a recommendation for mixing directive and nondirective methods. Additional support for mixing directive and nondirective methods in the writing center can be found in Peter Carino’s discussion of the power structure between the tutor and the tutee during a session (106-109). Carino states that, at times, tutors may use their authority as skilled writers to provide students with clear answers based on writing expertise but without knowledge of the subject matter (106).

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This is potentially problematic when a student is writing within their area of expertise and the tutor does not have the subject knowledge to provide correct directive information to the tutee. However, asking questions early in the session can mitigate these issues.

Providing the tutor with background information about the material that the student brings to the writing center can also help improve the session. Tutors can use Socratic questioning and include scaffolding techniques combined with directive tutoring to create an effective learning environment. By doing so, tutors can help the students discover their own knowledge of the subject matter and craft it in a way that will be understood. This use of scaffolding in combination with directive and non-directive methods and genre theory can aid in the transfer of learning between different contexts, which will be discussed next.

Transfer of Learning in Peer Tutoring The principles of knowledge transfer originate within educational psychology. As learners note similarities between different areas of learning, knowledge that is already present is engaged in transfer, and prior knowledge may be available for new application (Devet, 121). Amy Devet identifies one aspect of learning transfer especially applicable in this study: declarative-to-procedural transfer, generally defined as the process of “providing a ‘schema’” (126), which allows the consultant to transfer a general concept of learning to the student. By utilizing this general schema, the tutor is able to then transfer the more specific concepts to the student within the schema itself, giving the student a wider view of what they are receiving through transfer and keeping them from having too narrow a focus on small concerns that students may have about their writing (Devet, 125126). This process can also take place as procedural-todeclarative knowledge. In this condition, specific knowledge is generalized and is able to be conveyed to an audience that may not be intimately familiar with it (Devet, 126). This method of learning transfer takes place within our study related to tutor learning. When tutors are able to receive information about the assignment-specific subject knowledge that they receive from the assignment-specific training, they are able to use procedural-to-declarative knowledge, taking the procedural knowledge that they have and applying it to the training that they have received for the specific genre and subject matter conventions that have been transferred to them. Moving between procedural-todeclarative and declarative-to-procedural provides a foundation that grounds our study to maintain relevancy within the field of educational psychology.

Replication of a Tutor-Training Method • 61

According to Robert E. Haskell (76-79), the understanding of learning transfer has changed greatly over time. The early 1900s ushered in a wave of research focused on improving instructors’ ability to facilitate transfer. The formal method of transfer that had been utilized at that time has since been replaced by other methods; one of the most common of these methods is the metacognition model (Haskell, 84). This model is “composed of self-monitoring strategies” which can be used to facilitate transfer “within and across tasks or learning domains” (Haskell, 84).

Genre awareness can also instigate transfer from one area of study to another (Devet, 134-135). It can be assumed that if a writing tutor is taught the basics of genre theory and writing conventions within a discipline, they will have the ability to transfer learning between subject areas more easily, and continuously improve as a tutor over time.

Genre Theory and Writing Within the Disciplines First-year composition classes often do not prepare students to write for specific genres. In fact, there may be an expectation from faculty who do not teach writing or composition that their students should be fully prepared for any writing assignment once they have completed a first-year composition or introductory writing class (Devitt, 223). Unfortunately, this expectation is an unrealistic one, and a basic writing course outside of a student’s genre will not be enough to prepare them to write within their field. As Devitt states, a research paper from a first-year writing course “may not, in fact, be the most effective antecedent genre for the biology major’s paper” (223).

The transfer of learning that a tutor may receive in their training or coursework to become a tutor may be similar. Writing tutors are instructed in the acceptable methods of helping to create better writers, often referred to as writing center lore (Nordlof, 48). Unless a tutoring program is intended to focus on one genre, however, tutors may not be adequately prepared for work in every genre and will need to employ a heuristic that can be utilized across different areas of study.

The need for tutors to be able to work with students across genres is central to their ability to conduct a successful session. As a result, training a student to be a writing center tutor must prepare them to work with a variety of genres and writing conventions. If tutors have been trained to work with students in a variety of genre conventions, they can explain the writing conventions of the student’s discipline. Tutors can also use genre theory to scaffold in the writing center when they are not familiar with the subject matter that students are working with. The ability to look at writing and genre conventions within

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their field can help tutees to understand how their writing fits into the standards and practices of their field as it has evolved over time (Gordon, 4).

Being able to tutor to specific conventions and genres does not provide a perfect solution to a tutor’s lack of subject matter knowledge. While it may not prove helpful to directly teach the relevant technical material to tutors during tutor training, focusing on the basics of genre can provide a necessary bridge. In examining their own experience of tutors with and without subject matter knowledge, Dinitz and Harrington find that when a tutor has experience in the subject matter a student is writing about, they are able to “be more directive in ways that enhance collaboration” (74). However, they also acknowledge that tutor confidence plays a major role in the session quality when tutors lack experience in students’ subject matter. Dinitz and Harrington note that tutors may have felt the “session needed to move in a different direction but seemed to lack the confidence to push back on students’ ideas, assessments of their work, and goals for the session” (94), ultimately holding students back from reaching their true potential in the session.

The tutor training method used in this study addresses the issue of tutor confidence, ideally providing students with the most effective writing assistance possible.

Providing assignment-specific training to the tutors has the potential to improve the quality of sessions (Weissbach & Pflueger, 215).

Embedded Tutoring Embedded tutoring is another effective method of discipline-specific tutoring that incorporates a tutor within the structure of a course. Some programs have included tutors actually in a class section to offer individual tutoring, while others have included writing workshops during content-class time (Dansereau, et al.) and, when using specialist tutors with experience in the discipline, showed improvement in student grades (74).

The tutor-training method in this study is not strictly an embedded model. In an embedded model, the writing tutor visits the class and works with the instructor, often within the class time. In this novel method, the students are introduced to the writing center by the instructor and the director of the center, but do not encounter peer tutors until they arrive at their appointment in the center. Peer tutors are trained on the specific assignment, but they are never integrated into the class.

Assignment-Specific Tutor Training Using tutors who have already been trained in assignment-specific pedagogical methods can be of great benefit to students. There can be just as much

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benefit for the tutors as well. If tutors are provided with a layman’s understanding of the tutee’s vocabulary and subject matter, they may be better prepared to give useful feedback and feel as if they have better control of the session (Scrocco). Training writing tutors for specific assignments can help them to feel less intimidated by the material and more capable of helping the student improve their writing (Weissbach & Pflueger, 208). Additionally, specialized training may improve the quality of tutoring that a student may receive, advancing their writing capabilities within the genre they will ultimately use in a professional setting. Both Carino and Diana Awad Scrocco reinforce the potential benefits this methodology brings to the tutoring process, as tutors can adapt to material that is unfamiliar to them through seeing examples of what instructors expect, “even if only in the form of copies of successful papers from past students” (113). The novel tutor training method used

by Robert S. Weissbach and Ruth C. Pflueger (214215) provides just this kind of instruction to assist peer tutors in successfully helping students improve knowledge of discipline-specific writing genres. Tutors are thoughtfully trained in the details of tutoring specific types of assignments. Additionally, tutors’ responses in the tutor training session are a central point of the training, and these tutors are able to take ownership of their learning during the process so they can better help the students. Tutors are given information about the content of the class; details of the specific assignment and specialized terminology are explained. They are given samples of the reports they will see so they can identify features of a “good report” in comparison to a report that needs significant improvement. All of this takes place approximately one week prior to the tutoring so it is fresh in their minds.

For these reasons, this current study replicated and expanded upon the original study to gather additional insights.

Methods All study information was submitted to the IUPUI Institutional Review Board (IRB) and was approved with exempt status (IRB protocol #1805345879).

Sample For this study, student participants from two U.S. universities–one in the Midwest (Site 1) and one in the Southwest (Site 2)–were recruited from a one-semester engineering course where the instructor agreed to participate by assisting with the tutor training.

Participation included a required visit to the writing center for one specific writing assignment in that

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course. Tutor participants were recruited by the writing center directors. In total, six tutors tutored (and completed logs for) fifteen students, four of which were from Site 1 and eleven of which were from Site 2.

Instruments and Data Collection Assignment-specific tutor training provided tutor participants with a non-technical explanation of the report assignment given by the class instructor. The instructor and PIs reinforced the tutors’ training, explaining that their skill set was a valuable resource for the engineering students they would be tutoring.

Tutors were provided with examples of good and poor lab reports for that particular assignment, as well as the tutor checklist and tutor log. At the end of the training session, tutors completed the tutor pre-participation survey. This survey collected information about tutor confidence levels and experience with tutoring engineering students prior to participation.

Classroom visits to the engineering class sections participating in the study were conducted by the PI and the director of the writing center. Students were provided with information about the study and were invited to participate. Although the course required students to visit the writing center as part of their assignment, their participation in the study was voluntary and did not affect the student’s ability to complete the class or their grade. Those students who elected to participate in the study were given student pre-participation study information forms and an initial survey. The form explained the study in writing and provided participant consent from the student, and the survey collected initial information about the engineering students’ individual perception of the potential for writing tutors to effectively help them improve their lab reports. Students who agreed to participate in the study also allowed the PIs to look at a (deidentified) copy of their report draft before tutoring and after revising (the final version submitted to the instructor).

Tutors completed a tutor log for each student who visited the writing center after completion of the session. After the conclusion of the study, postparticipation surveys were administered to students and tutors. Students were given a post-participation survey to re-evaluate their perception of the effectiveness of a writing tutor in helping them improve their lab reports.

Writing tutors were given a post-participation survey to evaluate their confidence in their ability to effectively tutor engineering students following their experience in the study.

Although all data were analyzed, only data from the tutor post-session evaluation and the student presurvey instruments were utilized for this analysis, since

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they were the only ones to show statistical significance.

While the other instruments did show potentially favorable results, a larger sample size is needed to determine significance. The tutor post-session survey statements that tutors responded to are provided in Table 1.

A survey was given to student participants both pre-session and post-session with slight modification to tense. For example, if the pre-survey stated “I feel that a writing tutor can show me. . .” the post-survey stated “the writing tutor showed me. . .” Emails were sent to students using the Qualtrics online survey instrument both before and after their session. All questions on the survey used a four-point Likert scale including strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree. A scale-score mean was established for each student by averaging their responses across the survey.

Table 2 provides the student pre-survey statements.

Results and Analysis Statistical Analysis All analyses were run using SPSS v26. For tutors at each university, a multiple linear regression was calculated to predict how a tutor rated the initial quality of a student’s work before tutoring, the student’s attitude before tutoring (as measured by their pre-score average mean), and the tutor’s perception of whether or not the student was interested in their suggestions about content. A significant regression equation was found (F(3,11)=5.298, p<.05), with an R2 of .591 and an adjusted R2 of .479. The model predicted that the quality score is equal to .849 + -2.707 (Location) + 2.822 (If interested in content suggestions) + 1.751 (Student pre-scale mean), where location is coded as 1 or 2, interest in content suggestions is coded as 0 or 1, and student pre-scale mean ranges from 1 to 4. Both location and student interest in content suggestions were statistically significant. The coefficient output can be found in Table 3 below. No other models run were significant or provide the predictive power of this model.

Figure 1 shows a scatterplot of the tutor-assessed quality of the students’ initial paper versus the aggregated standardized values of the independent variables. This indicates that there is a probable correlation between the tutor rating of the initial quality of the student work, the student attitude before tutoring, and the tutor’s perception of whether or not the student was interested in their suggestions about content at Site 2. Additional data should be collected with larger Ns to determine if any other correlations exist.

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Student Attitudes Toward the Writing Center The data from the multiple regression analysis suggests that students’ attitude toward the writing center could be a factor in their engagement during the tutorial. In this study, we are defining student engagement as taking notes and/or asking questions during the tutorial.

When asked if they had previously used a writing center, of the total of 11 students at Site 2, eight students responded “no” and three students responded “yes.” Two engineering students who had previously used the writing center had used it only for general, non-course-related writing. This could imply that the students in this sample did not see the connection between the writing in their first-year composition courses and the writing in their engineering courses. If this is true, this is something that often signifies a lack of genre awareness and the ability to transfer one type of writing knowledge to another (Kohn; Devitt, 216217). Helping these students to understand that relationship could be beneficial.

Students’ responses to other items on their preparticipation questionnaire indicate that, while they may not have visited a writing tutor prior to this, they felt as though there was value in working with a tutor, which could also be a factor in how much they choose to engage in the tutorial. Table 4 shows that the engineering students perceived an inherent value in tutoring when asked how they thought a writing tutor may be able to help them improve their work.

The data in Table 4 suggests that these engineering students—with the exception of one “disagree”—all strongly agreed or agreed with the statements that a writing tutor would be able to help them with the quality of their lab reports. Interestingly, the statement with the lowest amount of agreement overall was “I feel that a writing tutor can help me follow the proper format and referencing of figures in my report.”

Further investigation of this statement may provide us with more detailed information of the perception of figures and tables that engineering students have about their reports and why they feel less confident in a writing tutor’s ability to help them in that specific area.

Overall, the results show a high perceived value of writing tutors within the engineering student sample analyzed in this study.

Tutor Perception of Student Engagement The other statistically significant variable was the data from the tutor post-session evaluations. Tables 5 and 6 display the engagement that tutors reported from observing the engineering students during their sessions and the tutors ranking of their agreement with the statements about student engagement.

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This data supports student engagement in the sessions, with tutors reporting that ten of the eleven students strongly agreed or agreed that students were receptive to suggestions and wanted to understand the reasons/rules behind those suggestions. Eight of the eleven asked questions during the session, and only one student indicated that the tutor needed to have specialized knowledge about the subject matter in order to tutor the subject matter. The relationship between the student and the tutor seems to be one of mutual understanding: both perceive a value that the tutor is able to provide to the student. Based on the significance of the relationship between these two variables, it seems as though the tutor training may have created an environment within the writing center that prompted the engineering students to be more receptive to the tutors’ suggestions.

There were also three written comments from tutors in the session evaluations that indicate students were engaged in the session and actively sought information from the tutor. Two mention student receptivity or responsiveness: The student did not seem to know at first that his writing should connect with a general audience.

However, he was receptive when I suggested that he define the technical terms. and The student was responsive to my suggestions and was quick to understand my reasoning.

The third comment describes a situation in which schedule deterred the tutor and student from having a full session, although it does not speak to the quality of the session itself: The session felt short because I was finishing my shift, and the student had to leave to a class, unable to stay and wait for another tutor.

The results from the tutors’ point of view indicate that they felt as though the engineering students were receptive to their comments and seemed to be engaged in the session. Three students left comments that support the quantitative data as well: “It honestly was a good resource,” “Keep it up,” and “Wonderful to work with” were the comments left by students. While this data could be dependent upon a number of variables, the statistical significance of the relationship indicates that although there is a small N for this sample, there is a relationship that cannot be explained purely by chance and is worth further exploration.

Future Studies Results of this study cannot be generalized because of the small N; however, the institutions involved are continuing to conduct research and improve the

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training based on results. While not an embedded tutoring program, this model does show promise for assignment-specific tutor training. Future research should include continued replication and expansion to test larger sample sizes, analysis of impact within and adaptations for other STEM areas, tutor self-efficacy, instructor and the impact of using this method on tutoring team projects. Other potential areas for future research could include looking at the combined direct and non-direct approach and implications for populations who speak English as an additional language.

One of the major barriers to beginning a program within a writing center is the issue of allocation of time and funds. As stated previously, writing centers are often underfunded and lack resources. This new type of training can benefit institutions because it relies on existing resources. Although there is an initial investment of time from the instructors, it is expected that the student writing in the final assignments will improve, which has the potential to reduce instructor workload. This needs to be tested and examined further. In addition, once refinements are made, this model can be adapted to and tested in a variety of contexts. Investigation of other STEM disciplines and classes may provide additional data to further elucidate the effects of this type of training on both students and tutors.

Instructor emphasis of the value of the writing center to the students was not examined here and could play a part in student attitudes toward the writing center. Future iterations of this study may benefit from looking at instructor perceptions of and emphasis on writing skill development. Current literature within the field suggests that some STEM instructors do not place a strong emphasis upon writing as a skill to be developed within the STEM classes (Kohn), which suggests that this may be an area of further investigation.

In addition, in future studies it would be interesting to look at demographic data students. In particular, gathering demographic data may alert writing centers to challenges that students who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) face when learning to write within their discipline. EAL students are faced with the task of working within a second language as they are “simultaneously encountering and negotiating new national, local, institutional, and disciplinary cultures” (Craig, 215). Studies suggest that EAL students may benefit from a mix of directive and non-directive tutoring (Craig, 231-232; Thonus, 239240). Collecting further data may better inform the instruments and methods in future iterations.

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Since many classes within STEM fields include a variety of team projects, the utilization of this method within team or group tutoring sessions seems to be a natural next step. Teamwork within an academic setting is a valuable precursor to the necessary collaboration in the workplace, especially for STEM students. By preparing students during their academic career, they may be better prepared for group collaboration and writing for a variety of audiences and purposes when they arrive in the workplace.

Future replication of this study may also provide the larger sample sizes necessary to find potential statistical significance among a greater number of variables. The small N of this study limited the measurement of external validity that could be obtained. With further replication, external validity could be increased by expansion to a number of settings. This may include institutions of a variety of sizes or demographic makeups. In this small sample, it appears that writing centers are perceived as being valuable by engineering students, and although more research needs to confirm this, it is possible that by training the tutors in discipline-specific writing conventions, students may become more engaged in their own writing improvement. Continued research in this area will contribute to the improvement of tutor training programs and the important work of writing centers.

Works Cited Berghmans, Inneke, et al. “A Typology of Approaches to Peer Tutoring: Unraveling Peer Tutors’ Behavioural Strategies.” European Journal of Psychology of Education, vol. 28, no. 3, 2013, pp. 703723. BASE, doi:10.1007/s10212-012-0136_3.

Boquet, Elizabeth H. “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions.”

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Carino, Peter. “Power and Authority in Peer Tutoring.” The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship, edited by Pemberton, Michael A., and Joyce A. Kinkead, Utah State UP, 2003, pp. 96-113.

Craig, Jennifer. “Unfamiliar Territory.” Tutoring Second Language Writers, edited by Bruce, Shanti, and Bennet A. Rafoth, Utah State UP, 2016, pp. 212234.

Dansereau, David, et al. “Building First-Year Science Writing Skills with an Embedded Writing Instruction Program.” Journal of College Science Teaching, vol. 49, no. 3, 2020, pp. 66-75.

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Devet, Bonnie. “The Writing Center and Transfer of Learning: A Primer for Directors.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 35, no. 1, 2015, pp. 119-151. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43673621.

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Devitt, Amy. “Transferability and Genres.” Locations of Composition, edited by Keller, Christopher J., and Christian R. Weisser, State U of New York P, 2007, pp. 215-227.

Dinitz, Sue, and Harrington, Susanmarie. “The Role of Disciplinary Expertise in Shaping Writing Tutorials.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 2014, pp. 73-98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43443372.

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Specialist: Making Connections Between Genre Theory and Writing Center Pedagogy.” Praxis, vol.

11, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-5. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/62041.

Haider, Mehwish, and Yasmin, Aalyia. “Significance of Scaffolding and Peer Tutoring in the Light of Vygotsky’s Theory of Zone of Proximal Development.” International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 1, no. 3, 2015, pp. 170173. http://www.ijlll.org/vol1/33-L310.pdf.

Haskell, Robert E. Transfer of Learning: Cognition, Instruction, and Reasoning. Academic Press, 2001, EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =cat06315a&AN=iui.15298222&site=eds-live.

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45, no. 6, 1983, pp. 594-599. JSTOR Journals, doi:10.2307/377146.

Kohn, Liberty L. “Can They Tutor Science? Using Faculty Input, Genre, and WAC-WID to Introduce Tutors to Scientific Realities.”

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Becoming Wiser: The Platonic Dialogue as a Pragmatic Model for Writing Center Practice.”

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Thonus, Terese. “What Are the Differences? Tutor Interactions with First- and Second-Language Writers.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 13, no. 3, 2004, pp. 227-242. BASE, doi:10.1016/s1060-3743(04)00015-3.

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Appendix Tables and Figures

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Table 1: Tutor Post-Session Survey Statements

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Table 2: Student Pre-Participation Survey

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Table 3: Coefficients of Multiple Linear Regression Model

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Figure 1: Scatterplot Showing the Multiple Linear Regression Model

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Table 4: Student Pre-Participation Survey Results

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Table 5: Student Engagement During Session

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Table 6: Tutor Agreement of Student Engagement

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THE IMPORTANCE OF INTENTION: A REVIEW OF MENTORING FOR WRITING CENTER PROFESSIONALS Maureen McBride University of Nevada, Reno mmcbride@unr.edu Abstract This article reviews existing research about mentoring within writing center studies and other disciplines, including research on traditional and alternative mentoring models for professionals. The benefits of professional mentoring are well documented in other disciplines; however, there is a significant gap in research on mentoring for writing center professionals. The authors examine their own mentoring experiences through three lenses—career advancement, professional identification, and personal development—to discuss how their participation in the International Writing Centers Association Mentor Match Program has benefited them. Based on these experiences, the authors outline recommendations for the Mentor Match Program and the discipline more broadly, including the importance of developing professional guidelines, formal training, and additional resources for mentors and mentees. The article concludes by arguing that the complex and isolationary nature of writing center labor requires an organized effort to support writing center professionals by developing a formal mentoring program.

“A good mentor can help you be your best self” (Lukas). In fact, some scholars speculate that the relationship between mentor and mentee may be one of the most developmentally important for an individual’s professional life (Solansky 676). These simple but important claims highlight the benefits of mentorship. However, access to mentoring is not readily available to many professionals in higher education (Darwin and Palmer). In their article, Anne Geller and Harry Denny discuss how the unique aspects of writing centers impact individuals and may create missed opportunities to professionalize the discipline. Nicole Caswell et al. explain that “the picture of writing center administration work remains blurry. Writing center administration continues to be misunderstood and undervalued, and very few new directors believe they are well-prepared for the actual work of running a writing center” (A3). The complexities of writing center labor suggest that preparing people for this work is difficult and there are few models for disciplinary identity available to new or transitioning professionals.

Within writing center scholarship, many professionals talk about mentoring for peer tutors and graduate students. While this is an important area of research, there is a gap in research and resources for professionals within the field. In fact, most books explore mentoring for peer tutors or graduate students,

Molly Rentscher University of the Pacific mrentscher@pacific.edu but only three of 35 books we surveyed about writing center work over the last 25 years explicitly discuss mentoring for writing center professionals (WCPs).

Since WCPs must “navigate the complex rhetorical, political, and pedagogical work” (Rowan 13) as well as oversee the day-to-day responsibilities of their centers—accounting, budgets, human resource concerns, recruiting, training staff, etc.—the importance of professional mentoring is high. For many WCPs, hands-on experiences and mentorship are the primary ways that the complexities of writing center administration are learned; similarly, Katrina Bell claims that experience is the greatest guide for directing a writing center. Ultimately, most formal education programs cannot address the full range of knowledge and experiences that are needed to perform all of the expected job functions (Bell; Murray and Owen), and mentoring can help fill that gap.

In fact, since not all WCPs start in writing center studies, it may be necessary to take a broader view of how to professionalize within writing center administration. Christopher Ervin notes that in 2002, 58% of director positions were held by non-tenure eligible faculty and staff; by 2003, new data suggested that number could be 69% (A8). Caswell et al. state that “writing centers continue to be directed by a diverse set of people from varied backgrounds” and typical routes for preparing future directors (i.e. graduate programs) may not have fully prepared many of the current directors (A7). Writing center directors are required to handle disciplinary, emotional, and daily operational responsibilities (Caswell et al.). With this range of labor, directors may need to learn some skills on the job. Opportunities for reflection, discussions of campus politics and how to navigate them, and scenarios and case studies—all potential topics and activities that occur within mentoring partnerships— may be necessary.

Many WCPs often have to create their own positions and responsibilities, something that few academics have experience doing. While some people may assume that composition is equivalent to writing center studies, first-year and writing in the disciplines (WID) program administrators often have different histories than WCPs, suggesting the need for mentors

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within writing center studies rather than colleagues influence on the professional development of the from composition, even if proximity between mentor mentee (Allen and Poteet 62). Stephanie Solansky and mentee are sacrificed (Geller and Denny). As describes the mentoring partnership as “a complex mentors, WCPs can help those new to writing center relationship based on a social exchange between at work advance “their writing centers, themselves, the least two individuals” (676). Throughout mentoring’s profession, and the discipline” (Rowan 121). Geller history it has been touted as a way for new and Denny suggest WCPs need to look at professionals to increase their networking nontraditional ways of defining our discipline, our opportunities, often leading to research and scholarship, and our professional roles. This call publication, as well as to enhance career opportunities supports the need to develop a mentoring/professional and job satisfaction (Darwin; Darwin and Palmer; relationship model to help guide this work and to help Kunselman et al.; Rowan). In fact, any mentoring, develop disciplinary identity. either formal or informal, has been shown to provide Since 2003, there have been promising efforts to advantages over people who do not have mentors support WCPs with the complexities of writing center (Allen and Poteet 70). Frankie Weinberg and Melenie administration. The International Writing Centers Lankau state, “Mentoring has been found to have Association (IWCA) organizes a Summer Institute, a profound positive impacts on individuals, and so one-week program to allow for new and experienced organizations have attempted to replicate these WCPs “to work with leaders from the field in wholebenefits by implementing formal mentoring programs” group workshops, small-group discussions, and one(1527-1528). More recently, the traditional models and on-one conversations” (“Summer Institute Leadership underlying theories of mentoring have been challenged, Track”). The St. Cloud State University Writing Center specifically with feminist perspectives, such as those of Administration certificate program provides four Joyce Stalker and Ann Darwin. The following review online courses open to graduate students and WCPs to of literature provides an overview of traditional examine issues like navigating institutional relationships mentoring, alternative mentoring, and writing-centerand developing research projects (Mohrbacher). And, specific mentoring. over the last few years, the IWCA has sponsored a special interest group around WCP mentorship at their Mentoring Models annual conference, which has had remarkable Traditionally, mentoring has had a history framed attendance. Finally, the IWCA currently offers the from a functionalist perspective in which the goal is to Mentor Match Program (MMP), a program connecting increase efficiency (of an individual’s career trajectory new professionals with more experienced WCPs. as well as from an organizational perspective of work Certainly, there are many successful stories that have production) (Darwin; Kunselman et al.). In this model, emerged from the IWCA MMP; the authors of this mentor and mentee are matched in a dyad with the article being an example of a successful MMP mentor possessing more power than the mentee both mentoring partnership. However, although the MMP professionally and within the mentor-mentee uses the term “program,” it primarily serves to match relationship. This top-down model positions a person mentors and mentees and has not fostered a formal more advanced in their career, or “wiser,” with a new structure, creating a looseness that is flexible but also professional in a one-to-one relationship (Haggard et inconsistent. al.; Stalker). This can be an effective model when new This article examines existing research about directors enter with little experience, helping them feel mentoring within writing center studies and from other less isolated, building their professional confidence, disciplines. Our goal is to use our experiences and and making them more likely to serve as mentors and existing scholarship to discuss mentoring models that in other professional capacities (Hardesty et al.). can support the development of professional capacity The competitive nature of higher education can and confidence as well as develop the discipline. sometimes influence mentoring relationships to be hierarchical (Darwin and Palmer). Because of the Literature Review higher percentages of males in senior leadership Mentoring in professional settings, specifically in positions, there is criticism that the functional model institutions of higher education, had an upsurge in the perpetuates paternalistic patterns of hierarchy late 1970s and early 1980s (Kunselman et al.; Stalker).

(Darwin). The term “mentor” implies certain Mentoring, both formal and informal, has been interactions, specifically regarding who has power conceptualized as a partnership with a mentor who (mentor) and who is the respondent (mentee) guides, sponsors, or has a positive and significant (Buckley), which may have constraining effects on the Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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potential of mentoring relationships to move away perspectives (Darwin and Palmer 126) and may include from a patriarchal model. These traditional models of the same benefits of mentoring dyads, specifically the mentoring frame the learning as top-down from reduction of feelings of isolation, increased confidence, mentor to mentee; however, viewing knowledge career advancement, and a better understanding of development as a dynamic process that is reciprocal culture and politics within higher education (Darwin). and participatory offers more benefits (Kunselman et Mentoring circles also disrupt the patriarchal, al.). Additionally, the cycle of traditional mentoring hierarchical traditional mentoring relationship by relationships may risk reaffirming existing power encouraging support to come from peers and senior structures rather than providing opportunities to members of the circle (Darwin and Palmer). The disrupt them (Rowan; Stalker). Advances in technology advantages to models like constellations, mosaics, and and increased attention to diversity and inclusivity have circles is that individuals have access to a network of changed the workplace and suggest that alternative people rather than just an individual (Darwin and models of mentoring are better suited to our new Palmer). workplace situations (Darwin 200-202).

The types of mentoring relationships available to Moving away from traditional models of WCPs may naturally disrupt the traditional model by mentoring provides for a range of mentoring the very nature of distance and difference in responses, which typically focus on lateral and multiinstitutions (including politics, structure, etc.), and connection approaches (Stalker 363). Dana Haggard et encourage a more collegial relationship in such al. claim that three core attributes play a crucial role in mentoring models as the IWCA MMP. Julie the effectiveness of a mentoring relationship: Kunselman et al. note that looking for mentoring reciprocity, developmental benefits, and consistent outside of an organization or institution may offer a interaction over time—these core attributes lead to a more holistic perspective of professionalism and career learning partnership instead of a hierarchical structure identification. Karen Rowan labels mentoring outside (292-293). In basic contrast to traditional models, of a home department as network-based, which is mentoring that emerges organically from existing likely a necessity for WCPs because of the lack of relationships, such as peer mentoring and collaborative colleagues in similar positions on their campuses or at mentoring, breaks with the power structures of their institutions (Geller and Denny). Moving away traditional mentoring (Bynum). Another approach that from the power structures of a specific institution may focuses on co-learning, rather than a hierarchical, allow mentoring partners to dislocate themselves from patriarchal approach, the radical humanist perspective, the competitive, hierarchical nature and gain potential allows for power relations to be challenged and for more transformation (Stalker). mentoring to be less focused on a role and instead used In addition to the traditional and alternative as a way of characterizing a relationship (Angelique et models of mentoring, the concepts of formal al.; Kunselman et al.). In this framework, mentoring is mentoring and informal mentoring play an important collaborative and risks are taken by all members; roles role in understanding the nuances of mentoring as well are transcended and language frames members as as being able to effectively develop mentoring colleagues rather than using the traditional mentorprograms. For many years, informal mentoring, in mentee terminology (Kunselman et al. 206). Potential which a mentor and a mentee naturally develop a limitations of the peer, co-learning approach may be relationship without any third party assistance, was the that career advancement benefits are fewer; however, standard (Allen et al.). In the 1980s, however, with psychosocial benefits are higher (Angelique et al. 199). shifts in the workforce, such as more women and With shifts in work life, a collection of mentoring minorities and greater need to change jobs or adapt to relationships that combines diverse people and new roles, companies started considering how formal perspectives, often described as a mentoring circle, mentoring programs could be effectively implemented constellation, or mosaic, may better support mentees, (Murray and Owen). The key distinction with formal specifically women in higher education leadership roles mentoring is that the relationship is initiated by a third (Searby et al.). Darwin and Edward Palmer offer party (Allen et al.; Wanberg et al.). There are mixed mentoring circles as an alternative approach because results from studies about the benefits of each type of circles focus on collaborative interactions and mentoring; however, many scholars have results that “typically involve one mentor working with a group of suggest informal mentoring provides more career and mentees or groups of people mentoring each other” psychosocial support than formal mentoring (Allen et with “a facilitator to keep conversations focused and al.). Incorporating training and support within formal productive” (Darwin and Palmer 126). The benefits of mentor programs, however, may improve results mentoring circles are the generation of multiple because training helps participants to establish higher Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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levels of comfort within relationships sooner (Allen et assumptions about the benefits of mentoring: Having a al.). Voluntary participation has also been shown to mentor reduced role conflict and ambiguity and improve results, as well as attention to trust, which is increased organizational commitment. Ultimately, particularly important in formal relationships (Chun et Blackhurst claimed that mentoring may be crucial to al.). the success of individual women and the elimination of Understanding how the use of e-mentoring, gender inequity in higher education. sometimes referred to as computer-mediated Stalker specifically identifies three benefits from communication (CMC), affects mentoring relationships traditional models of mentoring: career advancement, is an important component of any formal program personal development, and professional identification. mentoring that uses video chat, email, or phone for “A mentor who makes available the full range of these participants to engage in the relationship (Ensher and three mentoring functions to his or her protege will Murphy). Ellen Ensher and Susan Murphy and provide more valuable mentoring support to his or her Haggard et al. claim that e-mentoring helps to cut protege, thus resulting in more developmental benefits across institutional and geographic boundaries and may and more positive mentoring relationships” (Weinberg make mentoring programs more egalitarian. There are and Lankau 1531). The ability to make professional several advantages to computer-mediated connections through mentoring relationships is often communication: “access to a greater number of identified as the primary career benefit because mentors, greater flexibility in forming and sustaining mentoring leads to opportunities for research, relationships, and reduction of demographic and presentations, and publications. For professional personality barriers in traditional mentoring” (Haggard development, mentees learn ways to adapt to their et al. 297). However, there are also important academic environments and navigate politically within disadvantages that must be understood, such as the their institutions and professional disciplines (Stalker increased amount of time required to establish trust 364). The personal development of mentees is often an within the relationship and lower levels of commitment increase in confidence and a more accurate to the mentoring relationship (Ensher and Murphy). understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses Organizations specifically benefit from supporting (Stalker 364). Personal development is seen as the area mentoring relationships because participants end up of mutual benefit for both mentors and mentees with a better understanding of the organization or because of the self-awareness that is developed field, leading to higher rates of retention and leadership throughout the relationship (Stalker 364). within the organization (Chun et al.; Ensher and In addition to these benefits, mentoring has been Murphy). Formal programs are especially important linked to several challenges, one of which is the lack of when informal mentoring is not readily available a clear definition. Barry Bozeman and Mary Feeney (Ensher and Murphy), which is often the case for explain that without clear distinctions of what WCPs. Professionals who have been mentored are also mentoring is and what it isn’t, it can easily be confused more likely to become mentors, which expands “an with other concepts: “In most instances it is not easy organization’s human and social capital” (Chun et al.). to sort mentoring from adjacent concepts such as training, coaching, socialization, and even friendship” (735). The variability of what “qualifies” as mentoring Benefits & Challenges may create gaps in knowledge about how mentoring Mentoring has been linked to several benefits that can most effectively be structured. range from career advancement to increased selfRowan points to several claims that mentoring is a confidence to personal satisfaction (Darwin and natural, given part of writing center studies. She Palmer; Wright and Wright). Generally, both mentors cautions, however, that we need to be more intentional and mentees claim to benefit from the relationship. In about mentoring approaches because “good a meta-analysis of mentoring research, Tammy Allen et intentions” aren’t always enough. Kunselman et al. al. identified career benefits such as salary level, caution that mentoring is more than just giving advice promotion rate, exposure and visibility, career (199). Criticisms of formal mentoring programs include satisfaction, job satisfaction, career commitment, participants not knowing what they are doing or turnover intentions, and organizational life; they also expected to do (Darwin and Palmer 132). Most studies identified psychosocial benefits such as self-esteem, that include suggestions for improving mentoring work identity, sense of competence, role modeling, relationships suggest more resources, training, and counseling, and friendship. Anne Blackhurst’s results, support for mentors. In Liz Buckley’s research from her survey research of women administrators in examining email writing center mentor-mentee higher education, confirmed long-standing interactions (focused on graduate students and faculty Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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members), she notes that mentors requested more however, I was excited to enroll in the MMP to meet guidance and felt unsure about questions and other WCPs and pursue new professional expectations (4). Monica Gandhi and Mallory Johnson opportunities that might be available through the note that a robust training program for mentors is IWCA. typically absent. They suggest that a training program When I met Maureen in 2017, I was a recent should provide support for mentors in the following graduate and new writing center director. Although my areas: maintaining effective communication, aligning education and past writing center experiences as an expectations, assessing understanding, addressing undergraduate consultant, graduate consultant, and diversity, fostering independence, and promoting administrator prepared me well for the director professional development. Buckley highlights the need position, I sometimes felt unprepared for the to have support for troubleshooting technology complexities of writing center labor. I was eager to concerns and for setting expectations. Rowan grow professionally and focus on leadership skills, such concludes that having documents to help guide as developing strategic plans, navigating complex expectations and to clearly define roles within the political situations, and working with faculty across relationships helps both mentors and mentees. By disciplines. Maureen and I met several times at the creating a formal training program, standardization beginning of our mentoring relationship to articulate may be achieved which will validate mentoring as an professional goals, explore our own definitions of academic activity (similar to research or teaching). “mentoring,” and discuss expectations. These initial Trained mentors also model professional behaviors conversations were time-consuming, and I remember that are perpetuated throughout disciplines. feeling so thankful for Maureen’s investment in our Mentoring is distinguished from other forms of relationship. Over time, my conversations with support by the focus on a developmental relationship Maureen helped me feel more confident in my writing within a career context (Ensher and Murphy). Both center knowledge and abilities. They also helped me traditional and alternative mentoring models suggest identify short- and long-term professional development that mentors, specifically, and mentees need mentoring goals and connect skills to these goals, which resulted specific resources, including options for training in increased self-awareness. I pursued goals by (Bynum). Yvette Bynum suggests that “a truly effective engaging in a myriad of activities, such as presenting at mentoring program should be developed and local and international conferences, participating in implemented in a comprehensive and well-resourced service opportunities, and completing additional manner” (71). graduate coursework that ultimately advanced my career.

In addition to identifying areas for professional Examining Our Mentoring Experiences development and collaboratively pursuing In the literature, many scholars suggest that key opportunities for career advancement (i.e., conference benefits are career advancement, professional presentations and publications), Maureen encouraged identification, and personal development. We examine me to form other professional connections. At our mentoring experiences through these lenses in the conferences, Maureen introduced me to her colleagues following sections. and engaged me in conversations around my areas for development. Maureen’s willingness to connect me Career Advancement with other WCPs led to new relationships within my Mentee Expectations & Experiences local network, which were especially important because As a graduate student, I benefited greatly from the as a new writing center director in an unfamiliar city, I relationships I developed with faculty mentors in the had much to learn about local writing center writing center and in my composition and rhetoric communities. These relationships also provided a program. These relationships resulted in several career variety of perspectives that helped me develop a more advancement opportunities, including research, nuanced understanding of culture and politics within presentations, and publications. When I graduated, I writing centers and higher education more broadly. knew that I wanted to continue developing these Maureen and I have also had important relationships, but I also realized that I needed to grow conversations about promotion and leadership during my professional network. When I learned about the times of change—conversations that took place after IWCA MMP, I was thrilled. I was unsure what to trust and rapport had been built.

Maureen offered expect because the call for participants did not include guidance during periods of uncertainty at my information such as program objectives or logistics for institution, including approaches for collaborating with how mentoring relationships would be developed; others and navigating my fluctuating roles and Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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responsibilities, and our conversations helped me gain My conversations with Maureen were important spaces clarity in these areas and reduced role conflict where I could discuss principles and practices without (Blackhurst). My mentoring relationship with Maureen being evaluated or judged. Of course, I knew that has advanced my career in tangible and intangible ways, Maureen was an expert in the field, and there is risk and I can confidently say that I am more satisfied with associated with vulnerability, especially in hierarchical my career and more committed to the writing center mentoring relationships, but I viewed our meetings as field as a result of our mentoring relationship. spaces to be curious, honest, and open. For example, Maureen affirmed my perceived strengths in tutor Mentor Expectations & Experiences education and second language writing, but was I saw participation in the IWCA mentor program supportive and kind when I shared that I probably as providing me with an opportunity to advance my “underestimated the administrative and political career in terms of making broader connections with demands” of being a writing center director (Healy 37). other professionals in my field. With the opportunity To my surprise, I learned that I was not alone in this to interact with other WCPs, I knew that I would gain experience—that it’s common for directors to feel this insight into how other centers function, their obstacles, way, even with several years of writing center structures, values and could use that knowledge to help education and experience—and this realization helped my center. I believe that this level of professional me move forward without embarrassment or shame. interaction allows me more flexibility in my career by The ability to ask questions, explore research, and generating research opportunities, potential future discuss my emerging areas of expertise in our employment opportunities, and the ability to move up conversations reminded me of a successful tutor-tutee within professional affiliations. Additionally, as a relationship. In fact, Josephine Koster makes a woman, the need for professional connections helped compelling connection between tutoring and me to better identify with my position and reinforced professional mentoring and urges “the IWCA to make my commitment to my role and institution as seen in an organized effort to help writing center specialists Blackhurst’s study of women and mentoring in student develop these professional skills” (164). Koster affairs. Suzanne de Janasz et al. most closely capture explains that “in short, we should do for ourselves as the career connections I see in mentoring, which are WCAs [writing center administrators] what we do for related to the “boundaryless” nature of organizational our tutors: make sure the tools are available to give us structures and specifically of writing center studies. the best possible chance to negotiate understanding My participation in the IWCA MMP helped me with our audiences” (164-165). Because Maureen and I connect with other people in the field. Through my talked about institutional culture and structure, relationship with Molly, I met other professionals she professional relationships, and work with faculty, I knows, learned more about alternative conferences, both learned concepts related to these topics and and developed a richer understanding of the ways in practiced these skills with Maureen. In turn, I believe which Molly’s institutional contexts afford her these skills helped me develop a strong WCP identity. opportunities and create obstacles that I typically don’t Maureen’s affirmation of my strengths, enthusiasm face. All of this gave me perspective that I can use at for my areas of development, and eagerness to develop my institution and helped me better understand the a “learning partnership” (Stalker 292-293) gave me a complexities of writing center studies. As of this article, sense of belonging. Our IWCA MMP meetings were Molly and I have presented at one conference together, also one of the few consistent connections I had with are planning another conference presentation together, the field, as limited funding meant that I was unable to have worked on this article, and will likely plan future regularly attend writing center conferences. This sense scholarly projects together. As Alex Lyman claims, this of belonging was especially important when I decided gaining of perspective is a benefit back to me in my to make a significant geographical move to oversee the position as well as a way to support other development of a new graduate writing center, which professionals. among many things, involved collaborating with institutional stakeholders to develop a disciplinary identity for our center. My mentoring partnership with Professional Identification Maureen not only grounded me as I embarked on this Mentee Expectations & Experiences new adventure, but also guided me through important As I transitioned from being a graduate student decisions with regard to core principles (e.g., mission, administrator to a full-time writing center director, I core values, core beliefs) that were important for was confident in my knowledge and experience, but developing our writing center identity. nervous about my performance in this new position.

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Mentee Expectations & Experiences In addition to the psychosocial benefits described The isolation that is inherent in so much writing in the previous sections (e.g., affirmation, self-esteem, center work means that it is often difficult to have a work identity), my personal development has been an community of colleagues on our home campuses. To important albeit unexpected outcome of our mentoring this end, finding a way to have a professional identity partnership. Through our various conversations about requires a sense of a professional community in which writing center work, Maureen and I have discussed that identity exists. Mentoring offered me one of the work-life balance, self-care, and professional few opportunities to interact with other WCPs, gaining friendships within our institutions.

These a sense of disciplinary identity and finding models for conversations have been both organic and intentional. professional identities, as discussed in Geller and It was especially helpful to discuss prioritizing projects, Denny. managing requests, communicating boundaries, and As an established professional, it takes intentional developing healthy work habits—topics not often effort to optimize learning opportunities. Mentoring explicitly discussed in graduate school. Further, as I reinforces our understanding and ability to apply settled into my writing center director position, I found knowledge, and builds confidence as a professional. that it was important to have a confidant with whom I Lyman says, “To be kind to and confident in myself is could share frustrating experiences, as I am more the best way I can be a role model for others, and by hesitant to share negative emotions with my campus taking on the responsibility of mentorship, I am colleagues. For these reasons and more, Maureen and I reminding myself to strive for a higher standard.” By have planned to continue communicating and recognizing how I could support one person, I also collaborating beyond the MMP’s two-year cycle, and I learned more about my capacity to contribute to the am glad we have adapted our relationship to extend field more broadly: “When you mentor others, you beyond the designated time frame. gain critical skills to improve as a leader” (Lyman).

My experiences with the MMP have definitely Mentor Expectations & Experiences contributed to me feeling more connected with the The lack of similar writing center colleagues on a writing center studies because I have had to think single campus is socially isolating, so the opportunity intentionally about my choices to be able to explain to develop professional friendships is a welcome them to Molly and to engage in conversations about opportunity. The role of confidant is a common one our different political climates and institutional for mentors (Gandhi and Johnson). In Rowan’s structures, which demonstrates how serving as a examination of administrative professional mentor “gives mentors an audience for their ideas and development, she notes the importance of the feelings” (Wanberg et al. 414). Weinberg and Lankau psychosocial aspects of acceptance and confirmation. claim “committing to take part in the formal Helping mentees believe in themselves and find ways organizational mentoring program” demonstrates to establish routines of self-care are important. commitment to the program and organization Additionally, this becomes a reminder to establish or (Weinberg and Lankau 1537). I definitely experienced maintain these strategies for myself. this. Participating in the IWCA MMP was one of the While many people focus on professional identity first ways I moved beyond presenting at the annual and career advancement, the personal connections conference. The experiences I have had have also developed between participants in a mentoring made me care about the IWCA MMP in a way that I relationship can far exceed the other two benefits. In am committed to contributing to the future success of my interactions with Molly, I have learned that her this program. happiness within her work context and in her personal context are important to me. I care about cultivating a relationship that extends beyond mentor and mentee Personal Development and settles into personal colleague and friend. In Mentee Expectations & Experiences contrast, three other mentoring relationships through I joined the IWCA MMP in 2017 to expand my the IWCA MMP have actually been disappointing professional network, focus on my professional because I have not been able to connect with the other development, and connect with other WCPs. I was also mentees on a personal level in the same ways I have the only WCP on my campus, which was an isolating experienced with Molly. experience at times, and thus, saw the MMP as an opportunity to develop professional friendships and make a commitment to my professional development.

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and mutual mentoring language (where mentee and Recommendations mentor are asked to collaboratively coach one another) In our own experiences and in the available was a bit confusing and impeded our understanding of research about formal mentoring programs, setting the program’s purpose. standards and having specific goals and expectations are commonly noted as important components of a Training Program mentoring relationship. Most scholarship reviewed for Orientation or training for participants of a this article noted the need for guidelines and training to mentoring program sets consistent expectations for all help support the effectiveness of formal mentoring participants (Cranwell-Ward et al.). Jane Cranwellrelationships. We believe that it is imperative for Ward et al. suggest that orientations should help mentoring programs to set up success for participants participants understand that the mentoring relationship as much as possible. We are not, however, suggesting is more about developing potential rather than sharing that a mentoring program needs to be so rigid as to be or providing answers to problems. Orientations can without flexibility to adapt to different personalities, also help participants understand where to start and goals, and situations. how to end mentoring relationships. Since mentoring programs are typically formal and the match is assisted Professional Guidelines by a third party, “an initial orientation event might be A mentoring program should develop a set of used for the mentoring dyad to uncover points of professional guidelines to support the effectiveness of similarity” (Wanberg et al. 421). Martin and Sifers claim the program. Shannon Martin and Sarah Sifers explain that outcomes are improved when the sponsoring that “structured programs with established guidelines agency provides ongoing support/training and often result in better outcomes” (940). Guidelines specifies a goal for frequency of contacts because might include an operational definition of mentoring, a training leads to “greater mentor efficacy,” increasing set of core values or beliefs about mentoring that number of contacts and decreasing obstacles to anchor the program, a list of objectives, a detailed relationship building (Martin and Sifers 940-941). description of the mentoring program format (i.e., The content discussed in a training program traditional or alternative format) with mentor and should include the professional guidelines of the mentee roles clearly defined, a set of key skills mentoring program and other topics that either necessary for mentor and mentee roles, a detailed permeate or complement the professional guidelines. description of the stages of the mentoring relationship, In Allen and Mark Poteet’s research, the authors noted suggestions for how participants can be involved in the the potential for “training programs to complement the matching process, and a list of mentoring best selection of mentors” and to ensure that “mentors practices. have the levels of proficiency [e.g. communication The IWCA has identified some guidelines for the skills, ability to establish trust, flexibility]” to support MMP. When the IWCA first introduced the MMP in mentees (68-69). Additionally, “implementing formal 2011, the program’s goal was to pair “in-crisis writing mentoring programs that train participants on center professionals with geographically proximal emotional intelligence concepts may help to ensure colleagues for ongoing mutual mentoring and that the emotional needs of formal mentoring program collaboration” (“Year in Review”). The 2013 MMP call participants are met” (Chun et al. 445). This may be for participants did not explicitly mention especially important because many mentors selfmentor/mentee roles but communicated that the nominate and may not assess their communication and program had a flexible structure: “Mentors and coaching skills (Allen and Poteet 60). A training mentees will define the parameters of their program should prepare mentors and mentees to align relationship, including how and how often to expectations, assess understanding, address diversity, communicate” (Jordan). The 2017 call for participants foster independence, and promote professional built on this statement by communicating a traditional development (Allen and Poteet; Gandhi and Johnson). top-down format for the mentoring program: “The Beyond the interactive and interpersonal aspects of Mentor Match Program is designed to support new the mentoring relationship, a training program should writing center professionals by pairing them with more discuss the logistics of developing a successful experienced directors.” This information provided mentoring relationship. Understanding guidelines, some guidance when beginning our mentoring scheduling interactions, and troubleshooting partnership, but having clearer professional guidelines technology are a few important topics that should be would have improved our experience in the program. discussed before a mentoring partnership begins. In In particular, we believe that the top-down approach our experience, we discussed the frequency of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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interactions, scheduling, and technology by email in trainings/orientations (Cramwell-Ward et al.). Since our first meeting and then again by video in our second most mentoring within writing center studies occurs meeting. However, two years into our mentoring across institutions and often across geographical areas partnership, we shared that those initial interactions and time zones, having resources about the unique were a little awkward for both of us because although nature of e-mentoring could also be useful (Cramwellwe had “good intentions” (Rowan), we did not know Ward et al.). Additionally, in times of in-person what we were doing or expected to do (Darwin and restrictions due to COVID-19 e-mentoring may be the Palmer). only option that WCPs have available to interact with Mentoring program administrators could employ a mentoring partners. One of the resources we think variety of pedagogical methods in a training program. may be crucial to improve the success of a mentoring For example, role-playing scenarios could be provided program is to take up the concept of roadmaps to to practice providing feedback, how to allow determine why participants are seeking professional mentoring partners to make their own mistakes, and support and how they can build a mosaic of people to thinking through ways to receive feedback (Allen and help guide them to their goals (Montgomery 2). A Poteet 70). Martin and Sifer state that providing document like this could help participants learn more opportunities for participants to consider how to about each other, which has been shown to lead to problem-solve may lead to better mentoring outcomes. more effective discussions and a stronger sense of a A training program that addresses professional personal relationship (Montgomery 2). guidelines and key skills for a successful mentoring relationship better prepares those involved, which Disciplinary Recommendations possibly leads to higher retention of mentoring Given our own experiences and the lack of partnerships. A training program also saves mentors available research and scholarship about mentoring for and mentees time by creating less ambiguity and WCPs, we believe our discipline must do more to confusion, which is important because many WCPs support WCPs. The range of knowledge a WCP needs already struggle to find time within their busy to be effective is vast, and as Bell claims, the best schedules to participate in a mentoring program. And, support may be a mentor who can offer perspective finally, a training program helps professionalize the and friendship during the day-to-day experiences of mentoring program, potentially making it more writing center work. The IWCA took an important attractive to future mentors and mentees. Making the step in supporting WCPs by creating the MMP in 2011; training optional could be a way to avoid having too this program model frames learning as top-down and many required components or formalizing interactions pairs new WCPs with more experienced directors. too much (Hardesty et al.). Finally, by creating a formal Literature suggests that this hierarchical approach can training program, standardization may be achieved be an effective model when new directors enter with which will validate mentoring as an academic activity. little experience, helping them feel less isolated and building their professional confidence (Hardesty et al.).

Resources While literature also argues that a hierarchical approach The third component of a successful mentoring may preserve undesirable power structures (Angelique program is access to resources prior to and throughout et al.; Darwin; Kunselman et al.; Rowan; Stalker), the mentoring relationship. Resources might include a institutional differences in most WCPs mentoring handbook provided to mentors and mentees, training partnerships allow for a more collaborative partnership materials, discussion questions, or a curated collection (Geller and Denny; Rowan). Additionally, alternative of external print and electronic resources. The IWCA mentoring models offer participants a broader range of MMP provided a suggested reading list for mentors, mentoring partnerships through more group and bibliographies can be useful if participants have approaches (Darwin; Darwin and Palmer; Searby et al.). adequate time to read the selected literature. Other Rather than firmly offering and supporting one resources may include webinars about mentoring that approach, the MMP might offer participants more participants can access throughout their involvement in options and extend its impact through diverse pairing the program, online support groups for mentors to options, such as pairing new WCPs together or helping discuss mentoring successes and challenges, and participants build mentoring mosaics. discussion forums for participants. Additionally, The MMP model warrants a more robust resources about the importance of active listening, conversation about professional mentoring within our types of successful mentor/mentee behaviors, styles of discipline. The conversations should include program influencing, and how to receive feedback could be guidelines, processes, assessment, and logistical topics provided if they were not incorporated into (e.g., geography, sponsored visits to bring mentors and Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 3 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

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mentees together, financial sponsorship, and Works Cited participation costs). These conversations would help support the development of a strong, systematic Allen, Tammy D., et al. "Career Benefits Associated with mentoring program for WCPs: “When proper Mentoring for Protégés: A Meta-Analysis." Journal of consideration is afforded to the design of a program, it Applied Psychology, vol. 89, no. 1, 2004, pp. 127-136. is possible for formal mentoring programs to provide Allen, Tammy D., et al. "The Role of Interpersonal the same benefits as informal relationships” (Weinberg Comfort in Mentoring Relationships." Journal of Career and Lankau 1530). With our field having over 50% of Development, vol. 31, no. 3, 2005, pp. 155-169. our directors and staff from non-writing center Allen, Tammy D., and Mark L. Poteet. "Developing backgrounds, mentoring can be used to “support Effective Mentoring Relationships: Strategies from the recruitment and retention of individuals broadly” Mentor's Viewpoint." The Career Development Quarterly, (Montgomery 6). Mentoring can help professionals vol. 48, no. 1, 1999, pp. 59-73. who are new or transitioning into the field to navigate Angelique, Holly, et al. "Mentors and Muses: New “the gap between where they are currently and the Strategies for Academic Success." Innovative Higher role(s) and/or position(s) to which they aspire” Education, vol. 26, no. 3, 2002, pp. 195-209.

(Montgomery 6). While we know these conversations Archer, Arlene, and Shabnam Parker. "Transitional and are starting to occur, the immediacy of addressing Transformational Spaces: Mentoring Young Academics these concerns suggests we need to place more through Writing Centres." Education as Change, vol. 1, attention on WCPs’ mentoring opportunities. no. 1, 2016, pp. 43-58.

Understanding the role that IWCA MMP can play Baugh, S. Gayle, and Ellen A. Fagenson-Eland. “Formal in making WCP mentoring successful is an important Mentoring Programs: A ‘Poor Cousin’ to Informal consideration. The benefits of a successful mentoring Relationships?” The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: program are immense, leading to improved outcomes Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Belle R. Ragins for WCPs of all levels of experience, and ultimately, and Kathy E. Kram, Sage Publications, 2007, pp. 249trained mentors model professional behaviors that are 271. perpetuated throughout the discipline (Gandhi and Bell, Katrina. “Chapter 13: Our Professional Descendants: Johnson). A mentoring program is an investment in Preparing Graduate Writing Consultants.” How We our professionals and our discipline.

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REVIEW OF NEGOTIATING DISABILITY: DISCLOSURE AND HIGHER EDUCATION, EDITED BY STEPHANIE L. KERSCHBAUM, LAURA T. EISENMAN, AND JAMES M. JONES Cat Williams-Monardes Indiana University of Pennsylvania cs.williams.morades@gmail.com Today’s writing center administrators and tutors have grown increasingly invested in the intersections of writing center scholarship and Disability Studies, as scholars in the field have challenged us to attend to both our staff and students with disabilities. In this very journal’s 2015 special issue, Rebecca Babcock compiled disability-informed tutor pedagogies, Hillary Degner, et al. explored ways to create safe spaces for tutors, and Sharifa Daniels, et al. advocated strategies for inclusion while protesting the pathologizing of disability. In addition to these voices from within our community, however, we must seek out those beyond the walls of our centers and the pages of our journals.

We must seek out voices speaking to broader examinations of Disability Studies in the academy.

Only by welcoming critique from without can we inform our practices with the insight that comes from situating our experiences in a much larger context, expanding our vision to encompass the presence of disability in the university as a whole.

These outside voices resound in Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. In their introduction, editors Kerschbaum, Eisenman, and Jones state their goal to explore the complexities behind individual decisions to disclose disability in the university, taking an intersectional approach that considers factors both internal (e.g., identity) and external (e.g., available accommodations). They embark with the premise that disclosure is often politicallycharged and highly risky, especially for faculty and administrators, who are often left without the supports provided to students. Possibly the richest aspect of the collection is the plurality of visions and experiences brought together by the editors. Theoretical essays, autoethnographies, and empirical studies construct a comprehensive view of the accommodations, policies, and intercommunications that surround disability and disclosure. Evidenced by interviews, personal stories, and qualitative and quantitative data, the claims made in this collection charge faculty, staff, administrators, and graduate students entering the field to evolve ideologies and improve practices.

While directed towards this broader audience, Negotiating Disability proves relevant to everyone devoted to furthering the cause of accessibility.

IWCA’s 2019 conference “The Art of it All” held ten well-attended sessions on disability and accessibility in the writing center, spinning a common thread that is woven throughout Negotiating Disability: we cannot claim a commitment to diversity and inclusion until we are actively working to support our tutors and writers with disabilities, a process that demands implementing Universal Design attending to the voices of disability among us so that we might meet their unique needs as they arise. With this in mind, Negotiating Disability has the power to ignite and nurture conversations in the following areas: evolving tutor pedagogies, supporting staff with disabilities, and designing empirical studies to interrogate issues relating to disability.

The text is divided into four sections—identity, intersectionality, representation, institutional change and policy—each containing five chapters. The section on “Identity” calls for critical awareness of the many approaches to and embodiments of disability. The authors share pedagogical strategies and qualitative data that illustrate the instability disabled students often experience in the classroom.

In “Intersectionality,” the authors interrogate the pressure that those in higher education place on self-disclosure as a means to enact institutional change. In the writing center, as in the university at large, we must understand that students themselves recognize the many risks of disclosure. Through frameworks offered in Negotiating Disability, we can understand that a writer’s choice to share a disability with their tutor is a multifaceted decision with multifaceted effects.

The next two sections take up a different question: in what ways does the institution engage with disability? “Representation” stresses the need to develop healthy rhetorics that center disability within conversations on social justice and access to learning and university resources. “Institutional Change and Policy” dives into the tangible changes faculty and administrators can make to support students and faculty with disabilities, the latter of which are often

ignored. While reading these chapters, we should ponder two questions: (1) how can the writing center increase student (both writer and tutor) awareness of available services? And (2) how can the center spur institutional reform for disability alongside racial and linguistic reform?

When placed in the context of the writing center, two of the most intriguing chapters are those written

by Shahd Alshammari and Wendy S. Harbour, et al.

Alshammari’s chapter “A Hybridized Academic Identity: Negotiating a Disability within Academia’s Discourse of Ableism” interrogates the stigma surrounding disabilities—stigma that often leads academics to “pass” (i.e., choose not to disclose their disability to colleagues or students). With graceful strokes, Alshammari artistically blurs the line between abled and disabled, embracing the existence of a fluid state of being that empowers individuals with disabilities to transcend ableist barriers erected by the institution. While it has yet to receive the nuanced study it merits from our field, the concept of disclosure is critical to the writing center. Understanding the identity-based factors that influence students’ decisions to disclose to the academy at large helps us understand their decisions to disclose to individual tutors or to request accommodations from the center. Perhaps even more importantly, Alshammari teaches us the importance of imagining disability’s presence in every room regardless of whether someone has laid claim to it. For, more often than not, the disabilities that affect student writing are invisible.

In “‘Overcoming’ in Disability Studies and African American Culture: Implications for Higher Education,” Harbour, et al. grapple with the rhetoric of “overcoming” and its conflicting meanings to Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In Disability Studies, overcoming is treated as an oppressive concept that assumes people with disabilities must want to aspire to “normal” existences.

In contrast, Critical Race theorists find a far more positive meaning in “overcoming,” which evokes the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement. The most important takeaway from this chapter is to recognize how the multifaceted identities of every student demand intersectional understandings. Tutor training must emphasize that each student with disabilities has not only unique needs but also unique preferences on the ways their disability is articulated.

One reminder while reading this collection is to reflect on both the differences and similarities between the authors’ approaches to pedagogy and the institution versus those we might embody in our own centers. For instance, where Rocco and Collins (“An Initial Model for Accommodation Communication

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between Students with Disabilities and Faculty”) explore ways to successfully negotiate accommodations in the classroom, the writing center administrator should consider how knowledge of such conversations might benefit a tutor who works closely with a writer struggling to secure appropriate accommodations from their professor. Engaging with the collection in this read-and-reflect process will allow us to transpose and contextualize valuable lessons.

Negotiating Disability is an evocative reminder that those of us engaged in writing center work must consider and articulate the needs of specific disabled populations situated within and without our centers.

Only by doing so can we begin to grapple with the implications of disclosure as it affects our spaces.

Whether or not our staff and student writers choose to disclose, we must act upon our responsibility to cultivate safe spaces supportive of all disabilities.

Works Cited Babcock, Rebecca D. “Disabilities in the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/babcock131 Daniels, Sharifa, et al. “Writing Centers and Disability: Enabling Writers through an Inclusive Philosophy.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol.

13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/daniels-et-al-131 Degner, Hillary, et al. “Opening Closed Doors: A Rationale for Creating a Safe Space for Tutors Struggling with Mental Health Concerns or Illnesses.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/degneret-al-131 Kerschbaum, Stephanie, L., Eisenman, Laura T. and James M. Jones, editors. Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. U of Michigan P, 2017.

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BOOK REVIEW OF RADICAL WRITING CENTER PRAXIS: A PARADIGM FOR ETHICAL POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT BY LAURA GREENFIELD Debbie Goss Soka University of America dgoss@soka.edu An explicit and ongoing investment in dialogue about our ethics—and in fact a redefinition of the field as invested in a critical collective examination of the ethics of language production—would be revolutionary in practice.

—Laura Greenfield The rhetoric of campus discourse has been increasingly divisive since Donald Trump took office in 2016; concurrently, demands for social change are getting louder. My own campus climate is no exception. But what is the role of the writing center in this vertiginous landscape? Are we—campus centers of writing—innocent bystanders? Do we/can we make a difference? Laura Greenfield’s Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement calls for writing centers to prioritize peace and social justice as their primary raison d’etre. Dialogue, she says, is the praxis through which we can enact this mission. She challenges Stephen North’s instruction to change the writer not the writing (438), believing that change should lie instead in redefining “better writer” to mean one who heals others, who resists oppressive systems, who creates opportunities to liberate underprivileged people, who contributes to social or environmental justice, and who advances the cause of peace. In Greenfield’s own words, better writing could mean writers inspire readers to be kinder and more compassionate, to think critically about social injustices, or to take meaningful action for positive change. (47) Rather than focusing on making better writers per se, Greenfield’s radical praxis calls on consultants, and the writing center field at large, to focus on making a better world.

The book argues that without a core ethos of creating a just and peaceful world, the writing center field remains complicit in perpetuating oppression, marginalization, and even violence. Critiquing both conservative and progressive writing center practices, Greenfield calls on us to confront sociopolitical and ecological injustices that may arise in our centers. By harnessing decades of writing center social justice work, including her own edited volume, Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and

Change, Greenfield sees now as the time for writing center folk to look critically at our “perceptions and practices” (31). In Radical Writing Center Praxis, Greenfield builds on the emerging scholarship envisioning writing centers as a space for creating justice (e.g., Frankie Condon’s book I Hope I Join the Band: Narrative, Affiliation, and Antiracist Rhetoric; Beth Godbee, Moira Ozias, and Jasmine K Tang’s Body + Power + Justice; and Michele Miley’s article Feminist Mothering: A Theory/Practice for Writing Center Administration).

Collectively, Greenfield and, increasingly, others call on the field to critically question what the writing center does.

Greenfield aligns her argument with radical scholars such as Donald Macedo, Judith Butler, and Nancy Grimm, as well as these scholars’ definitions of radical. Transcending conservative–liberal binaries, Greenfield’s radical praxis means continual reflection on how writing center work perpetuates or disrupts social inequities. This reflection moves both tutor and tutee toward peace and justice in such a radically inspired writing center session. Likewise, writing centers, epicenters of our institutions, bear tremendous influence across our campuses and out into the world.

As one illustration of how a radical approach might view relationships in writing center consultations, Greenfield interrogates typical forms of student-centered pedagogy. The student-centered approach, if left unchecked, she explains, could force students to merely “survive unjust systems,” and “put the entire onus on the individual students to somehow figure out how to survive” (117). Greenfield warns that this approach to student centeredness runs the risk of overlooking injustices rather than fighting against them. This way, she calls for a move from the liberal to the radical in writing center praxis.

It is helpful that the book is chock-full of these kinds of concrete examples. Story-telling, for instance, can disrupt social inequities. During consultations, tutors could elicit stories about how students have negotiated ideological conflicts between their assignment and their own view, or stories about times their voices and their values were honored. Listening to tutees’ stories creates an opening for dialogue about

how writing can move the world toward peace and justice.

And story-telling occasions need not be limited to tutoring sessions. Radically expanding the endeavor of working toward peace and social justice through stories to other contexts such as tutor education, teacher education, or creating a space for interdisciplinary dialogue also characterize Greenfield’s radical praxis.

Writing center staff may team up with colleagues from other disciplines for a story-telling event that features faculty sharing their challenges with writing and their experiences of feeling supported. Greenfield herself created such an interdisciplinary workshop where participants could “make connections, identify [their] shared supports, collaborate on sharing a vision of outcomes, name shared values, and create next steps together” (160). Greenfield’s message seeks to bring people together, transcending political and other differences, to explore new possibilities through dialogue about writing, throughout educational institutions, and in the world.

Because writing center work affects more than what is happening in thirty to sixty-minute tutoring sessions, the writing center should be emboldened; it is, afterall, as Greenfield puts it, “directly tied up in the stakes of ensuring the future of life on the planet” (9).

In making these bold claims, Greenfield explains that when the writing center field negotiates institutional and societal change, systemic oppression can be resisted and transformed. She insists that writing center people critique language in our discourse, mission statements, or websites that might oppress certain gender, racial, or sexual orientation populations.

By widening our lens of writing center power asymmetries to include power relationships intersecting with our planetary ecosystem, writing center people can become agents of planetary eco-change. She argues that if interconnections between what people do and the problems of the world are ignored, life on the planet will remain unstable. On this point, Greenfield discusses this linkage of humanity and the ecosystem: When understanding our work with writing centers as indivisible from systems of oppression, our ethical engagement requires us to work not simply for justice and peace for humans but also for the right to livable lives for all beings on the planet, and indeed for the life of the planet itself. . . . survival of our very ecosystem is dependent upon this story of connection. The systems destroying our relationships are the same systems destroying the planet . . . . perpetuating a myth that human beings can conquer the environment. (171) Some may question whether social justice endeavors belong in writing center work. In my own

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writing center circles, several would say outright that they do not. And even if writing centers have a role in creating social change, Greenfield’s suggestions could feel too radical at times. When she challenges the reader to take such a radical stance that their job security is at risk, readers may question whether this radical approach is the best way to save the planet. In the context of a tutoring session, Greenfield might prioritize shedding light on a student’s biased language or an oppressive writing prompt instead of focusing on the student’s writing process. These moves represent a paradigm shift from which tutors approach sessions prioritizing ethical behavior, those that promote social justice and environmental respect. Will some readers question whether this approach goes beyond the scope of writing center work? Greenfield’s point is that to revolutionize the field takes sustained collaboration and dialogue; it takes radicalism to counter the violence of our oppressive systems and create a better world, or as Giroux put it, the job of an educator requires “civic courage” (102).

Greenfield sees this book best suited for tutor education programs. Radical Writing Center Praxis defines the writing center unconventionally, but with good intent, and for that reason, it could be useful when paired with other texts such as the Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors by Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta or The Idea of a Writing Laboratory by Neal Lerner. These would provide additional resources for tutors and historically situate Greenfied’s plea. But whether read alone or in combination with other books, writing center directors and seasoned tutors who are interested in social justice issues would appreciate this read.

Writing center scholarship is indeed taking a turn.

Greenfield’s insightful and passionate vision is certainly worth serious attention. Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement is an impressive contribution to our burgeoning writing center scholarship championing social justice. Her message is both timely and hopeful. Social transformation is possible and writing centers can, and perhaps should, be the protagonists. In fact, Greenfield charges the writing center field to change the world. To do that, she encourages us to “be bold!” (13).

Works Cited Fitzgerald, Lauren, and Melissa Ianetta. The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Giroux, Henry. “Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling: A Critical Reader.” Westview Press, 1997.

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Lerner, Neal. The Idea of a Writing Laboratory. Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Project MUSE. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/4096 North, Stephan M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.”

College English, vol. 40, no. 5, 1984, pp. 433–446.

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