23.1 Thresholds in the Writing Center

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 1 (2025)

VOL. 23, NO. 1 (2025): THRESHOLDS IN THE WRITING CENTER TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS

From the Editors Mary Fons and Sam Turner ​ A Lifetime of Writing Center Work: Why I Still Love Tutoring After 28 Years Roycelin Rogers DeLeon Introverts Achieving Confidence in the Writing Center: A Guide for Consultants Katelyn Lentz What is Too Much Help From GenAI? ​ Jeffrey Warndof

FOCUS ARTICLES

Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work Katherine Bridgman More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric James M. Cochran, Kara Poe Alexander, Rachel Herzl-Betz, and Ricardo Ramos Duran Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation ​ Andrea Hernandez Holm, Karen Barto, and Jennifer Glass Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded: An American Tries to Plant an Academic Writing Center in Post-Colonial Philippines Richard Kahn

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 1 (2025)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Roycelin Rogers DeLeon is a full-time writing center professional and adjunct instructor with over 30 years of experience in higher education. She holds a B.A. in English and History, M.A.s in eLearning and Adult Education, and is a doctoral candidate specializing in assessment and accreditation. Her work focuses on writing center pedagogy, student success, and institutional effectiveness.

Katelyn Lentz is a student at Pfeiffer University, studying Health and Exercise Science. Her goal is to attend an occupational therapy program to earn her Master’s degree. She is involved in campus as a peer tutor and writing center consultant.

Jeffrey Warndof works as the Writing Center Assistant Director at the University of Arkansas—Fort Smith.

He holds a B.F.A in Creative Writing and an M.A in TESOL from Arkansas Tech University. Since the public release of ChatGPT and other text-based generative AI programs, Jeffrey has devoted much of his attention to AI literacy and how these technologies affect the writing process and tutoring. He has presented on AI and Writing at multiple conferences and co-lead a faculty workshop. Before coming to Fort Smith, Jeffrey worked as an academic advisor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and taught English in South Korea.

Katherine Bridgman is an associate professor of English at Texas A&M University-San Antonio where she has directed the Writing Center since 2014. Her scholarship has appeared in venues including WPA Journal, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, Kairos, South Atlantic Review, College English, Computers and Composition, and various edited collections.

James M. Cochran (PhD) is Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing, the 2025–26 Winifred D. Wandersee Scholar in Residence, and Director of the Writing Program and Writing Center at Hartwick College. His research interests include pedagogies of memory, first-year writing, religion and literature, and environmental literature. His recent research appears in Revenant, Journal of Ecohumanism, Intégrité, Religion and the Arts, Word and Text, the Journal of South Texas English Studies, Open Library of Humanities, and Label Me Latina/o, as well as other edited collections.

Kara Poe Alexander (PhD) is Professor of English in Professional Writing and Rhetoric and Managing Director of the Center for Writing Excellence at Baylor University, where she has served since 2017. Her research interests include literacy studies, writing pedagogy, writing center studies, and multimodal composition. She is co-editor of Multimodal Composition and Writing Transfer (Utah State University Press) and Multimodal Composition Pedagogy (forthcoming, Utah State University Press). She has also published numerous articles in scholarly journals and edited collections.

Rachel Herzl-Betz (PhD) is Associate Professor of Humanities and the Writing Center Director at Nevada State University. Her research focuses on intersections between writing studies, intersectional accessibility, and disability justice. Her work has been published in Composition Forum, Pedagogy, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, and Writing Centers and Racial Justice: A Guidebook for Critical Praxis.

Ricardo Ramos Duran is a Secondary Education Major with a concentration in History at Nevada State University, aiming to become a Teacher in Title I schools. He is currently a writing specialist and fellowship recipient at the Nevada State Writing Center. His research centers around identity and diversity, exploring how writing centers address the needs of students sometimes ignored at the institutional level.

Andrea Hernandez Holm (PhD) supports academic and creative writers through coaching, editing, and instructional workshops. She is owner of Corazon Research and Writing Consulting, LLC and former director of the Writing Skills Improvement Program at the University of Arizona. Andrea is a scholar and a poet.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 1 (2025) Karen Barto holds a PhD in second language acquisition and teaching, which has informed her own multidisciplinary work. Karen served as a writing specialist at University of Arizona’s WSIP and a curriculum designer and instructor at the Center for English as a Second Language, including undergraduate and graduate academic writing courses. She is also an English Language Specialist for the U.S. Department of State where she trains TESOL and English medium instruction (EMI) professionals. As founder and director of Polymath Education based in the Netherlands, she continues to offer worldwide writing support, editing, and professional development in EMI, writing instruction, and TESOL. Karen takes a consultative approach wherever possible to foster autonomy for the learners she supports and integrates understanding of neurodiversity and AI in education to her own practice and training agenda.

Jen Glass taught workshops and tutored both undergraduate and graduate students at WSIP. She holds a master’s degree in linguistics with a concentration in sociolinguistics and a bachelor’s degree in German studies. Jen’s experience has included teaching at the European Union, the University of Arizona Center for English as a Second Language, and University High School in Tucson. Jen is now the Education & Outreach Manager at Tucson-based non-profit Watershed Management Group, a dynamic organization that focuses on river restoration, community conservation, and policy work. At WMG, Jen helps write and edit communications and coordinates the apprentice, intern, and docent training programs. Additionally, she is a Library Program Instructor at the Pima County Public Library, where she helps young learners improve their academic skills.

Richard Kahn had worked and traveled in more than 60 countries on five continents before studying education. He then taught English, ESL and EFL in juvenile corrections and in public state and elite private universities and colleges in the US, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Morocco, Bolivia and the Philippines. He also designed and instructed EFL teacher training for master’s students and established teachers and despite all this, still does not know if he taught his students half as much as he learned from them.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025)

EDITORS’ LETTER Mary Fons​ University of Texas at Austin​ praxisuwc@gmail.com

Some of the thresholds we cross in life are obvious. Milestones like promotion or graduation change how we identify and participate in our worlds, enabling each version of ourselves to be at once in progress and somehow of the past.

Sometimes we cross a threshold and know our lives have changed forever.

Other thresholds are more subtle, permeable but imperceptible. Sometimes the timeline of a momentous change is protracted: you’re going along in what feels like the status quo, then one day you look around and nothing looks familiar. Other times, you miss (or dismiss) a threshold, not realizing its gravity at the time.​ ​ The aim of Praxis is to bring readers the best work that comes across our desk, period.

Thematic throughlines take shape as we put together a given issue, but if a solid piece doesn’t “fit” with a theme being mulled over, that doesn’t mean it’s a hard-stop for that manuscript.

But when harmony happens on its own, it’s lovely to behold—and so it is with this fall issue.

If there were a single keyword appropriate for the entirety of Praxis 23.1, we think “thresholds” does the job. The pieces in this issue, directly or indirectly, contend with both physical and metaphorical movements of writing center work, from traditional pedagogical, logistical, even spacial containers (Points A) to whatever’s on the horizon (Point B).

Sam and I would be remiss not to thank Katherine Bridgman for her help inspiring this issue’s theme. Bridgman’s article, “Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work,” most certainly informed our “a-ha!” moment. In this essential piece, Bridgman urges universities to embrace multiliteracy in order to move across thresholds and out across the university. Bridgman advocates for the necessity of working alongside students as they draw from the breadth of their literacy practices. In today’s political climate, her argument is salient, indeed.

From the University of Arizona comes a conversation between practitioners in a center

Sam Turner​ University of Texas at Austin​ praxisuwx@gmail.com

identified for termination. In “Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation,” Andrea Hernandez Holm, Karen Barto, and Jennifer Glass reflect on a precarious threshold where their support of students’ literacies at physical borderlands meet an institutional precipice.

In Richard Kahn’s piece, “Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded: An American Tries to Plant an Academic Writing Center in Post-Colonial Philippines,” we cross geographical thresholds to explore Kahn’s narrative of how “expertise” travels across cultural borders. And from a team of scholars from the University of Nevada, Baylor University, and Hartwick College, we learn about how writing center anniversary events become public rhetorical arguments in “More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric,” by James M. Cochran, Kara Poe Alexander, Rachel Herzl-Betz, and Ricardo Ramos Duran.

Could there be a more apt example of a consequential threshold than the rise of AI? How to handle the matter in the writing center is considered in Jeffrey Warndof ’s essay, “What is Too Much Help From GenAI?” Here to share an undergraduate tutor’s perspective one year into the job, Katelyn Lentz offers “Introverts Achieving Confidence in the Writing Center: A Guide for Consultants”; the piece is both touching and applicable to anyone’s tutoring practice. And after decades in the field, Roycelin Rogers DeLeon reminds us that the work we do daily comprises a journey that is more than worth it.

Full disclosure: this is my first issue of Praxis. At the beginning of the fall semester, I crossed the threshold from writing center consultant to co-editor of this publication. I want to thank the staff for having faith in my abilities and co-editor Sam Turner for her good sense of humor and near spooky-level of patience with me as we’ve put the issue together. We’ll be back in the new year, and wish you peace and joy this holiday season.​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Mary Fons and Samantha Turner

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025)

A LIFETIME OF WRITING CENTER WORK: WHY I STILL LOVE TUTORING AFTER 28 YEARS Roycelin Rogers DeLeon Del Mar College rdeleon@delmar.edu The first time I walked into a writing center, I was not a tutor. I was a student, an adult learner entering college after twelve years away from the classroom. The decision to enroll had not been easy. Balancing family, work, and school was overwhelming, and I questioned whether I truly belonged in an academic setting. Writing, in particular, felt intimidating. I had always enjoyed writing, but academic writing seemed like an entirely different language. I spent hours staring at blank pages, second-guessing every word, unsure if my ideas were strong enough or if I was following the right format. When I finally walked into the writing center, I expected to be judged for what I did not know. Instead, I met a tutor who saw my potential. Rather than correcting every mistake, they guided me through my own thinking, helping me understand that writing was not about perfection but about process. That single tutoring session changed my perspective. I walked out of the writing center not just with a better essay, but with the confidence to keep pushing forward in my education. I never imagined that years later, I would sit on the other side of the tutoring table, working in the very same writing center that once helped me. Since that first visit, I have earned two bachelor's degrees, two master's degrees, and am now a doctoral candidate.

Education has shaped my family’s story as well. All six of my sons have attended college, and some are still furthering their education. My older grandchildren are dual-enrollment students who already recognize the value of learning. Even after 28 years of tutoring, I have no plans for retirement. I continue working with students, many of whom are the same ages as my grandchildren. Watching them struggle, persist, and ultimately grow into stronger writers and thinkers reminds me why I love this work.

Writing centers do more than help students improve their essays. They build confidence and encourage students to see themselves as capable learners. I know this not only as a tutor but also as someone who has personally experienced that transformation. Many

students arrive at the writing center convinced they are not good writers. Some have struggled for years and believe writing is a skill they will never master. Others think of it as an academic requirement they must complete, never realizing that writing is about much more than producing assignments. It is a tool for critical thinking, self-expression, and communication.

I have worked with students from all backgrounds, but I have always had a special connection with returning adult learners. One student, a mother balancing work, school, and family, walked into the writing center on the verge of tears over her first college essay. She apologized before I even had the chance to greet her, convinced her writing was not good enough. We took the assignment one step at a time, breaking it down into manageable tasks. Week by week, her confidence grew. By the end of the semester, she was not only writing stronger essays, but she was also encouraging her classmates to visit the writing center. Her story is one of many that remind me why writing centers matter. When students begin to see themselves as capable writers, they also begin to see themselves as capable learners. That shift in confidence often changes the way they approach their entire education.

Growth does not happen only for students. It also happens for tutors. Many of the tutors I have mentored began their work with the same doubts as the students they assisted. They wondered if they knew enough, if they could explain writing concepts clearly, or if they would be able to guide someone else’s learning. Over time, tutoring builds confidence just as it does for students. I have watched tutors transform from hesitant newcomers to thoughtful and skilled educators. Many have gone on to become teachers, professors, and leaders in higher education. Others have pursued careers in law, business, and public service, taking with them the communication and critical thinking skills they developed in the writing center. One former tutor shared that the most valuable lesson this work provides isn’t about grammar or essay structure but about the power of listening. Another told me

A Lifetime of Writing Center Work • 2 that their experience in the writing center taught them patience and adaptability, skills they now use daily in their career in public service. Watching tutors develop into confident professionals is just as rewarding as seeing students grow in their writing abilities.

Higher education can feel overwhelming, especially for students who do not fit the traditional mold. Writing centers provide something invaluable: a space where students feel supported, heard, and encouraged. Unlike the classroom, where students may hesitate to ask questions, the writing center fosters collaboration and discussion. For many students, this space is the first place where they feel comfortable discussing their writing. It is where they realize that struggling with writing does not mean they are failing. Instead, it means they are learning. I remember that realization vividly from my own experience, and now, as a tutor, I get to pass that understanding on to others.

When I first started tutoring, students brought in printed drafts, and sessions were always conducted in person. Writing centers operated as quiet spaces where one-on-one conversations guided students through the revision process.

Over the years, technology has transformed the way students write, revise, and collaborate. Online tutoring, digital collaboration tools, and artificial intelligence have introduced both challenges and opportunities. Some students now rely heavily on technology to assist with writing, while others struggle with the shift toward digital learning environments. Despite these changes, the

fundamental purpose of tutoring remains the same. Students still need a space where they can develop their ideas, ask questions, and build confidence in their writing. Writing centers continue to provide that space, evolving with technology while remaining focused on student-centered learning.

After 28 years, people often ask why I still love tutoring. The answer is simple. I see myself in the students who visit the writing center. I remember what it felt like to question whether I was capable of succeeding in college. I remember the frustration of struggling with writing and the relief of sitting across from someone who saw my potential and helped me find my voice. Now, I have the privilege of being that person for others.

I witness students grow into confident writers and thinkers. I mentor tutors who will go on to shape the next generation of learners. And I do it all in the very writing center that changed my own life years ago.

Writing centers will continue to evolve, but their mission will remain the same. They will always be places where students find support, develop confidence, and discover the power of their own voices. For those who are considering tutoring, my advice is to embrace the conversations, the challenges, and the small victories. Writing tutoring is not just a job. It is an opportunity to change lives, including your own.

After nearly three decades, I am still on this journey with no plans to stop.

It is a journey worth taking.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025)

INTROVERTS ACHIEVING CONFIDENCE IN THE WRITING CENTER: A GUIDE FOR CONSULTANTS Katelyn Lentz Pfeiffer University klentz787@my.pfeiffer.edu I’ve been working as a writing center consultant for a year now, and there are still times where I become anxious before a session.

I’ve always been an introverted individual.

I’m naturally soft spoken and tend to shy away from crowds. I prefer being the listener in conversations and I have always been quieter than most. Because I recognize my own introverted tendencies, it’s easy for me to identify other introverts like me. While I recognize these apprehensive trends within myself, I also acknowledge the hesitant tendencies of people who aren’t as open or extroverted. This poses a question for our writing center: how can we become more aware of introverts and help them gain more confidence during sessions? Also, how can introverted consultants like myself become more comfortable during sessions in order to maximize our intellectual support?

Because of our communication style, introverts can seem disengaged. This can lead to being overlooked in certain group settings. But more often than not, we’re simply overwhelmed in situations that involve socializing or the need to express ourselves. Because of this, introverts can seem disconnected from other people. I want to help make our writing center and the consultants more aware of how they work with students and how they can create a more positive experience for introverted individuals. Writing consultants can assist shy writers to become more confident and elaborative with their writing process through various strategies that provide comfort and assurance.

With this in mind, I led a professional development session with our team of consultants to discuss strategies to increase engagement with introverted students. We first looked at what we’re doing already to accommodate shyer students, like emphasizing reassurance, expressing our own vulnerability, and leading with positivity in sessions. We recognized the welcoming environment our writing center already creates.

Due to the secluded location of our writing center, there’s less traffic of students which in turn leads to a quieter and relaxed setting. We offer different

seating options to accommodate the preferred learning space for a given student as well, whether it be the standard table setting, beanbag chairs, or other preferred seating. The lighting we choose—natural sunlight instead of harsh fluorescent bulbs—also contributes to a calming environment where all students feel more inclined to focus.

During sessions, it’s important to provide reassurance while working with a student who appears introverted. Introverts can be incredibly self-critical and may judge themselves more harshly than non-introverts. Personally, I have an inner monologue that causes me to doubt the majority of my decisions, and these negative thoughts continuously cycle through my mind.

The last thing an introvert needs to hear is overwhelming criticism from others; however, our responsibility as a writing center is to provide feedback to help students grow intellectually. We must therefore balance feedback and reassurance to ensure our introverted students are learning and gaining confidence. Providing feedback and offering compliments on an introverted student’s work provides them with a level of reassurance that consultants are there to help—in a positive way.

By expressing vulnerability we eliminate the possibility of possessing a superior persona.

Just like the students they work with, consultants are students too, growing and learning on their academic journey. As consultants, we can express vulnerability during sessions to create a student-to-student connection to allow introverted students feel more comfortable. Approaching our sessions as opportunities for non-hierarchal learning makes for a less intimidating experience for students apprehensive in social settings. By making light of our own mistakes and incorporating personal experiences with writing struggles, we can create an understanding. In my own sessions, I often express my struggles with writing to assure students they aren’t alone. If a student vocalizes a common obstacle they face related to writing, I share my experiences with that same challenge. Whether it’s brainstorming ideas,

Introverts Achieving Confidence in the Writing Center • 4 finding credible sources for research, or adding transitions to improve an essay’s structure, I want introverted students to recognize that writing is a process, and everyone has trouble at some point.

An approachable presence and positive attitude will help an introverted student feel comfortable during sessions, too. Speaking from personal experience, I feel more comfortable engaging with someone who exhibits positivity; a welcoming presence is preferable to someone with a negative attitude. From the beginning of the session, exhibiting an uplifting manner can help alleviate some stress introverts feel once they arrive. Though they may still be anxious when engaging with a new person, introverts are more inclined to work with someone who is welcoming, not one who seems disinterested or pessimistic.

Acknowledging an introvert’s writing process can help them feel more comfortable expressing themselves. At our writing center, we strive to maintain an inclusive setting that helps all students expand their writing process. We want them to leave each session having learned something new. Our seclusive location diminishes excessive noise and traffic, which produces a more relaxed environment for introverts to do their work. An introverted writer may be incredibly gifted with a mind full of ideas just waiting to reach the outside world. In a quiet, inviting setting, approachable consultants can provide reassurance and express their own vulnerabilities with the writing process. When we do, introverted writers can gain the confidence they need to be heard.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025)

WHAT IS TOO MUCH HELP FROM GENAI? Jeffrey Warndof University of Arkansas – Fort Smith​ jeffrey.warndof@uafs.edu It’s safe to say that writing centers are fairly unified in both practice and ethos in 2025. It would be shocking, for example, to encounter a paper titled “Coming Full Circle: A Return to the Fix-it-Shop Model!” in an academic journal for writing center scholarship. Ideas such as collaborative learning, balancing directive, nondirective tutoring, and social constructivism have become conventional wisdom in writing center theory (Babcock), but there is nothing conventional about generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT. These bots “know” but are not cognizant.

They are unfeeling, yet have been shown to be biased. Whatever this new technology is, there is no escaping it (Cheatle). Use of tools like ChatGPTcan be “refused” (Fernandes et al.) on the grounds that their nature is ethically and pedagogically antithetical to writing. Yet some educators or educational services—including writing centers—may feel compelled to integrate generative AI (GenAI) into their practices in the spirit of “adapt or die.” As Scott Graham puts it, “Prohibition has always been doomed to failure” (163).

Ironically, in integrating AI technology, writing centers risk backsliding to the mid-century “fix-it-shop” model from which they have striven to divorce themselves. In the fix-it-shop model, a tutor essentially writes or edits a client’s paper for them. In this way, the tutor provides too much help.

How much to assist a client with their writing is the ethical consideration that largely defines tutoring. What constitutes “too much” help is subjective, but theory provides heuristics so that tutors may perform their duties with relative uniformity: read the paper together and aloud; keep the paper between the tutor and the client; don’t mark on the paper; ask questions; learn from the client; use scaffolding techniques, etc. (Brooks 3-4; Fitzgerald and Ianetta 105).

But what constitutes too much help from a chatbot? Early writing center studies on GenAI addressed key topics such as adding AI skills in tutor training, and the question of human vs. AI feedback. But there’s not been much scholarship on how AI should be used as a tutoring tool.

Perkins et al. argue that leaving AI policy to the

discretion of professors results in a lack of cohesion in universities, and though ethical AI usage is “seldom defined or demonstrated” they emphasize that “it is important that writing centers do not shy away from this complicated question.”

A writing center may lack cohesion when its AI policy is incongruent with its overall tutoring practice. Perhaps considering the idea of “too much” from a chatbot would provide insight.

Upon identifying a needed revision in a client’s paper, a well-intentioned tutor will ask him or herself: “I could do X for the client, but should I?” The tutor is essentially determining how much help to give. The tutor could just say, “This paragraph needs a topic sentence,” or “Say this instead.” But this would be too much help.

Instead, techniques that guide and scaffold the client should be used. This is common sense for most tutors.

But what if, despite the tutor’s guidance, the client cannot seem to draft a topic sentence, and the tutor suggests summoning help from ChatGPT? Perhaps the tutor has the client explain the situation to ChatGPT and prompt it to produce three options for a strong topic sentence.

But the tutor tells the client that they cannot simply copy one of three sentences: they must write their own, only modelling the chosen sentence. The client does so. In this scenario, the tutor guided the client away from copy-and-pasting directly fromChatGPT. By determining which candidate sentence best suited their paper then personally drafting one, that student might feel more confident in future drafts—thus improving not just the paper, but also the writer.

Nevertheless, in this scenario, too much help is provided. Take this same scenario sans ChatGPT. The client asks the tutor, “Could you write three topic sentences for me based on this paragraph? I just need something to help get me started.” Time constraints aside, an ethical tutor would not write the sentences for the student. Too much help is too much help whether it be natural or artificial. Thus, a common-sense heuristic like

What is Too Much Help From GenAI? • 6 “If I, the tutor, could do X, should I?” has utility writing centers in these times.

With this in mind, the question arises: can chatbots ethically and productively supplement tutoring in writing centers. Two uses might be considered. General purpose chatbots such as ChatGPT can be prompted to recommend sources on specific topics. A user’s ability to search with complete sentences and follow-up questions can yield results a traditional search engine, prompted with keywords and phrases, cannot. In this way, a chatbot can be used strictly as a research tool. A tutor trained in prompt engineering could guide a client in this process.

There are also chatbots specifically designed for source retrieval, such as Perplexity and Elicit.

Using AI tools in these applications is arguably equivalent to a tutor helping a client use their institution’s academic databases. Because the help the AI is providing is strictly source retrieval, it passes the heuristic: a tutor would if they could.

A chatbot can also excel as a “reverse dictionary” (Xu et al.). A client may be struggling to think of a particular word or concept based on a set of qualities; for example, they may be wondering "When I watch a movie that I've seen before with someone who hasn't, it feels like I'm seeing it for the first time. What's a word that describes this experience?” In this chat, ChatGPT accurately suggested “vicarious” (“When I watch”). After a dense dorm room discussion on the nature of reality, a student may ponder “What’s the idea that everything you experience is just a product of your mind?” When that student asks ChatGPT, the AI accurately responds with “solipsism.” Inquiries which require fully worded context are often better suited for chatbots than search engines (Nunes). And, although a tutor could rightfully refer a client to the correct word or concept if they could, their "dataset” is miniscule compared to any chatbot. The reverse dictionary use of AI is arguably appropriate and also leverages the chatbot’s vast dataset.

Unless prompted otherwise, a chatbot will give students answers, but they won’t guide them — and this is antithetical to tutoring. Individual writing centers must take care to keep their AI policy consistent with their overall practice. The heuristic presented here can be used to make sure both chatbots and humans are held to the same standard when it comes to offering “too much help.”

Works Cited Babcock, Rebecca. “Writing Center Theory and Research: A Review.” The Peer Review, vol.

7, no.

2, Spring 2023, https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/iss ue-7-2/writing-center-theory-and-researc ha-review/.

Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” The Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 15, no. 6, Feb 1991, https://ucwbling.chicagolandwritingcente rs.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/JeffBrooks-Minimalist-Tutoring-Making-theStudent-Do-All-the-Work.pdf Cheatle, Joseph N. “TPR AI Special Issue Introduction: No Escaping GenAI: Confronting a New Writing Center Reality.” The Peer Review, vol. 9, no. 2, Mar. 2025, https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issue9-2/ introduction/.

Fernandes, Maggie, et al. “What Is GenAI Refusal?” Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies, 12 Nov. 2024, https://refusinggenai.wordpress.com/wh at-is-refusal/.

Graham, S. Scott. “Post-Process but Not Post-Writing: Large Language Models and a Future for Composition Pedagogy.”

Composition Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, 2023, p.

163, https://compstudiesjournal.com/wp-con tent/uploads/2023/06/graham.pdf.

Nunes, Gabriel B. “Use AI as a Reverse Search Engine.” Kronopath, 28 Feb. 2024, https://www.kronopath.com/blog/use-ai -as-a-reverse-search-engine/.

Perkins, Meredith, et al. “How the Lack of Cohesion in University AI Policy Poses Challenges to Writing Consultants.”

Praxis, vol. 22, no. 1, 2024, http://www.praxisuwc.com/221-perkinset-al.

“Prompt Engineering.” OpenAI Platform, https://platform.openai.com/docs/guide s/prompt-engineering. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.

Xu, Ningyu, et al. “On the Tip of the Tongue: Analyzing Conceptual Representation in Large Language Models with Reverse-Dictionary Probe.”

Arxiv,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025) www.praxisuwc.com

What is Too Much Help From GenAI? • 7 https://arxiv.org/html/2402.14404v2.

Accessed 17 Mar. 2025.

“What’s the idea that everything you experience is just a product of your mind?” prompt.

ChatGPT, OpenAI, 8 April. 2023, https://chatgpt.com/share/67f56eb4-897 0-8002-af6e-4cf04e34ff98.

“When I watch a movie that I’ve seen...” prompt.

ChatGPT, 4 Dec version, OpenAI, 4 Dec. 2025, https://chatgpt.com/share/6931a357-ed 6c-8002-a2cd-38d76854a33c.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 1 (2025)

CROSSING THRESHOLDS: IDENTIFYING AND DISRUPTING THE AUTONOMOUS MODELS OF LITERACY SHAPING WRITING CENTER WORK Katherine Bridgman Texas A&M University-San Antonio​ ktbridgm@tamusa.edu Abstract This essay traces a long-standing tension in writing center studies that has for many become a matter of fact: the tension between our celebration of the space of our work within the writing center and our desire to resist and disrupt the violent power structures around the center. Underlying this tension—and often contributing to our willingness to maintain it—are autonomous models of literacy which, despite the tutoring praxes we enact resisting these understandings of literacy, are maintained by the focus of writing center work on one-on-one sessions within the center. I close with a description of how one writing center has worked to disrupt this tension between our spaces and our praxis through its transformation into a multiliteracy center.

Engaging these considerations moves the work of the center increasingly across center thresholds and out across the university, where we can actively work alongside students as they draw from the breadth of their literacy practices to navigate university spaces.

Keywords: literacy, multimodality, praxis, program administration Introduction In this essay, I invite readers to turn their attention to a tension that has largely become accepted in our field: a tension between the sacrosanct spaces that physically center our work in the university and the iconoclasm that informs and motivates this work. This tension emerges in the crux of an ambivalence that has hampered so much of our field’s work over the last decades. It has left us hamstrung between the physical and intellectual spaces we occupy. On one hand, we have largely treasured and protected the physical spaces that house our tutors and our work with students. On the other hand, our field often works tirelessly to resist the very contexts that give rise to these spaces. We catch a glimpse of this tension in what Jackie Grutsch McKinney describes as “the writing center grand narrative” wherein “writing

centers are comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-on-one tutoring on their writing” (3). Here, writing centers are at once spaces of iconoclastic resistance and comfortable, singled out places where students go for support.

In what follows, I suggest that these two facets of a writing center’s identity are often at odds in a way that we must attend to further.

This essay will move through three segments before concluding. I open with a discussion of why this tension warrants our attention. Next, I look at how this tension between the physical and intellectual spaces we occupy shapes our day-to-day work as a limiting factor in the reach of our field’s investment in doing the work of creating more equitable spaces on college campuses, work that is frequently described across our scholarship in terms of its anti-racist and decolonial commitments. Finally, I turn to examine one writing center’s response to this tension and the remaking of the writing center into a multiliteracy center that has resulted.

What’s the Issue Here?

In part II of Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine discusses a YouTube content creator named Hennessy Youngman. Youngman’s video series, Art Thoughtz, seeks to mentor young Black artists. Rankine discusses a particular video where Youngman discusses how to metabolize Black rage for a YouTube audience. She writes: Youngman’s suggestions are meant to expose expectations for blackness as well as to underscore the difficulty inherent in any attempt by black artists to metabolize real rage. The commodified anger his video advocates rests lightly on the surface for spectacle’s sake. It can be engaged or played like the race card and is tied solely to the performance of blackness and not to the emotional state of particular individuals in particular situations (23).

I reflect on this passage as a white cis-gendered settler-colonist living on the Yanaguana, named

Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 9 for the life-giving waters of the San Antonio River and land resided on by the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation and the Esto’k Gna/Carrizo-Comecrudo Nation that was violently colonized through a settler-colonial agenda that I continue to embody through both my presence in this space and my career as a writing center director at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. I think about the “actual anger” Rankine describes Youngman having, an anger “built up through experience and the quotidian struggles against dehumanization every brown and black person lives simply because of skin color,” an anger that Rankine observes he does not address in his YouTube video that is about anger (24). Rankine seems to be observing that his actual anger is not “sellable anger,” and so this “actual anger” is not addressed in his video, a video meant to mentor young artists in a commodified anger that will help them build their careers.

As I reflect on Rankine’s and Youngman’s work, I think about our writing centers. I think about our anti-racist and decolonial commitments.

I wonder if our centers are operating in a space similar to the corner of YouTube where Youngman operates, supporting students in an anger that many may feel, but that we ask ourselves and our students to abridge at the door.

As universities commodify this anger, a student can be angry in a writing center, but not too angry, not so angry that they leave the university all together. This kind of anger is the kind of anger that may spur students to come to college, to take courses supporting them in bringing the kind of civic action that finds itself mentioned in university mission statements and celebrated by student leadership programs. All while students are processing this celebrated anger, they are encouraged to come to the writing center to work on the papers that share their ideas, the cover letters that articulate their passions for leadership programs and employers, and speeches that pitch their graded solutions to issues they face in the world.

As students do this work in the center, their work in a sense becomes decontextualized as they are physically at a remove from the spaces they are wishing to engage and they are so often guided to the language practices of the university, language practices that Eric Garner engaged, saying “I cannot breathe.” April Baker-Bell asked us at NCTE in 2017, “Wouldn’t you consider ‘I

cannot breathe’ standard English syntax?” (5).

While Baker-Bell is calling out the lie of White Language Supremacy, she is also making clear how the spaces writing centers occupy within universities not only mute the anger of students through the language practices they are complicit with, but writing centers are themselves also muted as products of these language practices following the rules of university spaces. Kendra Mitchell and Robert Randolph confront us on this facet of our complicity in their 2018 IWCA keynote address when they describe the context of their centers: “You see, black skin places a demand of social justice on Black people at a high price.

For us, it becomes more than a curriculum: it is a matter of life and death” (22). They remind writing center practitioners that the work we do engages in a context that extends far beyond the sacrosanct walls of our centers supporting student research papers and cover letters as they head back out to the halls of higher education. They challenge us to look in the mirror and ask if our centers are creating spaces for “actual anger” or merely “sellable anger.”

As we, as I, work to turn this reflection into action through the work I do facilitating a writing center as its director, Romeo García urges us to enact “epistemological disobedience,” to “till the grounds on which power takes root. It is the most we can long for if indeed the WC cannot be saved” (5). What does it mean to till these grounds of our writing centers? I may ask myself, am I not already doing this through the antiracist and decolonial praxis our center is developing within our sessions? And then I think about what Audre Lorde says in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” when she asks us: “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

(41). Where, I wonder, are these questions coming from in our writing centers? How are our centers supporting students who are seeking answers to these questions?

Some readers of this essay may respond that these questions are coming from the centers they work in and the sessions they facilitate with students. And they are! We have ample evidence across our conferences and publications. At the same time, I ask where is this work happening?

Where are these conversations unfolding? Is the

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 10 answer, in the center? Where are the contexts students are living, working, surviving? Is the answer, outside of the center? By doing so much of our work in the center, do we share in Stanley Fish’s guilt when Vershawn Young writes: “Dominant language ideology also say peeps can speak whatever the heck way they want to — BUT AT HOME!” (111). Are we not also saying, “We have your back, we support you, let’s get angry together, but just in here and just in some ways”? In how we do our work, are we communicating to students something similar where the “here” is in the writing center, a space that is at once a part of the university yet isolated away from classrooms and the rest of our campuses in its work with students through one-on-one sessions? The remainder of this essay will seek to till the ground where power has taken root so firmly in our understanding of writing centers that we rarely, if ever, question that our work remains predominantly in the writing center, despite working diligently from within our sessions to disrupt the spaces around us.

Before I go further, I want to acknowledge the rich scholarship in our field about the healing, safe(r), brave(r) spaces that our centers are for many tutors and students, and I want to clarify that this is not an argument to do away with the one-on-one session and the other forms of individual work that happen within the center. Rather, I am inviting us collectively to examine the unquestioned and accepted centrality of our spaces (physical and online) as the primary, and sometimes exclusive, location for our work as writing centers. I’m also inviting us to ask why it might be that we continue to center our work within the spaces of our writing centers. In particular, I ask us to examine the tension between this centering of our work and the iconoclasm we espouse that resists the very spaces we embrace being embedded within.

Are We Okay with This Tension?

It is not uncommon that the idea of challenging this tension comes up in our work. However, if we revisit these calls for disruption, we find that authors frequently retreat back into the spaces of their writing centers, returning to follow the rules of place in the university, which stipulate that our work happens in the center. For example, as we headed into the twenty-first century, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford invited us to embrace our

positions as initiators of institutional “refiguration.” The potential areas for this refiguration they identified were “the refiguration of institutional space, of concepts of knowledge production and intellectual property, of research paradigms and rewards, and of budget allocations” (33). In their discussion of the space they prompted readers to refigure, they reflected: Writing centers offer a clear and compelling alternative use of space, one that in many instances combines the best of face-to-face and virtual education. In our centers as in many others, for example, the physical space allows for one-on-one consultations, for small group work, for individual work in quiet reading or writing corners, as well as for online access either within the physical center or from a distance. This new mix of space and use seem to us a very important but often taken-for-granted contribution writing centers make to refiguring higher education (34).

Nearly twenty-five years into the new millennium they were addressing, it is likely that few would disagree with any of this. What does stand out in their work, however, is that the work of refiguring seems to stop at the walls of the center, or digital interface extending from the center, in this invitation to reimagine our future in a new century. The refiguration they seem to invite is a refiguration of the spaces already within the writing center.

Later, Nancy Grimm brushes up against this tension in her essay included in Writing Centers and the New Racism (2011). Grimm opens this essay reflecting on some assumptions privileging “white mainstream students” that her own writing center once held: that students of color needed our help; that they would find our services useful; that the university and thus the writing center were race-neutral and benign spaces; and that the literacy education offered by the university and the writing center contributed to leveling the playing field, allowing them to become like us, thus (ahem) “better” and “equal” (75–76).

Grimm turns here to examine what happens within the writing center session and at the end of her essay concludes: “a tutor still works with one student at a time, but there are no attempts to

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 11 control or manage the powerful learning potential inherent in tutorial interaction with rules about who can or who can’t hold the pencil or how many appointments a student is allowed to have” (98). Reading this now, it stands out that perhaps one of the field’s more iconoclastic scholars wraps up an essay claiming to “retheorize” writing center work with the reassurance that no challenge has been made to the central role of the one-on-one session in our work. Her statement about the one-on-one session, like those making similar returns to our work within the writing center, perhaps suggests that our spaces and our pedagogies are able to exist outside of the violent spaces existing just across writing center thresholds. However, as Baker-Bell, Randolph, and Mitchell remind us, this now and never has been the case.

This comfort with our work remaining predominantly within the spaces of our centers is not by accident. Thirty years ago, Anne Ruggles Gere reminded us that there was more than one story to tell about Composition, and she went on to critique the history of Composition that was widely taught through the 1990s. She reminds us that the story we told each other about Composition for so long was a story of convenience, one that I would argue confirmed our allegiance to the violent colonial work of the university and, ultimately, tethered writing centers to the violence that largely defined the spaces around us. The story of Composition she tells is one that in its early moments maintained a somewhat dynamic relationship with the world of writing outside the academy, that bolstered and shaped the early iterations of Composition as a field. In her discussion of this, she points to work done by Frederick Randolph, Arthur Applebee, and Gerald Graff, and she expands on the gaps in their work to highlight that nonacademic traditions, literary clubs, and other student organizations were vibrant parts of the extracurriculum in the nineteenth century and shaped English curricula and the future composition programs that would emerge within these departments. These early reference points for writing centers, however, were curtailed and ultimately elided in the historical narrative created around English Studies and Composition Studies as Composition sought a closer marriage with rhetoric that would reward both with a more legitimated place within English Studies.

The historical trajectory Composition took as a result was one of convenience that garnered clout for Composition, a field that was seen to have a “historical and theoretical vacuum” and be an illegitimate member of English studies (Robert Conners, Lisa Ede, and Andrea Lunsford qtd in Gere 79). For Gere, as Composition sought to build legitimacy, it put its eggs in the basket of professionalization. The tradition of the extracurriculum that informed writing center studies as it took shape within an emergent field of Composition came to be seen as a threat to the professionalization of Composition and thus writing centers as well. Commenting on this key moment in the history of Composition in “Our Little Secret,” Elizabeth Bouquet writes: “As much as I might like to think that the extracurriculum exerted the primary influence over the development of writing labs, ultimately I am inclined to trace the development through the more typical institutional channels” (466). As we continue to work in the lanes outlined for us by these “more typical institutional channels,” the legitimacy of writing centers is often tethered to the physical (and digital) spaces we have been granted in universities across the country.

This marriage between writing centers and their institutional spaces, however, has not been without its tensions. Elizabeth Bouquet traces the roots of this tension to “[a] slow drift [that] occurred between the 1920s, when the writing lab was most recognizably a method of instruction, and the 1940s, when it became most recognizably a site” (469). Bouquet argues that during this time “writing labs begin to show evidence of the tension emerging between the institutional space of the writing center and the individual pedagogies enacted in that space” (469).

This tension is still with us today as the work of writing centers is often seen as indistinguishable from the space it occupies on campus, a space that is also, more often than not, antagonistic of our iconoclasm. It is as we negotiate this tension that I ask if we are perhaps no less guilty than Stanley Fish when we challenge institutional values and beliefs and invite our students to do the same—but continue to do this work only from within the walls of the writing center.

While the work of Bouquet, Gere, and others provides us with insight into the disciplinary history that has located our work as writing center practitioners so firmly within the

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 12 walls of our spaces, there is a much deeper violence that we enact by leaving this tension between our spaces and our practices unresolved.

As we grapple with this violence, García urges us to build an awareness that “[a]t the organizational level, Gringo-Centers like Gringodemia and gringoland empty land and people of substance to clear a pathway for modern/colonial and settlerizing designs to take root – the technological power of the idea (of the Americas)” (4). If we examine the identification of writing center spaces as the location where writing center work occurs within the settlerizing design of universities, we begin to see in perhaps new ways how tutors and writing center administrators become “entangled in informing-giving form to coloniality of knowledge-being and complicit in managing and controlling bodies of knowledge and the bodies of human beings” (4) through the repeated retreat of our work into the writing center space. By accepting the settlerizing design of the writing center, which keeps our work (regardless of decolonial aims) within the center, we mute our iconoclasm, always keeping writing centers distanced from the structures they are working to disrupt.

Keeping our work and our bodies focused on one-on-one sessions within our spaces is a way of “managing and controlling bodies of knowledge and the bodies of human beings” of both our writing center staff members and the students we work with in tutoring sessions as we require students to step outside of contexts rife with colonial violence and into our centers only to have to return to these contexts that remain unchanged after a session (García 4). As students go back and forth across our thresholds, we see that we, even if unintentionally, have shifted the responsibility for addressing the violent spaces of the university from actors in the university to the students navigating the violence of these spaces (McKinney). Even as we may work with students in sessions supporting them with powerful linguistic tools to use in their courses and other composing contexts, we remain removed from those contexts with students as we work with them in the center and away from the contexts they are actively negotiating beyond our walls.

This removal of our work effectively puts the responsibility on students to do the work we may imagine from the safety of our spaces and that we may be inclined to imagine as separate from the

work of the writing center (even though we can never completely distance ourselves nor unentangle ourselves from the colonial violence of the university). This is implicitly acknowledged when McKinney articulates her frustration negotiating the tension between our physical commitments to our space and our intellectual challenges to it in Peripheral Visions. She writes that it’s “like we keep bandaging up the war-wounded, fixing [students] up for their next battle without ever seeing if something can be done about the war” (69). This is largely the case because our work remains within our spaces instead of out in the university amid the violences that students are negotiating every day. In this arrangement, students, as McKinney says, are the ones going out into battle. Not us.

Tilling the Subsoil A key, but often underacknowledged way that writing centers participate in the maintenance of the settlerizing design of the university is through their maintenance of autonomous models of literacy. In particular, remaining within the center for so much of our work is one of the more subtle, yet more dangerous ways, writing centers sustain these autonomous models of literacy. Ede has written that autonomous models of literacy are “one of the most important, because most hidden and commonsensical, assumptions of our culture: that writing and thinking are inherently individual, solitary activities” (9). Stemming from this idea is that writing and thinking exist independently from the embodied spaces students share with their intended audiences and can be improved in any space.

This understanding of literacy and its material instantiation across the university has been one of the bludgeons of colonial violence.

These understandings of literacy were introduced to North America alongside European literacies that Steven Alvarez writes “dominated the hemisphere, physically and symbolically destroying Indigenous writing practices deemed as nonliterate at best and demonic at worst” (17). “Centuries later,” he writes, “these European literacies still dominate” and, I would add, fundamentally shape the way writing center work is conceived as primarily one-on-one support within our centers.

These models of literacy perpetuate a white racial habitus that prizes “individualism and self-determination, Descartes’ cogito, individuals as

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 13 the primary subject position, abstract principles, rationality and logic, clarity and consistency, and on seeing failure as individual weakness, not a product of larger structural issues” (Inoue 49). All of this embodies what Gloria Ladson-Billings describes as “the dominant Euro-American epistemology” (qtd in Delgado Bernal 107) that shapes our classrooms and gives rise to a “Eurocentric epistemological perspective” (Delgado Bernal 111). These epistemologies lead us to see our work and that of students “individualistically, as the preserve of rational, adult (male) actors unfettered by affectionate ties with concrete others” (Keller 154). Jean Keller goes on to write that the individualist Western model of autonomy “has been thought of as the pinnacle of human achievement, the source of human dignity, and the mark of moral maturity” (154). In contexts such as the university, which prize autonomy and individualism in student learning, it is taken for granted that an individual student can step into the one-on-one session within writing center spaces to work on their writing and, in some ways, this endows our spaces with the prestige of rationality and moral maturity—which further mutes the iconoclasm of our praxis as we leave the settlerizing designs of autonomous models of literacy untouched beyond writing center walls.

As writing centers embody these understandings of literacy in their support of students’ literacy practices within the university, they become what Grimm describes as regulatory centers within the university. Always hamstrung by our compliant residing in the physical spaces of our centers, we are “reproduc[ing] the social order and regulat[ing] access and subjectivity” (5) as we facilitate centers that leave the spaces students are living and working in untouched. Through this work, writing centers become more than simply regulatory centers, they become what Eric Camarillo describes as “whitening centers” as we allow the tension between our iconoclasm and our compliant attachment to our spaces go unresolved.

This tension has resulted in much handwringing by some of the more visible members of our field. For example, Shannon Carter describes this push and pull as one between meeting the needs of the institution and working to meet the needs of our students as the “writing center paradox.” Carter describes this paradox as a

tension wherein the writing center responds to “both our students and the literacy demands of the academy” (138). She goes on to say that it is “crucial that we ask ourselves how one can possibly effect change in a system that is so profoundly shaped by and dependent on maintaining the status quo,” a system that is invested in “the autonomous model of literacy dominating most rhetorical spaces over which we are not in control.” Like others, Carter observes the tension, but ultimately comes to accept this tension in a way that I am calling into question. I wonder if accepting the tension in our work between the values of our field and the values encoded in the brick and mortar spaces we occupy allows us to leave unaddressed (a) that these rhetorical spaces are embodied and materialized through the settlerizing designs that writing centers are part of and (b) that these “rhetorical spaces” are primarily beyond our control because we choose not to enter these spaces. All too frequently, we couch our choice to accept these underlying tensions of our field using what Eric Camarillo describes as “the neutral rhetoric writing centers use [that] often cloaks their true purpose, which is to get students’ writing to align with an academic standard” (n.p.).

Being Different As we challenge these long-held beliefs about the production and circulation of knowledge, Ede and Lunsford have challenged us to step into our roles as “bricoleur[s], trickster[s], and inventor[s]” (36) within the Writing Center. Claude Lévi-Strauss describes the work of the bricoleur as “a kind of radically flexible handiwork, an eclectic method by which the practitioner of bricolage, the bricoleur, employs all the available tools and materials ‘at hand’ to accomplish some purpose, typically in innovative, unpredictable, and cunning ways” (Farmer 32). Bricolage does this through “find[ing] ways of using the constraining order” to establish a “degree of plurality and creativity” (de Certeau 30). In other words, bricolage is “a practice that is simultaneously resistant and constructive” of the contexts in which it is practiced (Farmer 34). While Ede and Lunsford primarily drew from bricolage to think about how we could transform the spaces within our centers, I urge us to think about how our centers can themselves do the work of bricolage to challenge the settlerizing design of the universities that

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 14 surround us. Doing so not only frees our iconoclastic work from the gates of our thresholds, it also takes the responsibility for change off the shoulders of our students and acknowledges that writing centers can be actors for change themselves.

The bricoleur’s resistance to the “law[s] of place” (de Certeau 29) nudges writing centers to disrupt their own allegiance to their places within the university, the spaces from which they hold one-on-one sessions with students away from classrooms and other composing environments across the university for students. As autonomous models of literacy are part of the university’s laws of place—laws of place that isolate literacy support for student writers within the walls of writing centers across the country—disrupting these laws of place enables embodied disruptions of the autonomous models of literacy that have hamstrung writing centers for so long. While much work has been done to disrupt these models of literacy and their influence on earlier writing center pedagogy, less has been done within writing center studies to disrupt the material ways these autonomous models of literacy shape the spaces we continue to occupy with students. In the remainder of this section, I invite writing center practitioners to think about what we can take from the strategies of the bricoleur to extend our work inside the center to the spaces that exist beyond our walls as we take a step toward resolving the tension between our celebration of writing center spaces and our commitment to being iconoclastic forces in the university.

In Luz en Lo Oscuro, Gloria Anzaldúa highlights the ways identity is always reflective of and contributing to the environment that surrounds us. In particular, she underscores how important it is to consider our interactions with the environments that surround us, which is of particular relevance to those working in and through writing centers. She writes: Identity is relational. Who and what we are depends on those surrounding us, a mix of our interaction with our alrededores/environments, with new and old narratives. Identity is multilayered, stretching in all directions, from past to present, vertically and horizontally, chronologically and spatially (69).

As our field continues to do work within our sessions, without extending this work outside of

our walls to engage our environment, we are leaving the underpinning values of these spaces untouched. In particular, we are leaving the violent ideologies of autonomous models of literacy intact outside of our walls. In what follows, I tell the story of a sometimes clumsy and frequently unexpected journey our writing center has taken to address the tension between our iconoclasm and our place-based practice within the center.

Despite the stops, starts, and detours that may characterize this journey, the general trajectory is one of moving our work outside of the center, of destabilizing autonomous models of literacy, and of working with students in the composing environments many are negotiating in college.

Doing so has not relinquished us from our complicity in the violence of the academy. Rather, it has helped us to be more accountable in our work and disruptive of the autonomous models of literacy that have maintained our place-based practice in the center and muted the iconoclasm of our field.

We started with the materiality of our composing practices. Gunter Kress highlights for us critical connections between the materiality of our composing practices and the habitus we embody around these practices as writers. He writes that in addition to shaping meaning, the medium of our composing shapes our “habitus and the way we approach and conceive of our lifeworld” (185). With this in mind, early on, we leaned into the power of medium to initiate new relationships with the spaces and communities that contextualize our work in the university, to embody the disruption occurring within our sessions outside of the center.

We initially did this by inviting our university community to collaborate in the creation of an Earth Day text, a very large tree made of butcher paper that went floor to ceiling in one of our university’s common spaces across from our library. We used white butcher paper to create the large tree that would serve as the background for student texts. One of our tutors volunteered to design and paint the tree with some paints she had left over from another school project. About halfway up the trunk of the tree, another tutor added a sad looking face with a thermometer sticking out of its mouth suggesting that the tree—like the environment—was ill. The crown of the tree was large and painted green, providing a backdrop where participants placed

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 15 paper bandages on which they wrote what they were going to do to help the earth. The bandages were cut from light and dark brown construction paper. The tree, along with a piece of poster board with the writing prompt “What can you do to help the earth?”, was hung on a large wall directly in front of the entrance to our library.

This public and collaborative text was an early step in enacting the praxis we so often talk about enacting in the quiet of our centers out in the open, across the halls of our university where students are always already negotiating meaning as agentive users of literacy, with or without a tutor. I wish to draw your attention less to the content of our message and more toward the ways in which moving our work outside of the center allowed us to engage students and our university community in small yet profoundly different ways that actively challenged the autonomous models of literacy that dominate so many of our university spaces. This tree demonstrates what Kress reminds us of when he writes that medium can be a “means of expressing power or deference to power” (74). As the broader text of our tree came together through a range of actions among ourselves and with students that would not have happened in this way within the writing center, we were able to facilitate the creation of a collaborative text that invited both the creators and interpreters of this text to embody and make writing visible as a social practice. This happened as our tutors and students met outside of the center, embodying how “[t]here is outward social (inter-)action in which meaning is constantly created, in a transformative process of interactions with and response to the prompts of social others and of the culturally shaped environment” (Kress 93-94). As this kind of multimodal work spills beyond the margins of the page and the walls of our writing centers, we are able to make visible the “socially constituted systems” that shape literacy practices across the university and students’ lives and redraw those systems by building new relationships with students and literacy.

Slowly, over the course of years, we began to expand the scope of these events where we would leave the center and consciously reshape spaces through invitations for student writing.

While our work has extended well beyond these butcher paper creations, the value of this work is still a key piece of our movement outside of our center. For example, the first time our tutors meet

many of our first time in college students is during a summer block party we throw during a mandatory four-day program for all of our incoming students. This event is titled “Make Your Mark.” We have snacks, t-shirts for students reading “There’s More Than One Write Way” across the back, a DJ, bubbles, and chalk inviting students to quite literally make their mark on our campus’s central courtyard where convocation is held a few days later. This event illustrates the ways in which our center is taking our work outside of our walls, writing with students across the spaces of the university and using this writing to—even if for only a short time—transform the spaces we share with them. As students meet tutors at this event, they meet them outside our space in a context that is oriented toward our campus community and the vibrant work our literacy practices do to re/shape this community while students are invited to get to work as they transform our central courtyard with their art and motivational quotes. Over the course of the event, a tapestry of text emerges that contributes to the transformation of the space right alongside the work we are doing to transform what a writing center is and the role that writing tutors play on our campus.

As we have done this multimodal work, we have built new and more sustained collaborations across campus that have enabled a broader removal of our work from the walls of the center. For example, “Make Your Mark” is done in collaboration with our Office of First-Year Experience, which organizes the larger program that students are participating in. As this collaboration has grown, we have sustained relationships with individual faculty who invite our tutors into their first-year seminar courses for workshops and to introduce their students to the center. Additionally, we collaborate with this office on an event that we refer to as our “HIIT sessions.” These sessions occur in different spaces ranging from campus common spaces to gathering rooms in dorms throughout the semester and provide students with snacks and a supportive space to study. There with them while they study are writing and math tutors. Some students come to these events, work with their friends, and leave. Others come and work extensively with tutors. As these HIIT sessions are held in spaces such as student dorms, we are able

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 16 to disrupt the narrative that students must leave their spaces and come into our spaces for support.

In addition to these events, our tutors spend a significant amount of time outside of our center doing classroom introductions that are either brief five-to-seven-minute overviews of the center or they are longer sessions that walk students through how writing tutors support their work throughout the writing process. These latter sessions often serve the goal of teaching students about the center and introducing them to the idea of a writing process in the context of their course.

Many faculty who request these introductory sessions also follow up later in the semester with requests for circulating tutors who visit their courses and offer students support as they are workshopping or working independently.

This work with students outside of the center is helping to establish our visibility on campus as an active participant in the dialogues that are going on about writing and the negotiations students engage in as they compose across the varied spaces of the university. We disrupt autonomous models of literacy as we no longer solely engage students as individuals outside of the vibrant contexts they compose across. Instead, we are working to be in conversation with stakeholders across the university and becoming part of a much larger network on campus.

As our work outside of the center increased alongside many of the sustained collaborations that allow for this work, we saw that the traditional model of writing center administration was not working as well as we would have liked. As a result, we have added to our team an assistant director and a position we refer to as a first-year liaison. This staff member works 40 hours a week sustaining our work outside of our center and connecting with first-year students across the university. This shift was critical for our success with this new direction. Prior to her arrival, the limitations of a director’s position with a 50% course reassignment for a 3/3 load ensured that work outside of the center could not be sustained or part of deeper reciprocal collaborations with other offices on campus. As our first-year liaison has come in, we have been able to build collaborations with students and other stakeholders that are reciprocal and sustainable as they have become institutionalized within our center. For example,

we have a first-year advisory board made up entirely of first-year students, and we are in the process of implementing a faculty/staff advisory board that will work with the director. It has for many become accepted to see our tutors out and about on campus doing a range of activities that extend beyond one-on-one tutoring in the center.

In addition to moving our work outside of the center, we have also refigured what it means to be “in” the center. The brick and mortar space of our center has extended to include three spaces.

One of these spaces is a community space used for book launches, workshops, and club meetings for two student organizations that are sponsored through our writing center: the Writing Club and the Spanish Club. This community space has a couple of high-top tables, two funky triangle tables, and about 15 comfy chairs with swivel desks. When the space is not being used, we frequently leave it open and students will come in to study, scroll their phones, or occasionally watch a movie together. Through these organizations and the space that is distinctly not a classroom or tutoring space, we are able to work with students across the university in contextualized ways that disrupt autonomous models of literacy. Our two other spaces are a podcasting studio, which I discuss more below, as well as a large space where we do our more traditional tutoring and which includes an area for full class visits and workshops in addition to tables for one-on-one tutoring.

Finally, and perhaps most disruptive of the autonomous models of literacy that have hamstrung our work between our loyalty to our space and our iconoclastism has been that we are no longer a writing center. This shift in our relationship with the university, our students, and our administrative structure, has allowed us to transition into a Writing, Language, and Digital Composing Center that includes a podcasting studio that we equipped with funds not spent during COVID when our operations were virtual.

This podcasting studio is open to students who are working on school projects as well as students who are looking to produce their own podcasts. In addition to this, our digital tutors support students creating digital texts, using our learning management system, and other platforms across which they work. We also now employ Spanish tutors and speech tutors.

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 17 Conclusion In their introduction to The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book, Christina Murphy and Byron Stay comment that “[t]he writing center professional must map out management styles that will meet institutional needs/demands and that will enable success” (xiv). When I started directing our writing center in 2014, I took this at face value: writing centers strove to meet institutional needs and enable student success. It was years before I began to question what “success” meant for students and who was defining success for students in college. Once we start to ask some of these difficult questions, the façade of student-centered language that often hides the autonomous models of literacy sustained by the long history of universities begins to crack. We begin to see how understandings of student success that bolster autonomous models of literacy fortify “institutional needs,” naturalizing them within a context that regards literacy as a neutral, autonomous skill that is transmittable through White Mainstream English (Baker-Bell).

When we see literacy as always contextualized and imbued with power, we have to look beyond the individual writing center session and the pedagogies that guide that session and ask how it is that our spaces and the administrative structures that maintain them are engaging a system that keeps the racist and colonialist underpinnings of our universities in place.

As we so often come to this work with “an idea about what directing a writing center would look like,” even those who come to writing center work equipped with anti-racist or decolonial frameworks often find themselves in the uncomfortable space of reimagining things like administrative structures that maintain autonomous models of literacy, which often isolates writing centers from the broader contexts they are working in—again suggesting that writing is a neutral and autonomous skill (Caswell, McKinney, and Jackson 177). While we are part of the broader dynamic landscape of the universities that surround us, writing centers are also part of a broader, perhaps existential at times, landscape across which students live and work as writers.

Our work to destabilize autonomous models of literacy connects us to that landscape and shapes our agency across it alongside students.

García reminds us that “we cannot decolonize being without decolonizing

knowledge” (2). One step in this work, I suggest, is to challenge the tension that, although frustrating, has often been naturalized within our work between the disruptive work we imagine ourselves doing and the often-cloistered spaces where this work is happening. This decolonizing requires us to move ourselves and our work outside of our writing center spaces, spaces that are relics of the colonizing designs of universities through which writing centers were established as regulatory spaces perpetuating what we have come to no longer see as a standard academic English, but as a White Mainstream English that enacts “white ways of speaking [that] become the invisible – or better, inaudible – norm” (Baker-Bell 3). In order to disrupt this, we must divest ourselves from the privileges of our space, and move our work out into the spaces of the university. Such a transition makes our iconoclasm no longer simply disruptive, but allows us to actively participate in the (re)creation of the spaces we share and build with students across the university.

Works Cited Alvarez, Steven. “Literacy.” Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, edited by Iris Ruiz and Raúl Sánchez, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 17–29.

Anzaldúa, Gloria E. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, edited by Analouise Keating, Duke UP, 2015.

Asao, Inoue. Anti-Racist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Parlor Press, 2015.

Baker-Bell, April. Linguistic Justice. Routledge, 2020.

Bouquet, Elizabeth. “‘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.

Camarillo, Eric. “Burn the House Down: Deconstructing the Writing Center as Cozy Home.” The Peer Review, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019.

Carter, Shannon. “The Writing Center Paradox: Talk about Legitimacy and the Problem of Institutional Change.” CCC, vol. 61, no. 1, 2009, pp. 133–152. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life.

Translated by Steven Rendall. 1980.

University of California Press, 2002.

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Crossing Thresholds: Identifying and Disrupting the Autonomous Models of Literacy Shaping Writing Center Work • 18 Delgado Bernal, Dolores. “Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Raced-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge.” Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 1, 2002, pp. 105–126.

Ede, Lisa. “Writing as a Social Process: A Theoretical Foundation for Writing Centers?” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 9, no. 2, 1989, pp. 3–13.

Ede, Lisa and Andrea Lunsford. “Some Millennial Thoughts about the Future of Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 20, no. 2, 2000, pp. 33–38.

Farmer, Frank. After the Public Turn. Utah State University Press, 2013.

García, Romeo. “Re/Searching for Hope.” College English, vol. 42, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1–52.

Gere, Anne Ruggles. “Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 45, no. 1, 1994, pp.

75–92.

Grimm, Nancy. “The Regulatory Role of the Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 17, no. 1, 1996, pp. 5–29.

—. “Retheorizing Writing Center Work to Transform a System of Advantage Based on Race.” Writing Centers and the New Racism, edited by Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan, Utah State UP, 2011, pp 75–100.

Kress, Gunther. Multimodality. Routledge, 2010.

Lorde, Audre. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Sister Outsider, Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 40–44, 2007.

McKinney, Jackie Grutsch. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. Utah State University Press, 2013.

Mitchell, Kendra and Robert Randolph, Jr. “A Page from our Book: Social Justice Lessons from the HBCU Writing Center.”

The Writing Center Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, 2018, 21–40.

Murphy, Christina and Byron Stay, eds. The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book, Routledge, 2010.

Noddings, Nel. “The Caring Relation in Teaching.” Oxford Review of Education, vol.

38, no. 6, 2012, pp. 771–781.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric.

Graywolf Press, 2014.

Villenas, Sofi A., et al. “Chicanas/Latinas Building Bridges.” Chicana/Latina Education in Everyday Life, edited by Dolores Delgado Bernal, C. Alejandra Elenes, Francisca E. Godinez, and Sofia Villenas, SUNY Press, 2006, pp. 1–10.

Young, Vershawn. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2010, pp. 110–118.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Elizabeth Chilbert Powers and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and generative feedback to this piece as it was being revised.

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MORE THAN A CELEBRATION: WRITING CENTER ANNIVERSARIES AS EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC James M. Cochran​ Hartwick College​ cochranj@hartwick.edu

Rachel Herzl-Betz​ Nevada State University​ rachel.herzl-betz@nevadastate.edu

Kara Poe Alexander​ Baylor University​ kara_alexander@baylor.edu

Ricardo Ramos Duran​ Nevada State University​ ricardo.ramosduran@students.nevadastate.edu

Abstract This article reimagines writing center anniversary celebrations as powerful acts of epideictic rhetoric.

Applying Sheard’s six characteristics—educative, ritualistic, elicits judgment, initiates, supports, and influences discourse, participates in reality at critical moments, and inspires new realities—we analyze celebrations at three institutions: a private R1 university, a small liberal arts college, and a public institution. Our analysis reveals that these events function as strategic rhetorical acts rather than mere commemorations. Writing center anniversary celebrations affirm institutional value, strengthen community identity, and advocate for continued support.

Moreover, through commemorating past achievements, reflecting on present work, and envisioning future directions, these events reinforce the writing center’s institutional identity and showcase contributions to student success–all of which can help to secure ongoing support. Ultimately, we argue that approaching anniversary events as rhetorical opportunities rather than neutral commemorations enables writing center administrators to create celebrations that honor tradition, affirm communal values, and advance strategic aims.

Keywords: anniversary celebrations, epideictic rhetoric, institutional history, collective memory, writing center administration, archives, commemorative rhetoric In On Rhetoric, Aristotle identifies three primary forms of rhetoric—forensic, deliberative, and epideictic—each tied to a distinct temporal orientation (past, future, present, respectively) (1358b). Forensic rhetoric evaluates past actions and assigns blame or innocence, making it central to legal and courtroom settings. Deliberative rhetoric seeks to persuade audiences about proposed future actions—what should or should not be undertaken to achieve desired outcomes or

prevent harmful ones—and is common in legislative and policy-making contexts. Epideictic rhetoric attends to the present by celebrating, critiquing, or reaffirming current events and communal values. Traditionally associated with toasts, eulogies, commencement speeches, sermons, and acceptance speeches, epideictic discourse commemorates achievements, reinforces collective identity, and affirms communal bonds.

Scholars have examined epideictic rhetoric in classrooms, dominant ideologies, disciplinary discourse, and cultural practices (e.g., Crowley and Hawhee; Halloran; Killingsworth; Lussos; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca; Spigelman; Walker, “Aristotle’s Lyrics;” Walker, Rhetoric), yet its role within writing center contexts remains largely unexamined. This gap is significant because epideictic rhetoric is central to the celebrations, events, and everyday practices that shape writing center identity and community. One timely example is the writing center anniversary.

Because many writing centers were founded in the 1970s (Carino; Boquet, “Our Little Secret”), a large number are now celebrating 40-50-year anniversaries. While these anniversaries mark institutional longevity, they also emphasize the evolution of the writing center itself. As Giaimo reminds us, “writing centers, at their core, were created during times of crisis. Only, the crisis then was about ‘unprepared’ students rather than the myriad challenges we face in higher education today.” This observation underscores how today’s anniversaries function not only as celebrations but also as significant rhetorical moments–occasions that invite reflection on what has changed and what has endured. They affirm core values, honor the labor and contributions of past and present community members, and strengthen the writing center’s visibility within the academic community (e.g., Lerner, The Idea; McKinney). These celebrations enact epideictic rhetoric through speeches, testimonials, and institutional narratives, discursive forms that praise past achievements,

More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 20 reaffirm shared missions, and foster belonging among students, faculty, and staff (Boquet, Noise; Lerner, The Idea).

Despite their clear rhetorical function, little scholarship has examined these events as epideictic rhetoric. While studies have analyzed writing center histories, narratives, and institutional positioning (Geller et al.; Lerner, The Idea; McKinney), few have explored how anniversary events function as rhetorical acts. This gap leaves unexamined how anniversaries contribute to writing center values, identity, and institutional positioning as well as their potential to serve as sites of critique, transformation, and advocacy.

In this article, we apply Sheard’s six categories of epideictic rhetoric, following Rachel Graham Lussos’ model, to an analysis of three writing center anniversary celebrations. We argue that these celebrations function as epideictic rhetoric by commemorating important milestones, affirming communal identity, and fostering rhetorical reflection on the writing center’s role within the institution. Through an analysis of three case studies, we demonstrate how anniversary events affirm institutional presence, cultivate community and belonging, and provide opportunities for rhetorical engagement with writing center history and identity. More broadly, our findings highlight writing center anniversaries as significant epideictic acts that celebrate past accomplishments, reaffirm ongoing relevance, and solidify a writing center’s role in supporting academic, institutional, and community goals. By viewing these events through an epideictic lens, we demonstrate how they honor tradition, strengthen community ties, and shape the writing center’s identity within the academic landscape.

In what follows, we first provide background on epideictic rhetoric, situating it within rhetorical studies and composition theory.

Next, we review existing scholarship on writing center histories and celebrations and provide background on each writing center analyzed here.

We then present case studies of three writing center anniversary celebrations, analyze their rhetorical strategies, and discuss implications for community-building and institutional identity.

Finally, we consider the broader significance of recognizing writing center anniversaries as rhetorical moments that contribute to writing center advocacy, institutional visibility, and the

reaffirmation of core values. Ultimately, by framing writing center anniversary celebrations through an epideictic lens, we offer a new perspective on how these moments function as rhetorical acts that sustain and evolve a writing center’s role within the academy.

Epideictic Rhetoric and Writing Centers Epideictic rhetoric, one of Aristotle’s three branches of rhetoric alongside deliberative and forensic rhetoric, is primarily concerned with the present and often takes the form of ceremonial discourse that commemorates events, shapes communal identity, and creates a shared sense of belonging (1358b). Aristotle emphasized its association with praise and blame, but later scholars broadened the concept. Walker reconceived epideictic rhetoric as discourse that negotiates, reinforces, or revises values and beliefs (“Aristotle’s Lyrics” 7). Similarly, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca highlighted epideictic rhetoric’s aesthetic and pedagogical functions: it invites audiences to reflect on collective values and traditions while honoring or criticizing them. This expanded understanding positions epideictic rhetoric as a dynamic force for social cohesion that reaffirms institutional and cultural identities (Oravec).

In “The Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric,” Cynthia Sheard further identifies six defining features of epideictic rhetoric. She writes: We can say that epideictic is educative, that it is in many ways ritualistic, that it elicits judgment, that it can initiate, support, influence, or lend closure to other modes of discourse, and we should add not only that it participates in reality at critical moments in time but that it interprets and represents one reality for the purpose of positing and inspiring a new one (790).

Sheard’s framework emphasizes epideictic discourse’s role in invoking values and therefore shaping collective realities and stimulating change in a community. This expanded understanding positions epideictic rhetoric as dynamic: it honors traditions while creating space for critique, transformation, and communal identity.

Contemporary scholars have identified epideictic elements across diverse contexts ranging from landscapes (Halloran), sorority rhetoric (Hogg), and graduation ceremonies (Agnew) to the composition classroom (Sullivan), songs (Walker, “Aristotle’s Lyrics”), needlework (Carter),

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 21 and occasional cakes (Lussos). This breadth illustrates how epideictic rhetoric operates beyond traditional ceremonial settings as a powerful tool that shapes meaning in everyday cultural and institutional practices.

Writing centers are deeply embedded in institutional culture, making their anniversaries particularly rich sites for rhetorical analysis; yet, these celebrations remain largely unexamined as rhetorical events. Although scholarship has not focused on anniversary events in writing centers, scholars have examined anniversary events and culture in higher education more broadly: anniversary events as jubilees that construct meaning and identity (Guhl and Hürlimann), as a site of contested memory (Huxford and Wallace), as prompts for historical research and reflection (Paletschek), and as closely related to university historiography (Dhondt). The same attention has not carried over to studies of writing centers.

Instead, writing center scholarship has emphasized the importance of telling our stories through three primary approaches: (1) histories of writing centers (Carino; Boquet, “Our Little Secret;” Lerner, “Punishment; Moore), (2) archival studies (Nall; Wilde et al.; Buck), and (3) autoethnographies and testimonies that center on lived experiences (Faison and Condon; Giaimo and Lawson; Doyle). Peter Carino, for instance, sketches a history of writing centers from 1904 until the 1950s, challenging dominant narratives that characterized early writing centers as “dungeons where students were banished to do grammar drills” (113). Expanding Carino’s history, Elizabeth Boquet traces the development of writing centers throughout the twentieth century: from writing labs as methods in the 1920s, to physical sites in the 1940s, their apparent “disappearance” in the 1950s, the growth of peer tutoring in the 1960s and 1970s, and finally to becoming sites of contemporary composition studies in the 1980s. Framing her history explicitly as storytelling, Boquet acknowledges the multiplicity of narratives: “All of these stories can be written. Should be written. Are waiting to be written. Will be written. Or not” (479). Likewise, Neil Lerner traces the tensions between the growth and elimination of writing centers from 1939 to 1970: Writing centers grew due to increased college enrollments from “urban immigrants in the 1930s” and “returning veterans in the 1940s,” but many writing centers were

eliminated from campuses during the 1950s and 1960s due to budget cuts and the elimination of remedial programs (“Punishment” 53). Lerner’s history demonstrates both the precarity and possibilities that today’s writing centers face. More recently, Dan Moore reviews the formative years of writing centers (late 1880s to early 1940s) to identify the historical developments that gave rise to the principles that guide writing centers’ tutoring practices and philosophies today.

Archives provide another approach to preserving writing center narratives and therefore constitute essential infrastructure for commemorative events like anniversaries. Stacy Nall argues that informal partnerships and collaborations often remain undocumented in formal archives, yet these constitute a critical part of writing center histories. Nall calls for the collection and preservation of these informal moments as an act of “storytelling” that preserves “institutional memory” (117). Wilde et al. similarly explores how archival research can help to preserve “a living past” by foregrounding tutor voices that sometimes get ignored in dominant historical narratives of writing centers (105).

Finally, situated within her broader work on open access multimodality, Elisabeth H. Buck surveys the digital archives of writing center journals to construct a historiography of the treatment of computer technologies in the field of writing center studies. By detailing her archival research process, Buck calls attention to the necessity of maintaining “obtainable,” “navigable,” and “straightforward” archives (59) to better understand the past so that we can handle today’s challenges in the field.

More recently, counterstories, autoethnography, and testimony have emerged as methods for sharing writing center experiences. In Counterstories from the Writing Center, Wonderful Faison and Frankie Condon gather first-person accounts as a “means of surfacing, naming, interrogating, and dismantling the workings of racism in the daily life of the writing centre” (8).

Building on this work, Genie Nicole Giaimo and Daniel Lawson’s edited collection, Storying Writing Center Labor for Anti-Capitalist Futures, uses “counterstory, storying, and testimony” to convey individualized, lived experiences in writing centers (23), thereby complicating dominant narratives and making visible the experiences often excluded from official histories (23). Relatedly, Melanie

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 22 Doyle employs autoethnography to reflect on the stories she tells about her multifaceted and complex career in writing centers. Doyle suggests that autoethnography as methodology can serve as an accessible approach to writing center scholars, particularly those in precarious or marginal positions.

While each of the above approaches underscore the importance of writing center narratives, they do not address their rhetorical function in commemorative events like anniversaries. Only occasional references to anniversaries appear. For instance, in a 2015 blog post, Brad Hughes reflected on the 20th anniversary of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s online writing center. He traced the history and evolution of the center since the website was first launched in 1995 and highlighted its growth, technological adaptation, and role in academic writing support. The post generated nearly sixty comments expressing shared nostalgia, appreciation, and community.

Praxis’s 2013 special issue, “The Future of Writing Centers,” is framed around two anniversaries—the tenth anniversary of Praxis and the 20th anniversary of the UT Austin Writing Center (Orem and Pietsch). Despite occasional references to writing center celebrations, scholarly discussions remain sparse and none examine such occasions rhetorically. This absence leaves a clear opportunity to investigate how anniversaries commemorate history, affirm institutional values, and negotiate writing center identity.

Institutional Context and Methodology The three case studies presented here focus on writing center celebrations at three institutions—Baylor University, Hartwick College, and Nevada State University. Each case study employs a tailored methodology informed by the institution’s history and the specifics of its celebration. These methodologies include archival research, rhetorical analysis, and qualitative analysis. Taken together, these case studies offer a multifaceted perspective on how writing centers leverage epideictic rhetoric to affirm their institutional roles and community significance.

The Writing Center at Baylor University—a private R1 religious institution in the Southwest with an enrollment of 22,000 students—was established in 1983 and renamed the University Writing Center in 2019. The Center

is staffed by a director, assistant director, staff coordinator, and 30-35 undergraduate and graduate student consultants.1 In spring 2024, it celebrated its 40th anniversary. For this study, Kara, who has served as director since 2017, conducted archival research to examine the Center’s historical and rhetorical significance beyond her prior administrative knowledge. Methods included analysis of staff handbooks, university website archives, campus newspapers, and yearbooks. She also engaged in rhetorical analysis of the Center’s 40th anniversary celebration—its speeches, program materials and artifacts, structure, visual and symbolic elements, and community participation—to assess how epideictic rhetoric was enacted and institutional values were affirmed.

The Charlotte Orr Hotaling Writing Center at Hartwick College, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York with a population of 1,112 students, opened in 1978. The Writing Center was dedicated as a named space in the mid-1990s. The Writing Center is staffed by a director and approximately 10 undergraduate consultants. James has served as director since 2019. In the fall of 2023, the Writing Center celebrated its 45th anniversary. For that occasion, James analyzed the archival materials located within the writing center and at Hartwick’s archives. He also directed a member of the writing center’s undergraduate staff to identify articles about or even brief mentions of the writing center in past editions of the campus newspaper. The same undergraduate writing consultant also met with prior writing center and writing program administrators and recorded conversations with them about their experiences establishing and directing the writing center and writing program.

Nevada State University’s Writing Center became a stand-alone program in 2014, after its origins in the Academic Success Center (ASC).

Roughly 70% of the University’s 7,500-person student body identifies with a historically marginalized race or ethnicity and 60% identify as first-generation college students. It typically employs 14–17 undergraduate writing specialists and fellows. Rachel, assistant director since 2017 and director since 2021, and Ricardo, an undergraduate fellow since 2023, helped lead the 10th anniversary celebration in 2024. Together, they designed an IRB-approved study focusing on the team’s perception of The Long Night Against Procrastination, or LNAP, a bi-annual event that

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 23 has been celebrated since the center’s inception.

At Nevada State, this event is collaboratively organized by the undergraduate team and promotes productivity, community, and campus support. Rachel and Ricardo collected anonymous reflections from former employees and fellows in response to the following questions: “What does LNAP mean to you? What people, places, activities, and memories feel most important and why?” These responses, displayed at the 10th anniversary event, were analyzed using epideictic rhetoric as their critical lens. All respondents included in this article are identified by pseudonyms.

Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric In this section, we follow Lussos’s model to apply Sheard’s six characteristics of epideictic rhetoric to analyze three case studies of writing center anniversary celebrations. In doing so, we aim to highlight how these celebrations enact epideictic rhetoric and affirm community values, cultivate identity and belonging, and assert institutional relevance, value, and prominence.

Educative Writing center celebrations serve an educative purpose by helping attendees understand the center’s mission, values, and history, as well as its role within the institution. Beyond being a social gathering, these events provide an opportunity to actively share a writing center’s (his)story with a broad audience. They also facilitate knowledge about the purpose of a writing center and highlight its contributions to the academic institution.

During Baylor’s 40th-anniversary celebration, for example, Kara invited former directors, including the founder and first director, Dr. Dianna Vitanza, to attend and speak.2 During her speech, Dr. Vitanza recounted how, as a new assistant professor fresh out of graduate school, she recognized the need for a writing center at Baylor and drew on her graduate school experiences as a writing consultant to establish one. By revisiting the center’s origins, the event educated attendees—including current professional and student staff and university administrators—about its history, identity, and evolving role within the university. This reflection on the writing center’s founding also fostered a

sense of communal identity rooted in the center’s legacy.

Similarly, Hartwick’s 45th anniversary celebration highlighted the center’s resilience amid institutional challenges, including the college’s recent turnover of several chief academic officers.

James invited former writing center administrators (Emily Wilson-Orzechowski, Julie Suarez Hayes, and Stephanie King), writing program administrators (Dr. Robert Benson and Dr. Susan Navarette), and the chair of the English Department during the Writing Center’s formative years (Dr. Thomas Beattie). In Hartwick’s case, the Writing Program and Writing Center have long been intertwined, so those responsible for the founding of the Writing Center also had a hand in the founding of the Writing Program. In addition, Hartwick’s anniversary celebration took place following a period in which the College had had four different chief officers of academic affairs during the previous four years. By revisiting the writing center’s history and its long-standing contributions to student success, the event underscored its continued necessity, demonstrating its resilience and enduring value within the institution. Ultimately, this anniversary celebration not only commemorated the writing center’s history but also served as a crucial moment of institutional memory, reinforcing its ongoing relevance and educating both past and present members about its foundational values and contributions.

In a similar vein, alumni reflections collected during the 10th anniversary celebration of Nevada State’s LNAP illuminated the event’s evolution from a labor-intensive experiment into a cherished campus tradition. For example, Theo describes the “exhaustive” commitment to building the event, marked by “sweat, tears, laughter, doubt, and delirium,” while Claire recalls how the student workers “took time-stamped selfies with increasingly exhausted specialists.”

These reflections provide a kind of narrative arc by illustrating how LNAP evolved from a precarious, late-night experiment into a structured and anticipated aspect of campus life. By sharing these stories, the celebration educated attendees on the hidden labor required to foster writing culture and support on campus.

Together, these three anniversary celebrations illustrate how the educative dimension of epideictic rhetoric operates across

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 24 diverse institutional contexts and audiences. The Baylor and Hartwick cases emphasized institutional continuity by linking present-day practices to founding figures and reaffirming the writing center’s enduring value despite administrative change. In contrast, Nevada State’s LNAP celebration showcased the evolution of a newer writing initiative from an experimental event into an established tradition that embodies the writing center’s pedagogical and communal values. Across all three cases, anniversary celebrations functioned as rhetorical acts of education and remembrance that connected past and present practices, strengthened institutional memory, and advocated for the writing center’s continued support. In addition, they serve as powerful reminders of the writing center’s essential role in student success and academic life.

These approaches demonstrate that education through epideictic rhetoric can be achieved through multiple modalities—speeches, artifacts, and personal narratives—each suited to different institutional contexts and strategic goals.

Ritualistic Aspects Epideictic rhetoric is also inherently ritualistic because it adheres to established forms, traditions, and social expectations that foster belonging, communal values, and a collective identity (Bokser; Hogg). Writing center anniversary celebrations incorporate rituals—structured events, symbolic gestures, and communal gatherings—to commemorate achievements, reaffirm their mission, and strengthen institutional belonging.

Baylor’s 40th-anniversary celebration featured several key rituals. Speeches by the founding director, the current director, an undergraduate writing consultant, the dean, and the provost were central to the event and bolstered the writing center’s mission. As current director, Kara honored the individuals who shaped the center’s legacy, while the provost emphasized the writing center’s vital role in supporting students and faculty and adapting to technologies like AI. The student consultant shared a personal testimonial and highlighted how tutoring influenced her learning and development.

By recognizing past achievements and looking toward the future, these speeches performed a ritual function of affirming the center’s continued relevance and value.

Beyond speeches, visual and symbolic elements further enhanced Baylor’s ritualistic nature. Staff wore t-shirts featuring a 40th-anniversary logo, and the space included balloons, floral arrangements, and refreshments.

Attendees received commemorative cups, and a slideshow showcased archival materials, such as photographs, bookmarks, flyers, and stickers from the center’s history. These elements reinforced the celebratory and ritualistic nature of the occasion and provided a tangible link between the past and present, thereby strengthening participants’ sense of identity and belonging.

At Hartwick College, James took a different approach, opting for a more casual, informal, and speech-free 45th-anniversary celebration. This choice was strategic because it was Hartwick’s first writing center anniversary event. James sought to create a relaxed gathering, with plans for a larger, more formal, and ritual-heavy celebration at the 50th anniversary.

However, even in the absence of speeches and formal rituals, the event still carried ritualistic significance. The casual brunch format recalled a long tradition of writing center gatherings around food, a practice well documented in Hartwick’s archives through photographs of past celebrations, beautiful sheet cakes, humorous newsletters, and the gathering of generations of students in the same space. Like Kara’s showcase of past writing center artifacts, James displayed historical artifacts, including pamphlets, photographs from holiday parties and meetings, and founding documents.

Moreover, by embedding the event within the college’s annual reunion–a campus tradition for alumni and families of current students–James ensured higher attendance and greater institutional visibility. This integration illustrates another function of ritual in epideictic rhetoric—it attracts participants and secures the writing center’s place in broader campus traditions.

Nevada State’s 10th-anniversary LNAP event blended aspects of Baylor’s formal and Hartwick’s informal approaches. Students designed t-shirts for all attendees, which created a distinct event identity that fostered community.

Both the celebration and the collected alumni reflections focused on unintentional traditions, which only had value because of their shared recognition. Unlike Baylor’s formal speeches or Hartwick’s structured casual brunch, Nevada State relied on peer-centered, participatory practices

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 25 that gained significance precisely because they were shared. In fact, in the reflections, references to “subpar pizza,” hallway chair races, and late-night blackouts functioned as shorthand for shared memories, “memeifying” the event, and allowing student workers to build community across its 10-year history. Over time, these student-driven rituals accrued meaning, strengthened communal identity, and created continuity across the event’s decade-long history.

Together, these three case studies illustrate the varied ways epideictic rituals operate within writing center contexts. Baylor’s 40th anniversary emphasized formalized, highly structured rituals—speeches, ceremonial artifacts, and carefully curated visual displays—that reinforced continuity, authority, and the Center’s institutional legitimacy. Hartwick’s anniversary relied on informal, participatory rituals: a casual brunch format, historical artifacts, and the college’s reunion weekend. These rituals cultivated intimacy, embedded the center within campus traditions, and enhanced visibility and participation. Nevada State’s LNAP event blended these approaches, combining branded materials and structured displays with unintentional, student-driven rituals. Through repetition and shared recognition, unintentional practices strengthened communal identity over time. Across all three celebrations, anniversary rituals functioned not merely as ceremonial formality but as mechanisms that connect past and present participants—administrators, staff, and students—to the writing center’s ongoing mission.

Collectively, these cases demonstrate that ritualistic practices—whether formal, informal, planned, or emergent—affirm communal identity, preserve institutional memory, and sustain the writing center’s culture and advocacy within higher education. They also show that anniversary celebrations can be strategically deployed to serve both institutional priorities and community-building goals.

Elicits Judgment Writing center anniversary celebrations also provide moments for judgment—both positive and negative—that influence perceptions of a center’s legitimacy and institutional standing. The success of these events hinges on execution, which might include attendance, organization, food, attendance, promotional materials, and

speeches—factors that contribute to the public perception of the center’s value. A well-planned and well-attended event signals institutional validation and prestige, which may elicit praise and reinforce a positive ethos and institutional standing. By contrast, a poorly executed or sparsely attended celebration may signify marginalization, which could potentially affect future funding and support. For our centers, these events become rhetorical moments where stakeholders judge the center’s role and contributions and where centers self-assess, teaching the community how they, and their campus contributions, should be understood.

At Baylor’s 40th-anniversary event, for instance, the organization and content of the event underscored the writing center as an indispensable part of the university. Kara’s speech detailed the changes made over the years, highlighted new initiatives, and presented data on student engagement and usage—all aimed at demonstrating the center’s role as a vital university service. Student and faculty testimonials further shaped public perception by validating the center’s legitimacy and worth. The selection of speakers, the presence of key university figures, and the narratives shared by presenters and attendees alike all contribute to how the center is perceived within the institution.

Similarly, at Hartwick’s anniversary celebration, a common feature was praise for the work of the writing center and for past writing program and writing center administrators. A member of senior leadership attended the event and praised the writing center’s mission and projects, including earning an external grant, expanding linguistic justice resources, and implementing curriculum revisions that promoted student success. James, too, offered praise. He honored past writing center and program administrators for their work establishing and sustaining the writing center and contributing to what it is today. He also commended their design choices of the physical space and extended this praise even to seemingly small details, such as the significance of a Minnie Mouse clock that still hangs in the writing center today. They returned this praise, thanking James for hosting a celebration that involves them, and extolling the recent updates to the writing center and the writing program. Moving away from praise, they lightheartedly asked about decor that James had

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 26 removed from the writing center, such as a world map that had been hanging on the walls for decades in the writing center, which demonstrates how material artifacts can carry symbolic weight in institutional memory.

In addition, at Nevada State, alumni reflections on LNAP emphasized “support,” “collaboration,” “connection,” and “safety” to explain what they value about the event and how they, by extension, believe others should judge its value. Emilia described LNAP as “more than just a study session; it’s a place to meet friends, improve assignments, but most importantly it’s a place where you are safe and supported.” Xander noted that “It means connection. It means helping people find their people.” These narratives highlighted emotional, social, and professional growth, framing LNAP's broader impact on emotional, social, and professional skills. For example, Dayea explains how LNAP’s emphasis on serving and creating community influenced her classroom teaching post-graduation. In these narratives, alumni do more than celebrate the event; they establish the writing center’s long-term relevance and affirm its role in shaping both individual experiences and institutional culture.

Across these three anniversary celebrations, audiences evaluated the writing center’s value in ways that both affirmed its legitimacy and influenced future trajectory. Each event invited its community to reflect on the center’s mission, role, and impact, though the sources and modes of judgement varied. Baylor’s celebration strategically featured speakers from distinct institutional positions, ranging from student consultants to senior administrators, which allowed diverse stakeholders to share unique perspectives on the center’s work and thereby reinforced the center’s authority across multiple institutional levels. Hartwick’s celebration emphasized communal praise and symbolic artifacts, which prompted reflection on continuity and the center’s evolving identity. Nevada State centered alumni voices and privileged the relational and framed the center’s value in terms of support, collaboration, and connection. Together, these cases reveal how anniversary events function, not only as commemorations, but also as rhetorical performances in which writing centers negotiate identity and institutional value. By eliciting judgment from diverse stakeholders, anniversary events reinforce legitimacy and

prompt reflection, which helps centers align their mission with institutional priorities and remain valued spaces of learning and community.

Initiate, Support, Influence, or Lend Closure to Other Modes of Discourse Writing center anniversary celebrations initiate, support, influence, and lend closure to other modes of discourse about a writing center’s role, legacy, and future (Sheard). These events provide space to reflect on a center’s history, affirm its mission, and chart its trajectory. By gathering students, faculty, administrators, and alumni, anniversary celebrations spark conversations that elevate the writing center’s institutional value and significance. Through speeches, testimonials, and commemorative materials, these events shape how the center is perceived and influence its reputation. Anniversary milestones often serve to highlight moments of transition—leadership changes, programmatic shifts, and new initiatives—making these celebrations strategic rhetorical acts that help define the center’s evolving identity and purpose rather than merely retrospective exercises.

Baylor’s 40th-anniversary celebration exemplifies this rhetorical function by emphasizing the writing center’s role through public recognition and institutional discourse.

Kara’s speech acknowledged past directors and institutional supporters (e.g., Libraries, English Department, Provost’s Office, Dean’s Office) for their role in supporting the center. She also honored student consultants for helping to fulfill the writing center’s mission and contribute to student success. Beyond the formal program, the event fostered informal discourse, where attendees shared stories with each other of their connection to the center or its impact on their academic and professional lives. For attendees less familiar with the writing center’s work, the event served as an introduction to the center’s mission, people, and significance—potentially encouraging greater engagement in the future.

Similarly, Hartwick’s 45th anniversary celebration initiated and supported reunion discourse. As part of a larger alumni reunion, the celebration fostered conversations that evoked shared memories and highlighted changes over time. Charlotte Linde describes reunion discourse as twofold. First, it allows participants to remember and confirm their experiences with

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 27 others who share their memories—what she calls “the power for the participants because it may contain at least some of the right people to remember with” (54). Second, reunion discourse emphasizes contrast between past and present or “what has happened then and now” (55), which helps participants recognize their own and the writing center’s evolution. At Hartwick, both functions were clearly evident. Alumni reminisced with past writing administrators about their time in the writing center, recalling shared experiences and connecting with former colleagues. Likewise, writing center and writing program administrators recalled their shared pasts. Participants also engaged in the reunion discourse of contrast: alumni introduced partners and children, former writing administrators inquired about alumni’s careers, and attendees caught up on each other’s lives. The event also fostered new relationships, bridging generations of writing center consultants and administrators and strengthening the center’s ongoing legacy.

In short, writing center anniversary celebrations function as rhetorical acts that honor the past and shape the center’s future. These events initiate conversations, shape perception, influence institutional discourse, and lend closure to one chapter while opening another, thus guiding how the center is perceived and remembered. Baylor’s 40th anniversary emphasized public recognition and institutional acknowledgment, a choice that fostered engagement and reinforced the center’s relationships across campus. Hartwick’s 45th anniversary celebration centered on reunion discourse that bridged generations of writing center staff, confirmed shared memories, and highlighted change over time, an approach that strengthened the center’s legacy. Together, these cases demonstrate how anniversary celebrations employ epideictic rhetoric to guide perception, influence institutional narratives, and chart a writing center’s evolving identity. Through speeches, testimonials, and commemorative materials, these events ensure that writing centers are not only remembered but also continually reimagined as vital, dynamic spaces for learning.

Participate in Reality at Critical Moments in Time Writing center anniversary celebrations function as epideictic rhetoric by participating in reality at

critical moments in time—marking significant milestones and emphasizing its role within the institution. These events serve as historical markers that draw attention to a center’s longevity and its continued adaptation within the institution.

Through commemoration and reflection, they invite participants to honor a shared past while envisioning a collective future.

Celebrating a 10th, 25th, or 50th anniversary is important because it signals institutional stability and growth, recognizing that the centers celebrating today have evolved significantly from their founding iterations in mission, pedagogy, and institutional positioning. For example, Baylor’s 40th-anniversary celebration honored the center’s foundational years while looking ahead to future endeavors. The inclusion of music, a video slideshow, t-shirts, and flowers enriched the audience’s sensory experience by grounding the event in a shared, embodied engagement that fostered a sense of unity and collective memory.

More broadly, celebrations often incorporate visual and multisensory elements that engage the audience’s senses and invite them into a shared experience. All three celebrations used a range of elements, including slideshows, videos, banners, archival displays, and t-shirts, to create an embodied experience that fosters a tangible connection to the center’s mission and impact. At Hartwick, for example, archival displays and the longstanding physical space of the writing center—a space that has housed the writing center for approximately three decades—helped to build participants’ shared sense of community and memory. These communal elements help reframe the writing center’s role within the academic community and invite participants to reflect on its past, appreciate its present, and imagine its future.

At Nevada State, the 10th Anniversary celebration coincided with a pivotal financial milestone. Since its inception, the center had been supported by a generous external gift that also funded other student support programs on campus. Shortly before the anniversary year, the writing center began transitioning to state funding—a shift that signaled a move to greater institutional stability and permanence. While these transitions are themselves worthy of celebration, they also invite deeper reflection, reassessment, and, at times, increased scrutiny. Although only a few study respondents explicitly referenced the funding change, its significance was more subtly

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 28 reflected in how attendees interacted with the in-person exhibit. The display itself did not mention the shift in funding, yet many attendees interpreted the reflections as an invitation to construct a broader narrative about the center’s development. For them, the center’s transition was not just a financial update—it became the symbolic culmination of its institutional journey.

In this context, the act of highlighting the center’s history and adaptability took on added meaning, shaped by the convergence of multiple critical institutional moments.

By participating in reality at critical moments in time, writing center anniversary celebrations act as strategic rhetorical moments that commemorate the past, encourage reflection on the present, and invite contemplation on the future. In all three celebrations, each event reflected its center’s trajectory and priorities while reaffirming its place within the academic community. Baylor’s 40th anniversary event used multisensory elements—music, a slideshow, t-shirts, and flowers—to foster collective memory and embodied engagement. Hartwick’s celebration emphasized continuity through archival displays and the longstanding physical space, which reinforced a sense of rootedness and shared history. Nevada State’s event coincided with a pivotal financial funding that attendees interpreted as a symbol of institutional permanence and growth. Together, these examples demonstrate how anniversary celebrations serve as moments of rhetorical significance in that they connect past achievements with future aspirations. Through epideictic rhetoric, these events foster belonging, ownership, and anticipation, all of which serve to contribute to the center’s continued success, relevance, and vitality.

Represent One Reality and Inspire a New One This characteristic of epideictic rhetoric, while overlapping with others, uniquely prompts WCAs to pause and assess their center’s present reality and envision its future. Anniversary celebrations highlight the center’s current state and affirm its value while creating space to praise its contributions and validate its role as a vital part of the institution. However, these events do more than celebrate triumphs; they invite critical reflection on ongoing challenges facing contemporary writing centers. These challenges include recruiting and retaining consultants;

fostering staff diversity that reflects student populations; responding to changing student needs shaped by hybrid learning environments, evolving technologies, and shifting enrollment trends; navigating fluctuating usage rates amid shifting institutional priorities; addressing budget constraints during periods of austerity; and adapting to emerging technologies such as generative AI that reshape writing pedagogy and tutoring practice. While these contemporary concerns differ markedly from earlier struggles for legitimacy, they reflect how writing centers continue to evolve in response to the current moment. Acknowledging these realities positions participants within the center’s ongoing story and encourages collaborative problem-solving. Too often, writing center staff operate within what Anne Geller terms “fungible time” (8)—undergraduate tutors moving between writing conferences during shifts, which are often squeezed in between their own classes, or administrators navigating their own daily demands.

Anniversary celebrations offer a rare opportunity to participate in “epochal time,” allowing practitioners to pause and take stock of the center’s present state (Geller 8). This reflective pause is particularly valuable in the typically frenetic pace of writing center work, creating space for both honest assessment and aspirational thinking.

While these events offer a chance to reflect on the present through “epochal time,” they also inspire future possibilities by channeling that reflection into tangible change. For instance, the reflection sparked by the planning and execution of these celebrations inspired new possibilities for all of us, acting as a launching point for new initiatives, such as expanding services, embracing new pedagogies, or addressing emerging technologies like Gen-AI. After Baylor’s writing center anniversary celebration, Kara was inspired by conversations with attendees to establish a donation account for the writing center, which was successfully added as a funding option within the College of Arts and Sciences.

This initiative made the writing center visible to potential donors and opened up new avenues for support. By offering a vision for the center’s future, these celebrations served as a call to action for WCAs and other stakeholders to invest in the center’s continued growth.

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 29 Investment in the writing center’s future, however, extends beyond financial contributions.

Institutional partnerships, community engagement, advocacy, and activism can also play a crucial role in strengthening its foundation. For example, anniversary celebrations fostered relationships that initiated new forms of support.

At Hartwick, for example, as part of the planning process leading up to the anniversary celebration, one of the senior writing consultants interviewed past writing center and program administrators in an attempt to build an oral history of the early writing center. After these interviews, that writing consultant continued to see some of these past writing administrators as they attended campus events. The anniversary celebration gave rise to new relationships and engagement, which helped to shape the center’s future trajectory. These events thus became transformative rhetorical acts that redefined both what the writing center is and what it can become.

Beyond individual initiatives, writing center anniversary celebrations also foster a shared understanding of a center’s role within the academic community and inspire participants to imagine a new reality for its future. These events encouraged attendees to envision growth, innovation, and inclusivity and then motivated participants to become active contributors to that vision. This dual function of reflecting on the past and inspiring future change aligns with epideictic rhetoric’s power to praise and to transform.

Through this process, anniversary celebrations act as catalysts for change, strengthening writing center communities and enhancing their institutional presence.

This dual function of envisioning and inspiring a new reality is particularly evident in alumni reflections at Nevada State’s anniversary event, where respondents articulated a vision of what LNAP represents and offered an implicit argument for how those relationships should shape future priorities for the university, the writing center, and the event itself. Together, they pointed to LNAP as a sign of academia’s potential when given the resources to flourish. One respondent, Imara, highlighted LNAP as an example of how “successful collaborations, student support, equity mindset, hard work, fun, and a little more time” can foster a thriving academic community. To reach that potential, she argues, institutions need the right attitude, but they

also need a budget to match. Another respondent, Vida, emphasized the communal aspect of the event in a long poem that describes LNAP as an “exhibition of what students can accomplish,” a “demonstration of community support,” and as a chance to “feel close, in a genuine, unforced way.” While one reflection frames the event as a “reminder” and the other frames it as an “exhibition,” both understand LNAP (and writing centers themselves) as a kind of exception. For them, academia doesn’t always feel “close,” but they know that it can and, more importantly, they argue that it should. They claim that this kind of support within the context of “FUN” is essential, valuable, and worth saving. As Vida argues, “shit gets done, or doesn't.” For the respondents, the event’s value doesn’t lie in the number of assignments completed during the night; rather, it’s an argument for the essential value of a space that provides opportunities, while also allowing for multiple visions of success.

Vida ends her poem with a statement that could be read as a description or an order: “Within the Writing Center or at home​ Long Nights Against Procrastination​ Never get old.”

In her voice, the end of the poem “never get old” almost sounds like marching orders for future academic leaders to keep such practices alive.

LNAP, you shall not age. It is framed as both a true statement and a requirement. Her words suggest a vision for the future in which the spirit of the writing center’s events remains relevant and vibrant, continually shaping the academic culture at Nevada State.

As a rhetorical mode that represents one reality and inspires another, epideictic rhetoric allows writing center anniversary celebrations to affirm the present and envision future possibilities.

In all three celebrations, reflection on current challenges—such as funding, staffing, and evolving pedagogies—prompted action and imagination. Baylor’s event led to the creation of a donation account, expanding financial visibility and support. At Hartwick, the planning process initiated an oral history project that deepened institutional memory and fostered new relationships. Nevada State’s alumni reflections framed LNAP as a model for what academic communities could become, emphasizing

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 30 collaboration, equity, and joy. These examples show how anniversary events not only acknowledge the realities of writing center work but also inspire participants to reimagine its potential. Through this dual function, celebrations become generative moments that connect past and present while motivating investment in a more inclusive, sustainable, and visionary future.

In sum, Baylor’s donor initiatives, Hartwick’s renewed relationships, and Nevada State’s call to preserve LNAP demonstrate that writing center anniversaries are more than celebrations; they function as rhetorical acts that affirm institutional values, strengthen communal identity, and shape public perception. Through their educative, ritualistic, and commemorative functions, these events celebrate past accomplishments while influencing future discourse. Recognizing the rhetorical significance of these celebrations allows us to better understand their role in strengthening writing center communities and enhancing their institutional presence, thus ensuring that they continue to thrive and evolve.

Discussion and Implications Our analysis of three writing center anniversary celebrations reveals the pivotal role of epideictic rhetoric in affirming institutional values, fostering community, and securing institutional relevance.

Far from mere commemorations of longevity, these events serve as celebrations of identity and rhetorical renewals. They are opportunities to bridge past and future, to reimagine identity, and to negotiate value within each institution. Each milestone thus serves as a moment of reflection and renewal, a chance for writing centers to reaffirm and celebrate their histories while envisioning their ongoing relevance and possibilities for transformation. In an era when writing centers must justify their worth, these celebrations provide strategic opportunities to make persuasive arguments of value that extend well beyond honoring the past and demonstrate the writing center’s essential contributions to student success, faculty development, and institutional priorities. Thus, the act of celebration becomes a form of rhetorical performance, affirming what the identity of a writing center has been, and an articulation of where it might go next.

In addition to justifying a center’s continued existence, our findings suggest that writing center anniversaries contribute significantly to community-building and identity construction. As Sheard notes, epideictic rhetoric functions as both ritual and education, creating valuable moments for reflection and learning. As acts of “sensemaking” (Malenczyk), these celebrations provide a space to publicly acknowledge a writing center’s history, labor, and mission and to also cultivate a shared sense of belonging among staff, alumni, and institutional partners. By connecting past achievements to present work and future aspirations, anniversary events strengthen the collective identity of the writing center community and foster continuity across generations of participants. Anniversary celebrations therefore create strategic opportunities to assert institutional presence and demonstrate the writing center’s enduring impact.

This persuasive function of epideictic rhetoric can effectively convince stakeholders to maintain and enhance their support for the writing center’s mission, vision, and values.

Because of their epideictic nature, writing center anniversaries serve as pivotal moments of rhetorical transformation. Through the curating, planning, and execution of these events, WCAs and staff engage in a deliberative process of reflection—deciding which aspects of their history to highlight and which parts to ignore. This process involves culling through decades of archives, institutional records, and personal stories to craft compelling narratives that resonate with broader institutional audiences. In curating these narratives, administrators make strategic rhetorical choices about how to frame the writing center’s impact, value, and relationship to the campus. The stories they choose to tell, the significant moments they emphasize, and the achievements they showcase all attest to the writing center’s relevance. Thus, these celebrations move from a singular event in time to persuasive acts that can position the writing center as an indispensable part of the academic community.

Furthermore, this study can be helpful to other WCAs planning their own anniversary celebrations. Centering epideictic rhetoric encourages a strategic approach to celebration planning, and allows their creators to revise with broader messaging in mind For example, when planning an anniversary event, it can be easy to

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 31 focus on how a speech by an impressive alumnus or dramatic retention data will show how much the center has accomplished. It’s easier to forget that those choices in evidence, timing, and presentation also make a public-facing argument for how the center’s value ought to be assessed going forward. We are both responding to our current reality and inspiring one for our future selves. As previous scholarship on epideictic rhetoric demonstrates (Lussos; Walker, Rhetoric), commemoration involves not only preservation of the current moment but also an active reimagining of communal identity. In analyzing our three case studies, we found that our celebrations reflected the six elements of epideictic rhetoric to varying degrees, with some elements featuring more prominently than others. Not every epideictic element needs equal emphasis, but WCAs must recognize that their choices have rhetorical power, regardless of whether or not that power is under our intentional control.

It’s important to note that the rhetorical power of an anniversary celebration isn’t necessarily limited by its budget. While more financially secure centers may have access to dedicated archival support and better catering, our results suggest that smaller-scale commemorations carry equal potential for rhetorical impact. In fact, the success of the speeches, ceremonial artifacts, and visual displays in each center seems to owe more to their intentionality than to their extravagance. It would be facetious to suggest that funding doesn’t shape the ethos of a celebration.

However, the three celebrations suggest that invoking collective memories of past directors and grounded details, such as a Minnie Mouse clock, may carry more rhetorical power than a show of pure institutional largesse. This means that centers without a budget line for a banquet can still shape their reality at a “critical moment in time” with a potluck, a thoughtful lineup of speakers, or a collage of their collective journey.

A final implication from our analysis is the critical importance of recordkeeping and archives to the work of celebration planning.

Well-maintained records serve a practical purpose—they make it easier to compile invitations and provide materials for display. An archive of historical documents like brochures, handbooks, or photographs can be instrumental to an anniversary celebration. Beyond the practical function, archives can create opportunities for

engaging with epideictic rhetoric. Having access to accurate archives allows administrators to learn about the center’s history and make strategic decisions about which aspects to highlight or critique. Incomplete archives limit the reflective and educative potential of these epideictic moments. Writing center administrators seeking guidance on archival development can consult Nall; Wilde et al.; Ramsey et al.; and Ritter for effective strategies.

While our research addresses several important questions, it also generates new areas for inquiry. Future research might examine the rhetorical dimensions of other traditions, celebrations, and events in writing centers. Writing centers put on numerous events each year, such as the National Day on Writing, the International Writing Centers Week, writing retreats, writing groups, write-ins, community events, and tutor appreciation events. Investigating how these events embody or promote epideictic rhetoric could further illuminate their significance for writing center practice and identity.

In conclusion, writing center anniversary celebrations offer a time to praise, commemorate, and reaffirm the enduring relevance and purpose of a writing center. These events function as powerful rhetorical acts that provide WCAs with opportunities to reflect on the past, present, and future while also affirming identity, building community, and advocating for the writing center’s value. Through the lens of epideictic rhetoric, writing centers emerge as vital spaces that celebrate writing, community, and student success, while also emphasizing change, growth, and evolution. Beyond commemoration, these anniversaries enable WCAs to critically assess their center’s role within the academy and persuade others of its importance. In an era of institutional precarity, labor inequities, and the rise of generative AI, such epideictic moments become even more critical as sites for asserting value and advocating for continued support. As such, writing center celebrations position writing centers as dynamic spaces that honor tradition, embrace change, and look toward the future, thus serving as crucial moments for reminding us of their value and ensuring that they remain visible, vital, and essential to student learning and growth.

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 32 Notes 1. After the acceptance of this article, the University Writing Center at Baylor University merged with the Graduate Writing Center to form the Center for Writing Excellence in Fall 2025.

The merger resulted in changes to titles, roles, and staffing.

2. We include the names of people who have come before us to both honor them and preserve parts of our history.

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More Than a Celebration: Writing Center Anniversaries as Epideictic Rhetoric • 34 Acknowledgments The authors thank the two anonymous Praxis reviewers for their insightful feedback and thank one another for a rewarding collaborative experience. James thanks Hartwick College for his appointment as one of the 2025-2026 Winifred D. Wandersee Scholars-in-Residence, which provided course release time during the final stages of writing this article. Rachel and Ricky also extend their gratitude to the participants in this study, without whom the project would not have been possible. They are sincerely thankful to the writing center alumni of Nevada State University, whose experiences and reflections deepened their understanding of epideictic rhetoric, celebrations, and the center’s history. Their words and perspectives continue to resonate beyond the scope of this study and remind them of the lasting contributions each member has made.

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WRITING SUPPORT SERVICES TO MITIGATE INEQUITIES: AN OPEN CONVERSATION Andrea Hernandez Holm University of Arizona​ azholm4@gmail.com

Karen Barto University of Arizona​ bartokaron@proton.me

Abstract Racial and linguistic biases and aggressions continue to impact underrepresented students in higher education. As university writing center specialists in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, we witness their effect on students’ writing experiences. Consequently, our efforts to support students must aim to strengthen students’ skills in academic writing and facilitate a sense of belonging as they navigate the institution. In this article, we engage in conversation to explore how we, as individual specialists with multidisciplinary training and as a Humanities program, support underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students whose writing practices are impacted by inequities stemming from racialized experiences, language discrimination, and resultant imposter phenomenon. We will discuss how, in 2025, the program was identified for termination, and consider the gap in service that our absence may create.

Keywords: underrepresented, academic writing, writing support, higher education, inequities, writing centers Introduction In 2016, a group of organized undergraduate and graduate students at our institution released a 19-page letter from students to administrators addressing concerns related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (The students of the Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Center et al.). Representing students who align with the African American, Native American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and Women’s student resource centers, the letter identified issues that create inequities and negatively impact learning experiences.

These included underfunding and staff reductions in the student centers; lack of diversity among faculty and administrators; lack of student resources; and a general climate of underrepresentation or exclusion for diverse populations. The letter pointed to the impact absence of institutional support has on academic and personal well-being among underrepresented students. Although our university is a land-grant, Hispanic Serving (HSI),

Jennifer Glass University of Arizona​ zheniaglass@gmail.com

and American Indian and Alaska Native-Serving institution with a commitment to inclusive excellence, inequities for underrepresented students continue (Jandu). As a writing support program (writing center), we engage undergraduate and graduate students at our institution and frequently hear about the various experiences they have on campus. We have learned from many about the forms of linguistic, racial, and cultural discrimination they encounter. We have also witnessed how these experiences can reveal themselves in the writing process. We took the 2016 letter as a call to action for our center and an opportunity to begin the ongoing process of deep reflection on our purpose and how we implement it.

Unlike most writing centers, ours is independent of both student services and the English department. It is a small unit staffed by career writing specialists with multidisciplinary expertise. Like other centers, we promote belonging and inclusivity through our programs and approaches to our work with scholarly writers in all academic disciplines. Our hope is that with our support, participants in our services are better able to make informed choices within their writing practices, from mastery of conventions to development of effective and sustainable processes to growth of authentic voice.

We understand that student writers’ identities are complex, and writers are, first and foremost, individuals. Kimberle Crenshaw’s (Crenshaw, Crenshaw et.al) work on intersectionality reminds us that identities are shaped by multiple and diverse forces and experiences. In this paper, the term underrepresented is used to describe historically marginalized writers whose voices have been devalued or dismissed due to any aspect of their perceived membership within a particular national, racial, ethnic, linguistic, ability, or gender-based group, including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); students with disabilities; women; multilingual; international; and queer-identifying students. We include international students in recognition of the challenges shared by domestic and international BIPOC, those from low-income backgrounds,

Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 36 those with disabilities, and others underrepresented in academia, regardless of their nationalities (Jones 935). At our center, we work closely to understand a writer’s individual needs and ensure no assumptions are made based on identity markers such as race, ethnicity, gender, ability, or language. Listening with compassion and intentionally creating spaces allows writers to feel valued and encouraged to discuss both their experiences and writing openly and without fear of judgment. Yet, to make writing centers inclusive spaces, we have to do more than acknowledge that writing practices in higher education were created by and for specific learners, namely white, upper-class males, while other “non-traditional” or underrepresented learners have been excluded.

We acknowledge that inequity is currently embedded in norms surrounding academic language, writing, and writing support, and these norms are often linked to racial, ethnic, gender, and ability-related biases. Systemic patterns can make students feel their language isn’t “academic enough” or “good enough” for academic writing.

Linguists such as Duranti and Irvine posit that language always carries social meaning, including the idea of “standard” used to normalize the variety of the powerful. Other varieties are often treated as less intelligent, less sophisticated, and even incapable of expressing complex ideas (Scarcella 9). However, Muñoz-Muñoz points out an important paradox: while many believe in the “correctness” and importance of standards, they are often explicitly undefined; thus, people rely on implicit understandings, which usually uphold current systems of power and privilege. So, “non-standard” language, such as everyday vocabulary, is stigmatized when used by BIPOC, writers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and multilingual writers, sending a clear message that these writers don’t belong in academia, and if they want to try, they need to change their writing style (Hartse and Kubota).

Students who feel unwelcome in academia may not trust their writing knowledge and skills or feel confident that their perspectives and voices are appropriate in the academic context (Negrete-Lopez et. al). They are hesitant to write and share, are convinced that they are “bad writers,” and commonly experience writer’s block.

Studies find that aggressions against underrepresented students on college campuses persist (Harwood et al.; Aggarwal and Çiftçi), and

encounters with racism and xenophobia are common. Underrepresented students in higher education may experience implicit bias, race-based discrimination, violence on campus, and a lack of institutional support for culture and identity.

Additionally, inequities related to accessibility, race-based harassment, and health disparities have been amplified by COVID-19 (Lederer et al.). All of these micro- and macro-aggressions can deeply impact self-esteem (Nadal et. al), writing, and general academic achievement (Keels et al., Forster 5-6, Wilson and Cutri 64-65).

Often the primary source of writing support for students on campuses, writing centers can play a significant role for students and their perceptions of themselves as writers.

Consequently, writing specialists have to develop not only to better meet the needs of the writers they serve but also to meet their needs more responsibly (García; McKinney; Greenfield and Rowan), with awareness of and attention to the myriad of issues comprising individual and institutional academic identities. While they function within a larger system perpetuating problems students encounter, centers can engage a socio-linguistically-informed and social justice-oriented multidisciplinary approach to challenge inequities and encourage student confidence and agency.

We argue that our diverse personal and professional experiences and pedagogical foundations, including Funds of Knowledge (FoK) (Moll et al.), sociolinguistics-informed pedagogy, and translanguaging, strengthen our abilities to address issues and challenges writers encounter. FoK asserts that students enter school with their own resources of understanding and skills gained from their life experiences: home, work, and so on. This knowledge can and should be used to access new content. Simultaneously, this approach encourages educators to recognize students’ knowledges as learning tools and contributes to inclusive academic environments.

FoK and frameworks such as translanguaging that view multilingualism as an asset can counter the perception that some educational, social, cultural, or linguistic experiences are insignificant in or even mismatched to higher education. We argue that writing specialists must value writers’ FoK; embrace diverse linguistic and cultural knowledge about writing as resources rather than deficits; frame writing support as collaboration rather than

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 37 remediation, and encourage students to do the same.

In this article, we posit that a multidisciplinary approach can contribute to making writing centers inclusive and capable of serving as locus for advocacy to support students fighting inequities in higher education that challenge their writing processes. We share our experience here with the goal of offering other writing centers, whether staffed by undergraduate students or professionals with decades of experience, some ideas for reflection that writing specialists might be able to incorporate into their practice. As the impending closure of our writing center approaches, we are even more keenly aware of the need to speak about how writing professionals must recognize and help students navigate the challenges they face.

This article is structured as a conversation, reflective of our efforts to decolonize the writing center through critical consciousness (Louie). Structure is a rhetorical method, and we have chosen to implement it here as a decolonial tool. Tlostanova explains that a decolonial method destabilizes and defamiliarizes the researcher and reader from U.S./Western norms. In our case, the structure of conversation disrupts the traditional linear organization of a scholarly paper by combining elements and voices (i.e., introduction, conversation, anecdotal evidence) to explore an issue that is itself complex with multiple components.

Focusing on students: Our learning through conversation Andrea: Admittedly, the student call for action in 2016 initiated some significant changes on campus. The university increased staff in the student centers, including on-site mental health counselors and financial aid advisors. It also joined the state-wide movement to offer tuition relief to Native American students. However, racially motivated violence and discrimination against Black, LatinX, Native, Asian American, and Asian students have become more apparent. For example, since 2016, there have been several physical and verbal assaults against Black students in public spaces on campus (Egan). In 2019, university leadership made stereotyped remarks during a meeting with Native American students (Leingang). It was a stunning moment that called

attention to the persistence of racism at the highest levels and reflected experiences that Higher Education scholar Amanda Tachine (Diné) calls systemic monsters of white supremacy (Tachine). Also in 2019, three Latinx students protesting the presence of Border Patrol officers were arrested (Prendergast). Several undergraduate and graduate students I was working with discussed the wide-ranging impact of each of these incidents on their mental health, sense of safety and well-being, and academics. As they participated in protests, helped organize legal representation, and mentored affected students, their own writing processes were interrupted and, in some cases, derailed for weeks and even months. As Tachine explains, the burden of responding to and combating these experiences falls heavily on students.

In the wake of these incidents, COVID-19 further disrupted the lives and studies of the writers we serve, especially writers who identify as BIPOC. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Tai et al.), BIPOC individuals and communities experienced higher rates of infection, death, and long COVID at the height of the pandemic. I had one student who lost several family members, including her mom. She soon contracted the virus as well. There was no way she could focus on her writing during that time, or for several weeks following.

Working with these students in tutoring sessions, I knew that I had to shift the focus to fit their needs, even if that took us away from reviewing documents or discussing writing. I had to give them space to talk about their experiences when that’s what they wanted. I had to be prepared to offer realistic suggestions for time management and organization, but also on helpful resources for health and wellness, requesting timeline extensions, and securing other types of support.

While several students were negatively affected in the immediacy of the outbreak, many BIPOC students I work with continue to experience the impacts years later. This has motivated changes at the center to support students’ well-being. We opted to extend and keep our online services, which have continued to support accessibility for students who returned to their home cities, states, and countries due to the pandemic, and those who may not be able to attend in-person sessions for health reasons.

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 38 We’ve also developed programs to address mindfulness and ways to help students relieve stress and anxiety.

Jen: During the height of COVID-19, several of our graduate students from East Asia told me they were staying in their apartments as much as possible because they were frightened of being blamed for the pandemic. Sadly, these experiences reminded me of recent scholarship on the discrimination and anxiety faced by Asian Canadians, Asian Americans, and international students from Asia (Koo et al.; Cantugal and Tungohan). Many of our students from China, South Korea, and Japan were unable to travel to see their families for years due to tight travel restrictions in their home countries, even when family members fell seriously ill. As I met with these students, often online, I acknowledged the isolation, stress, and fear they were feeling and encouraged them to be patient with themselves when their writing process had slowed or even stopped.

Karen: Due to my background in second language acquisition, I am especially sensitized to the experiences of international students, who are underrepresented in U.S. university settings.

Because English monolingualism is the default here, multilingual students are often categorized according to their language background and told their English, including their writing, is inferior to academic expectations (Newman). At our own HSI, language awareness is not at the forefront, allowing the idea that multilingualism is a deficit rather than an asset (Muñoz-Muñoz) to persist.

Official enrollment data indicates student populations by race, but no data about language backgrounds is offered (“Enrollment”), and no university-wide support for bilingual students exists, even speakers of Spanish and English.

One week, I met with two doctoral students, both concerned about their performance because English is not their first language. One student spent her first doctoral semester tied in knots over it—she had always been made to feel deficient rather than valued as a Spanish and English bilingual, including at two HSIs. The other student had been sitting on multiple dissertation chapters for months, terrified of submitting something that might have “mistakes” to her advisor. However, her writing was even

more polished than published work I have seen.

Her chapters were ready, but her degree progress was significantly slowed due to these confidence issues. This student’s advisor was supportive, but these lessons have been learned and reinforced over years in U.S. higher education. They are difficult to undo.

Jen: It’s true that many of our students have internalized negative stereotypes surrounding non-native speakers and their writing, and even some of our more confident students are sometimes underestimated by faculty. Recently, a student from Asia, whom I’ll call Will, shared that he was told by a supervising faculty member that he should use Google Translate to read her email messages since, clearly, his English was too limited to understand the content. Will has ample experience teaching in the English language and has consistently received positive feedback from students. Understandably, he felt that this comment was racist and xenophobic. Will filed a formal complaint with his department and was told that he would no longer have to work with the faculty member in question, but I have no idea whether the faculty member faced any consequences. In this situation, Will acted courageously and assertively, but there are likely many other students who remain silent. When Will shared this experience with me, I told him that I agreed with his response to the situation and shared my frustration with faculty members who engage in micro-aggressions like this one.

Andrea: For many students, these types of experiences also contribute to the development of imposter phenomenon, widely known as imposter syndrome, because they perceive their abilities, experiences, or interests to be inadequate or unwelcome in the institution (Chrousos and Mentis). In academia, imposter phenomenon is experienced most often by students, staff, and faculty from traditionally underrepresented communities (Parkman; Edwards; Lockett). They are likely to believe they are underprepared for the rigors of academia, including understanding the institution; finding resources and effectively using them; finding or building community; and balancing home, work, and classes.

The responsibility for imposter phenomenon is generally placed on the shoulders of the supposed imposters. In other words, the

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 39 individual is expected to “catch up” and, ultimately, assimilate to the institution. This sentiment persists despite the growing awareness that imposter phenomenon—and its causes—impact individual achievement (Edwards 30) and threaten equity within the institution (Chrousos and Mentis; Breeze). It ignores systemic barriers or inequities (Breeze 196; Naylor and Mifsud) that may make students, and others, feel like imposters, unwelcome, and out of place, because no space has been made for them, their knowledge, or their experiences.

Jen: I find that some writers have trouble recognizing their own FoK whether it’s due to imposter phenomenon, other sources of underconfidence, or both. During the first meeting of each graduate writing group I facilitate, I ask group members to identify at least one strength and one area in which they can improve. I have learned, however, that without being “forced” to name at least one strength, many writers skip this question entirely or claim not to have any strengths at all. I now preface my question with a statement like, “I am going to require you to name at least one strength, even if you feel like it’s a small one.” It may make students uncomfortable to acknowledge even modest strengths, but it’s an important part of our role in mentoring and forging relationships with writers: building them up while providing them with tools to improve.

Andrea: Building relationships also promotes inclusivity because it honors more than just individual skills and strengths. Students’ writing practices are informed by family, community, and cultural and social traditions around literacy, writing, and production and reproduction of knowledge. Some may be in alignment with U.S./Western-based educational practices while others may not. In academia, multiple positionalities intersect every day, and our perspectives about writing are part of that, but we don’t talk about it enough. I want to think about how our university’s position as an institution in the Borderlands moves with—or against—student writing experiences.

One of the most significant things we’ve done is introduce the concept of positionality into our relationships with students. The first time we did this was in our Academic Writing in the

Borderlands program. We asked them to take a few minutes to account for things like how their past education, work, or personal experiences connect or don’t connect to the research they’re doing now. Students shared later that it was a revealing exercise because they’d never thought about choices or experiences that bring them to their research and writing processes. That opened the door to ask them to consider deeper questions about their citation practices, methodologies, and any communities that benefit—or don’t—from their work, including the university, participants, and academia. This kind of thoughtfulness may never make it into an assignment directly, but it helps the writer think about the relationships shaping their writing and can empower a better sense of belonging.

Jen: Reflecting on our positionalities as specialists and as a program has been valuable for us, too. It’s difficult, for sure, but we need to question what we do and how we do it, as well as why. It’s important for us to also question where norms and expectations of good academic writing come from, including long-held biases that privilege white, affluent, male ways of knowing and writing (Gonzalez and Pappolla; J. Wilson; Lunsford and Ouzgane). That said, I sometimes find it challenging to resist my own traditional (and postcolonial) training in academic writing, which has emphasized “fixing” errors and adhering to a narrow set of expectations regarding what counts as academic voice. Yet the longer I work with writers, the farther I move away from these prescriptive ideas. I urge my students to think about their writing process, their emphasis, and as Andrea highlights, their positionality, rather than whether each comma is in the proper place or whether a given word is “too informal” for academic writing.

I’m also actively trying to listen more and speak for students less, even when students themselves seem eager for me to fix their writing.

Although we may never succeed 100% in achieving our goals, in our one-on-one and group interactions with writers, we’re all trying to prioritize writers’ agency and voices and to problematize exclusive and inequitable norms and practices rooted in cultural hegemony and prejudice.

Karen: An important part of problematizing inequitable norms and practices is pointing them

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 40 out. Many of our students have, not surprisingly, internalized beliefs about what makes a good writer that they often don’t question; they just worry they won’t measure up. I also share my experience as a multilingual writer and draw from the concepts and practices of translanguaging (Li).

This theoretical approach sees multilingualism as a strength and encourages multilingual people to use the full breadth of their linguistic repertoires. In a writing support context, translanguaging serves as a basis for encouraging students to recognize the value of their language(s) so they may challenge those insisting that nonstandard language is “inappropriate” for academic writing.

Translanguaging can remind students that multilingualism is valuable and can promote expression with all of our linguistic knowledge.

For example, when a student wants feedback, I give a brief description of what I understand, including information about sociolinguistic register and traditional academic expectations as well as affirming that there are many valid ways of expression. Often, they seem more comfortable making choices about usage, style, and structure after realizing their writing is already understandable, conveying the core meaning they intended. Acknowledging sociolinguistic and historical influences on academic writing and students’ own FoK can help them increase confidence in the effective use of their repertoires.

Andrea: We know how difficult it may be to separate the writing of a paper from the things happening in life. Untangling them from one another but still acknowledging that they are related can be really eye-opening for some. I hope it makes students feel more empowered. Maybe they can both focus on the writing process and see themselves as part of a larger academic story that includes complex histories, opposing narratives, and diverse approaches. At the very least, maybe they don’t feel as alone because we’re making time and space to talk about these things.

Writing, academic, and moral support are frequent topics in both my individual and group tutoring. Many of the groups I’ve worked with started under our program for Women of Color students, and one of the motivating factors for students joining was the desire for community.

Several participants have formed professional relationships that extend beyond their writing time, and they co-present at conferences and even

publish together. One group published an article titled “Smile Now, Cry Later: Navigating Structures of Inequality in Academia Through Resistance, Resilience, and Humor in Our Women of Color Writing Group.” They discuss how their writing group serves to help them better navigate their graduate experiences as women of color and mitigate feelings of not-belonging in the academy (Negrete-Lopez et al.).

Jen: It’s such a rewarding experience to witness writing group members building community and confidence, and one of the key ways in which group members support one another is by being the first point of contact between writer and audience. Often, writers are anxious about how the audience will perceive their work, wondering whether readers will find their texts clear, “formal enough,” and written “correctly,” but in both our groups and one-on-one sessions, we adopt a non-judgmental, non-evaluative approach. For example, group members summarize the main ideas in each other’s work and ask questions for expansion or clarification. The goal is not to praise nor criticize the writing but rather to honor the writer’s voice while still helping them to effectively communicate the content to others.

In supporting writers with communicating with one or more audiences, I sometimes draw on my background in teaching rhetoric to Advanced Placement-level high school students. When writers seek feedback on language use, for example, I usually ask whether the audience already knows a term or whether they might benefit from a definition or example.

Alternatively, I might share my understanding of the connotation of a given phrase and ask whether it reflects the values of the writer and/or audience.

I can suggest phrasing depending on intent, but I encourage writers to think of wording as a rhetorical choice, not a question of right and wrong.

Similarly, when writers ask whether they are organizing a paper the “right” way, I often ask about their understanding of audience expectations and their own goals. In their opinion, how are the clearest and most persuasive texts in their field organized? What guidelines, if any, have their professors, reviewers, or other readers shared? Do they as writers want to meet or challenge their audience’s expectations, and what are the costs and benefits of each possible

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 41 decision? After reflecting on these questions, a writer may choose to re-organize a sentence, paragraph, or entire manuscript to better resonate with one or more audiences or more importantly, to reflect their own intentions. With these questions, I’m inviting the writer to draw upon their personal knowledge and experiences as well as content knowledge, hoping to illustrate that they do have FoK to support their thinking and writing processes. Many students haven’t been invited to participate in writing this way, so it can be somewhat disarming at first, but it eventually empowers them as they realize their own skills.

This is crucial for students, especially those who may feel excluded from the institution.

Karen: I treat audience too, but recognizing the harmful impact of some language ideologies, I ask students to consider audience critically. I often recommend even ignoring it while drafting. To optimize our flow of ideas, we should be free to read, think, and draft in whatever combination of languages or styles best allows us to develop and express our thoughts. Later, we can choose to modify our writing to match audience expectations. I seek to ground the students’ ideas as the most important aspect of their writing, almost decoupling them from the language and rhetorical patterns expected by specific audiences in academic writing, which become a mere (albeit time-consuming) afterthought. I want students to know that their way of thinking and expressing themselves is valid, regardless of what they have been told by others. Knowing conflict may arise between audience expectations and author voice, we discuss students’ options, like learning to write in different registers or challenging professors who say their chosen voice isn’t academic enough.

Overall, I introduce linguistic ideologies to help students recognize the unfairness of the judgments they receive, rather than to reinforce those judgments. Still, the inherent conflict between teaching about these ideologies and the systems of power they represent while also teaching how to adhere to them troubles me. I want to validate our students’ experiences and serve their needs, but our attempts lead naturally to certain questions. Are we as writing specialists colonizers, perpetuating standards by teaching them explicitly to those who want to learn them?

It would be worse not to respect the students’ own goals and understanding of their needs, wouldn’t it?

Andrea: The question of colonial/decolonial practices and academia is huge—awkward and uncomfortable. The conversation has been unfolding in Writing Center Studies for some time (Grimm; Greenfield and Rowan; García; Condon; Lockett; McKinney; and J. Wilson). Audre Lorde says, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (Lorde 95). As a part of a university that continues to perpetuate inequities, we are, in a sense, within “the master’s house.” Nevertheless, we can teach students “the master’s” academic conventions and also teach them about the legacies of violence that have informed them. I hope that, ultimately, we’re preparing students to better understand the choices they’re making in their writing processes.

Perhaps our efforts as a center are most closely described by what Louie describes as raising critical consciousness. We intentionally heighten our consciousness about the issues that underrepresented students are encountering across our campus and animate our intentions toward equity and inclusion in ways that validate students’ experiences, help them to amplify their voices and needs, acknowledge their agency, and encourage systemic change where we can.

Karen: Sitting with and reflecting on these questions, we keep listening, keep engaging in conversations with our students about their challenges, and try to support them (in the best way we can) on their academic paths.

Conclusion We’ve watched closely as institutions across the nation have experienced significant financial and political issues that impact their missions and values. In 2025, we began to see decisions that will likely have a negative impact on student experiences at our university. These included the dismissal of several writing instructors (Smith, C.), the consolidation of student cultural centers and dismissal of staff members in those units (Sannappanavar), and the closure of two language-related support centers and dismissal of those staff members, including our writing center (Dingman; Sannappanavar, “U of A”). The influence of President Trump’s Executive Orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (Schwartz)

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 42 have stymied the advances called for by the 2016 letter at our institution and are poised to mark a significant reduction in the support for all students. Further actions and policies have reduced funding on our campus, forcing units to restructure in order to accommodate smaller budgets.

Unfortunately, many student services—like ours—have been sacrificed.

In the last academic year, our small staff of four provided approximately 1,000 hours of writing support to undergraduate and graduate students. These students come from diverse personal, political, ethnic, national, educational, and academic backgrounds, but each student received the same expert support to help develop their skills in academic writing and build their confidence in their abilities to succeed in higher education. One of our aims has been to normalize writing support for all writers—to help both students and professors understand that writing is a dynamic skill that we are continually learning and growing—and to institute writing support as a fundamental resource not only for academic success but often for personal growth and achievement. That support has to include instruction and guidance through the mastery of writing conventions as well as mentorship through issues that impact writing experiences.

It is discouraging to know that underrepresented students are likely to be disproportionately affected by our writing center’s closure. We have received communication from campus partners, current students, and alumni/ae highlighting the potential negative impact on these students, specifically. We can only hope that supportive, inclusive practices will become even more prevalent in writing centers and that the institutions that house them fight to continue to be able to serve all students.

While we have a sense of the obstacles underrepresented students may experience in higher education, our work at our center has given us insight into how those obstacles directly impact students’ writing on our campus. Even as we continue to expand the ways we think about writing and writing support and aim to provide more inclusive services, we can agree that writing centers have a lot of work to do. We offer the following recommendations: First, continue to understand and address inequities that impact student writing. Being critical thinkers about our jobs and acknowledging

our concerns about biases, gatekeeping, and assumptions makes us better providers because we are listening, thinking about the life of the writing below the surface, and being less likely to jump into corrective mode with students. This was a challenge for us as a small unit with no hiring power in the current financial crisis at our university. Therefore, we prioritized professional development. Besides external opportunities, we integrated internal training into our regular staff meetings: each staff member researched a topic and presented a professional development session.

Topics were generated directly from our contact with students so we could learn more about issues they brought to our attention, such as imposter phenomenon, anxiety, neurodivergent thinking, and discrimination. Similarly, we continue to learn from and engage with existing scholarship that addresses ways to decolonize our practices and meet the needs of all students, taking into account race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, language background, and more (Smith; Burrows; Coenen et al.; Melzer; Salazar et al.; Rinaldi; Greene).

Second, recognize that representation in writing centers matters (Grimm Garcia; Baca et al.; Putney and Poythress). Develop partnerships with campus and community programs that support underrepresented students, such as Native American, African American, Latinx, Asian American, LGTBQ+, Women, and Disability student resource centers. State and federal policies may be forcing significant changes and even closure to such programs, as on our campus, but this makes forging partnerships and support systems all the more important. Equally, strengthen relationships with external communities, including school districts, tribal nations, and the public library system. This is especially relevant for land-grant institutions, like ours, which are charged with the responsibility of uplifting educational opportunities for local communities.

Partnerships also increase collaborative work toward institutional change by increasing staff, faculty, and administrators’ awareness of underrepresented students’ experiences and needs in writing.

Third, acknowledge that COVID-19 continues to impact both students and the ability to serve them. The last few years have required consistent adaptation to meet students where they’re at and support them to move forward. This

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Writing Support Services to Mitigate Inequities: An Open Conversation • 43 includes both online and hybrid instruction and recognition of the impact the virus has on health and well-being. College campuses are not immune to the ongoing impact of the virus or rapidly changing public policies around vaccinations and protective measures.

Finally, respond to who and where students are in order to develop productive and helpful relationships (Garcia). Race and racism must be addressed (Lockett)—as must homophobia and gender discrimination—especially as efforts targeting diversity on campuses increase. In our context, we advocated for connection to the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands through our Academic Writing in the Borderlands programs for students and instructors, and we considered how this place shapes the work that we do; the issues our students encounter; and the knowledge our institution produces every day.

The forces changing writing support in higher education are numerous. Institutions are scrambling to adjust to loss of federal, state, and private funding and to accommodate new policies at every level. Additionally, artificial intelligence has spurred a rapidly shifting landscape and upended long-held standards about academic writing for students, faculty, and support providers. These issues don’t suggest that there is a diminishing need or want for writing support, but just the opposite. In our experiences, writers and instructors of writers are eager for additional guidance and assistance navigating changes—good and bad—as well as the uncertainties that come with any shift. And, writing specialists continue to be those who are asking important questions about the impact of budget reductions on student success, the biases created by AI language models, and the erasure of DEI measures that place students at risk. In truth, the need for and purpose of writing specialists continues to evolve.

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EXPERTISE WIELDED; EXPERTISE YIELDED: AN AMERICAN TRIES TO PLANT AN ACADEMIC WRITING CENTER IN POST-COLONIAL PHILIPPINES Richard Kahn​ rkahns22@gmail.com Abstract “Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded” follows an English Language Specialist in Manila, Philippines who was sent to provide expertise to a storied public university. It explores the privileges and responsibilities inherent in authority transfers between people or cultures, and for every clear assertion, there is a fuzzy doubt.

The project in Manila was to design training modules for the first cohort of peer tutors in the Philippines’ first academic writing center in a university where professors were both time and resource constrained. Their context pushed most, in spite of philosophical inclinations, towards more teacher-centered and low feedback practices.

Though his stipend was provided by US State Department grants, this expert brought only fragmentary awareness of America’s role in Philippine history and a general ignorance of the existing academic culture. This paper is less a research document and more a narrative of both stumbles and dance moves through contradictions and complexity. It offers an analogy between these authority/empowerment tensions and the peer-tutoring dynamic that he was sent to introduce.

Keywords: peer tutoring, postcolonialism, process-writing, teacher training, academic culture The US embassy had given me a two-month assignment, and the Philippine Normal University (PNU) was hoping for that new academic writing center. It would be the first AWC in the Philippines, and I did not want to bluster my way through a meaningful project. I had seen it too often: an expert brought in, waving around truly impressive credentials, but only giving what they had brought without asking what anyone needed, that is, failing to recognize how expertise must be contextualized. The embassy had gifted me status, and it could merely be a spotlight on me tapdancing to everyone’s admiration, or my visiting expert designation could give us all a two-month focus on a highly complex issue: how a writing intervention developed in the US might

be adapted and appropriated, like the English language itself, to serve the needs of this former American colony. My questions and doubts should not undermine expertise, but rather parallel what happens in a writing center to cultivate and transfer authority.

My specific English Language Specialist project was only to design modules for peer tutor training, but other than the grant, a nearly bare room and the university’s still partially formed ideas of what a writing center is or can be, nothing was in place. With their plates ever-overflowing with other pressing needs, my new PNU colleagues had been waiting for their American expert to fill in the rest and import all necessary innovations.

This is a university devoted to teacher preparation. It is in their institutional DNA, founded as the Philippine Normal School in 1901 as part of the American colonial project preparing teachers to spread English and replace Spanish (Harrington). So, when a PNU self-assessment determined that the writing skills of their students were steadily deteriorating, the stakes were high: If these future teachers were poor writers who shied away from writing, they would pass their deficiencies and attitudes on to a generation of their students who would pass it on to the next in a death spiral of writing skills. Too dramatic?

Perhaps, but there was a real sense of urgency.

Of course, a two-month timeline would be a stretch when founding any new center. At PNU, the labyrinth of bureaucracy had already been navigated for approvals, but there remained everything from staffing to furniture, from training to deliberating policies and procedures.

More fundamentally, we were not only setting up a writing center from scratch, we would be setting one up where some staple ingredients, foundational assumptions of American writing centers, might not be found by merely scratching the surface. Though sometimes dust-covered, these core assumptions permeate American educational institutions. First among these is immersion in process-writing, that is, not as mere brainstorming games, but rather with all the spirals

Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 49 of reflection and revision that clarify thought and anticipate the needs of the reader’s understanding.

Second is that those spirals of writing revision are set in motion by readily available feedback, whether from instructor or peer or tutor. Third is general acceptance of peer tutoring and the overwhelming evidence of its efficacy that (mostly) quells concerns about the blind leading the blind.

Never having previously worked in the Philippines, I could not assume that these conceptual foundations of writing centers and their associated methodologies already permeated Philippine education. Certainly, many of my new Filipino colleagues were impressively credentialed and admittedly better educated than me, with doctorates in relevant fields and extensive research in teaching methodologies. Yet in spite of theoretical awareness of those underlying concepts, why had no writing centers spontaneously sprouted anywhere in the country?

I could not be sure if, rather than offering bountiful blessing, I might instead blunder in and disrupt a sophisticated educational ecosystem with an invasive species.

Of course, due to international exchanges, many Filipino scholars have studied abroad, but I met just two who had ever been inside a writing center, one in Hong Kong and another in the US, and both but briefly. With not a single academic writing center in the country, I wondered what PNU envisioned when they asked for one.1 If I asked anyone what they thought of when they heard ‘writing center’ (which I often asked as I tried to assess needs and expectations), the answer was always a logical supposition that a writing center was a place where struggling students were sent for extra help, or perhaps (as was the one in Hong Kong and others in Japan) where graduate students and faculty went for pre-publication editing and proofreading (Ubaldo). And when asked about peer editing, everyone (a word I do not use casually) assumed that was when an advanced student corrected freshman grammar and syntax mistakes. For the new PNU center, I hoped for something more than remedial and editing services, for something more aligned to the student-centered methods they taught at PNU but did not yet practice when it came to writing feedback. I was certainly willing to present the American model, not as the gold standard, but something to be adopted and adapted in whatever

ways most useful to their students. PNU itself had identified the need for a center and then solicited technical support from the US Embassy, but it seemed to me that if this writing center was to last longer than my two-month presence, I needed to follow them to where they wanted me to lead. At this point, no one knew where that would be, navigating between the distracting glitter of American academic prestige and the ideological resistance to American hegemony. I would need to show the substance in writing center concepts that lay beyond any glitter, and that beneath the risk of cultural imperialism lay the possibility of improved academic writing through student empowerment.

Even back home in Pennsylvania while reading, researching and gathering energy for this project, I did not want to dismiss self-doubt, something I mine for intellectual honesty. Not a buzz-kill, but a dose of self-skepticism might be healthy. I therefore took and still take seriously the possibility that I was carpetbagging American writing centers to another culture. Certainly, though I was shipped to the Philippines as an expert, my credentials would not be held in very high esteem among US writing center experts. The US State Department counted me as qualified because 1) I had taught academic writing for many years and 2) because I had successfully designed and completed projects in several countries for the same agency that was funding the Philippine project. Neither of these count for much in the eyes of many writing center theorists, in fact, they might both count against me.

First, as for having taught academic writing both in the US and abroad, if that’s all I had going for me, it is a credential that makes some writing center administrators cringe. For some, this is analogous to hiring an ESL or EFL teacher just because she is a native English speaker. Clearly, one does not necessarily translate to another, and I have seen wonderful EFL teachers who were not native speakers and terrible ones who were; the native speaker who learnt nursery rhymes on a parent’s lap might sense the subtle cadences and music of the language, but the one who has had to assemble the language through study might better understand its structure (Elyas). The two sides of the same coin look in different directions.

In a common but cartoonish dichotomy, academic writing instructors act as gatekeepers for Club Academia, checking for passwords and

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 50 shibboleths with a red pencil. On the flip side, at least for many writing center practitioners, a tutor walks with student writers for an hour or so while they navigate a squiggly path between the way they see things and the ways they must be seen by the institution, between what they have to say and how to be heard. I felt this conceptual split palpably when, while preparing for the Manila project, I sought out a well-respected writing center director and scholar, and he generously gave me an hour of his busy afternoon. The conflation of roles, that academic writing instruction qualified one to start or even work in a writing center, clearly exasperated him. It demonstrated a lack of understanding of what writing centers do along with lack of respect for writing center scholarship. I could only say that he was right, and that I had a lot of learning to do.

However, quibbling with my own concession, the divide between the two roles is far more porous than might first appear as evidenced by the frequent overlap between English department and writing center faculty. Straddling the two might actually be a healthy stretch. In my case, though I had begun my studies under qualified professors in an accredited program to teach secondary English, I really only learned to teach from my students at a juvenile treatment center (a euphemism used for this maximum-security prison for younger convicts).

To teach, one needs to know what one’s students already know, and these students had learned from their schools that they could not learn, much less offer understanding to others. From them, I learned that I needed to listen so hard that they would speak up, and when they did, they found to their surprise that they had voices that could overleap social and personal divides. In many cases, they eventually wrote successful GED and SAT essays and gained entrance to trade schools and colleges and universities. Their court files were stuffed with writing about them; finally they were submitting texts written by themselves. This experience has informed all of my teaching of academic writing, often to first generation college students, and I know my efforts were not unique.

Neither writing instructors nor writing tutors fall into the caricature some expect in the other, and many wear both hats. Nevertheless, in English department offices, I have heard snide comments about writing center advisers, shared with me as an English department colleague in the way a

white male tells me misogynistic or racist jokes, assuming I agree because I look the part. As for that wonderful writing center director who I spoke with, I suspect that the respect he had been too often denied by the English department faculty club is what he turned into the generosity he showed towards me. I remain in his debt for the direction he offered.2 There remained the other strike against me, one (perhaps an automatic three) for having been contracted for this work by an agency of the US government. The Regional English Language Office/Officer (RELO) in the US Embassy in Manila is a part of the public diplomacy section found in all US embassies, its ‘soft power’ arm. My first encounter with US embassies had been as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English in Kazakhstan, and from there I started working directly through RELOs as an English Language Fellow for three years, initially in Algeria, then Morocco; and then for two stints as an English Language Specialist in Bolivia. These CV entries undoubtedly carried weight with the RELO in Manila who had designed and funded this writing center project, and who eventually interviewed and selected me.

I need to address my work through the RELO in part because, as writing centers have spread across the world, some see that as yet another instance of American imperialism. For a timely instance, a recent issue of the Writing Center Journal included “Writing Centers and Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified and Exported as U.S. Neocolonial Tools” (Holton and Bell). In it, RELO projects are specifically called out for their political agenda; for being tools of American power. I am not sure what the Canadian authors, Brian Hotson and Stevie Bell, know about being pawns in geopolitics, but I have played the pawn in multiple games (corrections education, comp instructor, adjunct, volunteer). In this resumé lies my authority to assert that, though the game defines a pawn as the one with the most paltry power, many pawns recognize that meaning little to knights and bishops and secretaries of state affords them some freedom; they can act more effectively while under the radar. Stealth in plain sight, they can establish ‘pawn-to-pawn’ (peer-to-peer) relations and better provide their counterpart pawns with methods for maximizing their own potential and power, and this sounds like what happens in many writing

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 51 center consultations (Hughs, Bell). Certainly all undergraduate writers are pawn-level players in academia, and most academic writing instructors and writing center employees are too. I would go so far as to imagine that anyone who has worked in any educational institution can view that experience as a lesson in pawn power. Hotson and Bell, however, seem to see an open and shut case of neo-colonialism by simply pointing out where the funding comes from and who our nominal bosses are. The new PNU writing center was tainted and damned at the get-go by RELO support. As a teacher, I long ago realized that I must nod to the administrator and work for the student. Isn’t that one of the fundamental concepts of peer learning and tutoring?

Certainly, RELOs situate their projects within policy objectives, rationalizing their budgets by quantifying impact, and must describe how they further policy in terms that US senators can support. They need to market their work to maintain funding, and the reports I submit to them on the templates they provide are intended to bolster their case. I find, nonetheless, that I can be honest to that audience and also be honest to my students and colleagues. For instance, the opening sentence of my final report to my Manila RELO was, “Writing centers can play an important role in the kind of student-centered pedagogy that reflects democratic principles,” something the senators can get on board with.

Peer tutors remind students that their own authority is situated, not merely by the grace of professors, but in the uniqueness of their perspective. That perspective might be a neophyte’s unsettling insight into old subjects, or that the view from the far side of the globe, from the Philippine archipelago, is a vital, even a privileged angle necessary to see the whole.

Students are the best ones to remind teachers and institutions of how best to use our own, limited power.

Had I allayed my doubts with these thoughts/rationalization/rebuttals? Not really.

Rather, I found ways to keep them in mind as I worked in the Philippines.

I arrived in Manila on a Saturday after a 24-hour trip. After a jet-lagged Sunday, on Monday (still jet-lagged) it was time to go to the university and get to work. For my introduction to the dean and university president, I wore a suit jacket for the first and last time. This was the

tropics and people have ways to express professionalism that do not require excessive sweating.

I was escorted by the RELO, Dr. Carleen Curley Velas, whose PhD is from UCLA with a background in academic writing theory, and her assistant Connie Chico who has worked for the embassy for 34 years and has seen RELOs come and come and always go and is the one who knows how to put policy into practice. Both were treated as honored visitors. Everyone was introduced with a title and a first name: President Bert and Dean Ruth. After the rounds of introductions and welcome speeches, we had lunch in the office of Dean Ruth Alido with her ‘core writing center team,’ and that simple conference table in her office would become the first place I went every morning and the last before I left. It was the Office of Figuring Things Out. On the second morning, I came in to find Ruth on an all-faculty Zoom call. Ruth rolled her eyes to me and signaled that we could talk later.

When I came back from my cubicle in the crowded faculty office room, she explained that they had been discussing a collaboration with a Korean university, but one professor in her department, a man whose intellectual awakening dawned in the 1980s’ People Power resistance to the Marcos dictatorship, would always predictably complain about any international involvement. He was a professor of Filipino language and constantly advocated for national and cultural self-sufficiency. Ruth, who had also been part of the People Power uprising, sought out international collaboration and found his stance unrealistic. English is the nation-wide language of instruction and is the ticket for job advancement.

But this professor of Filipino certainly had a valid reason to be concerned; the history of PNU is tangled with colonialism. It had been founded in 1901 “for the education of natives of the Islands in the science of teaching”3 as one of the first policy moves in the new American colony at the end of the Philippine-American war (a piece of US history that was swept under the rug with the ashes of shame4). English was an explicit tool of benevolent subjugation, of making the natives change who they were through how they spoke.

The new teachers’ school had been chartered at the orders of William Taft, future president but, at the time, the first governor-general of the colony

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 52 and who told then President McKinley, “Our little brown brothers would need fifty or one hundred years … to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills” (Miller). The first teachers at Philippine Normal School were all Americans, known as Thomasites (after the USAT Thomas, the ship they arrived in) and were part of a proto-Peace Corps of idealistic college graduates enlisted for the noble cause.

Presently, as in many countries, the Philippines is engaged in an ongoing debate over how to both support its “mother tongues” (numbering more than 100) and also have a language of economic and political mobility. I had walked into these debates, and I needed to listen to the passionate conversations as closely as one could when only hearing the English translations.

My first opportunity to hear the conversations came three days later during the new academic year’s first department gathering. By virtue of being largely unused, it was held in the room designated to house the future writing center. This was not a department meeting so much as a lunch communion where everyone (except poor, clueless me) brought in some food to share and catch up on comradery. I was handed a plate and pushed to the front of the line and grazed on everything from pork adobo to jellied coffee desert. Filling my mouth with homemade food was easier than knowing what words should come out. Most everyone was speaking in Tagalog/Filipino, and though I did not want to make everyone shift to English for my benefit, anyone I turned to seemed happy to do so.5 At one point I turned and, seeing one man look me up and down, I went over and introduced myself. He returned my greetings at first haltingly, then with increasing warmth and, finally, after he discovered what songs we knew in common, we found ourselves singing an unlikely Simon and Garfunkel duet. The professor of Filipino, as he turned out be, was fond not only of the political rhetoric of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but also its folk and country music. Our harmonies did not, however, silence the challenging conversations we would continue to have during my time as his colleague. A few days later, I walked into the faculty office room and, seeing him there, asked what he was doing, to which he answered, “Waiting to sing a song with a foreigner,” and he went to the corner where his guitars leaned against the wall. He was an excellent

musician and a compassionate teacher, but unlike his proudly radical political stances, he restricted most of his writing criticism to grammatical correction. When I tried to point out what I saw as a contradiction in having people-power politics but prescriptive grading, he nodded, thought a bit and said that he too found it a contradiction that this white, middle class American would connect academic writing to empowerment and consciousness raising. Then he suggested we sing a John Denver song.

One professor in Ruth’s core writing center team was charged with researching the effects of a center on student writing. As much as wanting to set up a writing center, everyone wanted data, and after a while I learned that the promotion system in the national educational sector prioritized research (service was a small factor, and there were no student evaluations to consider). That was fine with me because I needed as much data as I could find on writing and grading: what kinds of writing were students asked to produce, how often, what modes of feedback were offered and perhaps most important, were there opportunities for student writers to revise.

In other words, what place could a writing center find in the normal flow of writing and evaluation at the university? So, I produced a questionnaire for professors based on these and other questions, many of them having weighed on my mind even before arrival.

Ruth arranged that a Google Doc form of the survey be sent to all faculty. Scanning over it before it was sent out, she told me she could already predict the answers with high confidence.

She was spot on: results described a faculty too overloaded with students and courses (weekly class time loads of 21 hours) to do much more than assign the barest minimum of writing and, in most cases, limit feedback to a final, unelaborated numerical grade. Some professors used a rubric, but usually the same generalized one for all writing; a few felt the obligation, almost a sacred duty, to mark grammatical mistakes. Some, usually ones early in their career, hand wrote comments but, as Dean Ruth admitted had been the case with her, their gushing energy petered out over the years. Numbers left on the top of student papers were their once-vital feedback’s dry fossil remains.

However, most everyone wanted to do more than the conditions allowed.

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 53 I realized that my survey questions should have been more precise. Nevertheless, I saw that I could present a writing center as a way to make the professors’ work more manageable. The center could offer feedback that instructors didn’t have the time to provide, and model effective feedback to students and efficient feedback for professors.

That feedback could yield observable improvements in student writing and stay the lamentations about the erosion of skills.

Instructors might even end up with a stack of more finished final drafts and, undistracted by mistakes, gain feedback on what is and isn’t working in their classes. If successful, student writing might evolve into work that professors might actually enjoy reading rather than dread assigning.

The assistant dean carved out a portion of the first official departmental meeting for me to present my project. My slot was at the end, right before lunch, after all the real business was finished. Until my turn came, I sat in the back and watched the discussions on issues ranging from course assignments to in-service projects. They toggled from English to Filipino so, for half the time, I relied on tone and body language. The discussions were sometimes impassioned with clear disagreement and forceful gesticulations, but though I have sat in on many faculty meetings in many institutions, this was unlike any other I ever encountered. No one’s ideas were dismissed, there was never condescension or biting sarcasm or one-upmanship, and after contentious exchange, I saw those who had just been in such disagreement go over to the other and engage in what were clearly warm exchanges. I mentioned this to a woman sitting in front of me and she said, “Of course, we may and must disagree, but in the end, before all else, we are all friends.” This might after all be fertile ground for the most principled of writing center principles: collaboration and respect (Lunsford).

And when I got up to speak, all I suggested was treated with careful consideration. I received thoughtful answers to my questions, and reached agreements without anyone rolling over to accommodate. It seemed that the general expectations had been for a writing center that served a remedial role, but since many thought that all their students needed remediation, and that would overwhelm our resources, my proposal for a center that focused on more global writing issues

seemed worth trying. By the end, everyone agreed to begin by creating a solid core, a pilot center with face-to-face tutoring and, over time, to let it expand and adapt to serve all of PNU’s students.

I met the next morning with Dean Ruth and her core writing center team. I was once again impressed with Ruth, who had a gift of making everyone comfortable enough to offer ideas and doubts in a way that led to action. When one professor worried that she was overbooked, another instructor, Marla, took over the task of selecting tutor trainees. Since students would not be paid for their substantial commitment (the university is free and it is understood that service is partial repayment), I offered to create a document that enumerated some of the benefits that peer tutors gain from their work. We formulated a tentative schedule, and I went off to complete the first training modules.

I had thought of starting with 10 to 12 trainees, but the response to the call for volunteers was overwhelming, a hundred submitting their names. Marla suggested we do the trainings in a large hall, but I gently pushed back, pointing to the advantage of training in the space where the center would be. I wanted the new tutors to feel that this was their space, their center. I felt that without them developing a sense of ownership, the center might not be sustainable. We might not be able to rely on professors, who were already overextended, to provide continuity. The 100 was winnowed down to 16, the most that the room could accommodate in ways that allowed frequent movement into pair and group work.

Asking Marla how these 16 had been chosen from the 100, she told me that they were selected from future English teachers (PNU prepares teachers destined for all teaching specialties) and their professors had identified them as the best writers of their classes. The first session with the new tutors was a week later, and I wondered if ‘best’ and ‘good’ writers were designations that we needed to explore right off.

Our opening session was titled, “Your Writing Process May Not Be My Writing Process.”

Knowing how important faculty support is for writing center attendance, I had hoped that several professors would attend (Baker). However, conflicting priorities arose and, one after another, all called off. Their reasons for canceling all made perfect sense, yet I wished they didn’t have so much confidence that they could defer to me, that

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 54 I would make it all work out. Long term, the center needed widespread support, and I would be twelve time zones away.

We started this session by reading a paragraph that began with the sentence, “Imagine, English in the Philippines as an American-made train, its luggage racks and boxcars crammed with American baggage and American freight.” I asked everyone to read the full paragraph and first explain in writing, “How can a language be like a train,” and then write down their own analogy for English in the Philippines.6 After five minutes of writing, they paired up and interviewed each other, not asking what they wrote, but what the steps or moves they made to get their words on the page.

The interviewing partner took notes, then they swapped roles. Each one then reported to the full group what they had heard from their partner, and usually, but not always, got their partner’s affirmation that the report was accurate. A key audience, therefore, was the source who could judge if they were accurately interpreted. This was in part an introduction to the paraphrase of the student writer’s work that is often effective in sessions, both in allowing the writer to hear how she sounds to another, and as a way for the tutor to try to enter the writer’s point of view (Valentine, Harris).

I then asked what questions they might have asked in order to better understand this strange paragraph about trains and English. I was mindful that this was a gathering of PNU’s sharpest minds, and because, as it turned out, all were from working class families, school was the one place where they could be elite. So, hands went up as if spring loaded. Yet, I held them back, asking for a full minute before anyone shared, a minute to act as an equalizer that let all students think and formulate their words. As a matter of pedagogical policy, I always try to provide a pause between posing a question and fielding answers, but in this context, that was even more important.

Though everyone’s English was very good, it was no one’s first language and second language processing is somewhat slower. More importantly, we were modelling that fast should not be conflated with best.

The questions they generated about the paragraph in turn generated more, ones about certain vocabulary, who wrote it, when, in what context and, since trains are now not common in the Philippines, how this could be apt. Though I

had started it off, soon the conversation was ricocheting around the room, eventually bouncing off every one of the 16 students.

Eventually, I paused the discussion to step back and reflect on the nature and power of open-ended questions, and how these sessions were, fundamentally, training on becoming skillful questioners. This first hour of listening and noting down, questioning, waiting and reflection was their initial taste of the peer tutoring we would soon dive into.

To further widen awareness of the varied ways successful writers get started, we then listened to the first episode of Alice Batt’s wonderful How We Write podcast from The University of Texas, and it was received with both surprise and pleasure. Most everyone in our select group had assumed their personal writing processes were universal best practices, but this first session revealed the spectrum of approaches that can turn a prompt into sentences. I designed our initial session to open us all up for the unexpected. For them, I was certainly something different, as they were for me; but more importantly, it turned out that they were also different from each other in their composing approaches. We were becoming more aware of our own expectations and how narrow they can be, preparing these new tutors for the flexibility necessary to work productively with whoever might come to our new center.

After this and each module, we had lunch together. The PNU commissary is so well-regarded for their lunch spreads that the faculty tries to schedule all departmental meetings as lunch meetings so that they can eat well on the university tab. And Ruth had clearly requested their best efforts for these students. The trainees were not compensated for their time in any way other than a good lunch, but they seemed to feel such a meal was just recompense. Most of these 20-year-olds held up the flowers of their warm smiles and sharp eyes on very slender stems, but it was only during a casual lunchtime conversation two weeks later did it come out that not a single one had had any breakfast before our 3+ hour morning sessions.7 And this unbroken fast in spite of some having to rise at 4 AM to take the long commute to central Manila via three separate legs on crowded jeepneys.8 After that, I stopped being surprised when I saw lunch plates piled four inches high with rice and Filipino classic dishes

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 55 such as adobo and kare kare, favorites for many that their families could no longer afford, what with the high prices for meat and for the peanut butter in the kare kare sauce. And then some would go back for a second mountain of savory foods followed by slices of orange papaya and red and yellow watermelon for dessert. It warmed my heart to see them enjoying their food. I loved joining everyone for these lunches, and while the others were just plain hungry, I feasted on their feedback about the just completed session that allowed me to make adjustments and adaptations in the next module.

The arc of the module series started conceptually (though even these were full of activities that practiced and challenged their applicability) and became steadily more practical.

For example, the second and third modules were entitled, “So, I hear you will be working in a writing center…er, what is a writing center,” and “So, I hear you will be a peer writing tutor…er, what is a peer writing tutor?” The penultimate session was “Principles and Possibilities,” which assembled some core peer tutoring strategies (e.g. looking for what’s good and building out from that, active listening, and tried-and-true questions like ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ and ‘Is there a simpler way to say that?’). Squeezed into the final, double-length module were both sentence-level responses and how to find resources focused on these issues. We gathered and shared links to exercises and explanations that could be given like parting gifts to their tutees. A single session on local issues was clearly insufficient, especially for these ESL/EFL writers, but if their professors were going to provide that promised window for global revision earlier in the writing process, we needed to take that rare opening. In my survey of them, the professors had asked for more critical thinking, stronger thesis statements and greater coherence and, judging from our cohort of trainees, students were craving the chance to use higher level thinking. To balance that with the other priority of professors, grammatical correctness, we planned that tutors would collect examples of sentence-level errors from tutee papers and then, during proposed monthly tutor workshops, pool and collate them into a library of grammar and mechanics handouts.9 Usually, at the core of tutor training is observation, watching an experienced tutor at

work, and then reflection and discussion to process the observation. Of course, that was not an option here with not a peer tutor to be found in any of the 7,431 islands of the Philippine archipelago. To partially compensate, we had carefully studied some video clips from American writing sessions, but to get any further, we would have to rely on simulated tutor sessions.

Before we transitioned to those, I gathered anonymous feedback from our 16 tutors in training about the sessions we had already held.

100% responded ‘yes’ to whether they would recommend the training to others. The comment section yielded statements like, “The workshops ignited something in me,” and “I’m pretty sad these are coming to an end.” As much as this feedback gratified me, I understood that they were not so much about my efforts as about a pleasurable dissonance that this experience had offered and they clearly welcomed. What we had spent these weeks exploring was the tension between skill and authority. An assumption, that authority must follow the mastery of skill, had been challenged, the sequence questioned. Instead, in order to fully develop some skills, perhaps student writers first needed to realize that they must claim the ultimate authority for their own unique angle of perspective. And it is through this authority that they might, with trial and many errors and mistakes, master some of the skills needed to transfer understanding. As Peter Elbow argued back in more revolutionary times, skill development grows more vigorously when fertilized by the sense of responsibility grounded in this authority, a responsibility to use whatever rhetorical resource increases understanding, clarifies communication, and perhaps even persuades a reader of its importance. The tutors needed to encourage both skill and authority and not wait for the former to confer the latter. For these tutor trainees, who had learned to defer authority, this was both novel and delightful. They were not, as initially assumed, merely role-playing the expert, the authority on how or what to write, rather, they were becoming skilled at leveraging better academic work by deferring to their tutees a rightful share of the authority. These future teachers were learning that, though standing before students can be gratifying, student learning might need less instructor tapdancing in the spotlight and a lighter hand, even if that means

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 56 standing in the learner’s shadow. Learning takes priority over teaching.

The aspiring teachers who comprised this first tutor cohort were feeling their way in the blurry overlap of student and teacher. They had been recognized as high-achieving students, but were not yet teachers. Their limited authority had been lent to them by the professors who had nominated them, but that did not make them professors. However, the new less-directive tutor role they were practicing seemed to relieve them of the unease of being mere professor impersonators. The more effectively they collaborated with other students who came for guidance, the less they would feel like imposters.

Perhaps some of this came as they sensed my own unease with being officially an expert, when I also needed to defer authority to those I was constantly trying to better understand.

So, from the module presentations and activities, we moved on to simulations of tutoring.

For the first one, we used a student-written text that had been posted on Academia.edu with the seemingly perfect title, “Scrutinizing the State of Academic Writing in the Philippine Context.” I could not find any information about the author other than her name, but I gathered from the context that she was a Philippine high school student when she wrote this essay, one that she was evidently proud of enough to publish online (Pasia). However, the 400-word, two-paragraph essay is so difficult to follow that at first I wondered if it was a parody of academic writing.

Sentences are long and tangled, larded with words that somehow seemed even longer as if the number of syllables were points in this game. In the end, I took it as it presented itself, an example of academic writing at its best, appropriately dense and expectedly opaque, then analyzing why it is lamentably underappreciated in the Philippines.

Therefore, the writer had authority as one in the trenches, battling to master the genre, but I guessed she lacked the feedback to allow her ideas to become clear enough to be communicated.

Perfect.

All of the prospective tutors received a copy in advance, a head start that would not be available in most tutoring situations, but this was the first dry run. We formed a ‘fishbowl’ in the class, a small desk in the center with two chairs, and the others all circling. As for who should play the writer, I felt it would be unfair to ask any of

the trainees to productively embody such opaque writing, but because I had read and re-read and worked hard to tease out what might be the intended meaning of each sentence, I hoped I could play the student writer respectfully. The tutor-playing student had volunteered, much to the evident relief of the others. She cocked her head as I read the essay aloud to her, and nodded like a pro (we had discussed the importance of non and para-verbals). Then, she asked what I meant by certain words, helped clarify some areas that the student-writer had not considered problematic, and perhaps introduced the brand new concept, revision, to the student writer.

To all those who circled the fishbowl, I had assigned the role of observer, providing each an observation form, an early draft for the form we would use for subsequent simulations. On it, they were to write whatever in the exchange seemed to be working, and what did not, and to jot down at least one question or response of their own that they thought might yield results. During our modules, ‘good question’ had been defined as one ‘that yielded a good answer,’ and ‘good answer’ meant more than ‘correct’; it could mean surprising, insightful or whatever stirs a realization or new clarity. When their turn came, the observers’ questions were well phrased and they prodded, poked and gently encouraged me, as the writer, to realize what I knew and hadn’t written, and hadn’t fully understood yet wrote anyway. One asked if there were, perhaps, three ideas in this one sentence, and if I could separate them. Another asked what I wanted the reader to take away from a section, which was followed up by suggesting that I might replace what I had written with what I had just said. The post-mortem of the activity was enough to bring the corpse back to life, and nearly every student wanted to play the next tutor.

I joined the observers, and we held two more simulations that morning.

My best-laid-plan was for a sequence of steadily more autonomous tutoring simulations, paring down the fishbowl and pulling myself back, but the continuity was interrupted twice by jeepney strikes. Without this cheap transportation for students, the university had to close in-person activities, at first for three days, and then again for a week. My schedule had been tight already, with a soft opening for the center scheduled for the final week of my contract. Fortunately, Dr. Carleen Velez, the RELO, was a fervent supporter of this

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 57 project and requested and received approval from Washington for a two-week extension for me, so we moved forward.

The simulated sessions used writing assignments that the trainees or their friends had previously produced. We treated them as works still in progress. I wanted enough quantity to provide a good variety, and only asked that they be accompanied by an assignment description and, if one existed, an evaluation criteria. The latter often did not exist even when grades were a very specific number and indicated an implicit criteria.

One student’s essay had earned 44 out of 50 possible points, but she had no idea why she had gained so many, or what she could have done to earn more. Another had 50 out of 50, but her simulated session made her aware of so much room for improvement that she assumed the instructor had saved time and graded it unread on the basis of his already high regard for her. In my casual conversations and two formal workshops/presentations with faculty, I had suggested that a powerful tool for writing improvement may be as simple as making evaluation criteria more specific, targeting and making explicit whatever needs they identified.10 I wagered the professors that student writing would become more satisfying to read, and they would see writing skills improve. Without these and other adaptations in instruction, simply adding a writing center would be insufficient to stay the decline in student writing. Throughout our sessions, I urged the tutors to identify their own sets of effective questions and suggestions, but without clear goals prioritized by instructors and expressed in assignment descriptions, which direction should those questions and suggestions point? The tutor sessions were to help students look to their own compasses, but the professors needed to orient the magnet. Was it none of my business if professors declined to provide explicit criteria? Or did the success of my business depend upon their clarification, articulation and communication? My position as a temporary intrusion in the business of the university made me hesitant, but my status as an expert allowed me, perhaps made me responsible, to at least enter the conversation, and that is why I volunteered a talk via Zoom during the jeepney strike and a faculty workshop.

Once the strikes were over, we returned to our work in earnest, aware that our time together was limited and that the flexibility

necessary to respond to diverse writing required broad experience. Drawing on a grant designated for improving English skills at PNU, Ruth and Marla arranged for a three-day trainee retreat at a hotel about two hours from Manila. There we could focus, and then decide on policy issues (e.g. can tutors switch from English to Filipino or other tongues?; how long will sessions be? how many hours would tutors work?). I could offer what I knew other centers were doing, but they knew better what might work at PNU. Our highest priority, however, was to hold as many simulated tutoring sessions as possible. In this, the students and Ruth and Marla and I were all in agreement, though the students were also hoping there would be a pool (there was!). Not one had ever spent a night in a hotel. Excitement was high.

The simulations were held in groups of three: one trainee playing the student writer, one the tutor and one sitting to the side, equipped with a revised observation form, acting as observer. In order to give time for a post session discussion between writer and tutor, and then observer feedback, the simulations were limited to 35 minutes, the post session conversation to 25 minutes for a total of one hour before swapping roles. After the cycle of three, I asked each triad to decide on the single most significant take-away and shared that with the whole group.11 After a long, well-earned lunch break, new groups were formed for an afternoon round.

During these sessions, I circulated around, kneeling quietly, eavesdropping, jotting down snippets and patterns I found significant. By the end of each round, my knees ached, but I was nonetheless delighted to see how, with each session, the tutors were spiraling up and forward in both skill and confidence. During the early rounds, for example, I had often heard the tutor say, “Don’t you think…” but after group discussion and critiques of technique efficacy, I began to hear tutors use more “I” instead of “you” statements, a common counseling strategy well suited to writing consultations (Rogers, “Giving and Receiving”). Rather than filling silences with premature advice, I noticed more silent yet pregnant gaps as tutors gained the confidence to let the method work, showed the patience to allow the tutee wider quiet space where they could discover their own answers.

Certainly, advice was offered, but by waiting, it became more specific, apt and absorbed.

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 58 Of course, the third day ended with speeches and certificates and lots of photos. I, along with every tutor, wore new shirts emblazoned with the student-designed PNU Academic Writing Center logo on the front and, on the back, the tag line, Peer-Powered Tutoring.

The ceremony was full of warmth and optimism for the success of the new writing center.

And then it was over. The training completed, the semester over except for exams, and my cramped seat on the 24-hour flight back to the United States awaiting. There was talk of an open house in the room where the center would be housed, but conflicts with the exam schedule left that ill-advised. Maybe next semester, and maybe I would join via Zoom.

As I come to the end of this report, I do not know how things stand in Manila, so cannot tie a bow around it. I am like the peer tutor after the student writer has left the room. I know the session went well, but the rest is up to them. I leave the expertise where it now belongs. We let go of each other.

My experience in the Philippines has changed for me the tense of expert. The noun places that credential firmly in the past: in studies completed, articles published, territory claimed.

Now, I think of an expert as one might think of a teacher, how no one is a teacher, no matter what one's certification, if no one is learning, that teaching and learning are like a rolling ball of yin and yang. In a similar way, to claim the role and responsibility of an expert, I needed to ask others—students, peer tutors, professors, and the institution of the university—to all shoulder yet more evenly share responsibility for the quality of student writing. The usual sequence is to identify the problem, bring in an expert, and let the expert solve the problem, but perhaps the strength of an expert is only manifested when she bends the sequence into a loop, leveraging the status of expert to give expertise away, letting it diffuse, by using expert in the present tense.

Notes 1. De La Salle University, one of Philippines most highly rated and respected universities, does have an English Language Lab, something distinct from a writing center. According to an email from its director, Dr. Jennifer Tan-de Ramos, they have neither one-on-one tutorials with students nor any peer tutors; rather their lab follows a clinic model,

providing faculty-led tutorials and review classes.

Since my departure from the Philippines, Central Luzon State University has opened an academic writing center, though theirs is staffed by faculty members.

2. Ted Roggenbuck of Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, a Co-Editor for WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, not only shared honest opinions and titles of articles and books, he also linked me into the Wcenter listserv where my queries and pleas were answered by so many who patiently walked me through my baby steps.

3. Act No. 74 of the Philippine Commission, January 21, 1901 and found on a bronze plaque at the university gate.

4. Though I thought I knew about the three-month long Spanish-American War, I had never even heard the name of the two-year war that followed where our Filipino allies in the fight against Spain had become our targets, and when at least 200,000 were killed by American forces (along with 4,200 Americans). Nor did I realize that Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” was not about British colonialism in India as I had assumed, but was written to encourage American annexation of the archipelago while warning the US of the manly cost of taming “Your new-caught, sullen peoples,/Half devil and half child.”

5. Filipino is an official, standardized national language based upon Tagalog, the majority language of Luzon, so among these scholars of differing mother tongues, perhaps that was their medium, but I certainly could not differentiate.

6. Though I did not share this with the students until after their ideas had been offered, the paragraph was by Filipino poet Luis H. Francia and published in 1989 in his introduction to Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, Rutgers University Press.

7. The day after I found out about the lack of breakfast, I put aside my hesitation at flaunting my ability to easily afford them, and brought in a big bag of breakfast cakes. I placed them on a desk

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Expertise Wielded; Expertise Yielded • 59 before anyone arrived. Modestly and deferentially, no one touched any until I urged them on.

8. Jeepney, a portmanteau word combining jeep and jitney, is the most common public transportation in the Philippines. They might be called a portmanteau vehicle, looking like a WWII jeep in the front and then a low bus in the back.

Crowded and cheap, jeepneys are cultural icons, their sides often adorned with images fusing religious and pop culture, but their outsized contributions to air pollution might mean their days are numbered.

9. Collecting errors and turning them into handouts was suggested by RELO, Dr. Carleen Curley Velez, who had used this method at the UCLA writing center.

10. PNU is a teachers university, so professors are more than casually aware of aligning learning goals with evaluation and of the value of rubrics.

However, the rubrics I was shown were generic, using abstract evaluation criteria (usually focus, content, organization and grammar/mechanics) for all assignments rather than using them to focus on the specific learning objective (e.g. clear examples from the reading, use of a particular concept) that the professor expected but never made explicit. A few instructors did tailor their rubrics, and therefore made the writer’s (and eventually the tutor’s) work more focused and effective.

11. The critical thinking engaged to evaluate which-of-all-they-noticed-is-best appears to increase later application of that insight.

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