Praxis23.3FullIssue

The University of Texas at Austin

PRAXIS

A WRITING CENTER JOURNAL

VOL. 23.3 — SPRING 2026

‘Which Way to the Writing Center?’

On Affect, Perception, and Place

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 3 (2026)

VOL. 23, NO. 3 (2026): “WHICH WAY TO THE WRITING CENTER?” ON AFFECT, PERCEPTION, AND PLACE TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS

From the Editors Mary Fons and Sam Turner The “Beehive Effect”: Rethinking Space, Observation and Pedagogy in Writing Centres Joel Benabu From Tutoring to Teaching: Course-Embedded Tutoring as Pre-Teaching Pedagogy Corinna Cape and Uttara Rangarajan

FOCUS ARTICLES Grad Expectations: Student Perceptions of Graduate Writing Centers and the Writer-Consultant Relationship among High-Frequency Users David Hershinow, Kristie Schlauraff, Daniel Hengel, Deborah Philip, Anna Carroll, and Charles Colwell Leadership by the Most Impacted: Accessibility Culture and the Student Advisory Board at the Sweetland Center for Writing Torre Puckett, Tess Carichner, Eli Friedstrom, Laine Kibler, and Maeve Waugh “I Was Surprised at How Well I Was Able to Handle It”: Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center Grace Williams and Amy Latawiec Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center: Oral Histories from First-Year Composition Mekenzie McElroy Why Place Matters: Identifying Usage Patterns Based on Writing Center Location Kimberly A. Bain Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers Emily Jane Pucker Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work David Brauer

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 3 (2026)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Joel Benabu (PhD) is an experienced writing specialist, researcher, and educator with a doctorate in Shakespeare Studies from the University of Toronto. With more than 15 years of experience working across multiple University of Toronto writing centres, Dr. Benabu has worked extensively with students across a wide range of disciplines and academic programs. In addition to his teaching and consultation work, he has contributed to scholarship in Shakespeare studies, writing pedagogy, and rhetoric through many publications, including a monograph (2023) and articles appearing in a range of academic journals, including Rhetoric Review.

His more recent research focuses on writing pedagogy, literacy development, and the evolving relationship between writing and generative AI in higher education.

Corinna Cape is a PhD candidate in English at Fordham University, where she focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century American literature and disability studies.

Uttara Rangarajan is a PhD candidate in English at Fordham University, where she focuses on postcolonial studies and speculative fiction.

David Hershinow is the Founding Director of The Writing Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. David is the author of Shakespeare and the Truth-Teller: Confronting the Cynic Ideal (Edinburgh UP, 2019). Their scholarship has appeared, or is forthcoming, in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, Criticism, Modern Philology, Modern Language Notes, and Shakespeare Newsletter.

Kristie Schlauraff is a lecturer in the Program of Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University and senior writing consultant at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research considers how epistemological and rhetorical frameworks forged in the nineteenth century continue to influence definitions of embodiment, frustrating efforts to decolonize language, institutions, and knowledge. She has published articles in Literature and Medicine, Victorian Network, Poe Studies, and Literature Compass, and is currently working on a book project on Victorian science and gothic soundscapes.

Daniel Hengel served as a Senior Writing Consultant at The Graduate Center for six years. He is an Assistant Professor at Columbia Greene Community College. Daniel has published articles in Radical Teacher, The D.H. Lawrence Review, Nordic Irish Studies, and The Wellsian. He has article-length works in various stages of the publication process with WLN, College Literature, and Irish Studies Review.

Deborah Philip is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology and a Graduate Writing Center Fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on the politics of home and unhomeliness in colonial and post-colonial Sri Lanka. She is currently a contributing editor at Anthropod, the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s podcast.

Anna Carroll is a doctoral candidate in the Art History Department at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is working on her dissertation on the spatial and sensorial experience of lay viewers in the 4th–8th century Byzantine Egyptian church.

Charles Colwell is a PhD candidate in Composition in the Music Department at The Graduate Center, CUNY. His dissertation research explores how local naturalist guides’ vocal-imitative and listening practices configure their knowledge relations with birds at La Selva Research Station in northeastern Costa Rica.

Torre Puckett (PhD) is a Herbert Postdoctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where accessibility is central to her practices as a writing instructor and consultant at the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center. During her graduate studies at the University of Michigan, she was a research fellow managing the access improvement initiative at the Sweetland Center for Writing. In addition to writing center studies, her research also examines disability in horror literature. Her research can be found in

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 3 (2026) the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, and she is currently working on a monograph about eugenic themes in horror literature of the fin-de-siècle.

Tess Carichner was a member of the University of Michigan Student Advisory Board from its inception until her undergraduate graduation two and a half years later. Tess graduated with her BSN, with minors in disability studies and global health from the University of Michigan. Her love for writing, the arts, and disability culture led her to create the Accessing Disability Culture Anthology, which features work from 25 disabled University of Michigan students on an open-access digital platform. Tess now practices as a hospice nurse while being a full-time PhD student at University of Michigan, where she studies the relationships of housing, selfdetermination, and sexual violence victimization risk for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Eli Friedstrom is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where they studied neuroscience and cognitive science with concentration in linguistics. While growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, Eli became a fierce advocate for disability and ensuring positive health outcomes for marginalized communities. In addition to their work with the Sweetland Center for Writing on the Student Advisory Board, they were also a research assistant in the Computational Neurolinguistics Laboratory under Dr. Jonathan Brennan. This upcoming fall they will begin their PharmD program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Pharmacy, where they are excited to integrate their passions of neuroscience, disability studies, and precision health and mental health care to the evolving field of pharmacy!

Laine Kibler (they/them) is a graduate from the University of Michigan (Class of 2024) with B.A.s in Creative Writing & Literature (Mixed-Genre) and Arts & Ideas (Image/Text). They currently work as an art studio assistant to paper artist Matt Shlian, and also as a desk clerk at Ann Arbor Public Library. Their research and creative projects focus on mental health, OCD, queerness, and other social justice topics.

Maeve Sundberg Waugh is a recently graduated alumnus from the University of Michigan who double majored in Classical Archaeology and Film Production. She has a passion for disability accessibility in academia, which drew her to the Sweetland Board and its crew of dedicated scholars and activists. She completed an undergraduate thesis investigating the culture of projectile inscription at the ancient site of Olynthos, which received high honors and an undergraduate prize in the UM Classics department. She now attends a master’s program for Classics with Teaching Licensure at Tufts University in Boston, where she hopes to continue studying the ancient world and promoting accessibility in the classroom.

Grace Williams (PhD) is an assistant professor at Lansing Community College. She previously attended Wayne State University where she served as assistant director of the writing center from 2023–2025.

Amy Latawiec (PhD) is an associate professor of teaching in the English department at Wayne State University. She served as writing center director at Wayne State University from 2022–2025.

Mekenzie McElroy is a PhD student in Florida State University’s English program, specializing in rhetoric and composition. Previously, she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a bachelor’s degree in writing and rhetoric, and a master’s degree in English from the University of Central Florida, where she worked as a writing consultant in the University Writing Center for four years. Her research interests include writing center studies and composition theory and pedagogy.

Kimberly A. Bain (PhD) is an assistant professor and writing center administrator at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her research focuses on linguistic diversity in writing center work as well as multimodal and service learning pedagogies of first-year writing. She also serves as the current editor of FORUM:Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty. Her work has been featured in The Peer Review, Composition Studies, and Composition Forum.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 3 (2026) Emily Jane Pucker (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of English and the Coordinator of Composition at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, GA. Her research centers on writing pedagogy, with special emphasis on writing centers and multilingual writers and writing. Dr. Pucker has over ten years of tutoring experience, including four years as an assistant director with the University of Alabama Writing Center. She resides in Milledgeville with her husband, Dr. Andrew Pucker, and their dogs.

David Brauer (PhD) is an associate professor of English and serves as the director of the writing center at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

EDITORS’ LETTER: ‘WHICH WAY TO THE WRITING CENTER?’ ON AFFECT, PERCEPTION, AND PLACE Mary Fons University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

There are few challenges writing center professionals have not faced at one time or another: budget cuts, staff turnover, and institutional drama come immediately to mind. Yet, of all the sturm und drang we collectively navigate in order to operate to the best of our ability, the matter of where we do our work is a central—and for many, perpetual—concern.

It’s no secret that there is as much variety in the respective location arrangements of writing centers as there are writing centers. At the University of Texas at Austin, we are fortunate to have generous space and plenty of natural light in our location on the first floor of Perry-Castañeda Library, one of the few buildings on campus likely utilized by UT’s entire student population at one time or another. But many reading this issue of Praxis will identify more closely with some of the space concerns addressed in this issue. Joel Benabu’s must-read column essay, “‘The “Beehive Effect’: Rethinking Space, Observation and Pedagogy in Writing Centres,” orients this issue.

Benabu reminds of the power of place in our work, and the affective potentials of the center ecologies.

Next up, Corinna Cape and Uttara Rangarajan offer their column essay (“From Tutoring to Teaching: Course-Embedded Tutoring as Pre-Teaching Pedagogy”) on the relationship between courseembedded tutoring and teacher training, writing “there could be no better place [for transitional pedagogy to develop] than the writing center, where academic support and community come together.”

To be sure, a future issue of Praxis will be dedicated solely to the matter of spatial location; in this issue, scholars apprehend “place” in a variety of ways. In this issue’s first focus article, “Grad Expectations: Student Perceptions of Graduate Writing Centers and the Writer-Consultant Relationship among High-Frequency Users,” David Hershinow and their team from CUNY contribute to conversations about the place of writing centers in graduate education in their report on the folks who visit their space most often. Next up, Torre Puckett and a team of students recall the successes they had in implementing a Student Advisory Board composed of disabled students to advise an ongoing access improvement initiative in their article, “Leadership by the Most Impacted: Accessibility Culture and the

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

Student Advisory Board at the Sweetland Center for Writing.”

Grace Williams and Amy Latawiec contribute to our field’s growing body of work about emotional labor, reporting back about tutors’ relationships to their work following targeted training on emotional labor (“‘I Was Surprised at How Well I Was Able to Handle It’: Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center”).

And in “Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center: Oral Histories from First-Year Composition,” Mekenzie McElroy explores how several first-year composition instructors found their way to the writing center, and how their perceptions of WC work shape how they frame the writing center for their students.

Kimberly A. Bain brings us back to the physical space of the center in her paper, “Why Place Matters: Identifying Usage Patterns Based on Writing Center Location.” In it, Bain describes a grueling period in which her writing center was forced to operate out of a cramped hallway, and makes the case for the power of space in “creat[ing] positive associations and memory of writing support on campus.” To round out the issue, tutors under Emily Jane Pucker find ways to wander (slightly) from the beaten path in meeting the needs of multilingual writers (“Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers”), and David Brauer’s lived experience shows us that the writing center’s place in curricula is forever subject to pedagogical relocation (“Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work”).

The end of another spring semester brings hope of a bit of a break, and maybe even the opportunity to see someplace new. We hope you can read this issue from a space you love, be it a comfy office chair or somewhere far, far away from your institutional duties. We owe our gratitude this spring to the wonderful authors featured in this issue; our dedicated review board who gives so generously of their time; and to our readers, wherever you are.

Mary and Sam

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

THE “BEEHIVE EFFECT”: RETHINKING SPACE, OBSERVATION AND PEDAGOGY IN WRITING CENTRES Joel Benabu University of Toronto, Mississauga j.benabu@utoronto.ca In September 2019, my colleagues and I toured the newly completed space that would soon house the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. The space was not yet fully inhabited; ladders, toolboxes, and extension cords were still visible throughout. After the tour, the Centre’s director led each instructor, one at a time, to a private office that would serve as a one-on-one tutoring space, designed to minimize distraction and support focused work with students. My new office was calm and uncluttered, yet its silence felt almost sealed off from the world.

This stillness stood in sharp contrast to the dynamic, communal space I had left behind months earlier.

Before this relocation, the writing centre had for many years been housed on the third floor of the University of Toronto’s Mississauga Library, which provided a more convivial setting. That older site carried its own distinctive soundtrack: the sharp ring of frantic telephone calls, the mechanical whir of photocopiers, and the muffled shuffle of feet against threadbare carpeting. Its narrow corridors were always abuzz with writing centre instructors and staff moving at a frantic pace, all humming as they attended to students’ needs. Students spanning undergraduate and graduate study would gather at one end of the corridor outside the main office, forming a line that sometimes zigzagged beyond the centre itself and into the library, everyone hoping to claim a brief window of access: to meet with a writing instructor, to book an appointment, or to secure a last-minute cancellation.

In this original location, one-on-one consultations took place in a small, designated area of approximately 500 square feet that had been shaped as much by necessity as by design. What lingers in memory are fragments: a small modular chamber of outfitted with four desks and a few mismatched chairs; a physical bulletin board covered with program flyers; cabinets holding shared instructional materials; and, eventually, whiteboards stocked with dry erase markers.

During peak hours here, as many as five one-onone consultations unfolded concurrently.

At first glance, this environment might appear ill-suited to productive labour, even counterproductive. In practice, however, it gave rise to a distinctly cooperative and formative mode of instructional work. Within its close quarters, instructors were consistently attentive to one another, often checking in after sessions to ensure they had not disrupted a colleague’s work. Voices lowered instinctively. Pacing shifted. Small adjustments were made in response to what was happening nearby. Far from producing disorder, the shared space fostered a strong sense of collective responsibility. There was an implicit understanding that individual consultations were in some ways interconnected and that the success of one depended, in part, on the care and awareness of all.

This interconnectedness moved beyond collegial courtesy, becoming an informal yet powerful site for learning about writing consultation practice. During appointment cancellations or late arrivals, I often listened in on nearby consultations, noticing how more experienced instructors framed questions, redirected conversations, or responded to student resistance. Through repeated exposure, I came to notice a practice used by a senior instructor who, early in a session, would pause after reviewing part of a draft and ask a simple but revealing question to the student: “What did you hope to communicate in this text?” The question gently illuminated the gap between the student’s intentions and execution, while also revealing how fully those ideas had been considered at the time of the appointment. After observing my colleague implement this instructional strategy repeatedly, each time with subtle variation and nuance, I began to experiment with using it myself. Much of what I learned from her emerged gradually, through a process of pedagogical incubation that relied less on commentary or formal reflection than on time, proximity, and a shared communal environment in which practice could take root.

Within the shared space, it also became possible to observe how instructors navigated more

1

The “Beehive Effect” • 2 difficult moments. I recall a tense incident in which a student became confrontational with a younger, inexperienced instructor, raising his voice and dismissing her feedback. As the exchange escalated, nearby instructors paused their sessions and swarmed toward the disturbance, their response swift and coordinated. While some escorted the student to the main office, others remained with the instructor to provide comfort and support.

Because consultations unfolded in close proximity, the situation was addressed quickly, documented clearly, and resolved decisively. The response required no announcement or directive; it emerged naturally from shared presence and awareness.

Seen in this light, such moments begin to resemble the dynamics of a beehive. As a working colony, a beehive is not organized around centralized command, but around proximity, responsiveness, and shared labour. Individual bees perform distinct roles within a common space, continually adjusting their actions in response to pheromonal cues, movement, and the immediate needs of the colony; coordination emerges instead through constant interaction, embodied signals, and collective sensitivity to the hive’s conditions.

Setting the biological analogy aside, this same underlying structure helps to illuminate the operation of writing centre spaces like the one I have been describing. Here, consultations are formally one-on-one yet spatially and socially interconnected. Within this space, instructors work side by side, remaining attuned to one another even while focused on their own sessions. Observation occurs incidentally and continuously, through peripheral listening, brief glances, and moments of shared attention. Learning is not transmitted topdown, as it often can be in formal director-toinstructor observation (Lawson 2), nor is it confined to scheduled exchanges of feedback as in the more egalitarian director-led peer-to-peer observation (e.g., Hall 2017; Kelly et al. 2022; Van Slembrouck 2010); instead, it develops gradually through immersion in a shared instructional ecology.

Traces of what I am calling the “beehive effect” persist, albeit in attenuated form, within the RGASC. One such instance is the Centre’s Writing Studio initiative, which meets daily for an hour and creates a shared, collaborative environment in which this dynamic can still emerge. In this space, several writing instructors work alongside one another, offering informal feedback to students

who drop in without an appointment to write, reflect, and discuss their work. Within this setting, pedagogical practices that are often tacit become visible and accessible through ongoing, informal exchange. In this sense, the initiative stands as a modest reminder of what shared spaces can still sustain. At the same time, its position as the only remaining space of its kind at the RGASC lends greater force to a broader impression: that environments designed for collective presence, visibility, and pedagogical attunement have become increasingly scarce.

The concern animating this reflection is that the institutional infrastructure supporting such modes of tacit and processual learning for writing instructors has gradually contracted at the RGASC. This contraction may be attributed, in part, to the institutional pressures and shifting conditions to which writing centres must continually respond, including changing student needs and preferences, and unforeseeable disruptions such as those experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In responding to these pressures, changes to one-onone consultation practices, whether the move to private offices or to online delivery, are often framed as technical or operational adjustments. Yet these adjustments carry pedagogical consequences, reshaping the subtle ecology through which instructors hone their craft and altering patterns of proximity, observation, and informal learning that often go unnoticed.

To be clear, these changes are not usually caused by a lack of physical space for multiple consultations. Instead, they tend to result either from external pressures such as public health measures that require isolation, or from institutional priorities that place student needs and preferences first. Many students prefer private spaces where they can speak openly with an instructor, and research suggests that some, especially those with attention or learning differences, are more easily distracted in noisier environments (Sahmurova and Gursesli, 2020). For these reasons, institutions may reasonably favor private consultation spaces over shared ones.

However, even when these decisions are well justified, they still reshape the professional learning environment for writing instructors.

Seen in this light, a pressing question comes into focus: have writing centres come to place too much faith in formalized structures of observation (e.g. director-to-instructor

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

The “Beehive Effect” • 3 observation), and too little in the quiet, generative labour that shared spaces already sustain? Stripped of metaphor, the question resolves more clearly: space in the writing centre is not merely a logistical arrangement or procedural convenience, but a constitutive condition of pedagogy itself, shaping the circulation of knowledge, the formation of practice, and the collective making of meaning. *** This reflection offers a call to attention that may resonate beyond the confines of a single writing centre in Toronto, Canada. If the so-called “beehive effect” has disappeared or is in danger of disappearing from your writing centre as shared spaces are dismantled, it is worth asking where it might still be recovered, even in smaller or partial forms, as the RGASC has done through its Writing Studio initiative. Otherwise, what stands to be lost is not merely a room and its occupants, but a form of collective professional practice. For this reason, the “beehive effect” should not be dismissed as inconsequential or reduced to a relic of prepandemic times. Rather, it is better understood as a pedagogical resource whose value emerges in the everyday rhythms of communal work, in the low hum of a space where instructors are, quite literally, busy at work.

Kelly, Megan, et al. “Notice, Ask, Explore: Transforming Peer Observation into Dialogic Reflection.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 47, no. 2, 2022, pp. 41–58.

Lawson, Daniel. “Peer Observation, Reflection, and Evaluation Practices in the Writing Center: A Genre Pedagogy Approach.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, Spring 2018, pp. 42–54.

Sahmurova, Aida, and Mustafa Can Gursesli. “Effects of Noise Pollution on Anger and Smoking Addiction in College Students.” IIOAB Journal, vol. 11, no. 5, 2020, pp. 42–47.

Slembrouck, Jane Van. “Watch and Learn: Peer Evaluation and Tutoring Pedagogy.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–6.

Works Cited Hall, R. Mark. Around the Texts of Writing Center Work: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Tutor Education. Utah State UP, 2017.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

FROM TUTORING TO TEACHING: COURSE-EMBEDDED TUTORING AS PRETEACHING PEDAGOGY Corinna Cape Fordham University ccape2@fordham.edu

After a semester working as a course-embedded tutor (CET) at our private R2 university, our colleague Sam was struck by the similarities between course-embedded tutoring and teaching.

As a graduate student worker with experience as an instructor of record, Sam was well-positioned to recognize the logical continuities that exist between the role of a CET and that of an instructor.

Whereas one-on-one tutoring sessions ask CETs to respond to an individual student’s goals, both CETs and instructors must balance the needs of an individual and the needs of the group. Sam’s insights helped us—fellow graduate students with leadership experience at our university writing center—interrogate the continuum along which tutoring and teaching exist.

As writing center (WC) leaders in the spring of 2024, we developed a course-embedded tutoring program tailored to the needs of instructors and students in individual courses. An expanded version of our program ran as a pilot the following summer, and the program continues to serve our WC today. Instructors selected for the program work closely with a WC tutor who offers dedicated support in the form of in-class presentations, customized materials, and group and individual tutoring sessions. For the pilot, we received IRB approval to interview students, tutors, and instructors about their experiences working together. We were particularly interested in how the presence of embedded tutors affected classroom dynamics, and how sustained work with a specific class prepared the tutor for professional teaching opportunities in the future. Interviews with tutors like Sam allowed us to further develop our thoughts concerning the relationship between CET tutoring and classroom instruction.

In what follows, we reflect on our experience piloting a CET program in order to identify continuities between tutoring and teaching, and offer suggestions for other writing center administrators interested in situating tutoring as “pre-teaching” training. As graduate tutors who have gone on to become composition instructors,

Uttara Rangarajan Fordham University urangarajan@fordham.edu

we often rely on our own tutoring experiences to fill gaps in our teaching practice. This column considers how such training might look in practice and to inspire conversations about CET tutoring as a pathway to the writing classroom.

We view writing center leadership teams and tutors as “intermediaries” who are able to circumvent traditional classroom power dynamics.

Because tutors work with students individually, they can achieve a level of openness and detail with students that is rarely replicated between student and instructor (Titus et al.) Therefore, the skills tutors build as CETs can help them become instructors more attuned to individual student needs, desires, and modes of learning—thus disrupting the aforementioned classroom power dynamics. Building such awareness can serve them in their existing tutor roles and may assist them on their way to becoming instructors. We imagine that CET training framed as pre-teaching would be meaningful for both graduate and undergraduate tutors interested in classroom teaching or group writing instruction.

Existing scholarship addresses the efficacy of CET programs, the dynamic and ambivalent role of CET tutors (Ristow and Dickinson; Webster and Hansen), and the overlapping power relationships embedded in CET models (Raica-Klotz et al.).

However, there has been little attention paid to the teaching skills that form a part of the skillset of a successful CET tutor. This column offers options for imagining tutoring as a meaningful professional development experience for all kinds of teachersto-be.

In their 2017 study of undergraduate and graduate tutor identities, Jennifer Grouling and Elisabeth H. Buck explored the paths tutors take to arrive at writing center work. The authors examined how their WC experience structures a tutor’s professional relationship to educating and “affects the sense of community in the writing center” (50). Grouling and Buck conclude that despite their “seemingly higher professional status,” graduate students who were assigned to

From Tutoring to Teaching • 5 work at the WC were less likely to view writing center work as part of their professional selfidentity, as compared to “self-selected undergraduates” (50). Buck and Grouling found that one of the causes of discontent amongst graduate students assigned to work at the WC was the inability to find a meaningful connection between tutoring and teaching. By consciously developing a CET program that situates embedded tutoring as pre-teaching pedagogy, WCs could cultivate a connection between tutoring and teaching and contribute to the professional development goals of graduate tutors.

Aligning Course-Embedded Tutoring to Writing Center Strengths Through our interviews with tutors and observations of the pilot program, we determined there are three areas in which the writing center is uniquely positioned to train future teachers.

Practical instruction in specific academic writing skills Writing tutors possess expertise that lend themselves to effective classroom instruction. For instance, many writing centers offer handouts explaining academic writing concepts. At our institution, tutors have the opportunity to help design these handouts and often use them to lead mini-workshops before group participation sessions. CET training provides a natural opportunity to expand these workshop offerings in ways that benefit both the embedded course and the tutor’s professional development. CET training aims to ease the transition from one-to-one tutoring to classroom-based work and to provide ample support as tutors embark on new professional tasks. Whether WCs already offer mini-workshops or not, giving CET tutors the opportunity to tailor materials in the resource bank to specific classes helps them practice course design through discrete tasks.

We also recommend that tutors have an opportunity to lead part of the class at some point in the semester. Classroom experience offers tutors the chance to bring their technical knowledge of writing and their experience in one-on-one sessions to a group environment. Preparing class materials helps tutors develop a framework for engaging writing pedagogy with a larger group. Delivering inclass writing instruction encourages them to hone the oratorical, interactive, and observational techniques that are key to teaching composition.

All the documents generated around these sessions will add to the WC’s repertoire of materials as well as to the tutor’s future teaching portfolio.

Learning through mentorship We view mentorship as a central component of CET training. Because all writing center administrators, composition instructors, and course-embedded tutors bring their own considerations to embedded tutoring, we arranged for prospective CET tutors to meet with all three parties in order to familiarize themselves with the composition classroom in its various aspects.

Because WC leadership and WC tutors exist outside the student-professor paradigm, mentorship from WC leaders can offer tutors unique insight into classroom dynamics. Writing centers place focus on writing tools as opposed to content specialization; our writing center, for example, offers appointments for any type of written assignment. Writing center leaders are therefore especially well-positioned to offer training that emphasizes instructional approaches applicable in many different contexts.

Further, mentorship from instructors shows tutors how composition classes work. This mentorship might involve classroom observations, 1:1 meetings, or email correspondence. Whatever form it takes, Webster and Hansen note that “intentionally making room for faculty-tutor conversations during the collaboration dramatically improves faculty-tutor integration” (54). The WC leadership team can again act as useful intermediaries by helping CETs prepare for formal interactions with instructors, advising them as to what questions they might ask or what to focus on in classroom observations.

A third mentorship approach includes pairing CETs-in-training with active CETs. Pairing may involve a trainee shadowing a working tutor during a CET presentation or interviewing a current tutor about their experiences. Scholar Jane Van Slembrouck notes that in peer-to-peer pairings, tutors were enthusiastic about the lack of “power differential” and gained insight from the reciprocal mandate to both observe and be observed. As Van Slembrouck notes, observing a more seasoned tutor not only gives CETs-intraining new skills, but “prompts self-evaluation” (n.p.). Conversely, being observed reminds experienced tutors that they are part of a larger

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

From Tutoring to Teaching • 6 ecosystem of writing specialists, even if they tend to work in isolation.

Finally, WC leadership might consider asking CETs-in-training to write and workshop their own job descriptions and professional development goals related to careers in writing education. In “All the Best Intentions: Graduate Student Administrative Professional Development in Practice,” Karen Rowan describes such an instance. In the piece, a graduate student administrator (GSA) worked with her director to develop a guide for redistributing labor so that administrative positions could be more manageable for future graduate students. Rowan notes that writing the actual job description gave the GSA and her administrator a chance to dialogue about the duties the position entailed, and that “the process of creating formal job descriptions requires directors and GSAs to articulate what it means to be an administrator in their particular writing centers” (39). Not only do we feel that writing their own job descriptions will help clarify each CET-intraining’s eventual role in the CET classroom, we believe that by doing so, tutors articulate the aims they have for their professional development.

From there, the leadership team can tailor the tutor’s experience in pursuit of those goals.

We also recommend that the instructor and tutor meet at the end of the semester to share their reflections. Tutors may ask pedagogical questions about course design, assignment sequences, and learning objectives to understand how a composition course is designed and executed.

Student-centered, individualized approaches to writing Many future composition instructors at Fordham University begin their graduate assistantships in the writing center. They therefore encounter students as individual learners before conducting group instruction. We encourage CETs-in-training to reflect on their work as one-on-one tutors so that they might carry these meaningful experiences to the composition classroom.

We also recommend that the WC leadership team offer writing and discussion prompts that can help tutors translate their skill set to the classroom setting. For example: ● If a student seems like they’re zoning out during a session, how can you engage them again? How might you modify your

approach for students disengaged during group work? ● What are your favorite strategies during one-on-one tutoring sessions? How could you implement them in a large group setting? ● How do you think having additional information about the learning objectives of a course will impact your 1:1 tutoring approach with students?

Metacognitive reflections can help participants develop an approach to course-embedded tutoring; specifically, an approach that acknowledges the affordances built through one-on-one tutoring and CET courses.

Closing Thoughts When we think of tutoring and college-level writing instruction as contiguous, tutoring becomes a space of pre-teaching pedagogy, rather than professional experience that graduate students see as entirely separate from teaching.

There was no CET program when we were tutors. But the throughlines between tutoring and teaching were evident to us. Fordham’s writing center has always been closely allied with the writing classroom; During our two years as tutors, we presented mini-workshops to introductory English classes and also designed and led evening workshops alongside other tutors. The WC happily shares supplementary resources with writing instructors in the form of presentations, handouts, and informational pamphlets. Having spent individualized time with students in composition courses who visited the WC, we were able to recognize the diverse ways in which students approach writing tasks and develop writing skills.

For instance, we noticed that even when working with very clear writing prompts, first year students often needed help decoding assignment instructions and guidance in building their research plan. Our tutoring experience made us better at designing prompts and teaching research skills.

We did not have experience leading a college class, however, and we believe we would have benefited from observing seasoned instructors and leading portions of classes as embedded tutors. Working with students under the guidance of an instructor would also have given us the chance to understand the difference between the kind of support a single student needs, and the kind of support appropriate for a group. We

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

From Tutoring to Teaching • 7 strongly believe that CET programs like ours have the potential to generate a more conscientious pedagogy that supplies tutors with the tools to become effective instructors in both secondary schools and institutions of higher education. For this type of transitional pedagogy to develop, there could be no better place than the writing center, where academic support and community come together.

Identities and Professionalization.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2017, pp. 50–60.

Ristow, Ben and Hannah Dickinson. “(Re)Shaping a Curriculum-Based Tutor Preparation Seminar: A Course Design Proposal.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no.

1, 2014, pp. 102–107.

Rowan, Karen. “All the Best Intentions: Graduate Student Administrative Professional Development in Practice.” Writing Center Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, 2009, pp. 11–48.

Titus, Megan L., Jenny L. Scudder, Josephine R. Boyle and Alison Sudol. “Dialoging a Successful Pedagogy for Embedded Tutors.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, pp. 15–20.

Webster, Kelly and Jake Hansen. “Vast Potential, Uneven Results: Unraveling the Factors that Influence Course-Embedded Tutoring Success.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, pp. 51–56.

Raica-Klotz, Helen, Christopher Giroux, Zach Gibson, Kramer Stoneman, Christina Montgomery, Crystal Brinson, Taeler Singleton and Ka Vang. “‘Developing Writers’: The Multiple Identities of an Embedded Tutor in the Developmental Writing Classroom.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, pp. 21– 26.

Van Slembrouck, Jane. “Watch and Learn: Peer Evaluation and Tutoring Pedagogy.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 8, no.

1, 2010, pp. 1–6.

Works Cited Grouling, Jennifer and Elisabeth H. Buck.

“Colleagues, Classmates, and Friends: Graduate Versus Undergraduate Tutor Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

GRAD EXPECTATIONS: STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF GRADUATE WRITING CENTERS AND THE WRITER-CONSULTANT RELATIONSHIP AMONG HIGHFREQUENCY USERS David Hershinow, Kristie Schlauraff, Daniel Hengel, Deborah Philip, Anna Carroll, and Charles Colwell The City University of New York Primary contact: David Hershinow, dhershinow@gc.cuny.edu

Abstract All writing centers have students who discover the value of making frequent appointments, but graduate writing centers experience this phenomenon in ways that warrant distinct attention and research. This study analyzes the survey responses of 32 high-frequency, long-term (HFLT) users—defined as students who made 10+ appointments over a 30-month period—in order to understand how they perceive the studentconsultant relationship and the role this ongoing relationship plays in their development as academic writers and researchers. Using a grounded approach that privileges the perspectives of respondents, the study finds that HFLT users see writing center consultations as a unique source of granular writing instruction and overall professionalization support. In describing their relationships with consultants, they reveal how these interactions benefit from an attention to both practical and emotional needs, as well as how they can parallel other important relationships like those with advisors. Finally, respondents consistently link the consultational focus on the nuts-and-bolts of writing process to their growing confidence as advanced academic writers. These findings support big-picture arguments about the future role of graduate writing centers within the wider landscape of graduate education, positioning them not only as a source of occasional feedback for students, but also as a new source of serial, long-term, transformative instruction and support. They also provide insights that can inform improvements in the delivery of writing center services, especially with respect to graduate students who engage with their writing centers as HFLT users.

1

See: Hughes, Bradley. “Looking at Writing Centers Through Scientific Spectacles: The Expertise and Commitments That Characterize Contemporary Writing Centers;” McClellan Brooks, Shannon.

Keywords: Graduate writing centers, professionalization, writing instruction, writerly identity, graduate education, student-consultant relationships, writing support, confidence Introduction All writing centers have students who discover the value of making frequent appointments, but graduate writing centers (GWCs) experience this phenomenon in ways that warrant distinct attention and research. Graduate students who are highfrequency, long-term (HFLT) users—who we define as students who have made 10+ appointments between August 2022 and January 2025—can provide us with valuable, sometimes unexpected insights. Their perspectives can inform our thinking about big-picture questions concerning the role that graduate writing support can and should play within graduate institutions and help us understand how GWCs fit into the larger networks of support that students rely on, such as peers, faculty advising, writing groups, and works-in-progress presentations. Furthermore, we believe our HFLT users can provide a new angle into more granular questions about tutor training, the processes of graduate student professionalization, and the occluded genres that mark much of graduate student writing.

The past twenty-five years have seen a steady drumbeat of advocacy-oriented arguments from scholars like Bradley Hughes, Shannon Brooks McClellan, Sarah Summers, and Stacy Wittstock et al. that seek to justify the need for more GWCs and course-based writing instruction. 1 Such pieces variously point to evidence that

“Centerless? Making Sense of Disruptions in the Graduate Writing Center;” Summers, Sarah. “Building Expertise: The Toolkit in UCLA’s Graduate Writing Center”; and Wittstock, Stacy, et al. “Making What We

Grad Expectations • 9 many—if not most—graduate students struggle to hit their completion milestones, juggle complex tasks, plan and write papers, overcome social and emotional obstacles, and forge identities as scholars and professionals, suggesting that there is a gap in the current approach to graduate education into which many students are falling, to their considerable detriment. But while these arguments are persuasive in their broad strokes, more followup research is needed to understand precisely what role GWCs and writing courses end up playing for graduate students when these forms of support are available to them. Do students understand these forms of support as filling a gap in their graduate education? How do they understand writing centers to be serving them? How do they understand GWC consultations within their larger ecology of support? We can begin to answer these and other questions by listening to, and learning from, the graduate students who use these services the most often, the students who presumably understand themselves to be getting something distinct and valuable from these additional resources.

Over the same quarter century, published work directed toward fellow GWC administration and staff has tended to center around operational concerns. How best can we train graduate writing consultants to approach sessions in which they and their student clients inhabit different domains of academic expertise? 2 What kind of training best prepares graduate tutors in particular to support peers with varied disciplinary knowledge who must write across many genres? 3 What does the graduate student tutor experience look and feel like? 4 These are all important questions for us to be asking and answering, especially at a time when more GWCs are opening every year. However, contributions to these conversations tend to be grounded in the experiences of consultants and writing center administrators. At present, there is a notable absence of work that builds toward its conclusions on the evidence of student perspectives. Our IRBapproved, survey-based research was designed to fill this gap. The short-answer questions in

particular were drafted to provide graduate student writers with a platform to articulate their relationship to and use of our GWC, their understanding of the role writing plays in their experience as emergent scholars, and how they see themselves in relation to their writing practices. 5 Ultimately, our study bridges these two vital conversations: the first regarding the institutional value of these spaces and their involvement in the educational trajectory of graduate students and the second on the cultivation of best practices in a field where widespread conversation across institutions has remained challenging and often focuses on consultants’ perspectives (Summers 55). Drawing on survey data collected in spring 2025, we seek to understand how graduate students conceive of the role that our writing center plays in their larger network of writing support and how our practices shape the relationship both between writers and consultants and writers and their work. In doing so, we hope to infuse graduate student perspectives into our collective understanding of the role writing centers can and should inhabit within graduate education.

While our discussion remains focused on graduate writing centers specifically, we believe our findings can usefully inform hybrid centers that serve both graduates and undergraduates. Indeed, the same can be said for undergrad-only centers that help students pursue research projects like the senior thesis. All writing centers need to think about how they support the distinct high-frequency needs of academically ambitious students who undertake original research projects—and who must produce the longform academic writing that results from them. We offer this study as a contribution to this larger conversation.

Know Explicit: Perspectives From Graduate Writing Consultants on Supporting Graduate Writers.”

2 See: Jewell, Megan Swihart, and Joseph Cheatle, editors. Redefining Roles: The Professional, Faculty, and Graduate Consultant's Guide to Writing Centers, Utah State University Press, 2021.

3

Background The proliferation of GWCs has been fueled by the growing acknowledgement that graduate-level writing support is distinct from other forms of writing support, and the awareness that graduate students are not merely students, but emergent See: Summers, Sarah. “Building Expertise: The Toolkit in UCLA’s Graduate Writing Center.”

4 See: Wittstock, Stacy, et al. “Making What We Know Explicit: Perspectives From Graduate Writing Consultants on Supporting Graduate Writers.”

5 For a list of our short-answer questions, see Appendix A.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 10 professionals in their respective fields.

Consequently, their relationship to writing is much different than that of undergraduate students. In fact, they often have what Bethany Ober Mannon describes as “sophisticated understandings of their own writing processes” that enable them to assemble resources and seek support in more targeted ways (59). For MA and PhD candidates, writing is more than a skillset; it is a vital tool for collective knowledge building and an integral means of forging identities. 6 As Cecile M. Badenhorst so aptly points out, “writing is the key vehicle for participating in disciplinary conversations, for accessing research funds and for progressing in an academic career. The consequences of not being successful are high” (107). The anxiety that this reality provokes in graduate-student writers is exacerbated by the frustrating fact that writing practices often remain largely invisible and seeking much-needed feedback from faculty advisors, GWC consultants, and even peers is often complicated by feelings of shame and self-doubt, as well as uneven power dynamics within those relationships. 7 The pervasive and often-unchallenged sense that graduate students should already know how to produce advanced scholarship adds an unwarranted and unnecessary degree of pressure that can ultimately worsen retention and completion rates.

The understanding of graduate students as entering their programs with a degree of experience and even expertise that undergraduates lack has, unfortunately, been one of the factors that delayed the creation of GWCs; as many scholars have pointed out, the lack of graduate writing instruction largely stems from a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of institutions, advisors, and faculty that graduate students enter their programs knowing how to write, a false premise that can immediately make students feel insecure about their writing and that fuels the idea that a student in good standing wouldn’t need ‘extra’ writing support (Wittstock et al. 31; Mannon 59). This myth has also been at least partly responsible for the perception of GWCs as remedial spaces intended to help only graduate students who are somehow ‘behind’ or ‘weaker

writers’ due to some sort of lack, including but not limited to, English language fluency, academic preparedness, a priori knowledge of genre conventions, and institutional, linguistic, and cultural capital.

If our experience at The Graduate Center, CUNY is any guide, then the reality of graduate writing practices is quite different indeed. A public R1 university, The Graduate Center focuses solely on graduate education, offering 31 doctoral programs and 18 masters programs. Because our institution serves New York City and its surrounding region, our student population is particularly diverse on many different metrics, including race, socio-economic background, and educational history. The students who come to our writing center reflect that diversity, ranging from MA students returning to the classroom decades after earning their previous degree to PhD candidates chasing the highest professional ambitions that academia has to offer. All of these students seem to find value in coming to The Writing Center, and the graduate-level needs they seek to fulfill tend to stymie the remedial/advanced binary so often imposed on academic writing support. Notably, the creation of our GWC— established in 2019—was the result of student-led advocacy by the Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council, the sole policy-making body representing students at The Graduate Center. In this respect, its origin story resembles that of UCLA’s GWC. In both cases, highly involved graduate students at public R1 universities advocated for their own needs, needs that are often unique to graduate-level education and all too often remain unaddressed unless graduate students are active participants in both institutional conversations and writing studies scholarship.

Now in its seventh year of existence, our GWC is small but mighty. It is led by a full-time Director and is staffed by two part-time Senior Writing Consultants (PhD in-hand) along with three graduate fellows, all of whom work roughly fifteen hours per week. In AY ‘24-‘25, our center completed 1,178 individual consultations and ran 25 workshops, 5 week-long dissertation and thesis writing clinics, and 9 weekly accountability groups.

6

Faculty Supervisors and Educational Outcomes for Graduate Students”; and Delgado and McGill, “Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Instructor Power in the U.S. Higher Education Classroom.”

See: Paré, “What We Know about Writing, and Why it Matters.”

7 See: Badenhorst, “Emotions, Play and Graduate Student Writing”; and Aguinis et al., “Power Bases of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 11 Taken together, these services produced 2,315 student engagements by supporting 546 unique users, or 17.6% of The Graduate Center’s student population.

Methods Our study seeks to understand the motivations and user experience of graduate writers who schedule frequent one-on-one consultations at The Writing Center over a meaningful length of time. As stated earlier, we define long-term users as clients who made 10+ appointments with our consultants between August 25, 2022 and January 30, 2025.

This metric served as our primary inclusion criteria for participant recruitment. It was designed to capture a wide range of student users, from those who made less frequent appointments over multiple years to those who made 10 or more appointments in a single semester. 8 We identified HFLT writers by pulling a usage report of all client appointments from our history on WCONLINE, a scheduling management system that we have used consistently from August 25, 2022. Consultants sometimes scheduled appointments for writers under their own names when students experienced issues logging into the system. In those instances, we gathered written information recorded in appointment history to identify the writers for each session and cleaned the data to ensure a more accurate appointment count. Several completed appointments remained unlocatable due to limitations of data storage on WCONLINE. Ultimately, out of 548 total clients, we were able to isolate a subset of 75 writers with 10+ appointments. While this means that just 12% of clients are HFLT users, that same subset notably accounted for 39% of all appointments within the above date range. Of the 75 potential candidates we recruited, 32 completed our survey. Notably, only 2 respondents identified themselves as coming from the sciences, with the remaining 30 respondents being a roughly even split between the humanities and social sciences.

We designed our survey with three key research questions in mind: 1. How do HFLT users understand the function of The Writing Center and its relation to their larger network of writing 8

Unsurprisingly, some students make frequent appointments every semester and over multiple years.

Among the 75 HFLT users identified for recruitment

support (e.g. advisors, faculty, peers, and other centers)?

2. How do HFLT users understand the role that consultants play in their writing process and the relationships they develop through frequent interactions with those consultants?

3. Do HFLT users experience a change in their self-perception as academic writers, and, if so, how do they make sense of that change?

These questions shaped the structure and implementation of an IRB-approved, anonymous, online survey that we created using Qualtrics and distributed through email in spring 2025. The survey consisted of three parts and took approximately 30 minutes to complete. We requested that participants complete it within two weeks and sent a reminder two days prior to the deadline.

The first part of the survey asked participants to answer 12 basic factual questions intended to establish their progress to degree, discipline, language use, frequency of visits to The Writing Center, use of other campus resources relevant to the writing process (e.g. advisors, peer groups, library services, etc.), and specific tasks engaged in during writing center consultations (e.g. brainstorming, preparing and revising job applications, understanding feedback, understanding specific genres, etc.). These questions helped us gain a clearer sense of how The Writing Center fits into the larger network of support that our students use to develop, revise, and complete writing projects, and to understand how our perceptions of the services we provide as consultants do and do not align with the perception of HFLT users.

The second part of the survey asked participants to answer 15 sliding-scale questions, indicating their level of agreement or disagreement with 15 statements about the role of The Writing Center and their relationship with consultants on a 5-point scale (strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree). Whereas the basic factual questions allowed us to better identify what kinds of writing tasks HFLT users engaged in during in this study, 4 people had made 100 or more appointments between August 25, 2022 and January 30, 2025, and 12 people had made 50 or more.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 12 consultations, these sliding-scale questions provided us with a clearer understanding of how their prolonged interaction with consultants has impacted their perception of The Writing Center and the writing process.

Finally, participants were invited to respond to nine short-answer questions intended to deepen our understanding of the role that consultations play in their writing process more broadly, and how they understand their relationship with consultants to be similar to and different from other sources of support (such as their advisors).

Knowing that short-answer questions can make some writers feel anxious, we encouraged participants to use informal language and skip questions where they did not feel that they had much to say. Questions in this section focused specifically on interpersonal relationships between students and consultants, motivation and selfperception of writing ability, learning transfer, and overall perception of The Writing Center.

In focusing specifically on HFLT users, and in asking them to contextualize their use of The Writing Center alongside other sources of support, our study emphasizes how the learning and personal trajectories of writers are impacted by consultations in ways that are distinct from other interactions. If this is the case, understanding what leads our HFLT users to consistently turn to The Writing Center might not only help GWCs establish best practices but also spark broader changes across other modes of support vital to graduate education. Keeping this in mind, we analyze our data using a grounded approach that privileges the perspectives of our respondents and uses their own experiences and interpretations of The Writing Center as the starting point for envisioning how the role of GWCs might evolve as they become more widespread within graduate education.

Results And Significance

Demographic Insights

Responses to the factual questions in our survey revealed several demographic insights about our 32 participants that provide valuable context for our findings. 63% of respondents reported that they were at or beyond the dissertation stage of their 9

Alternatively, for international students who completed their undergraduate education outside the United States, the very concept of writing centers might be new and unfamiliar. These students may not have

degree, suggesting that students in the thick of writing their dissertations are the most likely to make serial, long-term use of writing center appointments. Nearly half (47%) reported that English is not their first language. Heritage languages listed include Korean (2), Turkish (2), Spanish (2), Hindi (2), Mandarin (2), Western Armenian (1), Japanese (1), Portuguese (1), and Cantonese (1).

Finally, 69% of respondents had never visited a writing center before entering graduate school. Consequently, their perceptions of GWCs prior to coming to their first appointment were often based on myths about UWCs rather than first-hand experience receiving feedback from a consultant. 9 As one respondent explained, “I think my idea of what a writing center did was very limited, and more like what I envisioned an undergraduate center to be. What I had in mind was something like peer tutoring, or fairly basic feedback regarding style, punctuation, etc.” This statement echoes a broader misunderstanding of GWCs as places where consultants proofread and copy-edit or where students go only to seek remedial support. Yet, our results suggest that GWCs can effectively combat these stereotypes by clearly communicating the kinds of support they offer, particularly at key moments within graduate life like new-student orientation. When asked “How did you first hear about The Writing Center?” respondents overwhelmingly (62%) pointed to our own outreach efforts: 22% heard about us at new-student orientation, 34% saw an email, and 6% saw a flyer. Comparatively, only 13% heard about us from an advisor or instructor.

GWCs As Sites Of Granular-Level Writing Instruction and Professionalization

It may come as little surprise that a critical function of our writing center for HFLT users is an emphasis on the particularities of writing as practice. In fact, despite our respondents’ inclination to seek multiple forms of support, there remains a distinct and near-universal acknowledgement of a lack of granular-level instruction outside of The Writing Center.

Responding to the short answer question, “Do you negative pre-conceptions about the remediality of writing centers from their undergraduate years, but they may still worry that using a writing center amounts to them conceding to a remedial need.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 13 get something out of your work with The Writing Center that you don’t get from other sources of support? If so, what is it?” students not only emphasized the value of the one-on-one instruction they received but also revealed that this intense need was not being met elsewhere. For instance, one respondent said, “Yes, Because the focus is on the act of writing, this is unique and very important to my work as a graduate student, which I feel is not addressed by basically any other kind of support I receive.” Another said, “There is no other space at the GC to learn how to write. My advisor doesn’t have the capacity to teach to write, neither do other faculty.” Others noted that The Writing Center offered “very specific advice on scholarly production,” “discussions of real concerns about my writing,” and “help with all of the other writing work [beyond the dissertation] that graduate students should be doing.” Ultimately, 19 out of 22 respondents mentioned some form of support vital to developing confidence and writerly identity, from these kinds of granular-level instruction (13) to dedicated one-on-one attention (5) and detailed feedback (4). This same trend was evident in responses to the short-answer question, “What is the most significant thing you’ve learned through your writing center consultations?” where 18 out of 21 HFLT users mentioned transferable skills that they learned relating to various aspects of the writing process, from “transition sentences” and “approaches to organizing my thinking and writing” to “the importance of revision” and “meta theories about writing.”

Collectively, these responses suggest that our HFLT users understand The Writing Center as a place where they can learn both the guiding principles that inform academic writing and the concrete, practical strategies involved in revising their way toward strong final products—two emphases they do not associate with instruction in their home programs. This issue is not isolated to our institution. As Wittstock et al. explain, “because getting accepted to graduate school in many ways feels like the apex of writing, many graduate students and their advisors feel they should already be experts in writing” (31). Of course, the reality is that students entering graduate school still have a great deal to learn about academic writing. This is true not only with respect to the writing and revision process, which is necessarily more complex when it is being used to develop and communicate large-scale research projects, but also

with respect to navigating the many genres of academic writing that students rarely need to work in before entering graduate school.

At The Writing Center, we have found that persistent attention to granular writing instruction often entails explicit discussion of what Jon Swales terms “occluded genres”—forms of writing that are not part of the published record and therefore remain “hidden” and “out of sight” for the uninitiated (46). Graduate writing is marked by occluded—and therefore under-exemplified— genres: CFPs, fellowship and grant proposals, conference abstracts and presentations, prospectuses, the dissertation itself, and job cover letters. The occluded genres that suffuse the graduate writing experience are the very forms of writing students must master in their evolution as professional graduate students, scholars, teachers, and academics. Yet, graduate instruction at-large remains woefully underprepared to help students navigate these all-important and opaque forms.

Wittstock et al. note, “occluded genres are problematic, particularly in graduate school, because there is a faulty expectation that apprentices will simply osmose knowledge of them by virtue of entering a discourse community” (32).

This may be because, as Wittstock et al. aptly point out, “advisors often have trouble articulating genre typifications, perhaps in part because they were never directly taught those typifications themselves; thus, they have little conception of how to teach students genre-specific conventions and expectations” (32). Here, our center, and GWCs more broadly, acts as a professionalization forcemultiplier that leads students to develop a nuanced understanding of a host of untaught genres across the timeline of graduate student life. Consequently, they can more nimbly move between the role of student and professional and cultivate a writerly and scholarly identity.

The ability of GWCs to help graduate students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds professionalize is evident in the responses from our HFLT users. When asked, “Do you feel like your writing center appointments have directly led to better professional outcomes? If yes, how so?” all 21 respondents replied in the affirmative and, importantly, recognized these variegated genre forms as aspects of professionalization. For some students, being asked about professional outcomes led them to think in terms of publication:

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 14 Yes, I published four articles and five book/performance reviews with the help of the writing center. I believe I could finish my PhD within 5 years thanks to the writing center’s support.

I was able to successfully work on revisions on a peer reviewed paper and publish it (yeaay!).

But, notably, a much larger number chose to focus on occluded genres in their responses: I wouldn’t have finished my diss without the WC. I . . . complete[d] my dissertation and graduate[d]! Overall, I think that my writing has improved.

I have received prestigious grants in my field, and was called in for interviews for fellowships largely because I had the help from the writing center.

Yes, my own teaching pedagogy has improved. Job application materials are vastly improved. A conference abstract was accepted. One journal article is (very, very nearly) ready to go.

All my job application documents were workshopped over multiple sessions with the writing center . . . and I landed a tenuretrack position even before I graduated. At this moment, this feels like a big win.

Yes, the cover letters I worked on got me jobs.

Absolutely, my experience editing my job market materials (cover letter, research statements, and diversity statements) with

10

In posing this question, it is necessary to acknowledge the different relational structures that can be at play in a consultation (peer-to-peer, professionalto-student, etc.). Our own center is heterogenous in this regard: we have graduate fellows (peer-to-peer), Senior Writing Consultants (professional-to-student), and one Director (professional-to-student and, when students initiate it, mentor-to-mentee—indeed, sometimes even advisor-to-advisee, albeit informally).

When designing our survey instrument, we considered

the consultants have been fundamental in that regard.

This wide range of responses indicates that our HFLT users understand The Writing Center as a dynamic and multifaceted source of support for professionalization. It also reveals the breadth of the gap our GWC fills in their understanding of what it takes to be a professional graduate student and, ultimately, a professionalized member of an academic community. Even when consultants have different disciplinary expertise than graduate students, they serve as agile audience proxies, helping HFLT users write for readers they might not know how to speak to or know exist as they navigate unspoken academic expectations. Taken as a whole, our findings reveal the transformative effects that HFLT users understand the writerconsultant relationship to have on their development as academics, a relationship that helps them to productively redefine writing as practice and to demystify a range of academic genres in which they need to excel.

The Role of Writer-Consultant Relationships in Graduate Education

That HFLT users seek granular-level instruction and find valuable professionalization support at The Writing Center is not entirely surprising, but it does raise questions about how the nature of their relationships with consultants make GWCs such effective spaces for this kind of work. 10 Our survey revealed two key characteristics of oneon-one appointments that could account for this: first, the relationship between HFLT users and consultants develops through dynamic conversations about writing practices and the writing process that span multiple projects, genres, and skills. When asked, “What kinds of sessions have you used at the WC? Select all that apply,” respondents reported that they use sessions for goal setting and time management, revision, asking for and understanding feedback, navigating the value of capturing this distinction against the challenges of both building and taking a survey capable of tracking this variable. Ultimately, we decided to leave this variable out. We consider it the most significant limitation of this study that we cannot say for certain which kind of consultational relationship a participant is describing in a given response. Nevertheless, we believe the quantitative and qualitative findings in this section demonstrate substantial enough patterns to warrant consideration regardless of this limitation.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 15 publication, accountability, and a range of other tasks (see Figure 1 in Appendix B). 17 of 29 respondents (59%), have used 5 or more different kinds of sessions. Throughout these sessions, 97% of students reported retaining a strong sense of ownership over their work, a finding that reinforces Mannon’s claim that graduate writers have more nuanced understandings of writing that lead them to seek specific kinds of support at specific moments in the writing process.

While HFLT users are largely consistent in terms of using sessions to address a variety of writing skills and genres, they are far more varied in how they understand the role that consultants fill in their writing lives. This is not entirely unexpected; consultants occupy a unique space within graduate education that can be difficult to define because of the many ways GWCs are situated within the broader scheme of institutional offices, programs, and departments. Additionally, the staff of many GWCs, including our own, consists of both graduate-student consultants and consultants holding a PhD with varied experience and expertise in writing and writing pedagogy. A 2020 study from Claire R. McMurray suggests that graduate writers consider differences in disciplinary expertise and writing experience among consultants when booking appointments and choose consultants based on their perceived needs within the context of their projects. McMurray’s survey participants characterized graduate-student consultants as “readers,” “sets of eyes,” and “in-between people” who can offer the perspective of a reader outside their discipline and provide support with specific drafts (13). Meanwhile, they characterized consultants holding a PhD as “guides,” “mentors,” or “coaches” who have both writing and institutional knowledge that allows them to speak more metacognitively about the writing process and valuable experience completing a thesis/dissertation, applying for jobs, and publishing (McMurray 13). Our own survey did not ask respondents to make these distinctions between consultants, a limitation that prevents us from knowing to what degree HFLT users’ perceptions may have shaped the language they used to describe student-consultant relationships. Yet, 87% of our HFLT users “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the statement: “I find that different consultants provide different kinds of support.”

These numbers reinforce the idea that our users are

aware that each consultant can offer something different as a reader of their work.

The specific language that HFLT users employed when responding to the short-answer question, “How would you describe the relationship you have with your consultant(s)?” was varied, though there was some repetition of descriptors like “friendly,” “supportive,” and “professional” (see Table 1 in Appendix C).

Interestingly, HFLT users did not use words like “teacher,” “tutor,” or “instructor” in their responses to this question even though they emphasized receiving granular-level instruction throughout the survey. What emerges from their characterizations is a relationship that is sometimes like a friendship (where writers feel supported and perceive consultants as kind, comfortable, familiar, open, etc.), sometimes like a professional relationship between peers (where interactions are collegial and the power balance is equitable), and sometimes akin to a professional relationship with more senior scholars (where consultants assume the role of mentor or “writing therapist,” offer encouragement, and demonstrate an appreciable investment in the writer’s growth).

Respondents often provided descriptors spanning multiple categories, suggesting that the position of the consultant is fluid, a quality that may contribute to the versatility of The Writing Center as a generative site of both granular-level instruction and professional development.

However, in some instances there was a tension between “friendly” and “professional.” For instance, one respondent said, “It was friendly but also effectively professional” (emphasis added), a phrase that gestures towards the idea of friendliness as potentially coming at the expense of professionalism. Another respondent commented more directly on this distinction, saying, “So depends—one was super professional/focused on work…The next person was more personable/friendly/commented more personally on my stuff and although that was nice I found that type of feedback less helpful in terms of actually getting work done.” In this instance, the writer implies that privileging professionalism or friendliness gives rise to very different kinds of sessions. A third respondent similarly explained, “Some consultants are very encouraging and kind, but I find that I get the most from those more critical.” While a small percentage of our HFLT users pointed towards this division, 3 of 23

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 16 respondents (13%), it is important to consider the delicate balance that GWC staff often need to strike within student-consultant relationships. When asked “What motivates you to keep making appointments at The Writing Center?” 7 of 24 HFLT users (29%) mentioned their close relationship with consultants, as well as the kindness and support they received. This is significant, because one of the biggest sources of anxiety for graduate writers, even more so than other pressing issues like finances and childcare, is receiving feedback on their writing (Badenhorst 106). When we think across the responses to these two questions, it seems that as a best practice consultants should foster relationships that lie somewhere between friendly and professional to most effectively support graduate-student writers.

This conclusion is in keeping with research on best practices for cultivating productive student-advisor relationships in graduate education such as Marylee Spillett and Kathleen A. Moisiewicz’s article suggesting advisors move between “support and challenge” roles. While their own descriptors— cheerleader, coach, counselor, and critic—are distinct from those used most frequently by own respondents, their underlying sense that supporting graduate students requires “a toolbox of flexible strategies” aligns with scholarship on GWCs (Spillett and Moisiewicz 255).

Given that 88% of our HFLT users are in PhD programs, it is instructive to consider these intersections between their relationships with consultants and their relationships with faculty advisors, particularly since the latter also unfold over time through multiple one-on-one interactions involving discussions of student writing and professionalization. In designing our survey, we did not ask many questions related to the student-advisor relationship because we worried that HFLT users may be reluctant to speak about those relationships and concerned that their responses might compromise their anonymity. Yet, we did ask HFLT users two multiple choice

questions that yielded surprising, and relevant, results: “How frequently do you come to The Writing Center?” and “How frequently do you receive feedback from your advisor?” Our assumption was that writers who made appointments “Twice a month” or “More than twice a month” (those who met with us eight or more times per semester), would indicate that they received feedback “Once a semester” or “Less than once a semester” from their advisors. In other words, we expected to find that our highest frequency users were likely addressing a deficit in advisor support. Instead, we found a strong correlation between HFLT users who made the most appointments at The Writing Center and those who received feedback from advisors “Twice a semester” or “More than twice a semester.” 7 of the 12 respondents (58%) who met two or more times a month with a writing consultant, also received feedback from advisors more than twice a semester (see Figure 2 in Appendix D). While this does not tell us about the nature or quality of their student-advisor relationships compared to their student-consultant relationship, it does offer a compelling reason for thinking across them, work that existing research on graduate education and writing studies has not yet undertaken.

Existing scholarship on student-advisor relationships offers some useful insight into the role that advisors play within their advisees’ academic and writing lives. Schlosser et al. define the doctoral advisor as “the faculty member who has the greatest responsibility for helping guide the advisee through the graduate program,” a claim echoed in many studies that suggests advisor relationships could be an important consideration in regards to conversations regarding the gap between preparation and expected performance (179). 11 Faculty advisors are central to supporting, professionalizing, and socializing advisees, which, of course, can impact graduate program completion and retention rates. 12 A large part of professionalization in any discipline involves

11

12

See: Barnes, Benita J. and Ann E. Austin. “The Role of Doctoral Advisors: A Look at Advising from the Advisor’s Perspective”; Baird, Leonard L. “Helping Graduate Students: A Graduate Advisor’s View”; Lovitts, Barbara E. “Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from Doctoral Study”; and Nettles, Michael T. and Catherine M. Millett, Three Magic Letters: Getting to PhD.

See: Barnes, Benita J., Elizabeth A. Williams, and Shuli Arieh Archer. “Characteristics That Matter Most: Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Positive and Negative Advisor Attributes”; Ferrer de Valero, Yaritza. “Departmental Factors Affecting Time-toDegree and Completion Rates of Doctoral Students at One Land-Grant Research Institution”; Givres, Jean E., and Virginia Wemmerus. “Developing Models of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 17 helping graduate students identify opportunities to present and publish their work, bringing them into disciplinary communities and, in doing so, improving their confidence–tasks that fundamentally depend on their ability to develop, draft, and revise written work (Barnes and Austin 298).

Research focused on how doctoral students perceive their advisors and, relatedly, their advising relationships, captures a wide range of descriptions; over the past 40 years, advisors have been variously framed as guides, evaluators, directors, reliable information sources, advocates, role models, departmental and occupational socializers, encouragers, cheerleaders, coaches, counselors, teachers, and critics. 13 Much like our own study, this research suggests that advisors, like consultants, fill numerous roles for their graduate students that may be in tension with one another.

More recent work centered on the perspectives of advisors offers a slightly different set of descriptors.

In their 2009 study, Barnes and Austin conducted one-on-one, open-ended, in-depth qualitative interviews with 25 exemplary faculty advisors from the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and education at a public, researchextensive, land-grant university, asking them a series of questions regarding their understanding of their role as graduate student advisors. The study’s definition of an “exemplary advisor” was “a faculty member who has been one of the top producers of Ph.D. students in his or her department over a fiveyear period” (302-303). This criterion aligns with Barnes and Austin’s interest in socialization, defined in the context of graduate education by John C. Weidman, Darla J. Twale, Elizabeth Leahy Stein as “the processes through which individuals gain the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for successful entry into a professional career requiring an advanced level of specialized knowledge and skills” (qtd. in Barnes and Austin 301). Ultimately, socialization facilitates the individual and collective

identity formation vital to a successful academic career.

In Barnes, and Austin’s study, participants used five prominent descriptors to classify the characteristics or behaviors of advantageous student-advisor relationships: friendly/professional, collegial, supportive/caring, accessible, and honest. (305) The definitions they offer for each category are useful in terms of revealing the varied forms of support that graduate students require. For instance, they define a friendly/professional relationship as “strong and positive but has boundaries that both the advisor and advisee respects,” a collegial relationship as one “where the power structures are dismantled…so that the advisee feels that the relationship is balanced,” a supportive/caring relationship as “providing advisees with the emotional and psychological encouragement that they need to sustain them,” and an honest relationship as “providing advisees with feedback [particularly around their writing] that is candid and straightforward” (305 emphasis added). Collectively, these characteristics and behaviors point towards the conclusion that what makes this set of faculty advisors exemplary is an attention to graduate students’ emotional and practical needs (i.e. professional development).

This conceptualization of the ideal advisor relationship is supported by Barnes, Elizabeth A. Williams, and Shuli Arieh Archer’s study on how graduate students perceive positive and negative advisor attributes. Those who claimed to have satisfactory relationships highlighted that their advisors were “supportive, friendly, collegial, and respectful” (Barnes, Williams, and Archer 37).

Being an exemplary advisor, then, depends on a faculty member’s ability to forge multi-faceted relationships similar to those our consultants seem to have forged with our HFLT users (see Appendix E). The language that our graduate writers used

Graduate Student Degree Progress”; Pitchforth, Jegar, et al. “Factors Affecting Timely Completion of a PhD: A Complex Systems Approach”; and Seagram, Belinda Crawford, Judy Gould, and Sandra W. Pyke. “An Investigation of Gender and Other Variables on Time to Completion of Doctoral Degrees.”

13 See: Winston, R.B., and M.C. Polkosnik, “Advising in Graduate and Professional School”; Holland, J.W.

“Mentoring and the faculty development of AfricanAmerican doctoral students”; Spillett, Marylee, and Kathleen A. Moisiewicz, “Cheerleader, Coach, Counselor, Critic: Support and Challenge Roles of the Dissertation Advisor”; and Selke, Mary J., and Terrence D. Wong, “The Mentoring-Empowered Model: Professional Role Functions in Graduate Student Advisement.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 18 when asked “How would you describe the relationship you have with your consultant(s)?” closely parallels the language that exemplary advisors established when asked “What is the nature of the relationships that you have with your advisees?” (Barnes and Austin 302; see Appendix E). While our HFLT users did not directly reference accessibility, this is likely because GWCs regularly offer appointments and ensure consultants are available to meet throughout the semester. Our own GWC allows students to make up to one appointment per week, a level of accessibility that would be challenging for advisors to achieve given their other research, teaching, and service obligations. These correlations are significant given the widespread understanding of graduate advisors as having the greatest responsibility for students completing their programs and having successful careers. They suggest that GWC consultants might be wellpositioned to not only offer students additional support but also to contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding best practices, mentorship, and student well-being.

The Product of Revision: HFLT Users and Their Changing Self-Perception as Writers

One way in which the writer-consultant relationship arguably differs from the advisoradvisee relationship is in the sustained focus that gets placed on teaching genre awareness and the nuts-and-bolts process of writing and revision. It is therefore particularly notable that HFLT users link this very focus both to their changing selfperception as writers and to a fundamental shift in how they understand good academic writing to be produced. When asked, “How has your sense of yourself as a writer changed since using The Writing Center?”, 11 of 21 respondents (52%) reported that they have become more confident as academic writers, with several others offering differently-worded answers that invoke related themes (e.g. “an increased sense of agency” and finding more “compassion for myself when I’ve struggled with my writing”). The convergence on a single term is quite striking in itself, but the greater interest lies in unpacking their sense of why they have become more confident, and of the role their engagements with The Writing Center have played in bringing about this change. When respondents try to explain their growth in confidence, many see

it as the result of having learned foundational writing and revision skills: I am still insecure about my writing. But I am more confident of writing as a process—and appreciate all I have learned about strategies for getting ideas on paper, for reviewing what I wrote, for organizing and brainstorming ideas… organizing my time.

I’m still not confident enough but it’s improving. I think I got better at revising.

I see myself as a competent writer now when I used to see myself as an incompetent writer. [...] Learning nuts and bolts writing stuff (topic sentences; Gaipa strategies; the coherence and cohesion stuff from Joe Williams; frontloading; developing a scholarly apparatus; and probably more) helped me start to write stuff that was being taken seriously by editors. And it helped me write, period.

When I became confident because I was writing stuff readers could take seriously (because I learned how to communicate with readers which I never learned before) I started being more social and participating in the life of the department.

It’s hard to even remember the insecurity that I used to have.

All of these respondents connect their increased confidence as a writer to having gained a better understanding of how to approach writing and revision as a step-by-step process.

Indeed, HFLT users seemed to feel quite strongly about asserting this causal link, so much so that they comment on it widely. Throughout the short-answer section of our survey, respondents consistently tied their growing confidence as academic writers to a consultational focus on basic writerly skills—skills that are often misunderstood and stigmatized as embarrassingly remedial, but which were instead accepted as essential elements of building and communicating knowledge with rigor and precision. For example, we see this same narrative of change emerge when respondents were asked to reflect on their evolving understanding of The Writing Center as a resource: As an emergent bilingual international scholar, I never felt confident in my writing and I was also shy to meet with a

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 19 consultant at the writing center. However, since I started attending workshops, accountability groups and individual appointments, I can see the writing center is an incredible resource for academic writers to improve their practice and process.

I have learnt to better manage my anxiety around feedback—this is something unique that I would NEVER associate with the writing center. I was also encouraged to find my voice through my writing. This is not just emotional support—it involves learning concrete skills and reviewing my written work with a keen eye.

Again and again, respondents tied their growing confidence as high-performing academics to writing center support rooted in explicit instruction on the fundamentals of academic writing and research. When asked what motivates them to keep making appointments at The Writing Center, one HFLT user said that they’ve “learned tools that make [them] confident writing, such as–knowing the different types of topic sentences, knowing that topic sentences should be arguments, frontloading, writing cover letters for submissions to journals, and more.” In these and other responses, HFLT users focus on the importance of The Writing Center as a place where they learn both clear guiding principles and concrete writing and revision strategies. More importantly, they implicitly frame the production of strong scholarship—work that is clear, analytically rigorous, well-organized, and all-around smart—as a competency that can be cultivated. Many scholars have discussed the importance of helping novice academics approach the work of writing with a growth mindset. 14 Our findings add to this body of work in two ways. First, responses to our survey suggest that graduate students are often initially stuck in a fixed mindset, assuming that their struggle to produce good writing is the result of innate personal deficiency. Second, our study confirms the positive role that can be played by frequent, process-oriented writing center 14

See Chien, Chin-Wen, “Integration of Growth Mindset Concepts into Academic Writing Courses for Novice Researchers’ Academic Writing Skills and

consultations in getting graduate students to adopt a growth mindset—and to benefit from the earned confidence that comes with it.

Conclusion HFLT users of our graduate writing center understand their student-consultant relationship to be a very significant source of support as they professionalize and develop as scholars. They view this relationship as both distinct from and complementary to their student-advisor relationship, with a sustained focus on granular writing instruction being one of its most distinguishing features. Crucially, HFLT users consistently posit a causal relationship between this explicit instruction in the practical nut-and-bolts of the writing process and their growing confidence as high-performing academics, suggesting that—at least for high-frequency users—writing centers can play an especially prominent role in a graduate student’s educational and professional trajectory.

These findings support big-picture arguments about the future role of GWCs within the wider landscape of graduate education, positioning them not only as a source of occasional feedback for students, but also, and much more importantly, as a new source of serial, long-term, transformative instruction and support. GWCs do not displace the centrality of faculty advisors in a graduate student’s educational experience, but they do afford students with the opportunity to form a complementary and somewhat parallel relationship with one or more people who are highly accessible and extensively trained in consultation best practices.

We hope this study of high-frequency users will be used both to open up avenues for further research into this constituency’s needs, and also to encourage centers that are already no doubt aware of the existence of these users to consider them as a constituency with a particular relationship to the center and its services. This acknowledgement will, we think, help centers address their needs and perhaps also help these users meta-cognitively identify and advocate for their own academic and professional development.

Competence”; and Prihandoko, Lastika Ary, Ruly Morganna, and Suci Nugrah Amalia, “Self-efficacy and Metacognition as the Mediated Effects of Growth Mindset on Academic Writing Performance.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 20

Works Cited Aguinis, Herman, Mitchell S. Nesler, and Brian M. Quigley. “Power Bases of Faculty Supervisors and Educational Outcomes for Graduate Students.” Journal of Higher Education, vol. 67, no. 3, 1996, pp. 267–97.

Badenhorst, Cecile M. “Emotions, Play and Graduate Student Writing.” Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing, vol. 28, no. 1, 2018, pp. 103-126 Baird, L.L. “Helping Graduate Students: A Graduate Adviser’s View.” In Student Services for Changing Graduate Student Population: New Directions for Student Services, edited by Anne S. Pruitt-Logan, Wiley, 1995, pp. 25–32.

Barnes, Benita J., and Ann E. Austin. “The Role of Doctoral Advisors: A Look at Advising from the Advisor’s Perspective.” Innovative Higher Education, vol. 33, no. 5, 2009, pp.

297–315.

Barnes, Benita J., Elizabeth A. Williams, and Shuli Arieh Archer. “Characteristics That Matter Most: Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Positive and Negative Advisor Attributes.” NACADA Journal, vol. 30, no. 1, 2010, pp. 34–46.

Brooks, Shannon McClellan. “Centerless? Making Sense of Disruptions in the Graduate Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 42, no. 1, 2024, pp. 85–106.

Cheatle, Joseph, and Megan Swihart.

“Introduction.” Redefining Roles: The Professional, Faculty, and Graduate Consultant's Guide to Writing Centers, edited

by Joseph Cheatle and Megan Swihart, The University of Colorado Press, 2021, pp. 3–16.

Chien, Chin-Wen. “Integration of growth mindset concepts into academic writing courses for novice researchers’ academic writing skills and competence.” Higher Education

Research & Development, vol. 44, no. 3, 2025, pp. 566–584.

Delgado, Antonio, and Craig M. McGill.

“Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Instructor Power in the U.S. Higher Education Classroom.” New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, vol. 35, no. 4, 2023, pp. 186– 198.

Etzkowitz, H., Kemelgor, C., & Uzzi, B. Athena Unbound: The Advancement of Women in Science and Technology, Cambridge UP, 2000.

Ferer de Valero, Y. “Departmental Factors Effecting Time-to-Degree and Completion Rates of Doctoral Students at One Land-grant Research Institution.”

Journal of Higher Education, vol. 72, no. 3, 1998, pp. 319–335.

Girves, J. E., and V. Wemmerus. “Developing Models of Graduate Student Degree Progress.” Journal of Higher Education, vol.

59, no. 2, 1988, pp. 163–189.

Holland, J. W., “Mentoring and the Faculty Development of African-American Doctoral Students.” In Diversity in Higher Education: Vol. 2. Examining Protégé-mentor Experiences edited by H. T. Frierson, JAI, 1998, pp. 17–40.

Hughes, Bradley. “Looking at Writing Centers Through Scientific Spectacles: The Expertise and Commitments that Characterize Contemporary Writing Centers.” Writing Center Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2023, pp. 100–121.

Kamler, Barbara, and Pat Thomson. Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision. Routledge, 2006.

Lee, Cynthia. “More Than Just Language Advising: Rapport in University English Writing Consultations and Implications for Tutor Training.” Language and Education, vol. 29, no. 5, 2015, pp. 430– 452.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 21 Lovitts, B. E. Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from Doctoral Study.

Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

—. “Research on the Structure and Process of Graduate Education: Retaining Students.”

In Paths to the Professoriate: Strategies for Enriching the Preparation of Future Faculty, edited by D. H. Wulff and A. E. Austin, Jossey-Bass, 2004, pp. 115–136.

Mannon, Bethany Ober. “What Do Graduate Students Want from the Writing Center?

Tutoring Practices to Support Dissertation and Thesis Writers.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 59-64.

McLure, J. E. B. Recommendations for Faculty Advising. 1989. Georgia State University, PhD dissertation.

McMurray, Claire R. “How Do Graduate Writing Specialists and Graduate Tutors Serve Graduate Writers’ Needs Differently? A Qualitative Study of Writing Support in a Writing Center.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 44, no. 9/10, 2020, pp. 10–17.

Nettles, M. T., and C. M. Millett. Three Magic Letters: Getting to PhD. The John Hopkins UP, 2006.

Paré, Anthony. “What We Know about Writing, and Why it Matters.” Keynote presented at the Annual Dalhousie Conference on University Teaching and Learning, Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2007. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/dow nload?doi=10.1.1.574.4120&rep=rep1&ty pe=pdf.

Prihandoko, Lastika Ary, Ruly Morganna, and Suci Nugrah Amalia. “Self-efficacy and Metacognition as the Mediated Effects of Growth Mindset on Academic Writing Performance.” Journal of Language and Education, vol. 10, no. 2, 2024, pp. 108– 122.

Seagram, B., J. Gould, and S. W. Pyke. “An Investigation of Gender and Other

Variables on Time to Completion of Doctoral Degrees,” Research in Higher Education, vol. 39, no. 3, 1998, pp. 319– 335.

Selke, M. J., and T. D. Wong. “The Mentoring Empowered Model: Professional Role Functions in Graduate Student Advisement.” NACADA Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, pp. 21–26.

Schlosser, L. Z., S. Knox, A. R. Moskovitz, and C. E. Hill. “A Qualitative Examination of Graduate Advising Relationships: The Advisee Perspective.” Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 50, no. 2, 2003, pp. 178– 188.

Scott, Tony. “Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies.” In Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner & Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State UP, 2015, pp. 48–50.

Spillett, M. A., and K. A. Moisiewicz.

“Cheerleader, Coach, Counselor, Critic: Support and Challenge Roles of the Dissertation Advisor.” College Student Journal, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004, pp. 246–255.

Summers, Sarah. “Building Expertise: The Toolkit in UCLA’s Graduate Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 35, no. 2, 2016, pp. 117–145.

—. “The Rise of the Graduate-Focused Writing Center: Exigencies and Responses.” In Re/Writing the Center: Approaches to Supporting Graduate Students in the Writing Center, edited by Susan Lawrence and Terry Myers Zawacki, UP of Colorado, 2018, pp. 49–65.

Swales, John M. “Occluded Genres in the Academy: The Case of the Submission Letter.” Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, edited by Eija Ventola and Anna Mauranen, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1996, pp. 45–58.

Weidman, John C., Darla J. Twale, and Elizabeth Leahy Stein. Socialization of Graduate and

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 22 Professional Students in Higher Education: A Perilous Passage?, Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Winston, R. B., and M. C. Polkosnik. “Advising in Graduate and Profession School.” In Developmental Academic Advising, edited by R. B. Winston Jr., T. K. Miller, S. C. Ender, and T. J. Crites, Jossey-Bass, 1984, pp. 287–316.

Wittstock, Stacy, Lisa Sperber, Gabi Kirk, Kristin McCarty, Karen de Sola-Smith, Jasmine Wade, Mitchell Simon, and Lauren Fink, “Making What We Know Explicit: Perspectives from Graduate Writing Consultants on Supporting Graduate Writers.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, 2022, pp. 24–36.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

Appendix A Short-Answer Survey Questions 1. How has your understanding of The Writing Center (both what it is and what it does) changed over the time you’ve been making appointments?

2. What motivates you to keep making appointments at The Writing Center?

3. Do you have sessions where you don’t ask for feedback on a specific piece of writing? If so, what do you get out of those sessions?

4. How would you describe the relationship you have with your consultant(s)?

5. Do you get something out of your work with The Writing Center that you don’t get from other sources of support?

If so, what is it?

6. Do you feel like your appointments at The Writing Center have directly led to better professional outcomes? If yes, how so?

7. How has your sense of yourself as a writer changed since using The Writing Center?

8. What is the most significant thing you’ve learned through your Writing Center consultations?

9. Is there anything you want us to know about how your identity and/or lived experience impacts how you navigate graduate school and, relatedly, how you perceive and use The Writing Center?

Appendix B Figure 1 Session types participants reported having at The Writing Center.

Note: Number of participants who report focusing on each type of session during at least one appointment. Identified session types were included in a list of responses to the question “What kinds of sessions have you used at The Writing Center?”

Grad Expectations • 24 Appendix C Table 1 Descriptive words used by participants to describe their writing consultant.

Note: Table 1 includes a list of descriptive terms participants used in answer to the question “How would you describe the relationship you have with your consultant(s)?” Frequency count reflects the number of participants who used the term.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Grad Expectations • 25 Appendix D Figure 2 Side-by-side pie charts representing participant-reported frequency of writing center consultations and frequency of feedback from advisors on participants’ writing.

Note: Consultation frequency is keyed to per-month measurements and advisor feedback frequency is keyed to persemester measurements.

Appendix E Table 2 Descriptions of exemplary advisors (from Barnes and Austin) compared to survey participants’ descriptions of their writing consultant(s).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

LEADERSHIP BY THE MOST IMPACTED: ACCESSIBILITY CULTURE AND THE STUDENT ADVISORY BOARD AT THE SWEETLAND CENTER FOR WRITING Torre Puckett University of Tennessee, Knoxville tpucket6@utk.edu

Tess Carichner University of Michigan

Laine Kibler University of Michigan Abstract This article features interviews with four members of the Student Advisory Board at the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing, which is composed of disabled students and convened to advise on the ongoing access improvement initiative. In addition to providing practical steps for access improvements and suggestions for convening a student advisory board at your writing center, the interviews suggest that the benefits of a student advisory board extend beyond the access improvements themselves. The existence and administration of a Student Advisory Board can create profound cultural shifts in the writing center by modeling what it looks like to expect disabled bodyminds and value disabled insight in academiccreative spaces. The experience of the board members suggests that this valuing of disabled insight provides affirming access experiences, which can translate into more positive disability identification and more confident future selfadvocacy. This, in turn, can result in empowerment for disabled consultees that extends far beyond the space of the consultation.

Keywords: disability, accessibility culture, selfadvocacy, Universal Design for Learning, student advisory board Introduction Since the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing undertook an accessibility improvement project beginning in summer 2022, we have taken seriously the call by disability justice organization Sins Invalid for “leadership by the most impacted.” Too often, supposed “advancements” in accessibility are made without consulting disabled stakeholders, rendering the changes unhelpful or even harmful (the stair-

Eli Friedstrom University of Michigan Maeve Waugh University of Michigan

climbing wheelchair no disabled person ever asked for comes to mind!). As such, the leaders of this project prioritized centering disabled voices from our earliest planning stages.

At our writing center, we have solicited guidance from disabled stakeholders primarily through our Student Advisory Board (SAB). This board is composed of disabled students who contribute expertise cultivated through their lived experience, knowledge of disability community, and practice with accessibility activism to 1) guide the implementation of planned accessibility improvements, including providing disabilityinformed insights on proposed plans, generating internal accessibility trainings and materials for public circulation, etc; and 2) suggest avenues for future accessibility improvements (for example, the accessibility page on Sweetland’s website was entirely the SAB’s conception and creation). The appendix provides a breakdown of our accomplishments each semester between the SAB’s formation and the submission of this article, demonstrating both the consistent, impactful changes we have made and the sustainable pace at which we have operated. Sweetland has now established the SAB as a permanent organ to ensure that access improvements remain an ongoing process, responsive to changes in culture, technology, and best practices of writing instruction.

The body of this article consists of syntheses of interviews I (Torre Puckett) held with SAB members for the academic year 2023-2024.

These interviews made it clear that the value of the board goes beyond merely furnishing advice— rather, an advisory board centered on disability has the potential to create more profound shifts in writing center culture, modeling what it looks like to expect disabled bodyminds and value disabled

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 27 insight in academic-creative spaces. It demonstrates the empowering effects that anti-ableist spaces have on those who inhabit them, disabled and nondisabled alike, making the SAB itself a microcosm of the accessibility culture we hope to instill in the writing center at large. It is our hope that these syntheses will encourage other writing center leaders to establish a student advisory board to support their own accessibility improvements.

As context for what follows, readers may find it helpful to know that, after extensive research on the topic, Sweetland adopted a philosophy of accessibility that incorporates both Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-based and individual accommodations-based access policies. UDL seeks to create as accessible an environment as possible for the largest number of people (the disabled, the elderly or very young, those with different learning styles, etc). UDL has been suggested as an alternative to accommodations dispensed on an individual basis. This practice, while common, problematically demands disclosure and formal diagnosis in exchange for accommodations.

Students may be resistant to disclosure because of prior negative experiences with access-seeking, turning disclosure decisions into a form of risk management in which the need for accommodation must be weighed carefully against the possibility of “stigma, judgment, denial of access, and/or exposure to discriminatory and hurtful rhetorics of ableism” (Wood 85). As Elizabeth Kleinfeld astutely points out, the accommodations model can also “place financial costs on a student who may not be able to afford the medical tests and consultations that might need to happen to get the medical documentation” (para. 10). Further, as Kerri Rinaldi has argued, the demand for disclosure posits the consultant, rather than the disabled consultee themselves, as the most knowledgeable party regarding the consultee’s own disability, suggesting that only once a disability is known will the consultant be able to respond to the student appropriately based on “their knowledge bank of how to tutor that disability” (para. 18).

However, there are troubling deficiencies in the UDL model as well, such as Jay Dolmage’s concern that checklists of UDL best practices “invite us to believe that Universal Design would stop if the boxes were all checked” (“Universal Design”). Given the infinite and ever-shifting diversity of embodiments and experiences, no checklist can possibly anticipate every access need

before it appears. True universality is rendered even more unachievable by the fact that access needs can contradict one another; for example, when Sweetland’s Peer Writing Center replaced harsh fluorescent lighting with gentler lamplight, the change was welcomed by neurodiverse folks and those with migraines, but it presented a substantial access barrier for an SAB member with a visual impairment during our fall 2024 access audit.

At Sweetland, we employ UDL and accommodations models simultaneously in the hopes that the strengths of each model can help mitigate the deficiencies of the other. We create more UDL-informed spaces and practices while leaving a door open for accommodations-seeking and disclosure on the students’ own terms (for example, the accessibility question on our intake form invites students to indicate accommodation needs rather than a diagnosis, though of course students are welcome to disclose if they wish). This is, we believe, the most ethical course to ensure that no student’s needs fall through the cracks either because of hesitance to disclose or because they are not served by our “universal” design choices.

Our SAB has historically been quite neurodiverse, with a wide spectrum of diagnosis statuses and fields of study, which helps represent our student population at large. However, we encountered more difficulty recruiting students with physical disabilities, male-identifying students, and graduate students. As will be discussed later in this article, we are aware that the perspectives represented on the board hold strong influence over our outputs; since Sweetland has established the SAB as a permanent organ, we are committed to recruiting diverse perspectives and look forward to the insights of future iterations of the board.

What follows are syntheses of the interviews I (Torre) conducted with four SAB members. Since I regrettably do not have the space to examine each interview in full detail, for each I have highlighted and analyzed a theme or themes I considered to be either essential to the member’s philosophy of access or particularly illuminative of the ethical imperatives or practical realities of our access improvement process. Each synthesis is followed by a short response from the interviewee, which may address their own interview or their responses to their fellow members’ interviews.

In our interviews, these four questions (generated by the members themselves) were posed:

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 28 1. What motivated you to join the student advisory board?

2. What would you identify as some major themes that were often revisited during the work of the student advisory board (ie., problems identified, values centered, or solutions promoted)? What values or action items do you hope other writing centers might take away from the work you have done with the advisory board?

3. How do you believe the composition of the advisory board, as a community of disabled people convened for disability justice work, affected the quality of the work and the results achieved?

4. How did your efforts to raise awareness of and accessibility for disabled students in the Sweetland Center for Writing inform your personal growth as a disabled student and tutor? How do you foresee this experience affecting your future academics, jobs, collaborative projects, etc.?

Readers will find that amidst—indeed, inextricable from—the members’ meditations on the work of the SAB are their lived experiences as disabled people. Many members describe serving on the SAB as a major source of confidence in, and more mature conceptions of, their disabled identity.

While it is not necessarily the aim of the SAB to afford personal growth opportunities to its members, the consistency with which the members described the SAB as impacting their personal experience of disability suggests that 1) the wellbeing of disabled consultees and disabled consultants/staff (including the SAB members) are two sides of the same coin, and 2) the empowering effects of positive access and self-advocacy experiences can extend beyond the consultation to have lasting effects on positive identification with disability and future access outcomes. By creating accessible writing centers, we have the potential to empower disabled students to succeed in future self-advocacy efforts.

Interview 1: Tess Carichner, Nursing When reading Tess’ asynchronous interview responses, I was drawn by the repeated recurrence of a theme that she termed “accessible processes, not just accessible outcomes.” In her responses,

reflections on the accommodations she received as a member of the SAB intermingle with discussions of the better accommodation systems the SAB sought to create, suggesting that for her, the process by which we arrive at greater accessibility is just as crucial as the outcomes achieved. She calls accessibility “not simply something to achieve, but a continuous process that must be present in all spheres of design” and points out that “accessible pedagogy and mindsets are imperative for creating accessible policies and processes that live on past the current Advisory Board.”

Our practice of accessible processes is important partly for the sake of the immediate access needs of a board full of disabled members.

Since the call for applications specified that applicants to the SAB should identify as having a disability, facilitators were not only prepared but expecting to make accommodations for the members—for instance, offering the ability to conduct interviews for this article both synchronously and asynchronously according to the member’s choice, or consistently checking in about meeting modality preference. However, practicing accessible processes in the SAB is also significant for the way it anticipates and pre-enacts the accessible outcomes that we were working towards. As Tess writes of this mindset, “Sometimes including accommodations in the process makes things take longer. We knew that the number one focus was not how fast we could complete the project, but how considerate and equitable we could be in the design of a more accessible writing center.” In Tess’ writing, the SAB itself appears as a microcosm of the environment that we are attempting to generate at Sweetland: an intellectual context where disability is always anticipated, and where the resource investment required to be considerate and equitable is undertaken gladly.

As well as prioritizing sustained rather than static changes, this focus on process helps honor the labor of the disabled individuals contributing their expertise to that process. Amongst the members interviewed, Tess strikes me as the one with the strongest bent towards organized activism, and as such, she displays a deep awareness of labor performed by disabled people to create a better world for themselves to live in. Annika Konrad coined the term access fatigue to refer to “the everyday pattern of constantly needing to help others participate in access, a demand so taxing and

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 29 so relentless that, at times, it makes access simply not worth the effort” (180). Access fatigue generally refers to the experience of individuals fighting for their own needs, but Tess describes a corresponding experience of what might be called justice fatigue in advocates: “Many times, disabled people are doing immense amounts of free accessibility consulting and labor in order to promote accessibility in a space.” This extra layer of fatigue beyond that accrued by self-advocacy, coupled with the discouragement all too familiar in ableist environments, “have the ability to stop advocates in their tracks.” In the face of that kind of heartsickness, for the writing center to actively and earnestly come alongside disability advocates in their justice work can be extremely powerful: “My hope is strengthened through experiences such as the SAB, where there are faculty, staff, and students who are focused on making dreams of accessibility a reality.”

A concrete takeaway I might suggest based on Tess’ interview is this: administrators interested in convening their own SAB can consider the experience not only as an opportunity to learn how create a more accessible environment in their writing center from those most qualified to tell them, but also as a glimpse of what that more accessible writing center might look like. As such, it might be valuable to invite several writing center administrators or consultants to be involved in SAB affairs both to include them in planning and to immerse them in an environment built to be as accessible as possible.

To close my reflections on Tess’ interview, I would like to leave you with her words as a reminder of why accessibility efforts in the writing center matter: “Personally, I feel that skill in writing has been an integral part of my ability to contribute to disability culture, community, and justice. I want disabled students to have writing resources for their academic success, but also because disabled voices are paramount to our progression towards equity.”

The stakes of disabled access to writing skill and support do not end with the consultation, or even the classroom—it is a tool that helps the disability community make lasting advances towards justice and equity.

Response to Interview 1, by Tess Carichner

As we communally reflect on our work, I began to see how we have subverted experiences of academic ableism, and morphed them into

strategies to prevent those experiences from happening to other disabled kin. As you will read later on, Laine communicates about how their intrusive thoughts became of new use while completing access consultant work. Eli discussed how access to education changed drastically upon transitioning to UofM. Maeve’s section touches on the ideas of work and worth, which is strongly tied to the American conceptualization of disability.

Maeve says, “You can’t focus as much on what you’re good at when you’re also focusing on being socially acceptable.”

When utilizing accommodations with any sort of ease, I remember it was not always this way. When frustrated with issues of ableism that remain, I remind myself of the words of three disability justice leaders (Ho, Mingus, and Wong): “Access is Love” (“Access is Love”). The access I have now is because of the love worked into existence by disabled elders and ancestors. While our SAB lacks members who can contribute expertise related to being BIPOC, physically disabled, and/or non-speaking, it is made up of people from multiple majors, stages in their degrees, educational backgrounds, and (to an extent) types of disabilities. To make this love more substantial and all-encompassing, SABs that reflect the many intersectional identities of disabled people can be created and nurtured. My hope is that the work we do as a SAB contributes to the greater work of this disabled generation, in passing down more access to our descendants.

Interview 2: Maeve Waugh, Classical Archaeology & Film Production Maeve’s interview dwelt upon the relations between access, productivity, leadership, and success. She described resistance she previously felt to claiming the label of disability because she did not feel that her (primarily social) disability was interfering with her work: “I don’t get to take on the name of disabled unless… my work is inhibited by my mental illness.” This difficulty disentangling the notions of work and disability is all too familiar to anyone trying to make a living while disabled.

Lennard Davis goes so far as to argue that since the mid-nineteenth century, disability has come to be defined primarily by a person’s “relation to means of production or a productive economy” (73-74).

By this definition, only once a difference begins to impact work does it actually become a disability, and as soon as it impacts work, disability must be healed, managed, or expelled. As Tanya Titchkosky

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 30 writes, “body stuff”—not just disability, but “catching a cold, falling off your bike, menstruation, sleepless nights, hot flashes, desires”—“needs to all but disappear for the work of bureaucratic structures to be achieved” (123).

As Maeve has entered professional worlds that come with a stronger social component, she has come to find disability affecting her work life more strongly than it ever had before. In collaborative work environments, Maeve— mirroring the experience of many disabled consultees—finds her attention torn between “keep[ing] the mask on” and successfully executing the task at hand. Here, Maeve refers to “masking,” a practice that requires mimicking neurotypical behaviors and suppressing tics, stims, or other behaviors that may be natural to the neurodivergent person but are considered inappropriate by neurotypical society. The mental demands of masking often lead to exhaustion, heightened stress, overwhelm, impaired function, lower tolerance to stimuli, and even mental illness and “autistic burnout” (Raymaker). However, refusal or inability to mask is often punished by adverse consequences, including social ostracization, academic or career penalties, and even institutionalization, meaning that neurodivergent folks are often heavily socialized into the practice of masking.

Maeve and I discussed the double bind in which disabled people are almost never invited to disclose their disabled identity, much less in warm and welcoming ways that make them feel safe unmasking, but are met with bewilderment, discomfort, and even alienation when symptoms of that disability catch people unawares. Essentially, disabled people are implicitly compelled to “pass” as able-bodied as they possibly can, as successfully as possible, until the toll of energy and attention this demands grows too costly—and when this crisis point is reached, either the mask they wear must drop or the task at hand must fail, or both.

This leaves disabled people juggling competing imperatives, a sideshow that reroutes needed focus and energy from the task at hand. Maeve puts it in powerful terms: “You can’t focus as much on what you’re good at when you’re also focusing on being socially acceptable.”

This kind of pressure to be well in addition to doing well can sometimes be overwhelming, especially in spaces like the writing consultation. In consultation, students attempt a potentially

uncomfortable and challenging academic task within what Margaret Price might term a kairotic space—“the less formal, often unnoticed, areas of academe where knowledge is produced and power is exchanged,” where stakes may feel unexpectedly high and expectations not explicitly articulated (60).

In the most heartfelt segment of my interview with Maeve, we discussed the value of “places where people can be allowed to continue working and trying their best” if they do have outbursts, anxiety, shutdowns, or other disabled reactions that, in most spaces, might threaten to alienate others or “get in the way” of academic or professional success.

While it’s unlikely that students will be able to easily drop masking behavior so ingrained that it may have become difficult for them to recognize it as masking at all (“#TakeTheMaskOff”), we should be doing our best to create spaces where acting neurotypically is not a requirement for success. Of course, the physical and emotional safety of consultants must always be kept paramount in the rare cases where they may be threatened by an outburst from a student, but we must learn not to categorize our own discomfort or confusion in the space of consultation as a disqualification for the student. Welcoming students’ true selves, not just their able-bodied masks, into consultation may be as simple as offering a consultee a fidget toy, a five-minute break, or a sincere compliment, or as fundamental as revising the basic metrics of success for a consultation—perhaps today, that means getting words on the page without crying, or perhaps it means getting words on the page through the tears.

With these gentle acts, we can make room for students to do what they’re good at without the additional drain of masking or passing, and to grow without fear of the failures that pave the way to every breakthrough.

Response to Interview 2, by Maeve Waugh

I found that my interview section dealt with the difficulties of balancing work, disability, and identity as a college student, as well as how one’s disability “status” is often gauged by how well a person can fit into neurotypical society. This is most often measured by how well a student can complete the tasks assigned to them without assistance, but this is not entirely where the difficulties of living with a disability—or the commonly recognized needs for

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 31 accommodations—reside. Sometimes, making accommodations means helping people complete tasks that are difficult for them because of their disability, and sometimes accommodation means assisting people outside of their “productive task” day to day, often emotionally or mentally. One may argue that it isn’t the place for a writing center to offer this extra level of accommodation and inclusion because these people on the edges may not “need it,” but I can speak from experience and say that when I see teachers and counselors utilize meta-consulting 1 to reduce rejection anxiety, or offer fidget toys in the consultation room, or generally offer alternatives to reading aloud or eye contact, I feel welcomed and acknowledged and seen in a way that I usually don’t as a low-supportneeds autistic person, which not only helps my academics but also my self-confidence as a person.

Often, neurodivergent folks who do well in school but struggle socially are looked over as they seem to be “doing fine,” as their success is only being measured by a report card rather than how fulfilled or safe they feel in the moment. But success in life is defined by much more than productivity in work or success in education, and we have discussed how we want the writing center to provide accommodations to students with an individualized understanding of the needs of people who come into the writing center. By this I mean that we don’t follow the “independent reader/writer” standard of success as is usually pushed in public schools but rather work with the student and the tools at their disposal—whether that be text-to-speech, spellcheck, Google, writing templates, or whatever they may need to finish their writing project—in order to create a successful student by means of bolstering their own self-confidence in writing and as meets the standards of the University of Michigan.

Interview 3: Eli Friedstrom, Neuroscience & Cognitive Science, Linguistics Concentration Eli’s neurodivergence did not become apparent until later in life. They attended a private Christian school for their entire K12 education, which provided such a highly personalized and supportive environment that the need for educational accommodations never materialized. However, at 1

By “meta-consulting,” Maeve refers to the practice of explicitly narrating the reasoning behind consulting

the University of Michigan, where the environment is much more “catered to the average intelligent person,” their need for accommodations soon emerged as a factor. Although Eli has come to embrace their neurodivergent identity since starting college, they have no interest in pursuing a formal diagnosis—in their words, “that’s not going to aid me in any way, it’s only going to hinder me because of how stigmatized it is.” They prefer to retain control over the labels they use in different situations, a versatility that a formal diagnosis might limit.

Perhaps because of these experiences, a theme of disability as a flexible and circumstantially determined location on a spectrum emerged through the course of my interview with Eli. This manifested partly through their interest in Universal Design (UD) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Eli sees these as tools to “incorporate the needs of disabled people in a way that is not centering on them and otherwise Othering them.” For Eli, in concentrating our efforts on disabled people, we must be wary of a tendency to reify old and flawed methods of targeting the disabled individual as the site of intervention, marking bodyminds as the problem instead of a disabling and discriminatory system at large. As they put it succinctly, that would make the SAB “just the accommodations board.” Eli prefers an approach that “is for everyone, and by making it with disabled people in mind it helps everyone.”

They point out that anyone can embody disability, even if only for the duration of healing from a broken leg or a concussion. Eli says that this is why accommodations need “to be marketed towards the average person…this can be for you too. This can be you too.”

Eli’s awareness of non-disabled stakeholders in disability justice also manifested as a concern for how our work will be understood and received, a concern at least partly motivated by the pushback they routinely encounter against their queer advocacy. “When you get into microidentities,” they said grimly, “that’s where you kind of lose people.” Like so many advocates before them, Eli is wrestling with some of the most difficult and crucial questions of practical justice work: how to normalize difference without suggestions as they are offered. This helps demystify the suggestions for consultees and de-hierarchize access to information in the consultation space.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 32 minimizing the unique challenges of marginalized existences, and how to negotiate between the need to educate and the risk of alienation when attempting to connect with prospective allies who might balk at too much information or too much pressure. Referring to our work generating a training for writing consultants on disability, they cannily point out that a board of students who not only hold pro-disability perspectives but live disability every day might have a hard time assuming the perspective of someone less familiar with disability or justice work in order to meet that person’s educational needs. The type of disabilities represented on the board “could influence the type of work we put out, and make it not generalizable.”

Eli points out that our strengths in neurodiverse perspectives have surely influenced how we have chosen to focus our teaching and advocacy (at the time of this interview we lacked perspective on the experience of physical disability, though we have successfully increased our representation of diverse impairments in subsequent iterations of the SAB).

They remind us not to forget—mired as we are within our own viewpoints, passions, and ideologies—the value of works and perspectives that are important to others, or the importance of making sure that those who will implement our recommendations truly believe that the changes matter. The goal is not just to make changes to policies and spaces, but to mindsets, attitudes, and instincts, and this means that, just as much as nondisabled perspectives we do not share, we cannot afford to disregard the nondisabled perspective while pursuing accessibility advocacy.

Eli admitted that so much attention to nondisabled interests wasn’t quite “what you want to hear from a disability justice or advocacy board.”

However, they still find such attention necessary: “Ultimately we are trying to break down the barriers that bar us from having these experiences that are similar to neurotypical people or nondisabled people … but for the time being until those bars are actually broken, we have to operate within that system and within the framework that not everyone understands or is as accepting.” As galling and daunting as it can be to admit the difficulty of remaking our mindsets and our institutions, Eli is right to point out that resistance is real, resources are limited, and minds do not change easily or quickly. It is best to know your freedoms and constraints (in terms of budget, time, investment by individuals, and culture) so that you

can create the most accessible environment possible within them. Work with what you have right now, and wait and advocate for more to come.

Response to Interview 3, by Eli Friedstrom

Disability advocacy has been a cornerstone of my life since I began to understand the concept of “disabled,” and has roots in all of my experiences and connections. Being on this advisory board where a group of disabled students are able to do disability advocacy with tangible results has been incredibly special. This experience has not only allowed me to further understand myself and how I operate within a larger system, but through understanding different models of accommodations I have found myself being able to better understand the world around me and better able to extend this notion and empathy to others.

Tess mentions that the board is a “microcosm of the environment we are attempting to generate for Sweetland as an institution,” and my time on the board now informs my perspective of the world at large. I have implemented what I have learned as a part of the SAB in my job through accessible interviewing practices and training formats, my research in working with bilingualism, my position as a community support specialist for other disabled individuals, and my own actions and the way I treat myself. Access is important for everyone, and the more able and comfortable we are to provide means of access the more able and comfortable others will be to ask. I know that our work so far has just been the beginning and I am hoping that through our success our university will be able to recognize our importance to both the writing center and the university at large, which in the future will promote more disability advocacy positions and spaces.

Interview 4: Laine Kibler, Creative Writing & Film Photography As a consultant in Sweetland’s Peer Writing Center, Laine contributes a unique perspective to the SAB. When convening your own SAB, we highly recommend extending an invitation to existing consultants and consultants-in-training, asking that any interested disabled consultants apply; Laine has brought an invaluable perspective through their consulting experience and familiarity with Sweetland’s pedagogy from the consultant side. As such, Laine has helped highlight deficiencies in consulting practice from the perspective of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 33 someone who understands the pedagogical and practical reasons for many misfits between standard consultation practice and the needs of disabled students. As they write, “That was interesting because not only was I critiquing the accessibility of my own workplace, but I was being affected by the inaccessibility of it daily as an employee.”

Laine also reminded us that disability exists in all facets of the writing center, among our faculty and employees as well as our consultees. This has been a critical corrective to a tendency we might otherwise have had to focus our accessibility improvements only towards consultees, reifying what Tanya Titchkosky refers to as disability’s “absent presence.” In a reductive binary, this absent presence assumes disability will only be “partially included, for example, for those who may be receiving an education but not for those who administer or deliver education” (99). The mindset that those in teaching and leadership positions must necessarily be able-bodied and self-sufficient is damaging, and also reinforces a hierarchy between consultant and consultee that the peer consulting model in particular aims to minimize.

Working with the SAB has also affected Laine’s practice as a writing center employee. This has taken some concrete forms in consultation: “for example, I now hesitate to show students anything on my personal laptop screen in case they use screen readers or other access softwares on their technology that I don’t have … I try to ask students questions relating to their interests and opinions about coursework in brainstorming questions because it’s especially key to work around these things with neurodivergent students that can struggle to focus on uninteresting subjects.” It has also affected their behavior on the administrative and collegial side of their writing center work.

Firstly, they are now more comfortable with selfadvocacy as an employee and take proactive steps to address inequitable conditions for themselves and other disabled consultants. They write, “If I am finding myself at an unreasonable disadvantage compared to able-bodied or able-minded consultants, I can remedy the situation myself or reach out for help from my coworkers and administrators.” Secondly, it has given them a “designated time or area in [their] already quite full schedule to make those changes happen.”

Improving their workspace for their consultees and fellow consultants was not always in Laine’s job

description, but now that they are part of the SAB, it is. Now, they are not only requested but paid to designate time in their schedule for this task. Lastly, as they wrote, “this work… has allowed me to feel that openness about my daily struggles is helpful and important to the deconstruction of ableist academic structures (such as some aspects of writing center ideology).” Laine has not just become more comfortable being open about their challenges for the sake of their own access, but sees this openness as contributing to a larger justice effort in the writing center and the university at large.

I found Laine’s explanation why we must convene disabled people to do disability justice work extremely compelling and insightful. They wrote, “The mixture and variety of all of our experiences allowed us to think bigger about not only what the problems could be, but the various solutions to those problems that writing centers could implement.” To me, this suggests that the existing and intuitive familiarity with the challenges of disabled living which exists in the SAB allows us to look beyond those challenges to solutions; in a group of disabled people familiar with the shortcomings of the world we live in (which Eli has helpfully reminded us not to be naïve about) we need not waste much time retracing the shape of those shortcomings. Instead, we can skip straight to envisioning—and then making—a better world.

Response to Interview 4, by Laine Kibler

As I’ve moved out of the higher education sphere following my graduation from UM, I’ve begun to enter the “real world” and reflect on what the SAB meant to me during the latter half of my college experience. This advisory board has been the most special place—which also happened to be a professional setting—that I’ve ever existed in.

Rather than being bogged down by my rampant and constant obsessive thoughts and mental compulsions, they became crucially beneficial to the work I was doing. I was achieving a level of mindfulness and calm in this job that I struggle to find in my personal life, let alone in a professional setting, making me question the label of my OCD as a “disability” in the first place.

Reading through my coworker’s interviews with Torre, I was moved by Tess’s notion of the advisory board as a microcosm of what we were trying to accomplish in the institution of Sweetland.

This comment hones in on how this board can be

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 34 proof of a society’s ability to disable people more than their born bodymind. 2 It is extremely difficult to find work comparable to this, where my weaknesses in a neurotypical world instead become strengths, and rather than feeling out of place, I am precisely who I “should be” in every given moment. All institutions need to make space for this work, not just writing centers; room for marginalized identities to cocreate and coexist not only allows us to commiserate self-indulgently, but simultaneously allows us to make a better world. In summary, I feel that this work is so crucial because within it, rather than our human value being determined by one’s productivity, we, as disabled individuals, can have value by “merely existing,” as Torre stated in her writing about our interview.

When my mere presence functioned as a reminder that disabled employees must also be accommodated, I contained value as a person without “producing” the way society would traditionally demand of me.

Conclusion Institutions can balk at the work of improving access because the task seems daunting and unachievable, and downright inelegant besides. The awkwardness of repairing inaccessibility is wellillustrated by the concept of the retrofit, when a device nominally intended to improve access, like a ramp or elevator, is tacked onto a physical space that was not built with it in mind. The result is often not only awkward, ungainly, and ludicrously expensive—according to Jay Dolmage, retrofits are borderline “passive aggressive,” as though a visible, tactile sign of blame that disabled people dare to have access needs, or as though marking the disabled person forced to use them with stigma, ultimately serving to “preserve or perpetuate exclusion rather than address it” (Academic Ableism 77, 76). There is simply no retroactive addition of accessibility features that will match the unitary wholeness of a construction that, from its inception, was created with disability in mind. The writing center is also an edifice that was not 2

Laine refers to the social model of disability, which (in contrast to the medical model, which understands disability as located solely in the body) recognizes disability as socially constructed. To cite a helpful and

constructed with disability in mind, as are practically every educational institution and value—but writing centers can also be one of the most beneficial institutions on campus to support academic success for students with disabilities. An SAB can support this work by modeling a writing center institution that requires no retrofit, built with disability in mind from the ground up; better yet, its input can ensure that the programs and policies you implement in the future can also be retrofitfree.

As theorists and practitioners of UDL tell us, the most feasible and sustainable way to implement changes is by the “plus one approach;” by implementing and acclimating to one or a handful of achievable changes at a time, and repeating this process continually, you will continue approaching ever closer to universality (Tobin and Behling 134). Appendix B provides a nonexhaustive list of action items that can add up to substantial increases in accessibility, implemented one at a time as they become achievable.

For those interested in forming their own SABs, here is some logistical information on ours to get you started. Our members were recruited by circulating a flyer through our disability services center, amongst instructors teaching courses on disability, and amongst our peer writing consultants. From these options, we have had the most success with professors recommending their students apply to the SAB and through word-ofmouth recruitment by current SAB members. Our members are hired at a competitive hourly wage for a commitment of one year, but we have enjoyed an excellent retention rate, with a high proportion of students renewing their membership until their graduation. The SAB’s demands on our budget have been relatively low despite the competitive hourly wage the students are paid (which, as all four interviews indicated, the students understand as a mark of our appreciation for their work and genuine investment in accessibility improvement) because the activities undertaken mostly demanded a low time commitment. I found that, at a pace of one or two accessibility goals per semester—usually chosen by the director and the graduate student common example, if all buildings used elevators instead of stairs, wheelchair users would not encounter issues using stairs—in this case, the built environment has disabled someone who could navigate easily in a onestory or elevator-equipped building.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 35 facilitator, with the input of SAB members over the course of the semester often informing the plans for the subsequent semester or year—student labor tended to amount to only about 7-10 hours per semester per student (see Appendix B for some of the accessibility goals we have accomplished since the SAB’s founding). Our board typically consists of three to four students along with the graduate student facilitator; with more students, it became difficult or impossible to schedule meetings where all members could attend, and we have historically prioritized the ability to meet with all members rather than a higher number of members that could not consistently contribute.

Investing in a SAB yields high-impact results, particularly in its early semesters, when there is the most room for accessibility improvement. Many of our SAB’s contributions have cost nothing beyond the time it took for them to generate recommendations or materials (such as the training they deliver to consultants, materials they generate, web access recommendations, and clearer/more effective/more equitable accessibility policies). Other recommendations have resulted in low-cost, high-impact investments like lamps to create adjustable lighting options and fidget toys for each Sweetland location. Most recently, the SAB provided feedback on the new furniture Sweetland purchased for a waiting area and the configuration for that furniture, helping to ensure this substantial investment would be an access solution rather than an access problem to be solved in the future—a retrofit rendered unnecessary. There is no denying that accessibility improvement measures sometimes require a substantial investment of money, time, and other resources, but we have found that an SAB is not only a relatively affordable investment, but one that can help ensure the most effective implementation of what resources you have available.

Even if our writing centers cannot be entirely free of retrofits, we can from now on take seriously Annika Konrad’s call to “use access as a lens for all that we do in writing programs” (“Access as a Lens”). This is not to say that a nonretrofitted object like the SAB will always run with effortless smoothness, or even that it will require no accessibility upgrades in the future; as Tess pointed out early on, the accessible processes involved in our SAB sometimes cost us extra time, effort, and advance planning. However, in these lean times for both writing centers and equity

initiatives, avoiding ungainly retrofits is all but imperative. We can either pay up front for a more efficient and effective result (demonstrating our earnest investment in serving disabled community members in the bargain), pay later for an inevitably clumsier and likely costlier retrofit, or alienate entirely a community whose presence in the writing center is of great mutual benefit. The experience we have had with our SAB not only demonstrates just how different a space generated with disability in mind from the start feels to disabled people, but how it can help create spaces, policies, and cultures that do not require retrofits in the future. With disabled stakeholders involved in the process of creating new policies, physical environments, and programs, we can begin to do things right more often than we must do things over.

Works Cited “Access is Love.” Disability Intersectionality Summit, https://www.disabilityintersectionalitysu mmit.com/access-is-love.

Brooke, Collin and Alison Carr. “Failure Can Be an Important Part of Writing Development.” Naming What We Know, Classroom Edition: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda AdlerKassner and Elizabeth Wardle, University Press of Colorado, 2016, pp. 62–64.

Davis, Lennard. “Nationalism and Deafness: The Nineteenth Century.”

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 73–99.

Dolmage, Jay Timothy. “The Retrofit.”

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. University of Michigan Press, 2017, pp. 67–98.

—. “Universal Design: Places to Start.”

Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, 2015, https://dsqsds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/463 2/3946. Accessed 26 June 2024.

Herzl-Betz, Rachel et al. “Modeling Accessibility: Perspectives from the Accessibility Task Force.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 3–14.

Konrad, Annika. “Access as a Lens for Peer Tutoring.” Another Word: From the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin at

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 36 Madison. 22 February, 2016. https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/acces s-as-a-lens-for-peer-tutoring/. Accessed 28 June 2024.

—. “Access Fatigue: The Rhetorical Work of Disability in Everyday Life.” College English, vol. 83, no. 3, 2021, pp. 179–199.

Kleinfeld, Elizabeth. “Taking an Expansive View of Accessibility: The Writing Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver.” Composition Forum, vol. 39, 2018, https://compositionforum.com/issue/39 /msu-denver.php.

Titchkosky, Tanya. The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning. University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Raymaker, Dora. “Understanding autistic burnout.” National Autistic Society, 1 March 2022. https://www.autism.org.uk/adviceand-guidance/professionalpractice/autistic-burnout.

Results of the 2021 University of Michigan Student Campus Climate Survey on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. University of Michigan Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 2021.

Rinaldi, Kerri. “Disability in the Writing Center: A New Approach (That’s Not So New).” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015, http://www.praxisuwc.com/rinaldi-131.

Sins Invalid. “10 Principles of Disability Justice.” Sins Invalid, 15 September 2017, https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/10principles-of-disability-justice.

Tobin, Tom J. and Kristen T. Behling.

“Adopt the Plus-One Approach.” Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education.

West Virginia University Press, 2018, pp.

128–140.

Wood, Tara. “Rhetorical Disclosures: The Stakes of Disability Identity in Higher Education.” Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. Edited by Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Laura T. Eisenman, and James M. Jones. University of Michigan Press, 2017.

“The UDL Guidelines.” Cast, https://udlguidelines.cast.org/.

“#TakeTheMaskOff (but What if I Don’t Know How?).” Reframing Autism, https://reframingautism.org.au/takethem askoff-but-what-if-i-dont-know-how/.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

Appendix A This chart details the SAB’s accomplishments each semester between its formation and the submission of this article.

We include it to provide suggestions for accessibility improvements and to demonstrate the sustainable but steady pace at which we operate.

Semester Fall 2022

Winter 2023

Accomplishment(s) ● Conducted student accessibility audit focusing on consultee experience (later translated into resources for consultees and recommendations for consultants) ○ This audit supplemented a formal accessibility audit by the department of Architecture and Engineering and the university’s Digital Accessibility team, focused more on spatial and digital accessibility considerations according to the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and current formal best practices ●

●

Fall 2023

●

●

Researched and generated content for an “accessibility hub” webpage (providing instructions on how to receive accommodations for visits to Sweetland; information about the experience, accessibility, and sensory environment of Sweetland’s various services so students can select the consultation best suited to their needs) ○ In the process of generating this webpage, we formalized accommodation procedures that had not previously been standardized.

Added a question soliciting access needs to our WCOnline signup and intake forms. We infused the rephrased questions with language related to disability but did not specifically confine it to disability-related concerns, also inviting disclosures about stress level, state of mind, learning preferences, etc.

Began generating a professional development session on anti-ableist consulting. This was geared towards consultants in Writing Workshop, the professional consultant branch of Sweetland’s services (we also operate a Peer Writing Center staffed by peer consultants, who receive their own anti-ableist training as part of their curriculum) Began conducting interviews to create this article

Winter 2024

● ●

Finalized professional development presentation Delivered professional development presentation to Writing Workshop (professional) consultants during a Sweetland departmental meeting

Fall 2024

● ●

Renewed accessibility audit first performed in fall 2022 Updated website, particularly the accessibility hub webpage

Winter 2025

●

Consulted on accessibility improvements for Sweetland’s Minor in Writing, particularly its introductory and capstone courses Consulted on the selection and orientation of new furniture for the waiting area of Sweetland’s primary location

●

Leadership by the Most Impacted • 38

Appendix B A table providing a non-exhaustive list of actionable items to improve accessibility at your writing center, sorted by the investment of time and/or money required.

Scope Immediate, free

Task List (Non-exhaustive) ● ● ● ●

Medium-level investment of time or money

● ● ● ●

More significant investments

● ● ●

Establish a relationship with the disability/accessibility services unit on your campus.

Update language about disability on your website to be more welcoming, including removing outdated euphemisms like “handicapped” or “differently abled.” Ideally, replace demands for documentation or disclosure with invitations for access requests.

Download the Morphic toolbar (which collects a computer’s native accessibility features into a toolbar) and OpenDyslexic (a dyslexia-friendly font) to all computers where consultations take place.

Update policies and spaces with easy accessibility fixes (ex: extend time/number of appointments allowed for students with disabilities; lessen/eliminate penalties for missed appointments; encourage consultants not to use fragrances at work to improve experience for those with sensory sensitivities; if safety allows, prop open doors that cannot be operated with a push button to increase spatial navigability).

Hire a student advisory board! Almost every other item on this list will benefit from the input of disabled stakeholders in decision-making.

Invest in environmental adjustability measures (fidget toys, lamps for consultation spaces, quiet spaces, etc.).

Evaluate the equity of current accessibility policies and consider updating them.

Update consultant training or professional development to reflect a deeper investment in accessibility.

Contract out for a formal accessibility audit of physical and digital spaces. (Your disability services center will likely be able to connect you with an auditing service.)

Conduct surveys of satisfaction/dissatisfaction expressed by disabled users of your writing center.

Update furniture to improve accessibility. If possible, ensure doors to your writing center are pushbutton operable.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 2 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

“I WAS SURPRISED AT HOW WELL I WAS ABLE TO HANDLE IT”: PERFORMING EMOTIONAL LABOR WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE WRITING CENTER Grace Williams Lansing Community College willig30@lcc.edu

Abstract This article, first, describes the inspiration for tutor training on emotional labor at our urban research university where we served as director and assistant director of the writing center. We then detail the results of an IRB-approved study in which we conducted a focus group with three writing center tutors who participated in this training during the 2024–2025 Academic Year. Our central research question for this study was, “Does specific training on emotional labor impact tutors’ relationship to their work?” We found through focus group data that the training did have a positive impact on tutors’ relationship to their work. Specifically, tutors who participated in the focus group reported that as a result of their training, they felt satisfied with their work and were comfortable supporting students intellectually and emotionally while setting boundaries when needed. These results affirm calls from within writing center studies about the value of addressing emotional labor of tutors in tutor training.

Keywords: writing center, tutor training, emotional labor, emotional intelligence, boundary-setting Introduction Emotion is a key component of writerly development because different emotions impact the relationship writers have towards their tasks.

Emotional experiences relating to writing can impact both short- and long-term progress in student writers. Work from Dana Lynn Driscoll and Roger Powell suggests that when a student experiences an emotion during the writing process, that emotion can be categorized in one of three ways: generative (it assists the writing process), disruptive (it impedes the writing process), and circumstantial (it initially seems like a hindrance but is able to be worked through). Oftentimes, the emotions that would be categorized as circumstantial in Driscoll and

Amy Latawiec Wayne State University amy.latawiec@wayne.edu

Powell’s study (frustration, anxiety, confusion) are the ones that tutors encounter in the writing center, something highlighted in the first chapter of Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli’s handbook The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors (the guide we—Amy and Grace—used in our writing center). It is the task of the writing center tutor to help the student manage their circumstantial emotions so the tutor can have a positive impact on the student’s writing development. In other words, writing center tutoring is a job that requires emotional labor because it, in part, involves the management of other peoples’ emotions.

In Arlie Hochschild’s seminal text, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, she defines jobs that require emotional labor as those that 1) feature contact with the public, 2) “require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person,” and 3) “allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees” (147). All three of these criteria are met in the writing center as tutors work with students, build student confidence in writing (among other things), and follow the emotional display rules of their workplace (such as maintaining a curious demeanor towards student writing). Hochschild argues that while emotional management is a regular part of daily life and interacting with other people, this personal management becomes emotional labor when it is enacted as part of a public facing job. Additionally, when the employer is able to have a say in how the employee expresses emotion, “the worker must give up control over how the work is to be done” (Hochschild 119; emphasis original). The underlying source of stress for workers required to perform emotional labor is the dissonance between “self and feeling” and “self and display” when a worker’s feelings do not align with the emotional performance they are required to give for the benefit of a client (Hochschild 131).

This dissonance can be exacerbated by poor

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 40 boundary-setting and lead to burnout. Therefore, in order to avoid the negative consequences of emotional labor in writing centers for tutors, writing center directors must address it at the root: in job training. We attempted to do this in our writing center by focusing our tutor training on helping our tutors understand emotional labor required of them and developing the emotional intelligence necessary to perform this labor. We believe emotional intelligence is an important corollary to any conversation about emotional labor because emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize and use emotions to complete tasks, the central duty of the emotional laborer.

This article, first, describes the inspiration for our tutor training on emotional labor at our urban research university where we served as director (Amy) and assistant director of the writing center (Grace). We then detail the results of an IRB-approved study in which we conducted a focus group with three writing center tutors who participated in this training during the 2024–2025 Academic Year. Our central research question for this study was, “Does specific training on emotional labor impact tutors’ relationship to their work?” We found through focus group data that the training did have a positive impact on tutors’ relationship to their work. Specifically, tutors who participated in the focus group reported that as a result of their training, they felt satisfied with their work and were comfortable supporting students intellectually and emotionally while setting boundaries when needed. These results affirm calls from within writing center studies about the value of addressing emotional labor of tutors in tutor training.

Emotional Labor in the Writing Center: The Past Becoming Present

Emotional labor within writing studies has received increased attention in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (Driscoll and Wells), but writing centers have long been invested in the emotions of the students they see. For instance, even before 1989’s “Freud in the Writing Center,” in a 1946 issue of College English, Levette Davidson and Frederick Sorenson described the way in which their writing clinic at the University of Denver acted as a supplement to English I courses and as part of a unit with a reading clinic, speech clinic, and counseling clinic. These four clinics were intended to provide individualized support to

students outside of the classroom. Not only did Davidson and Sorenson invoke the idea of a medical facility in the name of their writing clinic and its association with entities that do attend to student health, they also advocated for a style of tutoring based on the work of psychologist Carl Rogers: Rogerian nondirective counseling.

Rogerian counseling contends that the client is the expert and that the answers they need to their problems can be obtained through questioning and nonjudgement on behalf of the therapist. In the Denver writing clinic, clinicians—that is, English graduate students—used questioning to gather biographic information from a student in order to “identify his needs and his hopes and his fears” (Davidson and Sorenson 85). Davidson and Sorenson asserted that this approach would decrease writer’s block by increasing confidence in the student.

Nondirective tutoring is still one of the most recognizable features of writing center work and from the very start it was associated with supporting positive emotional development in students. Davidson and Sorenson’s use of therapeutic techniques was not received without pushback, however. Writing center historian Peter Carino notes that the Denver clinic was criticized for “engaging in amateur psychology” (108).

Writing in 1949, Sorenson, too, called the writing clinic a failure. In particular, Sorenson notes that the writing clinic received little support from the counseling center, commenting that this was ultimately a good thing as “informed people” like actual psychologists “could not possibly permit uninformed ‘clinicians’ [writing center tutors] to tamper with student lives, and, as it turned out, there was no program for training clinicians in the methods of teaching grammar and rhetoric, let alone how to analyze students” (325). Still, Sorenson asserted his belief in the trial and error of the clinic and the larger student-centered model of English I at Denver. Also, as we will go on to discuss, it seems that as we have developed the ability to train our clinician-tutors in transmitting writing knowledge, writing center studies is reconsidering how to give students emotionallysensitive feedback.

Elizabeth Boquet echoes Sorenson’s assessment of the value of his and Davidson’s work in her history of writing centers. Bouquet commends the educators for their “counterinstitutional impulses” (469) that ultimately allowed

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 41 writing centers to develop their own identity distinct from the writing classroom. Boquet writes that, [T]he Rogerian nondirective method succeeds in securing the space of the writing lab as sacrosanct, … a space where students should feel secure in thoughts and ideas, as they should in a therapist's office.

It is through this therapeutic closed-door policy that writing centers begin to engage in some version of counter-hegemonic work, supported by a doctor-patient privilege which ushers in both a model for professionalism and an invitation for tutors to assume a neutral posture (at least as an ideal). (470) Writing center professionals have known since the inception of writing centers that what makes writing centers special is their ability to support students’ intellectual and emotional wellbeing, or as it has been put in recent years, the students’ “whole person” (McBride et al.; Driscoll and Wells).

With this history in mind, we are inclined to affirm Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells’ assessment that it is “possible, and perhaps likely, that students have been seeking writing center support all along because it is a place where both [social and emotional] needs can be met” (16).

Though the gap between Davidson and Sorenson’s work in the 1940s and the recent uptake of emotional labor in the writing center has been long, it is promising that the writing center studies as a field is returning to the affirmation that this type of labor is essential to the work tutors do (Driscoll and Wells; Giaimo, Unwell Writing Centers; Im et al.; Mannon; Nelson et al., “Making Visible”). It is because of this return to the emotional side of tutoring that our training came to be, and it is our hope that the description of this training and results of this study can be used to further the growing body of strategies for supporting the emotional labor of tutors.

Our Training: Background and Design

While scholarship supports the existence of emotional labor, many of the materials we as writing center directors still rely on for training does not. In Bethany Mannon’s analysis of popular writing center tutoring handbooks, she found that they “rarely distinguish from the presence of emotion the work of managing emotion” (145; emphasis original), thereby making emotional labor invisible

by lumping it into general information about emotions tutors may encounter from students.

Mannon concludes that while tutoring guides may acknowledge emotion, they do not present emotional labor as a skill that can be improved (156). Moreover, training manuals, such as The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors by Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta, seem to assume that tutors will come into their positions at the writing center with a high level of emotional intelligence in place, with comments like, “You probably already know how to interact with others, to help put people at ease if they seem to be feeling unsure…” (qtd. in Mannon 145). When we as administrators assume tutors are adept at managing emotions (both those of others and their own), we make them responsible for figuring out what to do when emotionally charged consultations occur. The assumption Mannon describes training manuals as making—that because a person has a desire to become a tutor, they automatically have the willingness and ability to undertake emotional labor in that role—was a key consideration in deciding to focus our training on how to perform emotional labor.

Another impetus for our training is how tutoring guides advise tutors to deal with their emotions by projecting professionalism. In the handbook we use in our center, Ryan and Zimmerelli, in part, define professionalism as “conduct that demonstrates a good work ethic and respect for the people and situations you encounter” (ix). As part of maintaining professionalism, Ryan and Zimmerelli advise that tutors, “Greet each writer cheerfully and indicate that you are ready to begin work, even if you are tired or under stress from school or job responsibilities” (2).

Here, employing professionalism is presented as a sort of coping mechanism for emotional stress tutors bring to consultations because it is what a tutor can defer to even when feeling overwhelmed themselves.

However, this may instead compound that stress by forcing tutors to perform more emotional labor than their job initially requires in order to maintain a “pleasant” (Ryan and Zimmerelli 1) atmosphere in the writing center. Im et al. suggest that the emphasis on professionalism that tutoring guides present, “may impose emotion-display rules that further exacerbate the emotional labor demanded by tutors” (Im et al. 218). Tutoring sessions can become emotionally laborious when tutors feel pressured to uphold professionalism in scenarios

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 42 where they, for example, experience conflict with a student or when they have to hide their true feelings in a consultation (Im et al.). In the narrow context in which Ryan and Zimmerelli define it (and that other manuals Im et al. explore), professionalism does not help tutors problemsolve or set boundaries because it asks them to subsume their emotions in favor of maintaining a positive work environment and service for studentclients.

Im et al.’s work on professionalism once more calls to mind Hochschild’s focus on emotional labor as that which is prescribed and monitored by employers. When we say that we as administrators require emotional labor of our tutors this is what we mean: we make policies and assign handbooks that attempt to exert control on their emotional expression. It is essential for writing center administrators to acknowledge the emotional components of tutors’ work and to prepare them to engage in it because we are the ones that require them to do so as their supervisors.

Some of the policies and procedures in our writing center that our tutors must follow that have allowed us (Amy and Grace) as administrators to control our tutors’ emotional expression include: “I will not comment negatively to students about any teacher’s grading policies, teaching methods, or personalities;” “I will refrain from commenting on the content of a student’s work and/or giving my opinion about the subject matter of a student’s writing;” “If a student is late to their appointment, I will kindly remind them that we must still adhere to the original appointment end time;” and “I will conduct myself professionally and refrain from becoming personally or romantically involved with a student while I am their tutor.” These policies exist to ensure tutors manage emotions they experience as a result of tutoring consultations in order to maintain a smooth operation which in turn contributes to building a positive campus presence for the writing center. We believe these are beneficial policies, though we do recognize they require tutors to perform emotional labor and tutors should receive support in learning how to implement them.

The focus of the tutor training that Grace developed for the Fall 2024 semester was on introducing tutors to the concept of emotional labor while providing opportunities to develop their emotional intelligence through personal reflection and group discussion. In several pieces

about emotional labor in the writing center, scholars make the recommendation that tutors be given opportunities to develop their emotional intelligence in order to perform emotional labor (Driscoll and Wells; Iantorno; Lape; Peterson).

John D. Mayer, Peter Salovey, and David R. Caruso state that a person is emotionally intelligent when they have the ability to “(a) perceive emotions in oneself and others accurately, (b) use emotions to facilitate thinking, (c) understand emotions, emotional language, and the signals conveyed by emotions, and (d) manage emotions so as to attain specific goals” (506). In other words, emotional intelligence requires being able to recognize emotions in oneself and in others and to take favorable actions based on those emotions.

Emotionally intelligent tutors are tutors who can attend to the needs of students and to their own needs. Emotional intelligence has been identified as a trait that contributes to workplace satisfaction and better mental health (Guy and Lee; Newman et al.; Schutte and Loi) and as such, is an added benefit of our training, given that writing center tutors can and do take valuable lessons from their writing center training that helps them in careers beyond the writing center, and even within their personal relationships (Hughes et al.).

At the time of our training and focus group, all tutors in our writing center were students (both graduate and undergraduate, but primarily undergraduate) at our university and they were trained on the job as they were hired. In the Fall of 2024, we began the semester with two returning tutors and hired six new tutors. Training for this semester involved five modules on our institution’s Learning Management System (Canvas) and monthly hour-long meetings held via Zoom. The Canvas modules included training overviews, materials for review, and activities for practice.

Overall, the modules and meetings from this semester focused on acclimating the mostly new tutors to the tutoring process, common writing situations at our center, and university resources, in addition to opportunities for developing emotional intelligence. At the start of the semester, tutors were asked to submit a reflection on Canvas about their incoming abilities to meet students’ writing and emotional needs. Then, the first training module provided an overview of emotional labor and emotional intelligence, paired with an activity where tutors identified potential student and tutor emotions and subsequent actions for a variety of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 43 tutoring situations. This was to foreground the first and fourth components of emotional intelligence: the ability to identify the emotions of oneself and others and to then act on them to accomplish tasks.

The pre-semester reflective prompt as well as the emotions labor and intelligence overview and activity can be seen in Appendix A. Once tutors had a preliminary understanding of emotional labor and intelligence, they completed one Canvas module per month on a variety of topics to prepare for the intellectual labor of their positions, including working in unfamiliar genres, understanding citation styles, and conducting research. Each of these modules also included prompting for tutors to think about what emotions may come up in scenarios relating to these topics and how they may act in response, thereby continuing to work on recognizing emotions and considering how to use emotion to accomplish consultation goals. For example, in these modules, tutors reflected on what they might do if a student became frustrated learning a new citation style. The final activity for our tutors in the Fall 2024 semester was to take a section of our training manual (The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors) and to rewrite it with actionable options for practicing emotional intelligence (the prompt for which is also presented in Appendix A). This activity was intended for tutors to critically engage with training materials and apply their emotional intelligence by developing their own strategies.

Our monthly meetings kept the same idea as our Canvas modules, but focused on tutors sharing tutoring tips with one another to, 1) help develop a community of practice and 2) allow tutors see the different options for responding to emotions. With the knowledge that tutors may feel uncomfortable expressing negative emotions towards their work in front of their bosses, we also utilized breakout rooms for tutors to freely discuss their challenges with one another before bringing them for moderated discussion with input from us as administrators. Similarly, although not a part of our official training, we maintained a disposition of openness for tutors so they could employ the necessary boundaries for managing the emotional labor of their work by. These boundaries range from taking 5-10 minute breaks between back-toback consultations, to the restriction of a student’s ability to schedule appointments with a specific tutor (a rare but important measure taken to ensure tutor comfort and safety). Overall, our goal for our

Fall 2024 training was to encourage tutors to be consistently conscious of the emotions involved in tutoring, both from the students with whom they work and themselves. This is something that continued into our Winter 2025 training as a regular part of our meetings, though the larger focus was on professionalization projects (including producing training materials for other tutors, creating hand-outs for students, and presenting at a conference). One tutor (Tutor 1 in this study) spent the Winter 2025 semester planning for and filming a video for other tutors about boundary-setting for asynchronous appointments inspired by the Fall 2024 training.

Methods

Qualitative Methodology, Methods, and Data Analysis

This study used a qualitative description approach to assess student tutors’ insights about emotional intelligence, the training they received in our writing center, and other thoughts about their experience as tutors during the Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 semesters on our writing center team.

The aim of the study was to collect data in an effort to learn the opinions and perspectives of tutors in our writing center who received specific training about the relationship between emotional intelligence and the work of a writing tutor. A qualitative description approach methodology provided rich discussion points for tutors to share their experiences and hear from each other throughout the discussion. This made it possible to highlight the voices of the tutors, ensuring that the findings were grounded in their actual experiences.

The qualitative data was collected during one focus group session lasting approximately 35 minutes. The focus group included four pre-written open-ended questions. During the focus group, we anticipated the potential need to skip questions for time or to substitute some questions with relevant follow-up questions (all questions can be seen in Appendix B). Each focus group question was tailored to identify the perspectives of our writing center’s tutoring staff about their experience with their work as it relates to emotional intelligence. We recruited five (5) student tutors who started in our writing center during Fall of 2024 (when we implemented training on emotional intelligence) and who were still employed during the Summer of 2025. Of those 5, three (3) tutors were available to attend the focus group session. All tutors were

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 44 provided with a research sheet that stated the purpose of the research and were informed that participation is not mandatory, but appreciated.

Upon completion of the focus group session, the written transcript was uploaded to a password protected shared document for both Amy and Grace to review. Once the data were shared, we read through the responses and applied codes according to our own reading and analysis of the data set. We applied thematic codes to the data set using the comment function in Google Docs.

The entire transcript was coded twice. When the independent coding was complete, both team members met, using peer debriefing and support, to discuss the existing codes and their themes.

Upon completion of both rounds of coding, Grace created a table detailing the themes of the transcript data as well as relevant quotes for each theme.

Subsequently, Amy and Grace reviewed the codes, condensing repetitive codes and deciding on specific language for each code. Then, each code was categorized into its respective theme. From there, the themes were reviewed again for consensus.

Results The main themes identified in our data analysis are: 1) Tutor Emotional Satisfaction with Their Work, 2) Tutor Comfort and Rapport in Consultations, 3) Tutor Emotional Processing, and 4) Tutor Need for Breaks and Boundaries. All themes were present throughout the entire discussion.

Tutor Emotional Satisfaction with Their Work

The first identified theme is tutors’ emotional satisfaction with their work. This theme of emotional satisfaction was demonstrated in several ways. Tutor 1 expressed emotional satisfaction with her work by describing external validation she received as a result of her tutoring, I got an email from that head of the department [of a student I worked with regularly] saying, like, ‘Hey, so and so, you know, was just speaking really highly of you, and I've noticed that her writing has, you know, changed a lot since you have started, like, helping her. So I just wanted to say thank you.’ So that made me, like, feel really good. I've never really had that sort of experience before, and it just makes me happy.

Another tutor, Tutor 3, summarized her general emotional experience upon finishing a consultation as positive: “I feel inspired by most of my appointments that I have had.” These tutors specifically use terms like “inspired” and “happy,” both of which are illustrative of a pattern emerging wherein, when given the opportunity to talk about their work broadly, tutors defaulted to discussing emotionally satisfying work. All three tutors also agreed to feeling “disappointed” when encountering no-shows. Tutor 1 reflected, “...part of me is like, oh, like, they didn’t show up. Kind of bummed, or, you know, a little disappointed that I didn't get to, you know, make that connection with someone.” This disappointment may be linked to tutors’ professed enjoyment of their work.

Tutor Comfort and Rapport in Consultations

All tutors gave detailed accounts of the experiences they had when building rapport with students. The tutors situated these interactions in the context of the feelings that would arise when dealing with the unknown of a new consultation and working with a new student. The following excerpts demonstrate the ways in which our tutors utilized emotional intelligence to recognize the changes in student emotions as consultations developed: Tutor 1: At the beginning of these weekly sessions, our communication was kind of limited to just the text box, a bit like the chat. And that thing was, I think that was just a combination of, like, tech issues as well as a comfortability, you know. ...But over time, like, I felt that they were getting more comfortable. And by the end, we had the video on.

Tutor 2: But I could tell, because he was nervous about writing some stuff.

Sometimes he would go a little bit off topic, and I would kind of have to, you know, but it wasn't a big deal. But one of those times he looked at the stickers on my laptop, because I have a bunch of them, and he was like, oh, you know, I really like those stickers that you have from this one comic that I like. And he was like, that's a really good comic. And I was like, Oh, thanks, you know. And then I, you know, ended up shifting it back so we didn't talk about it. But then we had like an hour long session once, and we made a lot of progress, and it was good. And there were

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 45 like five minutes left of the session. And he looks up at me, and he goes, “Okay, we have five minutes left. Can I just talk to you about Dunmeshi right now?”

Both Tutor 1 and Tutor 2 describe situations in which students’ actions changed, signaling to the tutor that the student had become more comfortable with them. Tutors also mentioned how building rapport served to comfort them as tutors: Tutor 1: So, right beforehand, it's always like, “Oh, what’s, what's gonna be.” It could be a wild card. But usually that changes, especially, you know, once they come on and we just start talking, especially the first few minutes, we're just building rapport and I'm explaining, you know what this is. And usually, on both ends, it feels like some ease has, has kind of entered so and over time.

Tutor 3: I feel like with just writing center students, it’s kind of nerve wracking, like [Tutor 1] said, like just to the initial like waiting period of them, like, coming in, or, like, waiting in the waiting room, like on the writing center platform. It’s always, like, a little bit of a nervous feeling that I get, like, what it…what are they going to bring, like, if they don’t submit their paper beforehand, like, what? What are we going to work on? I always kind of feel, like, reassured after the first, like, “Hello.” Like, “How are you doing?” Like, “What are we working on today?”

While these tutors generally felt nervous before a tutoring session with an unfamiliar student, it appears that this feeling is normalized enough among our staff to openly discuss it. Further, just as the tutors recognized emotional changes in students, they were also able to recognize the changes in their own emotional states during the rapport-building portion of consultations.

it related to their work. We also noticed that all tutors were able to discuss the ways in which the specific training on emotional intelligence assisted them in identifying and understanding their own emotions. For instance, Tutor 1 detailed feeling validated in feeling overwhelmed by her work when talking about it with other tutors during training sessions: “Being in, like, this group setting and hearing other tutors experiences made me realize, wow, like, you know, I'm not the only [tutor] who's feeling drained. … It also made me realize, especially during, like, busier seasons, like midterms and finals, to pause and, you know, check in with myself.” Similarly, Tutor 2, described the benefit of talking about her emotions with her peers, while also considering how students may feel in consultations as well: I think having a lot of those training sessions where you gave us the opportunity to talk about emotional intelligence, and, you know, a lot of the labor that we're doing, um, gave me a good way of like, okay, here's how you can talk about this and process it, but in a way that still acknowledges right, the humanity of everyone involved, as opposed to, oh, complaining about your job, or, you know, whatever.

Tutor 3 reported that the training on emotional intelligence further encouraged her to be both confident and honest about her skills as an undergraduate student tutor: “I can still provide valuable information to [graduate students], just like with the [training] prompts, just answering those honestly, I should answer [students] honestly as well, and not like, kind of sugar coat it or make it sound like I'm older than I am.” All three tutors ultimately note how their emotional labor and emotional intelligence training caused them to change how they processed their emotions towards their work and actions they took during and between their shifts.

Tutor Emotional Processing

Tutor Need for Breaks and Boundaries

One of the most dominant themes in the conversation with the tutors was their discussion of emotional processing. This theme emerged across responses to multiple questions. All tutors discussed their feelings in relation to different scenarios during a typical semester as a writing tutor. As described above, we noticed a pattern of tutors choosing to speak about positive feelings as

A final theme that emerged throughout the focus group conversation is tutors’ need for breaks and boundaries. For example, when discussing a student not showing up to an appointment, Tutor 2 saw it as an opportunity for a break: “Alright, I can, I can breathe a little bit.” Tutor 1 also described their break-taking as a “breather:” “I could take a break, like a breath, you know, have a

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 46 little break.” While the tutors find satisfaction in their work, they also recognize it as work, as laboriously intensive. Tutor 1 then went on to specifically mention that the training on emotional awareness contributed to her own ability to see the space available to take care of herself: “I mean, I still always put … the writer first, but sometimes at the cost of, like, all right, I’m, you know, I need a break and that these trainings help me, you know, take care of myself more and check in with myself more.” In addition to taking breaks between consultations, Tutor 2 brought up establishing boundaries when being transparent with students about whether they feel capable of handling a particular writing situation: “You know, when you think you can’t handle something, I think it is important to put up that boundary, like, ‘I don’t think I’m equipped to discuss this.’” This statement was given in response to a question about what advice our tutors would give other tutors about performing emotional labor, indicating the need to set boundaries was one of Tutor 2’s primary takeaways from her training.

Discussion Some themes that emerged from the focus group data were welcome and expected. Notably, the tutors’ willingness to openly discuss their own emotions as it relates to their work (emotional processing) as well as the choice to highlight positive emotions (satisfaction with their work) when asked about impactful moments they recall from their recent work. Though not expecting to see it as a theme, we nevertheless found it promising that tutors brought up the concept of boundaries when talking about various aspects of their work. As Noreen Lape states, an “emotionally intelligent tutor follows her intuition, draws a boundary, and reports such interactions to her director” (5). Boundary-setting is a popular and well-known concept in current culture and to see tutors’ implicit and explicit connections between their emotional intelligence and feeling comfortable enough to set boundaries in the workplace is an encouraging result of our small study because it is an important way to prevent the burnout caused by emotional labor.

The implications of training tutors, specifically on emotional intelligence, are many.

First, while there are many negative depictions of and discussions around emotional labor (like those on burnout), emotional labor is not—and does not

have to be—inherently negative. We hope that our small study illuminates the fact that emotional labor may only become a negative part of our lives when we do not have control over or awareness of our emotions. Both Mannon and Nelson et al. (“Making Visbile”) contend that emotional labor is not only necessary in the writing center, but that it is the type of labor that makes tutoring fulfilling.

Ultimately, any attempt to dictate a tutor’s emotions in their workplace (e.g. through the use of politeness policies) without also providing them a space to explore and apply knowledge of those emotions can lead to suppression, avoidable outbursts, and, ultimately, burnout in their position. Hochschild explains that when workers are not prepared to engage in emotional labor, they develop one of three detrimental stances toward their work: 1) they identify too much with the emotions they perform and get burnout, 2) they distinguish between their own emotions and their display of emotions at work but feel guilty for needing to perform (see Nicklay for a discussion of how guilt impacts writing center tutors), 3) or they distinguish themselves from the performance and do not blame themselves but feel cynical about being required to perform. Hochschild recommends that “the harm in all three can be reduced … if workers could feel a greater sense of control over the conditions of their work lives” (187). In our writing center, what this has looked like for us is equipping tutors with the knowledge they need to understand when the emotional labor they are exercising is disproportionate to their role and the support to implement relevant boundaries that protect their emotional wellbeing.

One of the tutors (Tutor 3) in our focus group said checking in with herself emotionally allowed her to be “emotionally available to students.” Although this tutor did not expand on what being emotionally available to her meant, in general, being emotionally available means being ready to engage with another person on an emotional level. One way tutors demonstrate emotional availability in the writing center is through performances of empathy, which proponents of emotional intelligence training hold as one of its key benefits. Lape argues that training tutors to develop their emotional intelligence can lead to tutors performing genuine empathy for students which can then encourage students to engage in the problem-solving necessary to complete their writing tasks. Once an emotion is

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 47 identified, a tutor can verbalize observations about said emotions, question where they come from, and help students make a plan to work through/with them. Rachel Peterson, like Lape, also believes that emotional intelligence training can encourage empathy in tutors and highlights that empathy building is especially important as tutors work with diverse student populations. Peterson proclaims that the goal of emotional intelligence training for tutors should be to “help tutors interpret the words and actions of the students they work with as well as how to communicate in sensitive ways that facilitate learning” (n.p.). When tutors are empathetic, students feel safe and learning can occur (Lape).

Training tutors in emotional intelligence can be beneficial for students receiving tutoring services, and it can also help improve tutor wellbeing, something discussed by the tutors in our focus group and within a growing body of literature on tutor emotions. Responding to the proliferation of work on the stress of students, Nelson et al. (“Does Peer-to-Peer”) sought to understand the stress of tutors and found that tutors with elevated stress levels going into writing center consultations maintained that stress at the end of consultations, but tutoring did not cause elevated stress where it did not already exist. This is significant because as Nelson et al. conclude, when stressed tutors go into consultations, they “are worse at perceiving the stress of the students with whom they are working” (“Does Peer-to-Peer” 35). If tutors do not have the emotional intelligence to recognize and manage their own emotions, they are going to be less effective in their job because they are less able to respond to student concerns (see Stanford for work on coregulation in the writing center). Nelson et al. recommend that “writing center directors should think more about how we can prepare peer tutors to notice and attend to their own stress, rather than focusing on managing student writers’ stress” (“Does Peer-to-Peer” 35). This recommendation is in line with those from scholars advocating for greater attention to tutor wellbeing in writing center studies (see Degner et al., Perry) and is something we worked to foster in our training as we had tutors to discuss the emotions relating to their work in private reflections and breakout rooms. It was encouraging to hear from the tutors in our study that being able to discuss emotions openly did not equate with “complaining about [their] job,” (Tutor

2) but rather served as a valuable outlet for processing job-related stress.

Future work in the area of tutor wellbeing can include more methods to validate tutors’ experiences with learning about both emotional labor and emotional intelligence and how they see these concepts impacting their work. Specifically, the implementation of a survey instrument at multiple stages of a training during several semesters, both quantitative and qualitative, can support the more rich qualitative data in methods like focus groups and interviews. Additionally, studies that seek to understand the impact of tutors’ awareness of emotional intelligence on the students with whom they work can provide more context to the ways in which these trainings can impact student success more broadly.

Limitations We acknowledge that our small study has several limitations. First, our writing center staff was small (with eight total who began training in Fall 2024 and five who remained employed through its entirety plus the implementation of this study’s methods) and thus studying the perspectives of our staff would naturally yield a limited amount of data.

From the five tutors who could speak to the training on emotional intelligence and their perspectives on its usefulness in writing center work, due to scheduling conflicts, only three tutors were able to attend the focus group session.

Another limitation we encountered was limited time to complete the study within the regular work of operating the writing center. There were original plans to study the emotional experiences of both tutors and students who utilized the writing center’s services during the study period, however, we encountered methodological challenges with the survey system we had integrated into our scheduling service. Further, we acknowledge that the discussions and conclusions drawn from the data would be strengthened through the ability to triangulate this focus group data with other quantitative and qualitative methods like student surveys and reflective writing. Finally, longer focus group sessions or multiple sessions would have also contributed to a stronger data set. Unfortunately, coordinating schedules was an issue during the summer semester in which we collected data.

Despite these challenges, we believe that this study’s questions, rationale, and methods can serve as a strong foundation to future research on the

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 48 subject of writing center tutors’ perspectives on the emotional labor of their work.

Conclusion What we hope to contribute here is a voice in the ongoing conversation around emotional labor, emotional intelligence, and the work of writing center tutors. The training created, implemented, and the subsequent discussion from our tutors about their experiences are meant to provide a small example of what is possible in writing centers beyond the intellectual side of a tutoring session, but without attempting to overextend the bounds of our service and put tutors in the role of counselor. Existing scholarship tells us that consistency, focused training, and professional development for tutors play a key role in their ability to positively impact student success as well as their own confidence as it relates to their work (MacFarlane, Walker). Further, training that focuses on the awareness of and welcoming of emotions in the writing center is important. Given this, what we hope to demonstrate to readers here is that offering specific training on emotional intelligence, asking tutors to regularly respond to reflective prompts, and providing a space for them to openly discuss the emotions they witness and experience can lead to the overall emotional wellness that others in our field have called for both attending to and studying (Giaimo, “A Matter of Method”).

While emotions are becoming a normalized part of consultations in the writing center, those emotions are usually assigned to the student and not the tutor. Typically, we see emotional labor as the work that the tutor may have to do to address the emotions of the student with whom they are working. Here, we argue that it is not just important to normalize emotions for students but for the tutors’ themselves because in its original conception, emotional labor involves the emotional management of others and of ourselves. Ultimately, we hope readers, especially those involved in tutor training, see that the awareness of the emotions of all peoples in a writing center consultation (emotional intelligence) is important because we do tutors a disservice when we focus solely on the emotions of the students with whom they work.

Works Cited

Boquet, Elizabeth. “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 50, no. 3, Feb. 1999, pp.

463–482, https://www.jstor.org/stable/358861.

Carino, Peter. “Early Writing Centers: Towards a History.” Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no.

2, 1995, pp.

103–114, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43441973.

Davidson, Levette J., and Frederick Sorensen. “The Basic Communications Course.” College English, vol. 8, no. 2, Nov. 1946, pp. 83–86, https://www.jstor.org/stable/371349.

Degner, Hillary, et al. “Opening Closed Doors: A Rationale for Creating a Safe Space for Tutors Struggling with Mental Health Concerns or Illnesses.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015, http://www.praxisuwc.com/degner-et-al131.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Roger Powell. “States, Traits, and Dispositions: The Impact of Emotion on Writing Development and Writing Transfer Across College Courses and Beyond.” Composition Forum, vol. 34, Summer 2016, https://compositionforum.com/issue/34 /states-traits.php.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Jennifer Wells. “Tutoring the Whole Person: Supporting Emotional Development in Writers and Tutors.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 17, no.

3, 2020, pp.

16–28, https://www.praxisuwc.com/173driscoll-wells.

Giaimo, Genie N. “A Matter of Method: Wellness and Care Research in Writing Center Studies.” Wellness and Care in Writing Center Work: A WLN Digital Edited Collection, edited by Genie Nicole Giaimo, Press Books, 2021, https://ship.pressbooks.pub/writingcente rsandwellness/chapter/chapter-1/.

———. Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond. University Press of Colorado, 2023, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.399536.

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

Guy, Mary E., and Hyun Jung Lee. “How Emotional Intelligence Mediates

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 49 Emotional Labor in Public Service Jobs.”

Review of Public Personnel Administration, vol. 35, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp.

261–277, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0734371X13 514095 Hochschild, Arlie. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling.

University of California Press, 1983.

Hughes, Bradley, et. al. “What They Take with Them: Findings from the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 2010, pp.

12–46, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442343.

Iantorno, Luke A. “Positive Affective Display and Emotional Labor in the Writing Center: A Qualitative Study.” Emotions and Affect in Writing Centers, edited by Janine Morris and Kelly Concannon, Parlor Press, 2022, pp. 199–215.

Im, Hohjin, et al. “The Emotional Sponge: Perceived Reasons for Emotionally Laborious Sessions and Coping Strategies of Peer Writing Tutors.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 38, no. 1/2, 2020, pp. 203–30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27031268.

Lape, Noreen. “Training Tutors in Emotional Intelligence: Toward a Pedagogy of Empathy.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 33, no.

2, Oct. 2008, pp.

1–6, https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/wln/v33 /33.2.pdf.

Mannon, Bethany. “Centering the Emotional Labor of Writing Tutors.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 39, no. 1/2, 2021, pp.

143–68, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27172217 .

Mayer, John D., et al. “Emotional Intelligence: New Ability or Eclectic Traits?” American Psychologist, vol. 63, no. 6, Sept. 2008, pp.

503–517, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003066X.63.6.503 McBride, Maureen, et al. “Responding to the Whole Person: Using Empathic Listening and Responding in the Writing Center.”

The Peer Review, vol. 2, no. 2, Fall 2018, https://thepeerreviewiwca.org/issues/issue-2/responding-tothe-whole-person-using-empathiclistening-and-responding-in-the-writingcenter/

McFarlane, Kathryn J. “Tutoring the Tutors: Supporting Effective Personal Tutoring.”

Active Learning in Higher Education, vol.

17, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 77–88, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787415616 720 Murphy, Christina. “Freud in the Writing Center: The Psychoanalytics of Tutoring Well.”

The Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 1989, pp.

13–18, https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1195.

Nelson, Matthew, et al. “Does Peer-to-Peer Writing Tutoring Cause Stress? A MultiInstitutional RAD Study.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, 2022, pp. 21– 37, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27220881.

Nelson, Matthew, et al. “Making Visible the Emotional Labor of Writing Center Work.” The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration, edited by Courtney Adams Wooten et al., UP Colorado, 2020, pp.

161–76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv180h76 t.15.

Newman, Daniel A., et al. “Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance: The Importance of Emotion Regulation and Emotional Labor Context.” Industrial and Organizational Psychology, vol. 3, no. 2, June 2010, pp. 159– 164, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.17549434.2010.01218.x.

Nicklay, Jennifer. “Got Guilt? Consultant Guilt in the Writing Center Community.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 32, no. 1, 2012, pp.

14–27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442378.

Peterson, Rachel.

“Conversation Shaper: Emotional Intelligence as a Teachable Skill: How Empathy-Based Training Can Shape the Writing Center into an Activist Space.” The Peer Review, vol. 7, no. 2, 2023, https://thepeerreviewiwca.org/issues/issue-7-2/conversationshaper-emotional-intelligence-as-ateachable-skill-how-empathy-basedtraining-can-shape-the-writing-centerinto-an-activist-space.

Perry, Alison. “Training for Triggers: Helping Writing Center Consultants Navigate Emotional Sessions.” Composition Forum,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 50 vol.

34, Summer 2016, https://compositionforum.com/issue/34 /training-triggers.php.

Ryan, Leigh, and Lisa Zimmerelli. The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. 6th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Schutte, Nicola S., and Natasha M. Loi. “Conections between Emotional Intelligence and Workplace Flourishing.”

Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 66, Aug. 2014, pp. 134–139, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.03.0 31.

Sorensen, Frederick. “The Basic Communications Course Reconsidered.” College English, vol. 10, no. 6, March 1949, pp. 324–328, https://doi.org/10.2307/372672 Stanford, Nichole E. “Coregulatory Tutoring: Harnessing Nervous System Regulation for Comprehension.” Center Moves, no. 5, 2026, https://rmwca.wildapricot.org/Stanfordcoregulatory-tutoring-Center-Moves-5.

Walker, Ben W. “Tackling the Personal Tutoring Conundrum: A Qualitative Study on the Impact of Developmental Support for Tutors.” Active Learning in Higher Education, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 65–77, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787420926 007.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

Appendix A: Training Activities Pre-Semester Reflection on Writing Knowledge and Emotional Readiness Prior to beginning the training for Fall 2024, please answer the following two prompts: ● Writing tutors need not be subject-matter experts, but they do need knowledge of writing forms, strategies, and processes. What writing knowledge do you bring to the writing center? What areas of writing do you want to know more about? ● As many of us understand, sharing one’s writing with another person can be an emotionally vulnerable situation.

How prepared do you feel in coping with the emotional requirements of this job? What communication skills can you sharpen/rely on in the writing center?

Introduction to Emotional Labor and Emotional Intelligence Background A simple Google search for the term emotional labor will bring up several definitions, including this one: “the management of one’s emotions in order to present oneself and interact with other people in a certain way while doing a job.” An important part of the labor you perform as a writing center tutor is emotional in nature. As a tutor, you must project a caring professionalism, which includes providing cognitive and emotional support to students as they work on their writing. Writing for The Writing Center Journal, Bethany Mannon summarizes that, “During appointments, tutors draw from reserves of kindness and enthusiasm to help writers build confidence, even excitement. At times this means defusing writers’ frustrations over challenging assignments or writers’ disappointment in low grades, but even when no negative emotions arise during a conference, tutors try to spark writers’ investment in their projects and empathize with the challenges of navigating higher education” (144). Additionally, you work in the writing center to support students while managing your own emotions that come up as a college student and human being.

The first step towards performing the emotional labor of writing center work effectively is recognizing it as such. If emotional labor is what you do then emotional intelligence is what you use to perform such labor. Writing for American Psychologist, Mayer et al. summarize that emotional intelligence involves the following abilities to, “(a) perceive emotions in oneself and others accurately, (b) use emotions to facilitate thinking, (c) understand emotions, emotional language, and the signals conveyed by emotions, and (d) manage emotions so as to attain specific goals” (506). Put another way, emotional intelligence is the awareness of one’s own emotions and the emotions of others combined with the ability to manage emotions and interact with others empathetically.

Taking emotional labor and emotional intelligence together, this week’s Canvas training will ask you to, first, read through the second chapter from The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors on conducting writing center consultations. As you read through this chapter and are exposed to the tutoring strategies used within the writing center, think of where this chapter is implicitly or explicitly describing emotional labor or asking tutors to utilize emotional intelligence. Then, use your burgeoning knowledge of consultations to complete the discussion board activity on identifying emotion in the writing center.

Activity From the list of five situations adapted from our tutoring handbook, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors (Ryan and Zimmerelli), choose three. For each one, review the Feelings Wheel to help you identify what emotions the students in these situations may be feeling and what emotions you as the tutor would feel. After identifying the various emotions present in these sessions, explain why you think the student and yourself may feel those emotions. From there, use the knowledge of tutoring strategies you learned from reading the tutoring guides/prior experience with tutoring to describe how you would conduct these consultations.

In sum, answer the following questions for each situation you choose, ● What might the student be feeling? ● What might you feel as the tutor? ● Why would the student and yourself be feeling this way? ● How can you proceed with the session?

The situations are as follows:

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 52 ●

Situation 1: You are working with a student who was at the writing center door before the director opened the center. They are working on a ten-page literature review and describe their process so far: They got the research done for the literature review and finally sat down at 9:00 PM last night to write. At 5:00 AM, they realized they had good information, but they just weren't putting it together effectively. After a couple of hours of sleep, they arrived at the writing center at 9:43 AM to wait for it to open at 10:00 AM. Once you begin looking at the literature review, you see that the student has been describing their research article by article, so you tell the student that they should try to synthesize multiple authors’ ideas, instead of dedicating one paragraph to each source. The student looks at you, tears forming in their eyes, and tells you the assignment is due by the beginning of their class in 2 hours.

●

Situation 2: You are working with a regular student today. This student is the type of person who always has a thousand ideas bouncing around in their head at once. If someone asks them about subject A, they find some obscure relation to subject B and discuss that. For example, last time you saw them, they were working on a paper about Serena Williams and they began to tell you about their love of sports, especially soccer. They told you they were on their high school soccer team and then about their participation in a club sponsored by their favorite English teacher which led them into a discussion of their favorite book senior year. As they come in today, they smile at you and say, “I feel like I learn something new every time I work with you!” Their paper today is for a psychology class and is on Carl Jung’s theories. They are likely to end up talking about anything but Jung this session.

●

Situation 3: You have an asynchronous consultation where the student is writing an argumentative paper on immigration policy. According to their appointment note, the three areas they want you to focus on are: 1) if they have smooth transitions from idea to idea, 2) if they adequately describe their position after using quotations, and 3) if they implement the counterargument effectively. As you read the paper and prepare to leave your feedback, you find that their perspective on immigration is contrary to yours. You know from the writing center policies that you are not supposed to judge students or share your own opinion on their topic, and you still want to help this student with their writing. You take a break from this paper as you think about how to proceed.

●

Situation 4: You are working with a student in an online consultation who is writing a personal narrative about a difficult situation they have encountered. They chose to describe their experience with a learning disability, but are experiencing writer’s block. During the consultation, they keep their camera turned off and you hear rustling as you are working. As you discuss what they have written thus far, they respond to your feedback with sarcastic questions like, “Why do I have to explain everything? Shouldn't people just understand?” and paired with confused questions like “How personal should a ‘personal’ narrative be? How do I know what to include and what to leave out?” Finally they say, “I’m sorry, I just can’t focus on this paper right now. My sister was in a car accident last week and has been in the hospital ever since. I’m just so overwhelmed right now.”

●

Situation 5: You are working with an ESL student who has studied English grammar and is familiar with the rules who came to the writing center because their business instructor failed their paper for grammatical problems. The instructor told the student that their ideas and organization are “quite good” and is allowing them to revise the paper. The student is taking this opportunity to revise the paper, but wonders aloud if the professor may be discriminating against them because they are ESL. Still, they want a good grade on this paper because business is their major. Before beginning to read their paper, the student says to you, almost automatically, without making eye contact, “Please don’t judge my grammar. I’m horrible when it comes to writing in English.”

Final Training: Analysis and Revision of Writing Center Advice We began the semester with an activity centered around developing emotional intelligence in response to the emotional labor of writing center work. To conclude the semester, we will return to these concepts.

In her analysis of writing center tutoring manuals published in The Writing Center Journal, Bethany Mannon found that many manuals only alluded to emotional labor in the writing center or took for granted the emotionally laborious components of tutoring. This leaves our training manuals incomplete, with their authors missing an opportunity for Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 2 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Performing Emotional Labor with Emotional Intelligence in the Writing Center • 53 explicitly helping tutors not only manage but also recognize, accept, and harness emotion in tutorial sessions. This is an issue especially when manuals only address negative emotion (thereby making tutors nervous about the kinds of students they may encounter).

Now that you have more experience tutoring, you are well positioned to analyze and evaluate writing center advice as well as provide your own, which is what you will do as you participate in the following parts of this training: ● Part 1: Read. Read chapters 4 and 7 in The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. As you do so, think about the scenarios Ryan and Zimmerelli give advice for and how they approach emotion in their advice. ● Part 2: Analyze. Choose one passage you think does a good job of explaining the emotional labor or emotional intelligence required for writing center work. Using quotes from the section, provide a one paragraph analysis of why you think this is so. Then, choose a passage you think is missing attention to emotional labor or an explanation of how tutors can use their emotional intelligence to respond to students. As with the effective passage, provide a one paragraph analysis using quotations to explain why you think this second passage is less effective. ● Part 3: Rewrite. Rewrite the ineffective passage to be more explicitly attentive to emotional labor or emotional intelligence. Reproduce the passage in full and highlight your changes. ● Part 4: Explain. Explain in one paragraph your revisions and the impact reading your revised version would have on another tutor.

Appendix B: Focus Group Questions ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

What is a memorable tutoring experience that you had last semester at the center?

How do you typically feel before your tutoring sessions, and does this feeling change during or after the sessions are over?

Follow up question: How does a “no show” make you feel about your work?

How did learning about emotional labor and emotional intelligence impact your work as a tutor if at all?

Follow-up question: How, if at all, do you feel like any of the training that we did helped or hindered or had any effect on feelings you have about working with graduate students?

Follow-up question: What, if any, training that we did made you feel like it was okay to express those feelings that you had about working with the graduate students?

What recommendations or advice do you have for tutors or students who want to become peer tutors as it relates to the emotional labor involved in a tutoring session?

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 2 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF THE WRITING CENTER: ORAL HISTORIES FROM FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION Mekenzie McElroy Florida State University mlm25@fsu.edu Abstract Faculty attitudes and teaching practices significantly influence how students understand and engage with writing centers. This project uses oral history interviews with three first-year composition instructors to explore how their experiences, knowledge, and attitudes inform the ways they incorporate the writing center into their teaching. The participants (a graduate teaching assistant, a non-tenure-track instructor, and a tenured professor) shared stories that revealed how familiarity with the writing center often developed slowly and was shaped by visibility, personal relationships, and firsthand opportunities to see the center’s work. As their understanding deepened, so did their trust in the writing center’s pedagogical role, which influenced how they framed the writing center in their classes. While each instructor valued the center as a partner in supporting student writers, they differed in their approaches to integrating it into their courses, reflecting broader tensions over required visits, extra credit, and student motivation. These narratives highlight the importance of building and sustaining facultywriting center relationships through consistent outreach, shared pedagogical values, and increased visibility, which can help writing centers that have been pushed to the margins of institutional life move toward a more central role in writing instruction.

Keywords: faculty perceptions, first-year composition, oral history methodology, student engagement, faculty-writing center collaboration Introduction First-year composition courses are often where students first develop the writing strategies they will use throughout college. These courses not only introduce students to academic writing expectations but also connect them to campus resources designed to support their growth, including the campus writing center. Writing centers often offer one-on-one consultations, classroom visits, workshops, and online materials

to help students reflect on and improve their writing. But despite the range of support they provide, in many institutional contexts, writing centers are still significantly underused, especially by students in their first year of college (Bowles 14; Masiello and Hayward 57). This underutilization presents a challenge for both instructors and writing center staff, who must navigate students’ perceptions, misconceptions, and motivations to foster greater engagement with these resources.

Faculty attitudes and teaching practices can have an influence on how students understand and engage with writing centers. When instructors view the writing center as a meaningful partner in helping students grow as writers, they are more likely to help combat the perpetuated notions that writing centers still function as remedial services (Carino 105-106). Instead, they tend to talk about it in class, recommend it to students, and frame it as a valuable resource, not just for struggling writers, but for anyone looking to improve. However, not all faculty members share this positive view. Some do see writing centers primarily as remedial spaces meant for struggling students and can unintentionally discourage students who do not perceive themselves as “struggling” from seeking help. Others may simply be unsure about what the center actually does or what tutors can help with.

These misunderstandings, whether based on outdated assumptions or a lack of familiarity, can potentially make it harder for students to take advantage of the support available. For first-year students in particular, many of whom are still adjusting to the expectations of college-level writing, those mixed messages can make the writing center feel irrelevant or even intimidating, which may lead to lower rates of use.

During my time as both an undergraduate and graduate peer tutor at the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) University Writing Center (UWC), I grew accustomed to this variability firsthand.

Through informal conversations with faculty in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, I learned about faculty perspectives that were quite revealing and troubling. These conversations were meant to

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 55 help the UWC learn how faculty were engaging with the center and how they could better shape the practices to support student needs. Most faculty expressed general support for the UWC, yet many were unsure about what actually happens in a consultation. When asked to describe its purpose or what a student might experience, several hesitated, offered vague answers, or admitted they were unsure. This gap extended beyond logistics to a deeper misunderstanding of the UWC’s pedagogical role in student development.

Only one instructor clearly articulated that the UWC isn’t a “fix-it shop,” a persistent misconception about writing centers that frames writing centers as remedial services for grammar correction and proofreading (North 435). Writing center pedagogy instead emphasizes student ownership, collaboration, and long-term skill development through conversation and revision (Lunsford 5-6). The instructor who made this distinction had prior first-hand experience working at the UWC, making her insight an exception rather than the norm.

More striking than the lack of knowledge was how it shaped faculty engagement with the writing center itself. One professor confessed, “A lot of my reluctance to really talk about the writing center a ton to my students is because I’m afraid I’m going to tell them the wrong information.”

This hesitation revealed a significant barrier: when instructors are unsure about what the UWC offers, they avoid promoting it altogether. This silence matters. For many students, particularly in first-year composition, the instructor is their primary source of information about campus resources. If instructors say little to nothing about the writing center, there’s a chance that students may never know the center exists.

During my four years as a tutor, I saw the consequences of this disconnect. Students arrived with wildly different expectations: some expecting full-scale editing, others assuming they could drop off papers for review. Most had only heard of the UWC when their professor mentioned it in passing or offered extra credit, and even then, they did not know what to expect. Engagement with writing support was inconsistent and, seemingly, was closely tied to how (or whether) faculty discussed the UWC in class.

These experiences led me to consider how faculty perceptions shape student access to writing support. Instructors can either reinforce or

challenge misconceptions, influencing whether students approach the center with curiosity or avoid it entirely. While existing research offers insight into faculty attitudes and strategies for promoting writing center usage, there is limited research focused specifically on first-year composition instructors. Given the pivotal role these courses play in shaping students’ academic writing identities, understanding how instructors in these classrooms promote writing center engagement and how their pedagogical values shape that process is especially important.

Understanding this dynamic is crucial for creating equitable and effective writing support, particularly for first-year students still developing their academic identities.

This study examines how first-year composition instructors at UCF perceive the UWC and how those perceptions inform the ways they incorporate it into their teaching. By identifying strategies that effectively encourage student engagement, this research seeks to make writing centers more visible, accessible, and integrated into writing instruction, starting with the faculty who introduce students to them.

Writing Centers and Academic Success The role of writing centers in nurturing both writing proficiency and overall academic success is well-documented. Research by scholars such as Jesús José Salazar, Joseph Zuccarelli et al., Frank Devlin, Lori Salem, Carol Trosset et al., and Muriel Harris demonstrates that writing centers not only improve students’ writing outcomes, but also promote independence and help close achievement gaps, particularly for underrepresented populations.

Numerous studies demonstrate the benefits of writing center visits on student performance. Salazar’s 2021 meta-analysis of 82 studies revealed that students who used writing centers performed 31.2% better on writing assessments than their peers who did not, with 40.6% of struggling writers showing significant gains (70). Similarly, Zuccarelli et al.’s 2022 study found that students with multiple visits achieved higher grades in writing-intensive courses in addition to their improved writing skills (7). The frequency of visits is crucial, as students who engaged with writing centers more regularly demonstrated greater improvements than occasional or non-users.

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 56 Data provided by UCF’s University Writing Center shows similar patterns. Between 2019 and 2024, students who visited the UWC while taking Composition II were twice as likely to successfully complete the course. Additionally, more data showed that students in four-year programs who used the UWC during their first year had a 96% retention rate, with 62.6% graduating within four years. Students who did not attend the UWC within their first year saw lower rates: a 91.8% retention rate, with 58.7% of these students graduating within four years. Though external factors influence these numbers and causality cannot be claimed, the data suggest a positive association between writing center engagement and academic success.

Importantly, the benefits of writing center usage extend beyond remedial support. Frank Devlin’s student survey revealed that even highachieving students saw improvements in thesis clarity, organization, and argument structure following tutoring sessions (152). This supports Salazar’s argument that early engagement with writing center tutors can help students develop more effective writing practices, which they can carry throughout their academic careers (Salazar 76). These studies suggest that writing centers provide support for students at any skill level, enhancing both the mechanics and conceptual aspects of writing.

Writing centers also play a critical role in supporting overall academic achievement in underrepresented and diverse student populations.

Studies indicate they can help close achievement gaps for first-generation, minority, and multilingual students (Salazar 77; Salem 158; Trosset 42). By offering targeted support in writing-intensive courses, writing centers can help “reduce the achievement gap in higher education for those diverse students who may be struggling writers” (Salazar 78). Salem and Trosset et al. emphasize that international students and English language learners disproportionately benefit from writing center visits (Salem 158; Trosset et al. 40).

However, Salem also emphasizes the need to adapt traditional, non-directive writing center pedagogy to better support diverse learners (162). These studies suggest the importance of writing centers in promoting academic equity, as they provide resources that help level the playing field for students from diverse backgrounds.

Faculty Attitudes Toward Writing Instruction Faculty attitudes toward writing significantly influence how writing is taught, discussed, and valued in the classroom. In writing-intensive disciplines, instructors often embrace writing as a process and emphasize revision, critical thinking, and development (Murray 17; Tobin 5). These instructors frame writing as a skill students develop over time and actively mentor students through the iterative stages of writing. As a result, students understand writing as a means of engaging with ideas, testing arguments, and refining their thinking.

Not all instructors share this perspective, though. Some instructors hold traditional views of writing instruction that emphasize grammar, mechanics, and adherence to formal academic standards. While this approach can be important for helping students build foundational skills, it may overlook the more complex and iterative aspects of writing, such as critical thinking, argument development, and revision (Tobin 11; Murray 20). Consequently, students in these environments may come to see writing as a formulaic task rather than an evolving process of discovery and intellectual growth.

Faculty Understanding of Writing Centers Faculty understanding of writing centers, often shaped by their education and pedagogical values, significantly influences how they promote writing resources to their students. Those who see writing centers as collaborative, developmental spaces are more likely to integrate them into their teaching.

Others, however, maintain a remedial view and perceive writing centers as spaces for grammar help or struggling students (Harris 36; Masiello and Hayward 57). This deficit model has the potential to stigmatize writing center use and deter students from seeking help.

This disconnect can hinder students’ willingness to seek help, particularly for those who already feel insecure about their writing abilities. At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Malcolm Hayward found that many faculty saw grammar and punctuation as the writing center’s primary domain (5). This narrow view may lead some instructors to dismiss writing centers as irrelevant to their course goals. Similarly, Wendy Bishop notes that some instructors view writing centers as threats to their classrooms, and that others are “worried about peer tutors and the coordination’s potentially subversive

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 57 interactions with their students” (32). This tension is familiar at UCF’s UWC, where tutors are trained to avoid overstepping by not attempting to teach course content or rhetorical concepts. These boundaries, while helpful, speak to a broader issue of mistrust or misunderstanding.

Further, a lack of awareness regarding the range of services offered by writing centers can contribute to misconceptions among faculty. Lori Salem suggests faculty may not fully understand how writing centers can complement their instructional approaches, leading to underutilization of these resources (152). Many instructors are unaware that writing center services often extend beyond tutoring sessions, including workshops, writing groups, and online resources.

This gap in understanding can hinder effective collaboration between faculty and writing centers, ultimately impacting student engagement and success.

Strategies for Encouraging Students to Use the Writing Center To encourage students to visit the writing center, instructors may benefit from intentional, strategic approaches. Successful strategies rely on faculty involvement, motivational techniques, and clear communication of the center's value. Two primary approaches emerge in the literature: writing center promotion in the classroom and the use of incentives and mandates to increase visits.

Promotion in the Classroom

Promoting the writing center within the classroom can normalize its use and reduce student anxiety.

The instructor plays a key role in this aspect of learning because their perceptions of the writing center influence how they discuss it, and when they can help demystify the writing center, their students feel more inclined to take advantage of their services (Harris 40; Bishop 32). Ryan and Kane found that interactive demonstrations of writing center sessions helped students reframe the writing center as a supportive, nonjudgmental space (159).

Similarly, UCF’s University Writing Center offers classroom visits where tutors come into their classroom and give a presentation about the UWC and its services, which can help alleviate some of the unease about visiting a tutoring service.

Incentives and Mandates

Several studies indicate that mandatory writing center visits significantly increase continued student participation (Clark 34; Bishop 37; Gordon 161). Irene Clark’s research emphasizes that students often need a direct push, such as a requirement from their teacher, to attend writing center sessions (34). This aligns with the idea that many students, though aware of the benefits of writing center support, often fail to visit voluntarily due to time constraints or lack of self-motivation.

Similarly, Bishop’s survey findings show that students overwhelmingly attended the writing center when their instructor required or strongly suggested it, underscoring the critical role teachers play in driving engagement (37). Barbara Lynn Gordon found something similar, stating that, when students are required to use the writing center, they “come to appreciate a service that many would not have otherwise tried” (161).

Additionally, Clark and Bishop found that a large percentage of students who did visit appreciated the support and were likely to recommend the center to others, suggesting that mandates help bridge the gap between awareness and action.

Integrating a writing center into a visit can also make writing center use feel integral rather than punitive. Bishop describes a TA who required students to visit the writing center for their first paper, and then write a reflection on the experience (38). This approach made the visit part of the course’s writing and revision process. UCF’s UWC supports similar efforts by providing faculty with examples of assignments that integrate writing center visits, both for required and optional credit, in a document titled “Integrating the University Writing Center into Your Course.” These tools help faculty integrate the center in meaningful, pedagogically aligned ways.

Methodology This study documents and analyzes firsthand accounts of how three first-year composition instructors at the University of Central Florida perceive and incorporate the University Writing Center into their teaching practices. Grounded in oral history methodology, this research prioritizes the lived experiences and perspectives of faculty members to better understand their relationships with the UWC. This project was submitted to the University of Central Florida Institutional Review Board (IRB) under form HRP-250, Request for Not Human Subjects Research (NHSR) Determination, and

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 58 was determined not to constitute human subjects research. Accordingly, this study was conducted in compliance with institutional guidelines for research ethics.

My choice of oral history was informed by my experience as a writing center tutor and by calls within the field for more narrative-based, qualitative work. Scholars have emphasized the need for research that captures the lived realities of writing center stakeholders, including their beliefs, memories, and motivations that shape how they interact with writing support (Hallman et al.; Smitherman 1; McKinney, Strategies for Writing Center Research 62). Oral history allows for the collection of reflective, participant-driven narratives that situate individual experiences within broader institutional and pedagogical contexts. As Carey Smitherman explains, this method creates space for stories that might otherwise go unrecorded, especially about institutional history and faculty engagement (1-2). Valerie Raleigh Yow similarly argues that the subjectivity in oral history is a strength, revealing how people make meaning of their experiences over time (25). That emphasis on reflection, interpretation, and context makes oral history particularly useful for this project.

Following Smitherman’s model from the Writing Centers Research Project, this study emphasizes the preservation and interpretation of faculty voices as a way to better understand the evolving role of the UWC at UCF. Rather than aiming for generalizability, the goal is to foreground the depth and complexity of individual perspectives. Participants are positioned not as data sources, but as co-narrators of a shared institutional story that reveals both the practical strategies instructors use and the pedagogical values that inform their engagement with writing support services.

The research is guided by the following questions: ● How do these FYC instructors perceive the role and effectiveness of the UWC? ● In what ways do these instructors incorporate the UWC into their courses, assignments, and instructional practices? ● What barriers do these instructors perceive in encouraging student engagement with the UWC? ● What suggestions do these instructors have for improving UWC services and faculty collaboration?

These questions reflect years of conversations I have had with both students and instructors, which made clear how faculty understanding of the UWC shapes if, when, and why students seek writing support. The methodology centers those instructor experiences, with the aim of bringing their perspectives into larger conversations about writing center integration and visibility.

Participants

This study includes interviews with three instructors who currently teach or have recently taught First-Year Composition courses at UCF. I selected participants from a range of instructional roles within the department: one graduate teaching assistant, one non-tenure-track instructor, and one tenured professor. Each has engaged with the UWC in some way, whether through assigning extra credit for visits, recommending the center to students, or participating in center-led workshops and events.

My goal in choosing this group was not to produce a representative sample in the statistical sense, but rather to gather a range of perspectives shaped by different levels of experience, job roles, and relationships to the UWC. Each instructor brings their own institutional knowledge, teaching philosophy, and set of assumptions about writing support, and it is those nuances I wanted to capture.

Data Collection and Analysis

I conducted individual interviews over Zoom, each lasting around 50 minutes, and with consent, the interviews were audio-recorded. They were semistructured and open-ended, allowing for rich, narrative responses while giving participants freedom to guide the conversation. I used guiding questions to prompt reflection on their teaching, their involvement with the UWC, and their departmental experiences, while encouraging them to share stories, memories, and reflections in their own words.

The following questions guided the conversations: 1. What kinds of experiences have you had with writing centers, as a student, instructor, or in any other role here at UCF or at any other university?

2. If someone new to the department asked you what the UWC is or what it is for, how would you describe it?

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 59 3. Can you tell me the story of your relationship with the UWC: how it started, how it has evolved, and how your view of the center has changed over time?

4. Can you walk me through a time when you brought the UWC into your teaching?

Maybe through an assignment or extra credit? What worked? What did not?

5. Can you think of a student whose writing changed noticeably after visiting the UWC? What happened?

6. Did that experience shape your sense of what the UWC can (or cannot) do for students?

7. Have you ever had a moment where getting students to use the UWC did not go the way you hoped? What did that experience show you?

8. When you think about what the UWC does—or should do—how well do you think it fits with the goals you have for your students’ writing?

9. If you could tell the UWC one story from your teaching that captures what you and your students need most from a writing support service, what would it be?

10. When planning out your class, how did you decide to incorporate the UWC into your course?

After each interview, I transcribed the recordings following Smitherman’s recommendation. This practice helps capture the tone, nuance, and meaning that might be lost with outside transcription, especially when participants express sarcasm, hesitation, or emotion (Smitherman 3). After interviews were transcribed, I began analysis by closely reading each transcript, making initial notes on recurring ideas, surprising insights, and emotionally resonant moments. I compiled responses into a table organized by question, which allowed me to compare how instructors’ experiences and perceptions aligned or diverged.

Using this table, I conducted a thematic analysis to identify patterns across narratives. I tagged repeated phrases and concepts such as “student resistance,” “extra credit,” “collaboration,” “misunderstanding,” and “relationship.” These were grouped into three broader themes: experience with and knowledge about writing centers, attitudes toward the UWC, and integration of the UWC into the classroom.

These themes allowed me to further dissect the interviews to look for things that might have been overlooked when creating the table.

Throughout the analysis, I treated the transcripts not as decontextualized data, but as reflective stories, guided by oral history’s emphasis on context, narrative, and meaning-making over quantification. Rather than abstracting findings, I aimed to preserve the specificity of each voice, noting where stories complemented or challenged one another. This interpretive approach revealed not only what instructors believe about the UWC, but how those beliefs formed over time and why they mattered to their pedagogy.

Oral Histories This section presents the findings from three oral history interviews conducted with instructors who have previously taught first-year composition at the University of Central Florida. To protect the privacy of participants, pseudonyms are used throughout. The participants included one graduate teaching assistant (“Reagan”), one non-tenuretrack instructor (“Nathan”), and one tenured professor (“Sara”). Each instructor brought a unique perspective informed by their institutional roles, teaching experience, and varying degrees of engagement with the University Writing Center, which shaped how they talked about the center’s role in student writing development. These stories reflect a range of insights, sometimes overlapping, into how faculty members understand, interact with, and integrate the writing center into their teaching practices.

Rather than aiming to generalize findings across the entire Department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF, these oral histories prioritized depth and participants’ individual experiences.

Open-ended conversation allowed instructors to articulate their understanding and perception of the UWC in their own words, eliciting reflection, memory, and personal interpretation in the process.

The result is a set of narratives that reveal not only practical concerns, but also deeper insights into pedagogical values, assumptions, and institutional relationships.

In this section, I present the narratives of all three participants to discuss the three key points of focus: knowledge of the UWC, attitudes toward the UWC, and the ways in which the UWC is integrated into courses. These subsections allow for the cross-discussion of the experiences of these

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 60 instructors, providing a fuller picture of their perceptions of the UWC.

Knowledge and Experiences

Across all three interviews, participants described their knowledge of the writing center as deepening only after entering professional or graduate-level writing instruction roles. Each instructor’s path to understanding the UWC reflects a broader issue in writing center scholarship: the center often only becomes visible and meaningful to instructors when they are either directly involved with it or have explicit opportunities to observe and reflect on its practices.

Reagan Reagan’s early interactions with writing centers as a student were, by her own account, forgettable. She described her early exposure to writing centers, both at Valencia College while completing her associate’s degree and at UCF as an English major, as minimal and “not worth recounting.” Like many students, she didn’t hear much about the UWC until she started taking classes in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, which houses UCF’s writing center. During this time, her sessions focused on drafting, refinement, and citations, but she referred to these encounters as “general and textbook,” noting that she did not truly engage with the center on a deeper level until she worked there for one semester while enrolled in ENC 4275: Theory & Practice of Tutoring Writing, the course required for all new tutors at the UWC. Through this course and her three weekly required practicum hours, Reagan began to understand the writing center beyond its surfacelevel image as a generic tutoring service. She was able to understand the work tutors did outside of the standardized sessions she experienced and how the center functioned as a pedagogical and communal space. Reagan said that her relationship with the writing center “became a lot more nuanced and more frequent” once she became an instructor.

For Reagan, teaching shifted her relationship with the UWC from passive observer to active partner, and it was that shift that shifted her view of the center to a meaningful resource for both her students and her teaching.

Nathan Nathan expressed a somewhat similar trajectory.

He didn’t recall the writing center being a part of

his undergraduate experience, stating that his first interactions with a writing center were while he was completing his graduate coursework at UCF. During this time, he started to learn about its purpose and potential through conversations with those involved in the UWC. When asked to describe the UWC, rather than framing it as tethered to the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, he emphasized its reach across disciplines and levels of experience, describing it as “a resource for everybody at the university level, regardless of what they’re working on.”

This knowledge and understanding of the broader institutional role come directly from hearing from people who have spent years thinking about the UWC’s purpose and place in the university community. While observing former UWC Director Mark Hall’s composition course, Nathan noted his consistent promotion of the writing center as a university-wide resource, which first sparked this newfound understanding.

Throughout his time working as an instructor in the department, Nathan has observed various community-oriented efforts made by the UWC that helped reinforce his understanding that the UWC is there for more than just helping composition students.

Sara Sara’s experience was shaped by visibility and proximity. She did not hear about writing centers until late in her undergraduate education, when she was applying to graduate programs and had a friend who worked at her university’s writing center.

During her subsequent graduate programs, she had minimal contact with the writing center, but she started to learn more about it and the practices of giving feedback to student writing because her dissertation chair was the writing center director. It was not until she arrived at UCF, where the University Writing Center was often praised and highly regarded, that she began to develop a deeper awareness.

When Sara first joined the faculty at UCF, the UWC was housed on the first floor of a building that no longer exists. She described being put off by the UWC’s physical space, which appeared undesirable and inaccessible. Her earliest impression of the space was less than inviting: “The door to the writing center looked like a fire door, like you shouldn’t be in there,” she recalled. That physical separation felt like a barrier to

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 61 understanding the writing center’s practices, and she admitted to not sending her students because she “didn’t know what was going on in there” and “didn’t know what to tell them.” A few years later, the UWC moved to its current, more visible location, where most of the wall separating the space from the hallway is covered in large windows, creating a fishbowl effect. The new space allowed her to see the work of the center more clearly, and she was more open to learning about it, especially after conversations with the administrators and tutors who worked there. She noted, “Being able to talk to the tutors and learn about what was actually happening in the center... really helped. It was community that shaped the center and made it what it was.”

Attitudes

Despite different starting points, all three instructors viewed the UWC positively, seeing it as valuable for student development, collaborative learning, and pedagogical alignment. Their accounts suggest that attitudes toward the writing center are shaped not only by institutional messaging but also by personal interactions, with seeing the UWC in action reinforcing its pedagogical value and the importance of visibility and outreach in shaping faculty perceptions.

Reagan Now an avid supporter of the writing center, Reagan emphasized that her appreciation for it grew in parallel with her development as an instructor. Equipped with her knowledge of the UWC’s pedagogical practices from her time in the tutor training course, she had a foundational idea of how it could work in tandem with her teaching.

But, as she spent more time in the classroom, she began to see it not only as a place where students could get help with unfamiliar genres or citation formats, but as a partner in her own teaching, especially in moments when her students needed perspectives beyond her own.

Reagan’s positive attitude toward the writing center was reinforced throughout her semester of teaching, but especially so by an experience one of her students had when visiting the UWC. This student struggled with time management and organization, so Reagan was quick to encourage him to visit the UWC when an extra credit opportunity arose. After his session, the student mentioned how talking to the tutor helped

him work through his ideas and ground him, and he felt more eager to write and complete what he could. For Reagan, hearing about this experience reinforced the idea that the writing center is helpful for things outside of writing, and students are receiving positive experiences that they can take with them, rather than just knowledge they can use to complete an assignment.

Nathan Generally, Nathan feels an appreciation for the writing center and its work. He expressed that the UWC’s work mirrors his own teaching philosophy, particularly in how it emphasizes student decisionmaking, rhetorical inquiry, and engagement with writing as a process. He sees the center as a site of dialogic learning that complements his own goals for his course, and he values its role in shaping reflective and independent student writers.

Additionally, Nathan discussed the evolution of the UWC into a more outward-facing resource, increasingly focused on community engagement—a shift he considers significant. He recognized that the UWC goes beyond just helping students in their coursework and has evolved into an entity that is more centered on reaching out to the greater UCF community than it ever has been.

Nathan spoke positively of this evolution, even commenting on his desire to attend one of the more popular community events the UWC hosts: the Halloween Open Mic Night. This recognition from someone outside of the writing center is rare and displays a true attentiveness to the ongoings of the UWC. Sara Initially skeptical, Sara came to value the UWC after seeing its practices firsthand and meeting tutors who told her about the inner workings and goals of the writing center. She described this as a turning point in her attitude toward the UWC because their emphasis on writing as conversation closely matched her view of writing as a community activity. Through conversations with her students who worked as tutors, she learned they have the experience, language, and tools to offer the kind of feedback that traditional classroom peer review often lacks. Sara stated that witnessing and engaging with students who were passionate about the community that shapes the writing center is exactly what makes her want to partner with the UWC and send her students there.

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 62 Another experience that helped her feel more confident in the UWC’s work involved a student with aphasia, a communication disorder that can impact spoken and written language. This student struggled with getting her thoughts to come out as she intended, resulting in writing that was not entirely clear or cohesive. Sara sent her to the writing center to see if there was any support the tutors could give her, and a tutor told her about using dictation tools to assist in her writing. This was something Sara had mentioned to her, but after hearing it from the tutor, the student seemed more willing to try it out. The resulting writing was noticeably better. There were still some issues with it, but it was more coherent, and the student was more confident in herself. The way this accessibility issue was handled pleasantly surprised Sara, and she now feels entirely comfortable sending students to the UWC without having to worry about following up with them on the access end.

Integration of the UWC into the Classroom

All three instructors valued the UWC as a pedagogical partner, but integrated it differently based on beliefs about motivation, autonomy, and classroom culture: Reagan emphasized structured support for difficult assignments, Nathan prioritized students’ internal motivation and choice, and Sara focused on exposure and relationships, presenting the writing center as one of several learning options.

Reagan Reagan initially provided information about the UWC in her syllabus and encouraged students to visit, but she did not have it integrated into any of her assignments or tied to a grade. GTAs were encouraged to sign up for a time slot to bring their students to the UWC for a workshop of their choosing, so this is how Reagan opted to integrate the UWC into her course. During this workshop, she noticed that her students were engaged, asking active questions, and taking notes. She was pleased with the success of the workshop and remarked that she had students refer back to what they learned during that workshop throughout the semester.

Reagan decided to offer credit for a UWC visit halfway through the semester, when her students were struggling with a specific assignment.

She recognized their need for extra support and created an extra credit assignment that required

them to attend a session and reflect on the feedback they received. This encouraged a fraction of her students to go, but even then, she recognized that they were simply doing it for the extra credit and not applying what they learned to their assignment.

Reagan noted that students would write what they were told to do in their required reflections and then would not follow through when working on their final draft. She expressed disappointment, but not surprise, with this outcome because she wanted her students to understand the value of the peer feedback they were receiving. However, she is hopeful they will take that experience with them as they continue through their time at UCF and maybe return to the UWC one day.

Nathan Nathan, by contrast, avoids assigning points or providing course credit for writing center visits. He wants students to view the UWC as something worth seeking out on their own, not because they have to, but because they see the value in it. For him, requiring visits or offering extra credit risks undermining the center’s purpose by framing it as something students use only if there is a reward attached. He will still encourage specific students to attend if he feels they might need extra support, but he will not tie any sort of credit to visiting.

Instead, he invites tutors to do classroom visits, which are presentations a representative from the UWC gives to introduce the writing center and its services to the students. Because these are tutor-led, students get to actually see who they could be working with, putting faces to this entity they have likely only briefly heard about in class.

Nathan mentioned the positive, inviting attitudes tutors have when they visit his classes, and credits that as part of the reason many of his students attend.

Interestingly, when discussing the support his students need, Nathan admitted there was a potential place for extra credit or points tied to an assignment. He acknowledged that the most important conversations he felt like he was having with his students were the ones where they got to think through their research topics and talk through some of the avenues to explore. Then, he mentioned knowing that these conversations could happen at the UWC and even started to say he wished there was a way to make that happen before stopping himself and admitting that it could be the extra credit or points that could get students there.

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 63 Sara Sara’s practices fall somewhere between the others.

When she last taught first-year composition, she was still reluctant to include the UWC in her course beyond a syllabus mention or referring a student.

She was still unsure what the tutors did, what happened behind that “fire door,” and what to tell her students about the UWC. Without being able to tell her students that she was sure it could help them, she opted not to offer extra credit or any points toward an assignment for attending.

However, after a few years of learning more about the UWC and its practices, she has started to integrate it into the other courses she teaches in ways that can be used when she next teaches composition. For each major assignment, Sara offers her students the opportunity to visit the UWC to discuss the assignment as an alternative to one-on-one conferences. She wants her students to discuss their writing with someone outside of the course, so she tries to push them to go to the UWC for that perspective. She still has some students who opt to have the one-on-one with her, but she has noticed that, more recently, her students choose to go to the writing center.

Discussion Across all three conversations, one of the clearest patterns was that instructors did not enter their roles with a full understanding of what the University Writing Center does. Instead, their knowledge of the UWC grew gradually, shaped by experience, observations, and personal relationships. Visibility was one of the biggest factors: Reagan’s experience tutoring in the center gave her firsthand knowledge; Nathan’s exposure to writing center work through his involvement in the department shaped his understanding; and Sara’s impression shifted when the UWC moved to a more visible, open location and she began to directly interact with tutors when they were her students. Each instructor’s understanding of the UWC became more nuanced once they had the opportunity to witness or participate in the center’s practices. This suggests that visibility, both physical and rhetorical, remains an important factor in how faculty come to understand writing centers.

This is far from a new development in writing center studies. This finding aligns with scholarship on the persistent “invisibility” of writing centers within academic institutions. In Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers, Jackie Grutsch

McKinney argues that writing centers often operate on the margins of institutional awareness, described through generic narratives that obscure their actual practices (7). The oral histories in this project reflect that peripheral positioning: instructors’ knowledge grew through informal encounters, personal observation, and former employment.

Though their attitudes were shaped by different experiences, each instructor expressed positive views of the UWC. Reagan saw the center as a space that addressed student needs empathetically and promoted collaborative thinking. Nathan appreciated the UWC’s alignment with his teaching philosophy, particularly its focus on student-driven decision-making and reflection.

Sara ultimately came to view the University Writing Center as a community-oriented space that mirrors her belief in writing as a social, dialogic process. In each case, faculty trust in the center grew when they were able to see how its pedagogy aligned with their own. Personal connections with tutors and staff— whether through classroom visits, faculty meetings, or in-session collaboration—helped reinforce this trust and moved the writing center from the periphery to a central pedagogical partner.

This trust-building process aligns with existing research that emphasizes the importance of shared pedagogical values and relationship-building between faculty and writing centers. As Lea Masiello and Malcolm Hayward describe while presenting the findings of a survey focused on the bridges between the writing center in the classroom, these networks of trust come out of discussions of “shared pedagogical beliefs about writing instruction” (73). When instructors perceive that writing centers share their commitment to student-centered, reflective learning, they are more likely to view the center as an ally rather than an add-on or alternative. This underscores the importance of writing centers actively cultivating faculty relationships as part of their outreach.

The integration of the UWC into their courses is where the instructors started to diverge the most, demonstrating varying strategies that reflect their broader beliefs about student motivation. Nathan deliberately avoids tying assignment points or extra credit to writing center visits, arguing that doing so might give his students the wrong message about the value of the UWC. He emphasized organic, peer-based encouragement instead. Reagan takes a more

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 64 adaptive approach. Initially providing students with information and encouragement, she began integrating the UWC more formally after noticing where students were struggling. Sara admitted to barely mentioning the UWC in her classes during her early years at UCF because she was unfamiliar with it and didn’t want to send her students there without knowing what actually happens in the space. But now, after learning more about the UWC and being able to see the tutors in action, she has fully integrated it into her upper-level courses, encouraging students to visit the center as an option for feedback on major assignments. Despite these differences, all three instructors emphasized that students benefit most when writing center visits are framed as authentic, low-stakes opportunities for dialogue about writing, not as hoops to jump through.

The instructors’ varying strategies for integrating the UWC into their courses reflect ongoing tensions in writing center discourse around required visits and assessment. These instructors mentioned a desire for their students to get something out of their visits to the writing center, and followed it up with a disappointment that students often go just for extra credit and coast through the session without seeming to apply what they learned to their subsequent assignments. This conversation is not new. The drawbacks of requiring students to visit the writing center have been discussed since Stephen North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center,” where he states, “Occasionally, we manage to convert such writers from people who have to see us to people who want to, but most often they either come as if for a kind of detention, or they drift away” (440). It is difficult to get students to understand the value of the writing center if they do not attend tutoring sessions, but if they are not required to attend, or if they are and are begrudgingly going, they might not get the desired outcome, making it difficult to find the right balance between requiring and encouraging students to attend the writing center.

It is important to note the limitations of this project. As previously stated, these are just the accounts of three instructors in a department of more than 50 faculty, adjuncts, and graduate teaching assistants who all have their own experiences with, knowledge of, and perceptions of the University Writing Center. Additionally, the institutional context of this study is crucial to mention. Since the Department of Writing and

Rhetoric split from the English Department and inherited the UWC in 2010, it has maintained a strong relationship with the center. This departmental support includes administrative collaboration, shared pedagogical values, and, in some cases, shared personnel, such as graduate teaching assistants who may tutor in the UWC as a part of their assistantships or faculty who have previously worked in the UWC or other writing centers during their graduate programs. As a result, the overwhelmingly positive attitudes expressed by participants may reflect this supportive environment rather than a broader institutional consensus. Future research that includes participants from a wider range of disciplines could provide a more comprehensive picture of how writing centers are perceived across the university and what barriers to integration exist outside of writing-focused departments.

Conclusion This project began with a personal observation: faculty perceptions appear to significantly influence whether and how students engage with the writing center. Through oral history interviews with three instructors from the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, this study suggests that while perceptions of the University Writing Center are generally positive, they are not immediate or automatic. They are a result of deliberate relationship-building, pedagogical alignment, and increased visibility.

Instructors who had opportunities to observe, participate in, or work within the UWC developed deeper trust in its mission and were more likely to recommend it to students in authentic, meaningful ways. They become not only advocates, but collaborators with the UWC. These conversations provided three key insights that I feel are important for writing center practitioners to keep in mind when trying to cultivate relationships with faculty: (1) faculty members understand the writing center through continued, individual experiences; (2) reluctance isn’t always active resistance; and (3) writing center engagement is tied to pedagogical identity, not always their perceptions of the UWC. Additionally, this research serves as a starting point for further examination into faculty perceptions of writing centers. This study focused on the perspectives of three instructors in a specific department at one university, but if there is a need for future research, this provides a foundation for

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 65 research that considers faculty in different disciplines, potentially across various universities.

This research could paint a fuller picture of the external perceptions of the writing center, which was a goal I had when I started looking into this line of inquiry in 2021. In this way, the project not only sheds light on current perceptions, but also lays the groundwork for a broader, more comprehensive understanding of how writing centers are viewed and valued across higher education.

The insight this project provides has broader implications for writing center practice and institutional strategy. It reinforces the idea that writing centers cannot afford to remain peripheral or passive in faculty engagement. Instead, centers should proactively cultivate relationships with instructors through sustained, dialogue-based partnerships that acknowledge faculty as costakeholders in student development. Tutor classroom visits, co-curricular programming, and even informal chats with instructors can serve as valuable ways to build trust and demonstrate pedagogical alignment.

Works Cited Bishop, Wendy. “Bringing Writers to the Center: Some Survey Results, Surmises, and Suggestions.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 1990, pp. 31–44, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43444136.

Clark, Irene Lurkis. “Leading the Horse: The Writing Center and Required Visits.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 5/6, no. 2/1, 1985, pp.

31–34, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43441808.

Devlin, Frank. “The Writing Center and the Good Writer.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 144–163, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442621.

Gordon, Barbara Lynn. “Requiring First-Year Writing Classes to Visit the Writing Center: Bad Attitudes or Positive Results?”

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol.

36, no. 2, 2008, pp. 154–163, https://doi.org/10.58680/tetyc20086887.

Hallman, Rebecca, et al. “Re(Focusing) Qualitative Methods for Writing Center Research.”

The Peer Review, vol. 0, no. 0, 2015, https://thepeerreview-

iwca.org/issues/issue-0/refocusingqualitative-methods-for-writing-centerresearch.

Harris, Muriel. “Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors.” College English, vol.

57, no. 1, 1995, pp. 27–42, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/378348.

Hayward, Malcolm. “Assessing Attitudes Towards the Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, 1983, pp. 1–10, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43444105.

Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1991, pp. 3– 10, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43441887.

Masiello, Lea, and Malcolm Hayward. “The Faculty Survey: Identifying Bridges Between the Classroom and the Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, 1991, pp.

73–79. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43440550.

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

McKinney, Jackie Grutsch. Strategies for Writing Center Research. Parlor Press, 2016.

Murray, Donald. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” The Leaflet, New England Association of Teachers of English, 1972, pp. 11–14.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.”

College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp.

JSTOR, 433–446, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/37704 7.pdf.

Ryan, Holly, and Danielle Kane. “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Writing Center Classroom Visits: An Evidence-Based Approach.” The Writing Center Journal, vol.

34, no. 2, 2015, pp. 145–172, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442808.

Salazar, Jesús José. “The Meaningful and Significant Impact of Writing Center Visits on College Writing Performance.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 39, no. 1/2, 2021, pp.

55–96, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27172214.

Salem, Lori. “Decisions…Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 35, no. 2,

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

Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center • 66 2016, pp.

147–171, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43824060.

Smitherman, Carey. “Conducting an Oral History of Your Own Writing Center.” The Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 27, no. 10, 2003, pp. 14, https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/wln/v27 /27.10.pdf.

Tobin, Lad. “Process Pedagogy.” A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, edited by Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick, 2000, pp.

1–18.

Trosset, Carol, et al. “Learning from Writing Center Assessment: Regular Use Can Mitigate Students’ Challenges.” The Learning Assistance Review, vol. 24, no. 2, 2019, pp. 29–51.

UCF University Writing Center. “Integrating the University Writing Center into Your Course.” https://cah.ucf.edu/uwc/wpcontent/uploads/sites/38/2022/01/Inte grating-the-University-Writing-Centerinto-Your-Course.pdf.

Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists. Sage Publications, 1994.

Zuccarelli, Joseph et al. “Measuring the Effect of Writing Center Visits on Student Performance.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 19, no. 3, 2022, pp. 3–15, https://www.praxisuwc.com/193zuccarelli-et-al.

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

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

WHY PLACE MATTERS: IDENTIFYING USAGE PATTERNS BASED ON WRITING CENTER LOCATION Kimberly A. Bain Palm Beach Atlantic University bainka@pba.edu Abstract The campus writing center is a place of institutional vulnerability. With departmental budget cuts and restructures on many campuses, the value of writing center work within the institution is often challenged. While efforts to find value in this work, despite these challenges, are supported by theories of de-centered and borderless writing support, the value placed on physical space must be considered as intrinsic to writing center work. Because academic writing support operates in the ecology of the institution, the value of support outside of classroom instruction is often demonstrated through the designation of its physical space on campus. This article argues that reflecting value through the provision of physical, fixed space communicates to outsiders, not only to users of that space, but to the institution as a whole.

Looking at one institution’s decision to hold writing center functions in a temporary space with limited borders and lack of close support to a fixed, designated space for writing support highlights its value through usage rates from one academic year to another. Providing this key insight into a case study of writing center effectiveness, one can consider how value and classification of the physical space affect the use of the center. If institutions are to value the center and the work done therein, they must be willing to provide adequate, designated space to reflect that value, so that outsiders can create positive associations and memory of writing support on campus. spatial rhetoric, program Keywords: administration, decentering, public memory Introduction To examine place as an essential component of oncampus writing support—whether the place be a writing lab, studio, or conference room, is to evoke a rhetoric of importance. Making connections to who we are, what we do, and where we are is vital to the work we do as writing center professionals.

The space that supports that work reflects the values of both the writers and the institution where

it is located. In late fall of 2024, the writing center I direct at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Writing Central, moved to a permanent location on campus proximal to other academic services that reinforce its institutional value. Prior to this move, our writing center existed as two-to-three sets of portable tables, a few chairs, and a single desk. Our location: the corner of a hallway surrounded by computer labs. While this space was functional for the center’s most basic operational needs, it was truly “makeshift.” Through a close analysis of the usage data before and after Writing Central’s move from the hallway to a permanent location within the library—a nexus of academic support within our institution—I argue that proximal power exists when writing centers are located near familiar academic centers of support on campus, subsequently developing a rhetoric of value that encourages the existence of writing centers within institutions of higher learning. Genie N. Giaimo notes that “Space is not interchangeable, despite the neoliberal turn toward swing spaces, open spaces, and otherwise informal spaces. Space, like contingency, is also not value neutral” (36). In an effort to affirm the subjectivity of location and its weight on the perceived value of writing center work, this essay examines the data from Writing Central’s usage patterns before, during, and after the transition to our permanent location in our university library. By analyzing the center’s usage data, I argue that physical location signifies how much an institution values the writing center and how that value is communicated to the campus community.

Because of its often precarious position within institutions of higher learning, the writing center must assert the value of its physical location on the college campus: proximity communicates that value to the institution. On the importance of physical location in the perception of writing centers, Kara Wittman et al. point out that: The physical space represents a place where we can find each other when everything feels scattered and far flung, and that has real value. Our space is

Why Place Matters • 68 modest, but we now know we can’t underestimate the value of being able to point to a space down a path, or in a hallway, or on a map, where a student can go and encounter other humans ready and willing to help, to talk, to listen.

Wittman et al.’s discussion of locality in writing center work resonated with me after experiencing the transitional periods of relocating Writing Central. As the director of Writing Central, I considered the concept of locality when the center existed temporarily in a hallway. The cramped space was far away from any identifiable connections to on-campus academic support. As a result, the value and presence of the writing center was compromised. As Hadfield et al. note, “Metaphors of home are also often used to describe writing centers with the proverbial coffee pot offering a welcoming cup… [resulting] in a space where people enjoy spending time and where they are happy, productive, creative, and social.”

(170). However, home evokes a sense of familiarity that correlates with proximity, something not present when Writing Central was placed in a temporary location, away from other familiar academic points of support. As Morris notes, “In writing center lore, the space of the writing center is often emphasized: the closet, the basement, the shiny new location in the middle of campus. The physical space is an important one. That’s where connections are made and the space is where students are invited to return again and again” (178). If outsiders (i.e., individuals or groups unfamiliar with the work of a writing center) are able to classify the location of writing support as valuable and appropriately positioned with other centers of academic support, they can see how this value is reflected in the physical presence of the writing center as a noteworthy space of on-campus engagement. Assessing qualitative data of writing development and academic success are often measured by institutional administration to gauge the writing center’s value and justify its existence on campus. However, grades and academic progress measurements may not be the vital component that upholds the center in terms of sustainability and the reflection of that value through institutional funding. Rather, an essential metric of value is in the ability to provide connectivity that correlates with student retention while maintaining standards of academic excellence. The center’s usage rates often reflect the clearest distinction of value based

on the ongoing support the center provides students, which is reinforced by repeated student engagement. I argue that these usage rates often involve key concepts of accessibility that are intrinsic to location and placement on campus.

Location classification, which sets academic support centers apart from classrooms, affects the support center’s usability as it is perceived not only by students, but also by faculty who support student usage of these resources.

Peter Carino considers the classification of the classroom’s value compared to that of the writing center among students. He notes that “students so acculturated to tangible rewards—they speak of ‘getting something out of a class,’ ‘getting good grades’—may wonder what they ‘get out of’ going to the center, what they ‘get for’ spending an hour of their busy week talking with someone about their writing” (102). This perceived value does not only impact students, but also faculty and administration. The precarity of the writing center is demonstrated by the struggle to appropriate a classification for its use outside of the classroom.

This misclassification can lead to shifting values placed on the work of the writing center. It may also mean that “Having felt the pressure of being on the bottom of hierarchical relationships in the university, centers have been loathe to take an authoritative position in their work, preferring a peer tutoring model that promotes a nonhierarchical relationship between tutor and student” (Carino 98). However, this nonhierarchical model can also create a “working” value that is placed onto the center, which leaves it out of important considerations of location and proximity on campus. Outsiders may perceive the writing center as fluid and unstable in nature, and seek to withhold tangible support for its location or become unwilling to develop its resources to position it connectively within the institution.

At Palm Beach Atlantic University, Writing Central’s staff is made entirely up of undergraduate and graduate peer coaches, whose employment structure is fluid. They are often employed on a contingent basis. While other academic support services such as the Testing Center and the Office of Accessibility have fulltime, non-student staff that conduct operations, Writing Central is unique. Under the auspices of the university’s English department, services are performed entirely by peer coaches under the leadership of a faculty director and part-time

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 69 coordinator. The structural fluidity of the center is often reflected in its physical proximity to other, more established locals of academic support. Even outside of the classroom-learning classification, the writing center is difficult to classify as a designated nexus of academic support, based on these structural peculiarities. Because of the uniqueness in departmental structure, writing centers often have to vie for a valued location in proximity to other academic support centers, rather than be defaulted as an embedded part of the university that physically anchors academic support.

When students can not make these connections of value due to the location of the writing center, engagement falters. Similarly, much of the confusion surrounding the geography of Writing Central’s temporary location was in finding it on campus. Geographically removed from other academic support centers on campus, Writing Central was positioned in an in-between state, possibly as unsure in location as it was in support.

Engaging in writing center support meant that students had to enter a now-secured building with their access card, discuss their writing support needs with a coach that may have been in close proximity with another coach and his student, and navigate the busy hallway of faculty office meetings and classroom sessions.

The argument for designating a distinct, fixed writing support location can be traced to the origins of institutional writing support within institutions of higher learning. During the early 20th century, designated writing support services grew as a pedagogical component of the writing classroom; after the end of the Cold War, writing labs emerged out of a turn toward formalism in education. (Boquet 471). Through the use of writing labs, on-campus writing support became a directive, pedagogical remedy for the struggling collegiate writer, later carving an identity for support through nondirective engagement fostered by personalized collaboration, less tied to curricular goals. Emphasizing extracurricular writing support services meant connections and associations with classroom learning needed to be distinct. The argument that the writing center needed to be more than just an extension of the classroom meant developing theories that identified the value of location as a place with its own identity.

In considering the rhetorical borders that continue to cultivate that value, Eric M. Camarillo notes the following: Writing centers (and other sites of hegemonic privilege) tend to protect their borders, their boundaries, in order to prevent what might be viewed as chaos. A “center” necessarily centers bodies and discourses, normalizing them and flattening difference. (236) As Camarillo notes, the bordering of writing support comes with particular spatial rhetorical moves. Becoming distinct from that of a directed, learning classroom or a laboratory for classroom remediation means providing a defined location to cultivate close connections with writers and their coaches as they work through challenges and considerations of the writing process as a valued nexus of learning support. These rhetorical moves support the argument for distinct learning support within the institution and outside of the classroom, which still maintains standards of excellence offered through close, nondirective environments of learning.

As a director, I am committed to the promotion of writing center excellence by offering rigorous training programs and resources that fully support student writers. Working out of a suitable location considers another dimension of “excellence”: outsiders identify the work done in the writing center with supportive work done elsewhere on campus.

The academic writing center often carries with it perceptions of questionable value, which are often demonstrated through defunding, resource removal, and staff reduction. For many academic institutions, quantitative data is often used to assess the writing center’s validity as an on-campus resource. The reality for many writing center practitioners (Cirillo-McCarthy et al.) is that this work is essential to reflecting the center’s value in the institution.

They note the following: Typically, the successful receipt of our institutional documents, from annual review narratives to budget and space requests, is strongly connected to our ability to frame the writing center in transactional terms, meaning our ability to convey, in quantitative ways, what the institution receives in return for funding…

We are encouraged to engage with

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 70 administrative speak in order to justify our writing center’s value in relation to “utilization” and “student credit hours,” or in relation to student success measures such as “resiliency,” “retention rates,” or “impact,” thus attempting to use such language to clarify the texture of writing center experiences.

This essay looks at the ways in which proximal power invites an argument for the value of writing support within its institutions. Meaning placed on the location where writers are supported in their writing is paramount to understanding how that support is perceived. In correlating the physical with the social when considering value perceptions of writing center work, Bronwyn T. Williams, “Not only do enclaves operate differently, but they can work to influence the larger social field through their different values and practices” (10).

Appropriating pedagogical value outside of the classroom is tricky. That value is not curated simply by the amount of resources and funding the center is provided. However, its value is shaped by what outsiders associate with it and who they see valuing its location.

Stephen North considers the ways that writing centers advocate for themselves based on the value placed on their positionality within the institution. He notes that “Even when [writing center staff] want to resist, we may face real limitations. Our writing centers may be small and institutionally vulnerable” (7). Placement equals power when it comes to institutional structures of credibility and value. Advocating for institutional support and visibility requires both a theoretical and physical location of value. When physical writing centers become defunded and are reduced to marginalized, obscure, or transitional locations on campus, it must be considered how value is placed on the service that can be easily marginalized by spatial constraints, compared to those who have remained a valuable presence on campus.

Background Writing Central offers campus-wide writing support to students, faculty, and staff at Palm Beach Atlantic University. The center offers both in person and online support to members of its campus community. In the years shortly after the COVID pandemic, which moved all on-campus activity to an online-based modality, the center relocated from its location in the lower level of the

on-campus library to a temporary hallway location on the second-floor of the campus’ business school.

As a result of this move, Writing Central found its usage had drastically decreased for inperson coaching sessions. While the university’s administration joined together to find a campus location for the center, Writing Central felt the effects of limited value placed on centering the location within the university. In the fall of 2024, Writing Central relocated back to the lower level of the library, which then also hosted the student testing center, the peer tutoring center, and the accessibility services center. Shortly after the move, Writing Central saw a sharp increase in its in-person usage.

Writing Central has historically existed for students, staff, and faculty to engage in conversations about writing and to provide academic support through informal writing events and workshops. Peer coaches engage with students and each other in meaningful conversations of academic discourse. However, the temporary location, centered just outside classrooms and faculty offices, afforded less privacy. This in turn limited people’s ability to engage in some of those meaningful support opportunities.

Many outsiders had difficulty identifying the temporary location and classifying the writing center in the context of that new location. The campus business school provided little classification for academic support outside of a few faculty offices and four computer-lab classrooms.

Having the center move to the hallway within the business school’s building demonstrated the clear correlation between classification and value through institutional structure. If outsiders could not recognize the location through classified patterns of identification, i.e. the ideal location for academic support, they would struggle to perceive it as such. While meaningful conversations and writing support could take place by trained support staff and coaches in this makeshift location, the lack of associations with a valued entity of academic support, based on its location, proved to create a clear barrier for student engagement, demonstrated by observable usage trends.

Methodology To demonstrate the connection between the institutional value of location on writing support and its usage, I conducted an analysis of the usage

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 71 rates of Writing Central’s coaching services from Fall 2023-Spring 2025. This nearly two-year assessment tracks the changes in usage rates before, during, and after the final relocation to a fixed, designated location in the on-campus library. The assessment provides insights into the behavior patterns of students who engaged in in-person sessions hosted in both the temporary location and later, in the fixed library location of the library..

Using the tutor tracking system, WCONLINE, usage data was collected to identify the trends in usage for one academic year (AY) before the transition (23-24), a semester (Fall 2024) during the transition, and an academic semester after the transition to the permanent location in the library (Spring 2025).

The WCONLINE system tracks each individual coaching session that is conducted both online and in person for all semesters within each AY. By running a System Statistics Report, the system tallies the number of sessions conducted within a certain time range. These date ranges are the first and last date of the semester. Summer semester was not accounted for in these statistics due to the nuanced usage rates of limited availability, which occur on a yearly basis.

Usage is documented through WCONLINE via student self-booking or writing coach/administrator assistance. Writing coaches are able to book appointments as placeholders for activity taking place that does not involve actual coaching, i.e. training, workshop attendance, classroom presentations, etc. These placeholder appointments were not included in the usage data.

Scheduled appointments that had been canceled or missed were not included in this study.

The amount of contact hours were not analyzed in this study. Writing sessions can be selected in 30- or 60-minutes time frames.

However, WCONLINE tracks individual sessions despite the length, individually. All appointments, no matter the length, each count for one session. If a student decides to book two distinct 30-minute sessions back-to-back, these appointments will count as two individual sessions. Using data that tracks the number of individual sessions, rather than total hours, allows for the true number of contact sessions to be revealed, instead of tracking the variations of 30- and 60-minute appointments.

Challenging the Value of Placement within the Temporary Location

Many writing center scholars and enthusiasts will argue that the writing center’s value extends beyond its physical components. These enthusiasts believe that writing support is about those who support it, regardless of physical location. However, location contributes just as much to community value as does the work done inside the location.

In considering how physical centeredness intersects the impacted value of the post-pandemic context, “The Writing Center is Not a Place,” Kara Wittman et al. note the following: Losing our physical space from March 2020 to January 2022 was a little like catapulting a structure we’d built on solid ground into the air and hoping that it wouldn’t in liftoff suddenly disintegrate, fly apart. And it didn’t. In many ways, it became stronger—paradoxically, more solid. Once we no longer had the physical space of our writing center to rely on as proxy for community.

The social value placed on physical centeredness allows for an understanding of how that value is reflected when writing centers are marginalized through placement within temporary locations.

Jackie Grutsch-McKinney considers misunderstandings identitive considerations of location’s value in writing center work by pointing out that “Composing the ‘writing center space as cozy home’ narrative is a culturally conforming act even as it defies local, material conditions. (20).

These associative misclassifications can come with precarious cultural associations that hinder the perceived value of the work done in the center.

When the writing center is perceived as cozy, its location risks becoming inherently devalued as it stands in conflict with more objective centers of academic support that are not classified in such a manner. How many other institutional offices on campus are regarded as cozy, directly relating to academic support?

The often precarious locations afforded to writing centers creates an argument for classification. Location in organizational structures reflect the ecology of the institution, and while McKinney would argue that the “cozy home” classification often comes with nuanced associations that do not uphold the ethos of the writing center, i.e. through gendered and personalized, familial associations, outsiders are not only classifying the writing center within the parameters of real-life organizational structures,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 72 but also within institutional structures. In other words, the value of a “cozy” space could be developed in temporary spaces as a justification for its “cozy” and academically unfamiliar precarity.

The emphasis should not be on simply providing a location on campus for writing support, but it should be on what that location holds in terms of value, and how that value is represented and communicated to the campus community. For this reason, inappropriately classified locations for writing support can discourage its usage if the center as represented by its location on campus is not perceived as valued in comparison to other support centers of value.

When students are eager to seek support and institutions identify the value of the writing center, that value can resonate beyond the physical location. However, interpreting that value is the first step in transcending the borders of location and proximity through classification. Within the institutional structures of power, negotiations between institutional value and student usage need to intersect. In order to validate a sense of presence for the writing center, student value is often the metric used. In other words, if the center is not being used, no matter how intrinsically valuable the service is perceived by its staff, it loses its value within the institution, which is reflected through declining usage patterns.

Reflecting on the disruption of a writing center location due to administrative shifts, impacting the center’s perceived value, Wang-Hiles describes their center’s relocation experience in the following: In 2017, the writing center was taken from the English department and subordinated to the Office of Retention and Student Success (ORSS)... [The writing center’s] location also moved from inside the library to a classroom building with reduced space. Sadly, there was no official campus announcement about these changes.

Students and faculty only heard about them later through word of mouth. (99) Similarly, when Writing Central entered this temporary location within the hallway of the business school, one could only consider the challenges in justifying the value of this support service as a whole. With proximal limitations in an already small-sized campus of less than 6,000 students, institutional value impacts the accommodation of each department on campus.

Working to provide accommodation for each resource center on campus is already fraught with logistical concerns that are only exacerbated by administrative perspectives of value and prioritization. However, these phenomena provide a clear understanding of how value directly responds to writing center location.

Indeed, the value of Writing Central remained questionable when students could and would need to pass through its location to get to classes by entering and leaving the hallway.

Coaches struggled to conduct their sessions while faculty chose to leave their doors open during lectures or advising sessions in close proximity to the common hallway. Students waiting for their professors would use the Writing Central space to convene. By existing in a location that offered little exclusivity, writing support was compromised, as demonstrated through its usage rates for the academic year (AY) of 2023-2024.

Table 1 (see Appendix A) highlights an important trend that existed during the temporary location period, which took place in the Academic Year (AY) 2023-2024. During the fall and spring semester of that AY, total appointments and faceto-face appointments were at their lowest, compared to the following AY. The fall semesters tend to have higher numbers of usage than spring semesters, due to the influx of newly admitted students at the start of the year and smaller graduation percentages. Therefore, the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semester showed the lowest rate of usage for the center.

The usage rates of online appointments were high during the Fall 2023 semester, when Writing Central operated out of the business school hallway. The high usage rate of online support shows the intrinsic value of the center and that it was being used consistently; however, the lack of value demonstrated by the unaccommodating physical location likely compromised the utilization of Writing Central’s in-person support.

The usage rate of online support provides key insight into student behavior and student needs for writing support. If students are given the option between an in-person or online appointment, they tend to choose the in-person option, as shown in the comparison above (see Table 1 in Appendix A).

However, when online support usage is high, it can usually be tracked to some structural change within the writing center or the institution as a whole e.g., COVID pandemic policies of remote learning,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 73 campus closures, etc). Tracking these trends can give insight into the intrinsic value of the center that allows students to adapt to different modalities (in-person, virtual, hybrid, etc.) while still taking advantage of the support offered by the center. If students do not feel comfortable seeking writing support at the location of a writing center, they are less likely to book appointments in person, but will still engage online.

Effects of the Transitionary Period on the Center’s Value When Writing Central finally opened in the library, in close proximity to other academic centers of support, there was a big sigh of relief from departments familiar with our services. At last, our institution signaled that it values our work.

At Writing Central, increased student usage reflected the positive associations they made with the new location. In reflecting on the value physical spaces represent, Roger Chao notes “their influence can be understood through the behaviors and actions they afford or prohibit to those who interact with them” (19). If usage rates were significantly low for Writing Central (see Table 1 in Appendix A) while operating in the temporary location, its usage data would not be enough to demonstrate the value of Writing Central. Rather, Writing Central’s value as represented by increased usage rates would only be reflected after the move to the fixed location.

In considering how barriers of location can obstruct the value of writing center support, Erin D. Mcclellan reflects on sociologist Richard Sennett’s argument about the rhetorical power of place in his seminal 1977 work, The Fall of Public Man. Mcclellan notes The place where people gather signifies both the opportunities and constraints people understand to be a part of their sense-making processes of place. In this view, we can only perform what we understand to be possible “in the world.”

What we see as possible is determined by the opportunities and constraints present in our surroundings—both in terms of the tangible resources at our disposal but also in terms of the intangible belief structures that are formed through our experiences and discourses about those experiences.

(9)

The question of opportunity is considerable when considering not only the value that exists within the center, but the potential value in terms of the writing center’s affordances. If the location of the writing center does not inspire confidence for writing support, then it ceases to encourage positive usage behavior. For example, if a goal of the writing center is to provide professionalized service, one must classify what the writing center encompasses, both theoretically and practically, as professional. If a temporary location in between classrooms and faculty office doors does not allow outsiders to identify its patterns of classification as professional, the center remains in the in-between spaces of laymanship and professionalism. This inbetween state creates dissonance between the student’s perceived value of the writing center and its institutional value. If the center becomes unidentifiable as a classified, geographic location of learning and institutional engagement, that dissonance becomes overwhelming, and appreciation of the value of the service may be rejected.

If Writing Central had remained unclassified and continued to operate out a “temporary” space at a distance from other services of established value, the dissonance may have resulted in decreased usage, similar to the fall 2023 and spring 2024 semesters of Writing Central’s operations.

Figure 1 (Appendix C) shows a clear increase in the center’s usage during the transition period of relocation is reflected. During the semester of transition (Fall 2024) usage increased dramatically. Having a steep increase in a short period of time, signaled a significant point that fostered engagement with in-person center usage.

While online support maintained its approximate usage rate for a fall semester, the shift in usage pointed to a clear systematic change with center operations.

Beginning in August 2024, plans were put into place to relocate Writing Central to a fixed location in the library with a sectioned office. Word spread on campus about the move (though it had not yet been officially approved). Then, that November, Writing Central announced that it was now open on the lower level of the library, next to the accessibility office and the testing center.

Students could now classify writing support with other, more established academic support centers, thereby placing the same value on the theoretical

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 74 considerations of writing support as they would on the centers nearby.

The relocation in fall 2024 was a time of movement and clarity. Writing Central focused its efforts on clearly communicating the move to all on campus. No longer would the center be wedged in between classrooms in a narrow hallway. Now students could get one-on-one coaching in a designated, on campus office. Effective campus communication regarding the relocation added another layer of value to the writing center. The information circulated evidenced to the institution the commitment of Writing Central and situated our services as being equal to that of other academic support resources located within the library. For the rest of the semester (two months), Writing Central continued to send campus-wide email announcements about the transition. We posted flyers at student centers and within academic departments, letting the campus community know that the center would now operate in full service with a designated location, alongside other support service centers.

Figure 1 (Appendix C) details the increase in usage that occurred in the fall of 2024; sessions increased by more than 100 from the previous fall semester. Based on trends that remain consistent by season, rather than by semester, usage data is typically tracked by corresponding semester (FallFall; Spring-Spring). One might assume that fall usage patterns in 2024 at the time of the transition, would have decreased. However, the increase in usage shows how the transition demonstrated the center’s value within the institution. Observing the increase in center usage at the fixed location, it can be noted that students’ engagement is fostered by their public memory of the center before its move to the temporary space. Wanting to see that value represented through the return to a fixed space may have contributed to this increase in usage.

Public memory of location is established by what is performed in that location.For many, temporary, unclassified functions affect appropriate public memory. Students may have struggled to remember the value of Writing Central sessions they had before the change in location, demonstrated by a clear discrepancy in AY 23-24 usage, compared to that of AY 24-25. When the appropriate classifications of a writing center are not available in its classified location, attachments to the writing center, which correlate to repeated usage, may not develop. Thus, the consistent

increase in usage during the transitional period shows that attachments, which led to positive public memory, were made to the location, proximal to other centers, by its users.

Contextualizing the importance of crafting public memory of the writing center work means providing positive associations with location in terms of what it reminds students of and how they connect with memories shaped by other academic experiences.. If these factors do not align, participants will be discouraged from identifying with that location as a memory of academic support.

Of the connections between past and present that interact with public memory, Gary Dickinson et al. note the following: Yes, public memory bears relationships to the present, but those relationships are highly variable and dependent upon contexts, available rhetorical resources, representational choices, framings by various techné, and so forth. Yes, public memory narrates-arguably constructsshared identities. But it does even more than that. It constructs identities that are embraced, that attract adherents (as well as dissidents). (22) The public memory shaped by the use of the different locations of Writing Central was supported by affective associations of learning support conducted in either location. As usage declined in Spring 2024, it was clear that public memory was shaped in a way that developed dissidents against the work done in the temporary location. However, as public memory intertwined with the new location, adherents were able to replace the memories of misclassification, which was shown in increased usage in spring 2025.

The ability to transition to a fixed, designated location gave outsiders the opportunity to make positive associations with the work done at Writing Central. If students did not know where Writing Central was now located, they could easily remember that it was located in the proximity of other support services. This feature eased communication about the move because students had already developed behavioral associations with the new location. In fact, much of Writing Central’s usage now overlapped with that of the testing and accommodation center, due to proximity, which led to the student ease of connecting to the existing academic support on campus.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 75 Students were able to replace nonassociative memories with associative ones.

Had they placed any value on the support offered by the library, the accessibility office, or the testing center, they would have then added that associative value onto the writing center. Having the center far removed from that associated location may have confused the value placed on the work done in context to that of other designated support centers.

Considering how location communicates value in referencing Lefebvre’s work, Chai notes that “Every language is located in space. Every discourse says something about space (places or sets of places); and every discourse is emitted from a space” (qtd. In 40). If discourses of writing center work are not appropriated by the location, communicative practices would lose their effectiveness. However, the increase in usage that occurred during the move to the fixed location highlighted the need for writing center discourses to be appropriated by its location on campus.

Fixing Location to Demonstrate Writing Center Value In the first week of November 2025, Writing Central officially moved into our new office on the lower level of the on-campus library. Students could flow in and out without being restricted by key card verification and had access to printing services and computer use if needed. There were no classrooms on the lower level, so there weren’t distractions from large groups of students passing by. Since the move to this location, Writing Central has been able to offer identifiable support in context with other academic support centers who have been fixed within the library for years.

Many events to promote campus services take place within the library, which allows Writing Central easy access to these promotional events to offer our own promotion. Prospective students visiting campus often attend orientation events within the library. This creates a convenient opportunity to connect with students in close proximity to Writing Central whenever we welcome them to campus. Oftentimes, due to its office location within the nexus of university academic support, many students recognize Writing Central as one of their first points of contact for on-campus support in their academic work.

This proximal power would not exist—or exist only within the margins—if our writing center

were still placed in a temporary, unclassified location. Proximal power confers value, shapes perception, and is tacit recognition of institutional value placed on writing centers (despite any perceptions of its precarity). Proximal power also allows for a tangible display of support on campus, reflected in the university’s shared value in the center’s existence.

Figure 2 (Appendix D) provides a clear breakdown of each month of the fall semester in which Writing Central’s physical location was moved from the business school to the fixed location in the campus library. During the start of the semester (August 2024), there was a reduced rate of usage compared to that of the previous AYs. In August, the center maintained its hours with the start of the academic, sixteen-week semester, which began during the second week of the month. This reduced availability considerably, compared to September and October months.

October signified the month that featured the most evidence of the effects of this transition.

From September to October, there was a considerable reduction in usage based on the number of sessions that took place. During October, Writing Central staff prepared to transition to the permanent location, which meant taking up coaching time to work through the transition, i.e. move furniture, curate the new space within the location, and prepare campus-wide communication. This is reflected in the reduced usage rate from September to October. Events that occurred in November had an exponential effect on usage for the center.

Table 2 (see Appendix B) demonstrates percentages of usage throughout the Fall 2024 semester at its highest in November 2024. In examining other factors that could have affected the usage rate and comparatively high number of sessions, the usage reflected by the transition to the new location remains consistent.

At Palm Beach Atlantic University, major academic moments in the fall semester such as midterms (October) and final exams (December) typically result in an increase of usage at the center; students may seek support to prepare for these assessments. However, one would typically see that increase around those specific months. The idea that a sudden and sharp increase in usage during the month of November can strictly be attributed to the instance in providing support in the new location.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 76 While August, October, and December feature major academic events and reduced academic weeks, November 2024 featured no atypical factors outside of a regular, academic month. Outside of a federal holiday, which removed a total of three days from the calendar, there were no changes during this month, outside of the transition of the writing center to the new location.

The number of online sessions across each month of the transitionary period (see Table 1 in Appendix A) also provides key insight into the correlation between the transition to the new location and increased usage. While the rates of inperson, face-to-face sessions increased during and after the move to the fixed location, rates of online sessions decreased. Factors such as population growth, effective promotion methods, and major academic events do not easily account for the consistent decrease in online sessions and the increase in these in-person sessions, resulting in comparatively higher rates of usage in Spring 2025 than in Spring 2024.

If these factors superseded the effectiveness of the transition to the fixed location, online rates would not decrease. Rather, what these trends demonstrate is a clear increase in inviting discourses that have been made present in the new, fixed location. These considerations argue that writers are supported as much by their environment as they are by what takes place in that environment.

Conclusion This study suggests that careful consideration must be given to the geographic location of a writing center, and that the location may determine how students value its services. Proximity to power makes the argument that auxiliary support for students is vital to the life of the institution. When the location of the writing center is unsuitable or inappropriately placed, students are less likely to seek its services. Creating a public memory that is positive among outsiders requires more than just service and writing competence. The experience of a service requires clear and consistent appropriations based on Burke’s patterns of identification.

Writing center administrators must consider what this may mean for the future of

writing centers, particularly as their funding and institutional support are often in flux. Boquet considers the consequences of this precarity: While acknowledging the appeal of programmed instruction in notoriously under-staffed, under-funded labs, these critics nevertheless feel committed to what they deem the fundamental principle of the writing lab: one-to-one contact with “a human being who cares” (qtd. in Veit 2).

This philosophy, an extension of the Rogerian nondirective/mirroring model of writing lab operations, led these labs to define themselves in opposition to their auto-tutorial counterparts, to characterize the lab spaces as non- threatening (however specious) and to fill them with creature comforts—couches, plants, coffee pots, posters. (473) For many writing centers, being understaffed and underfunded means persuading institutions to consider factors that correlate an environment to positive usage percentages. When institutions consider what to do with limited campus space and resources, making an argument for location involves identifying how writing coaches and their writers are affected by their environment.

Writing Central is tremendously grateful for the new location we’re in to offer writers a valued resources of support. The change provided a sense of credibility to our services through spatial rhetoric. As the figure above (see Figure 2) demonstrates, usage continued to increase for the center in Spring 2025 compared to the prior spring semester, showing a positive pattern for usage rates at the library location.

Comparing both monthly and semesterly trends furthers the point that today, our writing center is where it needs to be. Annual assessments will encourage us to consider how location supports our effectiveness. However, the clear picture that has been demonstrated through usage provides context for the value of the work done at the writing center.

Moving forward, writing centers can be encouraged to advocate for their value exemplified in their physical locations on campus. Hatfield et al. further, “According to architectural theorists, space and design decisions should result in a space where people enjoy spending time and where they are happy, productive, creative, and social. Those are certainly worthy goals for a writing center” (171).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 77 While this essay does not directly consider the design of writing center spaces, the placement of the writing center is an equally visual rhetorical choice. Writing centers are often tasked with justifying their value to the administrative powers that delegate institutional resources. Similar to Cirillo-McCarthy et al.’s conversation about rhetorical reporting strategies, this essay provides a quantitative analysis to justify qualitative decisions.

Through usage data, writing center practitioners can use quantitative data to create narratives around its value, ensuring that its quality is truly represented. As of Fall 2025, Writing Central has become a flowing nexus of academic support on campus in its designated library location. Students continue to navigate to Writing Central when in the library in search of other support services.

Identifying value inherent in location takes a strong rhetorical stance when demonstrating our value to administrators. We hope Writing Central’s data tracking efforts will further challenge affronts to writing center value if and when future conversations of potential relocation arise. Despite the inevitable decisions made regarding writing center location, which often lay outside of the center’s control, I hope this discussion encourages conversations about representation and the deeper meanings of place that affect the writing center’s function and value as it seeks to support and be supported by its institution.

Works Cited Boquet, Elizabeth H. “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- To PostOpen Admissions.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 50, no. 3, 1999, pp.

463–482, https://doi.org/10.58680/ccc19991340.

Cirillo-McCarthy et al. “Writing Center Reporting Strategies That Subvert Institutional Absurdities.” The Peer Review, vol.7, no. 1, 2023, https://thepeerreviewiwca.org/issues/issue-7-1-featured-issuereinvestigate-the-common-places-inwriting-centers/writing-center-reportingstrategies-that-subvert-institutionalabsurdities.

Camarillo, Eric C. “The Writing Center as a Border Processing Station.” Systems Shift: Creating and Navigating Change in Rhetoric and Composition Administration, edited by Carter, Genesa M., and Aurora Matzke, UP of Colorado, 2024, pp. 235–248.

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

96–113.

Chao, Roger. “Analyzing Physical Spaces As a Means of Understanding Rhetoric.”

Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, vol.4, no. 1, 2020, pp. 18-28, https://doi.org/10.31719/pjaw.v4i1.54.

Dickinson, Greg, Carole Blair, and Ott, Brian L, editors. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique). U of Alabama Press, 2010.

Giaimo, Genie N. “Trading Spaces: Space as Metaphor for Contingency in Writing Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol.

41, no. 1, 2023, pp. 35–41, https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1949.

Hang-Wiles, L. “Counterstory: Ignored Labor with a Writing Center.” Storying Writing Center Labor for Anti-Capitalist Futures, edited by Giaimo, Genie, and Daniel Lawson. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado, 2024, pp.

99–102.

Hatsfield, L. et al. “An Ideal Writing Center: ReImagining Space and Design.” The Center will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship, edited by Pemberton, Michael A., and Joyce Kinkead, Utah State UP, 2003, pp. 166–76.

McKinney, Jackie G. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. UP of Colorado, 2013.

Mcclellan, Erin D. “Making Sense of the City: Place, Space, and Rhetoric in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square.” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, vol. 4, no.

1, 2008, pp. 1–32, http://liminalities.net/4-1/pioneer.pdf.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp. 433–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/377047.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Why Place Matters • 78 Williams, Bronwyn T. “Writing Centers, Enclaves, and Creating Spaces of Change Within Universities.” Writing Center Journal, vol.

40, no. 3, 2022, pp. 6–20, https://www.jstor.org/stable/e27220877.

Wittman, Kara et al. “The Writing Center is Not a Place.” The Post-Pandemic Writing Center: A WLN Digital Edited Collection, edited by Sarah Rice, Katunich, and Lape, PressBooks, 2024.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

Appendix A Table 1 Comparing Usage Percentages By Semester

Appendix B Table 2 Number of Sessions and Usage Percentages

Appendix C

Figure 1. Center Usage per Semester Based on Location

Why Place Matters • 80 Appendix D

Figure 2. Month-by-Month Usage During Transitionary Period

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 2 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

TUTORS’ FLEXIBLE APPROACH IN WORKING WITH MULTILINGUAL WRITERS Emily Jane Pucker Georgia College & State University emily.pucker@gcsu.edu Abstract The contemporary writing center is built to serve traditional students well, but as the university diversifies, so does the writing center. Increasing numbers of multilingual writers are entering the university and using the writing center.. What do tutors do to meet the needs of the writers they serve? Using first-person interviews with tutors in a large and successful center, the author finds that flexible tutoring is the key to supporting multilingual writers. Each tutor interviewed claimed to value primarily “non-directive” methods of tutoring, but quickly revealed a willingness to adjust that approach according to the needs of the writers. Flexibility, including the ability to engage in more directive practices, was at the core of successful tutoring multilingual writers.

Keywords: writing centers, tutoring, multilingual writers, flexibility Introduction In 2016, while working as a new doctoral student in the writing center at the University of Alabama, I began to notice a pattern: tutors trained in nondirective methods often shifted their approach when working with multilingual writers. Despite their formal preparation, tutors frequently adopted directive strategies, such as offering grammatical guidance, suggesting structural changes, or even writing directly on students’ papers, when they sensed that doing so would better support the writer’s needs. This observation led me to a central question: How do writing tutors negotiate tensions between their training and the realities of working with multilingual writers?

Writing center pedagogy has long emphasized the non-directive approach. Under this paradigm, the writer retains control over their work and the tutor prioritizes the agenda articulated by the writer. However, this practice assumes that writing center clients are able to identify areas of concern in their writing; that they can articulate their concerns in English; and that they feel empowered to make requests of someone they interpret as an authority. Taking these factors into consideration, recent scholarship has begun to

question whether non-directive methods adequately serve linguistically diverse students (e.g., Salem; Moussu; Thonus). Scholars have begun to look at how tutors adapt their practices when working with ESL students and what those adaptations reveal about the evolving role of the writing center. For example, Beth A. Towle (2023) investigated how first-generation college students experience the writing center differently than peers more familiar with academic norms. Towle found that first-gen students often feel like “outsiders” to the academy. Tetyana Bychkovska and Susan Lawrence (2024) used surveys to reveal that tutors typically provide more sentence-level assistance to multilingual writers. As Moussu writes, “Regrettably, this tutoring philosophy [has] unintended consequences: ESL students who go to WCs in hopes of finding help with a difficult language and who specifically need feedback on what WC culture tends to regard lower-order concerns may feel structurally excluded” (59).

Faced with clients with distinct needs, the participating tutors in these studies are breaking from the traditional expectations in writing center work in order to prioritize their clients.

Using interviews and case studies from a large, research-intensive university in the American South, this study seeks to understand how tutors adapt to the needs of non-traditional clients. In the academic year this study began (2019-2020), 3.8% of the university’s student population was international students (The University of Alabama).

This number is in line with comparable institutions: the 2025-2026 year saw 3% international students at the nearby University of Mississippi (University of Mississippi) and 6% international students at the University of Georgia (University of Georgia).

These numbers are likely to climb in future years: according to the Institute of International Education, “As of the 2024/25 academic year, the United States hosted nearly 1.2 million international students, reflecting a 5% increase from the previous academic year” (2026). Thus, the findings of this study can be extrapolated to shed light on practices at other institutions and to prepare for an increasingly internationalized future.

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 82 The study examines how tutors describe their training, how they reflect on their actual tutoring sessions, and how they reconcile the gap between the two. My findings suggest that tutors are not simply abandoning their training, but rather reinterpreting it in context—prioritizing student needs over pedagogical orthodoxy. This paper contributes to ongoing conversations about tutor agency, multilingual support, and the future of writing center pedagogy.

Profiles of Tutor Participants My first task was to understand how tutors view their tutoring practice and how they describe their work. To identify tutor participants, I put out a call via our writing center’s listserv. I also contacted tutors whom I knew personally, including former students. The three tutors who volunteered to be a part of this study paint a picture of the struggle between directive and non-directive practices when working with non-traditional students in the writing center. All tutors in this study worked at the University of Alabama Writing Center during the 2019-2020 academic year. My research was conducted in accordance with The University of Alabama’s human research guidelines, and the names of the participants have been changed.

First, I interviewed Gemma, an undergraduate tutor. Gemma is a white-presenting young woman with a great sense of humor and green hair. Gemma started out as a first-year student in one of my classes; I encouraged her to apply for the tutoring course, a requirement for all undergraduate tutors, and I was her instructor in that class as well. We therefore have a longstanding relationship and rapport. The second tutor I interviewed was Muna, an international graduate student from Turkey by way of the United Kingdom. She speaks English with ease and fluidity, but occasionally mistakes one word for another or loses tracks of her sentences.

Nevertheless, her willingness to persevere in an Anglophone country—since our interview she has settled in the Pacific Northwest with her American partner—is admirable. The third tutor was Kristin; at the time of our interview, she was also a graduate student, studying applied linguistics. Despite limited tutoring experience, she was confident and comfortable with multilingual writers and planned a career in teaching.

These three tutors kindly gave of their time to help me understand how they do what they do.

While they are, of course, all individuals with unique styles and beliefs about tutoring, they described a variety of similarities. Common themes ran through our conversations, which helped me to gain a clearer picture of the techniques the tutors use with their clients and help them to grow as writers.

Interviews of Tutors I began each interview with a list of open-ended questions asking tutors to think about what they anticipated happening in a session, and then reflect on what did in fact transpire. Here, I sought information on how the tutors did their work and to what degree their goals aligned with the clients’ expectations. If both the client and tutor agreed that the tutor worked to keep control over the session and the writing stayed in the hands of the writer, we can infer that the session followed the nondirective approach. Muna, for example, described the great effort she puts in to avoid pointing out errors for a client when the Socratic questioning method might help the client discover errors for themselves.

I also interviewed several multilingual writers who used the writing center; while their full responses are beyond this study's scope, their feedback helps measure the effectiveness of the tutors' methods. Having collected the tutors’ and clients’ feedback, I applied the principles of grounded theory to guide my analysis of these interviews.

Grounded Theory Grounded theory is a way to build a theory “from the ground up,” to allow the data to create and guide the theory, rather than to impose it from the literature (Urquhart). Grounded theory methods (GTM) include systematic coding and data analysis to identify emerging relationships.

I carefully coded the transcripts of my interviews using colored highlighters; however, instead of looking only for common themes or topics from one interview to the next, I sought relationships among those themes. Urquhart writes, “It is almost certain you will find categories that are, in fact, characteristics of others. The relationships ‘Is a kind of’ and ‘Is a characteristic of’ enable researchers to decide which of their codes are, in fact, aspects of others” (chapter 1).

Following this advice, I identified these relationship markers within the interviews to guide later

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 83 analysis. This is to say that my development of a coding system that accurately and effectively analyzes these interviews is part of an iterative process of developing a coding system that is essential to GTM. Ultimately, I found that the tutors expressed similar trajectories of adaptation: they begin with a commitment to non-directive practices, such as avoiding line-editing or providing full phrases to their clients. When faced with multilingual clients, however, the tutors find clients who expect authoritative feedback and reassurance that they are expressing ideas “correctly” (Moussu 60). The tutors in my study responded by using more directive strategies for multilingual writers, which better serve those writers and help them reach their goals.

Directive Strategies in Practice Each of the tutors who volunteered for the study did so on the basis of their commitment to nondirective tutoring. However, the interviews revealed they are in fact much more open to a flexible tutoring style that takes into consideration the specific needs of their clients. Despite the received wisdom of writing center studies that suggests that non-direction is the best practice, these tutors often see that their clients need different kinds of intervention and help in order to truly develop as writers. In practice, during sessions with multilingual writers, tutors adjust to give more direction to their clients. The tutors gave specific descriptions of the steps they take to support these multilingual writers.

Given that Gemma had studied with me for several years, I expected her responses to reveal a strongly non-directive approach to tutoring.

However, actual sessions with actual clients don’t always reflect a tutor’s inclinations. For Gemma, non-directive tutoring seems to mean allowing the client’s stated goals to take precedence in the session. In practice, Gemma may guide the client away from those stated goals if she feels they are not the best use of the client’s time and energy.

Right from the start, Gemma identified a familiar situation in writing center tutorials: a client who desires help with “grammar.” For many clients, especially for undergraduates and those lacking confidence in their writing skills, “grammar” is a catch-all term for many types of concerns, including mechanics, usage, spelling, punctuation, as well as broader concerns with clarity of expression or formatting. Eckstein and

Ferris note that even highly proficient L2 writers lack confidence (157). Gemma pointed out that her approach varies depending on the language skills of the client: If it’s a native speaker who’s coming in [asking], ‘can you just look at my grammar, just like, my APA citations,’ I’m a little bit annoyed because I want to help them build their paper but we were taught like, ‘hey, we’re not a proofreading service.’ [But] I want to be able to interact with [the client] and help them build their paper. So even if they just ask for grammar, I try [to] make sure that the bigger things are in order, as well. If I do see big issues, I’m not going to ignore them [just] because they asked for me to look at grammar.

Her training and experience, as well as her distance from the writing, allows Gemma to identify areas that require attention and care beyond local-level concerns. She strives to honor the client’s stated goals, but she also knows clients are often unaware of what they need to do, exactly, in order to accomplish those goals. Gemma therefore steers the conversation toward global issues when she feels steering is needed. Though this approach deviates from the typical call to let the client determine the goals for the session, Gemma’s method is in keeping with the intention to make better writers.

Graduate student Muna takes a slightly more subtle approach. A multilingual writer herself, Muna was born in Turkey. When asked to describe her tutoring style, Muna said, I’m definitely not a direct[ive] tutor, pointing out the errors or the issues with what my student has written down. This concerns the students who write in the report, ‘I’m not sure if my content is good,’ or, ‘I'm not sure it flows well,’ all these things. So the whole session shapes around these concerns. I look at them first and then [...] any other things that I kind of notice. My goals are first to eradicate any concerns that the clients have—it might be a flow thing that they’re concerned with— and then I look at it then if there are really issues.

Muna does not see herself as offering direction but allowing the client to set goals, which she prioritizes for their time together; as she says, she seeks to “eradicate” the client’s concerns as the

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 84 first order of business. She then attempts to subtly guide the client to their own conclusions about their writing. When a tutor asks leading questions about a problem area the client has not noticed, the client is more likely to see the discovery as their own and is therefore more likely to retain the lesson.. For Muna, this is the definition of nondirective tutoring, which is in line with the sentiments of many tutors with whom I communicated: there is value in the act of discovery.

Muna seeks especially to integrate the client’s stated concerns with those she observes as the tutor. As an illustration, she described a client who comes to the writing center seeking help with “flow,” a notoriously elusive quality. The client’s goal is to create smoother-sounding writing, in which one idea moves logically into the next.

Naturally, one solution here is to make greater use of transitional words and phrases – but this of course occurs more readily to the tutor than to the client. Muna points out a spot in need of work, then encourages the client to find their own solutions to the problem of flow. She asks if a “linking word” such as “moreover” or “furthermore” might be appropriate, then let the student decide. This thoughtful approach allows the client to set the goals for the session and to identify solutions on their own, while still being guided by the tutor’s experience and ability to view the work from a distance. Muna uses rhetorical questions and indirect suggestions to guide the client toward a conclusion that retains the client’s voice.

The third tutor I spoke with, Kristin, was a graduate student studying applied linguistics at the time of our interview. The previous semester, Kristinco-taught a first-year writing course geared toward multilingual writers,classroom experience that no doubt influences her approach to tutoring, which she describes as “a student-needs focused approach.” Krisin likewise asks clients leading questions to help them draw their own conclusions, yet for her, non-directive tutoring means emphasizing the client’s needs even if this means providing explicit direction. In this way, Kristin’s style contradicts her identification as a nondirective tutor; however, when placed in context with colleagues Gemma and Muna, it becomes clear that tutors are willing to shift and adjust their practices in a session to help the client reach the goal of becoming a better writer. These examples show how tutors implement directive strategies in

practice. But what motivates these shifts, and how do tutors justify them? The next section explores the reasoning behind these adaptations.

Adapting Tutoring Methods for Multilingual Writers The tutors are caring and empathetic toward the clients, and willing to shift their approach to be more directive when needed. This section examines the motivations and contextual factors that lead tutors to adapt their methods. Gemma, for example, stated that, With non-native speakers, I do try to focus on grammar a lot more because I realize that's what they really do need help with … They didn't spend years in elementary school learning [English] grammar rules, you know? When they come to the writing center saying ‘I need help with grammar’, it’s … not just something [they’ve] put on the appointment form.

Kristin echoed this phenomenon, saying that though she gets requests for grammar help from monolingual writers, I feel like it’s more prevalent with ESL students, and… they really want you to correct their grammar… In those sessions, I [do] give a little bit more attention to grammar than I would in my other sessions.

The tutors in this study are acting, in part, as linguistic informants who are able to help the writers navigate the challenges posed by lacking an innate understanding of English (Harris and Silva 530). Unlike domestic students who often use “grammar” as a catch-all term for proofreading activities, multilingual writers are intentional about seeking a deeper understanding of their target language.

This tendency to use “grammar” as a catch-all can lead to a mismatch between the client and tutor’s goals for the session. I summarized Gemma’s approach during our conversation as, “When I’m working with a domestic student who says they want to talk about grammar, I feel like it’s going to be a more superficial conversation than if I’m working with a multilingual writer who states they have similar goals.” The tutor is inclined to allow the client to determine the goals of the session, but is likely to override this if the client’s stated goals are not appropriate for the text they are working on; this disconnect is more likely to occur with clients for whom English is their primary

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 85 language, according to Gemma and others. These real experiences recalled by the tutors are in contrast with recommendations by Moussu and others specifically to prioritize content over form: the tutors in this study are acting, in part, as linguistic informants who are able to help the writers navigate the challenges posed by lacking an innate understanding of English (Harris and Silva 530). The hybrid approach, which blends together the directive and non-directive, accords well with the description by Matsuda and Cox, who identify multiple ways to read multilingual writers’ writing.

Zawacki and Habib similarly argue for greater attention to explicit grammar in writing classrooms as a means to unlocking expression. Gemma’s experiences are not unique to her: In contrast, and for reasons stated above, a multilingual writer who identifies a goal of working on grammar is more likely to in fact desire to work on grammatical structures in writing, and less likely to use the term “grammar” to include tasks that are not grammatical.

Another way tutors adapt to the unique needs of multilingual students is by going beyond the text to consider oral expression. Despite the pandemic preventing in-person sessions, the center continued to offer help over Zoom and not only asynchronously. Since they could talk with the clients live, they could work on oral skills as well as written. For example, Gemma described working with a client from South Korea, who struggles with English pronunciation and American cultural features. The live conversation allowed Gemma to help the client work on skills like “small talk” at the start of an interaction. From these conversations with her client, Gemma took away certain understandings of South Korean culture: [Small talk] is not really a common thing in South Korean culture, so before we started this interview, we [tried] a little bit of small talk… I noticed as our sessions are progressing, we chit-chat a little bit before we get into the session: ‘How is your day going? How’s that job interview?’ So we practice that a little bit, and then we go into grammar and pronunciation and things like that.

Here, Gemma brings up an oft-overlooked function of the writing center: helping clients to develop academic skills beyond their writing. It matters less whether Gemma gained an accurate understanding of South Korean social norms than

that she helped a client develop confidence in conversational English. Tutors may fill the function of academic coach or role model by showing clients they’re allowed to email professors, where to go to access campus resources, or how to use the library.

In her work with the client mentioned above, Gemma acts as a writing tutor as well as a speech coach and guide to American cultural expectations.

Gemma becomes a “cultural informant” as described by Williams and Severino, explaining to her client how the client’s expectations may not match the realities of academic culture in the U.S. There are other ways in which the tutors described adapting their practice to better serve these writers. Because Muna is herself a multilingual writer, she talked about the depth of her empathy with these clients: “I know what they're going through and I know that I feel empathetic towards their whole writing in a second language journey.” She feels she is more able to identify potential problem areas for these writers because she shares them. Furthermore, she is highly sensitive to the challenge of mastering the genre of academic essays, a genre that may not exist in the clients’ home countries. Many of “those students come from kind [of] backgrounds where they probably never ever have written anything even in their language,” Muna explained. “I try to be even more gentle.”

It is fair to wonder if these adaptations in fact achieve the goals of the writing center: from the tutor’s perspective, it can be difficult to know how successful a session has been. Clients typically do not provide updates on their work after they leave the center. However, occasionally they may email the tutor to thank them for their feedback; this is especially true of asynchronous appointments, in which the tutor and client interact only through written comments. However, as Gemma pointed out, an important clue to the tutor that their work has been useful to the client is when the client chooses to book another appointment with that tutor for the future. Building a relationship over many sessions is one of the most gratifying parts of writing center work; as Gemma put it, Seeing the same name pop up on your schedule multiple times kind of gives you a sense of, ‘Okay, I'm helping… They keep coming back to me in particular, so I must be doing something right.’ [With] repeat

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 86 clients, verbal feedback [is] a sign for me that I’m doing a good job.

Indeed, the experience of seeing a client grow as a writer—and knowing that the client appreciates the tutor’s time and effort, expressing this by becoming a “repeat customer”—may be the highest compliment a tutor can receive.

Kristin built on this idea. She too appreciates the occasional response email she receives, and she identifies returning clients as a sign of success. She also points out that seeing a client actively change their writing in response to the tutorial session is perhaps the greatest indication of success – that is, not only do these clients return to her, but they have worked to incorporate her suggestions and have even gone further to apply her advice elsewhere in the paper: “They’ve gone beyond what I have suggested and really revised their paper and put a lot of thought into it: I think that's a successful session, and I can kind of measure that from paper to paper.”

Doubtless the experience of helping a client to grow and develop as a writer over time is a valuable one. Kristin’s past experience as a classroom teacher no doubt also helped her to notice how clients can grow over the course of several visits.

Asynchronous Tutoring As a result of the global pandemic, many institutions shifted to online instruction. For many writing centers, this included asynchronous tutoring. This means that the client uploads their work as a text file, and the tutor provides written feedback on that text and returns it within a specified timeframe. Asynchronous sessions offer unique opportunities—and challenges—for supporting multilingual writers, particularly in grammar instruction and revision planning. This text-only model has its drawbacks, to be sure, but one of its benefits is the tutor’s ability to provide more thoughtful feedback as they can revise their writing, as opposed to the more immediate responses required by verbal conversation.

Especially important for multilingual writers is the ability to more carefully read and digest the tutor’s feedback and refer back to it as they revise. This was a common mechanism for coping with the pressures of the pandemic, and one that has been retained by many institutions. For example, my current institution, Georgia College & State University, offers three modalities for writing help: face-to-face, online through video conferencing,

and asynchronously as described above (Georgia College & State University); online programs, such as Southern New Hampshire University, have been using asynchronous tutoring for even longer.

Situating these tutors’ experiences alongside those of other writing centers highlights the broader pedagogical shift toward flexible, multilingualresponsive approaches in asynchronous environments.

Gemma, who has extensive online tutoring experience, shared that when she sees a grammar issue, she provides not only instructions for correcting the error, but also the reasoning, in the hope that the client can avoid further instances of that error. When Gemma is confident that she is working with a multilingual writer, she seeks to offer an even more in-depth response to the error.

Because of the increased grammatical knowledge many multilingual writers have due to learning English as an academic subject, this further explanation can be especially useful, building on their existing knowledge or reminding them of information they had learned but forgotten.

In much the same way, Muna likes to leave summative feedback on an asynchronous session that gives the multilingual client specific areas to work on. For example, she writes to the client, “Whenever you're revising this by yourself, think about these three things. Just focus on a few things that are manageable to get done before you have to turn this in or before your next session.” This approach gives structure to the client’s next steps without hijacking the writing, and while helping the writer to focus on global concerns while revising.

Most of Kristen’s tutoring experience has been online due to the global pandemic. Regarding the kind of advice she offers to her multilingual clients in asynchronous sessions, Kristen said, I’ve been leaving a lot of comments on their drafts… questions that will guide them [toward] things that will improve the clarity of their draft. I try to make my comments [relate to] things that the students have identified that they think they need work on in their papers.

In short, Kristen’s willingness to offer some explicit direction in an asynchronous session resembles their willingness to do so in an in-person or live video conference session. Writing centers like ours still deal with the changes brought by the Coronavirus pandemic. Some of these changes, such as the embracing of online options, remain

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 87 after restrictions are lifted. There will be more opportunities to study how tutors and clients do asynchronous tutoring and how asynchronous tutoring affects clients’ learning.

Conclusion When writing center professionals imagine their clients, they often imagine someone who simply needs a little prodding to produce stronger work.

The tutors I interviewed tended to describe their approach as “nondirective” because they see this as prodding a way to avoid handing clients the answers. However, multilingual clients may not be able to articulate their own answers regardless of the amount of prodding from the tutor. Gemma, Muna, and Kristin interviewed knew this intuitively. Despite their commitment to nondirective methodology, each adapt their practice to meet the needs of multilingual writers. The clients, in turn, describe an increased sense of self-efficacy and of capability following an appointment in the center. That is, the clients are getting what they need. Thus, training for tutors must evolve to support tutors in the many ways they will be called upon to make sure their clients are getting what they need.

Works Cited Babcock, Rebecca and Therese Thonus. Researching the Writing Center: Towards an Evidence-Based Practice. New York: Peter Lang Inc., 2012.

Bychkovska, Tetyana and Susan Lawrence.

“Tutors’ Perspectives on Their Work with Multilingual Writers: Changes over Time and in Response to Revisions in Training.”

The Writing Center Journal (2024): 76–101.

Cogie, Jane. “ESL Student Participation in Writing Center Sessions.” The Writing Center Journal 26.2 (2006): 48–66. JSTOR. 28 June 2024.

Eckstein, Grant and Dana Ferris. “Comparing L1 and L2 Texts and Writers in First-Year Composition.” TESOL Quarterly 52.1 (2018): 137–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44984815.

Georgia College & State University. “Writing Center.”

2026. https://www.gcsu.edu/writingcenter.

Harris, Muriel and Tony Silva. “Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options.” College Composition and Communication 44 (1993): 525–537.

Institute of International Education. “International Students.”

2026. https://opendoorsdata.org/annualrelease/international-students.

Lerner, Neal. “Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of Our Effectiveness.” The Center Will Hold, edited

by Pemberton, Michael K. and Joyce Kinkead. Utah UP, 2003. 584–745.

Matsuda, Paul Kei and Michelle Cox. “Reading and ESL Writer’s Text.” ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. Edited by Bruce, S. and Ben Rafoth.

Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2009. 42–50.

Moussu, Lucie. “Let’s Talk! ESL Students’ Needs and Writing Centre Philosophy.” TESL Canada Journal 30.2 (2013): 55–68. research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?i d=9e2d46dd-7d51-3b4e-bc27674fbf14b445.

Salem, Lori. “Decisions…Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?” The Writing Center Journal 35.2 (2016): 147–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43824060.

Southern New Hampshire University. “Scholarly Communication and Publishing.” 2026. https://libguides.snhu.edu/scholarlycommunication-andpublishing/WritingSupport.

The University of Alabama. “The University of Alabama Higher Education Act Student Population Information Fall 2019.” 2019. https://oira.ua.edu/HEA/reports/genera l-information/studentpopulation/201940.html.

Towle, Beth. A. “Accidental Outreach and Happenstance Staffing: A CrossInstitutional Study of Writing Center Support of First-Generation College Students.” The Writing Center Journal (2023): 72–86.

University of Georgia. “Admissions.” 2026. https://www.admissions.uga.edu/admissi ons/admission-statistics.

University of Mississippi. “University of Mississippi International Student Report.”

2026. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges /university-of-mississippi-maincampus/student-life/international.

Urquhart, Cathy. Grounded Theory for Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide. SAGE, 2013.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Tutors’ Flexible Approach in Working with Multilingual Writers • 88 Zawacki, Terry Myers and Anna Sophia Habib.

“Internationalization, English L2 Writers, and the Writing Classroom: Implications for Teaching and Learning.” College Composition and Communication 65.4 (2014): 650–9. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43490878.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

PARADIGM SHIFTS: HOW INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS RESHAPE WRITING CENTER WORK David Brauer University of North Georgia, Dahlonega david.brauer@ung.edu Abstract It is a common occurrence in writing center scholarship that a relationship is drawn between the work of writing centers and that of first-year composition programs. Indeed, in the pursuit of helping students develop literacy skills, a certain institutional and disciplinary partnership exists.

Even if writing centers and writing programs are not connected directly through organizational structures within an institution, they work together in common cause to improve student writing. But changes in higher education are reshaping the institutional landscape. Institutions are creating policies and initiatives that may place writing centers and writing programs in an adversarial relationship. Institutions now have the power to reshape or even break the connection between these institutional players and undermine their commitment to literacy development. This article explores how and why this shift occurs and how writing center administrators may negotiate this dynamic to develop and maintain institutional capital and to evolve with institutional changes. In analyzing a case study from my own institution, the author applies the institutional logics perspective of Patricia Thornton and John Ocasio. By drawing from institutional theory, this article provides writing center administrators with a novel approach to an emerging tension in institutional contexts and in the discipline.

Keywords: writing center administration; first-year composition; writing program; institutional theory; institutional logics perspective Introduction From the early days of modern writing center practice in the 1970s and 1980s, the writing center has aligned itself with first-year composition (FYC) 1

Lori Salem notes that empirical data indicates that “writing centers are the single most common model for academic support, and a majority of institutions have them” (37).

2 In evaluating the justification for a writing center within academic settings, Lori Salem points out that the

curricula, helping FYC fulfill its departmental and institutional mission. 1 The conceptual, theoretical, and pedagogical frameworks of the late 19th- and mid-20th-centuries that legitimized FYC helped the writing center formulate its own place in an academic setting (see Boquet, Carino). Increased funding for writing centers over the last thirty years may be attributable in part to the growth of composition studies as an academic discipline at that time. For the most part, early scholarship on writing center practice assumed there existed a cooperative relationship between writing centers and FYC (see Waldo, Ianetta et al., Lerner). Once that connection was established and further theorized, the harmonious relationship could be taken for granted. This dynamic reflected a kind of disciplinary isomorphism: once the model was articulated, it would be replicated predictably across institutions. 2 Yet this once stable, generally predictable relationship now finds itself strained by intra-organizational dynamics that may in fact pit these two institutional sponsors of literacy against each other. I contend that in a growing number of institutional contexts, the relationship between FYC and writing centers no longer adheres to traditional models and that writing center directors (WCD) should prepare for changes.

Much of the scholarship on writing center work and its relationship to composition studies positions the writing center as a support mechanism for FYC. Mark Waldo argues that the “ideal relationship between the writing center and program [is]…almost symbiotic” (170), Emily Isaacs & Melina Knight apply terms like “helpmate” and “adjunct” to define the role of the writing center vis-à-vis writing programs, while Michelle Eodice articulates a more oblique

reasons for opening a writing center followed a familiar model, as “whatever the individual motivations were, the decision to open a writing center suggests that factors outside the institution were at work, since the idea of a writing center comes from other institutions in the first place.” (23, emphasis Salem).

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 90 perspective with her emphasis on collaboration. 3 Because this “symbiotic” model was definable and reproducible across institutional contexts, early conversations about writing centers isomorphic assumptions about their place in the academy proliferated. In most undergraduate contexts, the writing center provides services to help student writers to develop their writing skills and to recognize the importance of developing strong writing skills beyond FYC (see Waldo, Lerner).

When writing center services align with the institutional mission, they reinforce that institution’s understanding of how and why the writing center works. Even as scholars acknowledge the variables that shape the relationship between FYC and the writing center— including departmental practices, institutional environments, and administrative hierarchies, many still assume a complementarianism between the two institutions. 4 My Story: An Unplanned Case Study But what happens when evolving circumstances negatively affect the relationship between a writing center and a FYC program? At the WCD 7500student Dahlonega campus at the University of North Georgia, I experienced a chain of events that caused me to reconsider my expectations for a shared vision among local sponsors of literacy.

Two events reshaped our institutional environment in profound ways: a multi-campus consolidation and the launch of a core curriculum initiative focused primarily on student retention. As a result of these actions, I see the prospects for complementarianism between FYC and the writing center may be shaped less by disciplinary alliances and more by institutional forces. I witnessed how changes in institutional policies affect writing center work. Thus, my essay will combine personal narrative, reflection, and the application of theoretical perspectives. Given that the impacts of 3

Balester and McDonald gathered data from a variety of institutional settings highlighting the mutual benefits of collaboration between a WPA and a WCD but also noting that a difficult or strained relationship between the WPA and the WCD was generally caused by lack of communication, lack of collaboration, or both.

4 Despite cooperation, writing center scholarship has fostered an identity as anti-hegemonic, iconoclastic, and proudly marginalized. Beginning with North’s “Idea” and carried on in Riley’s “The Unpromising Future,’

institutional change on writing center practices are both unique and isomorphic, I hope to offer perspective to both faculty and administrators regarding a troubling reality for writing centers and WCDs. 5 In 2012, the University of North Georgia was situated on a single campus. At that time, the writing center served fewer than 4,000 students.

Since then, consolidations and mergers have created a multi-campus institution. The five main and four extended campuses have different entrance requirements and thus serve a diverse student population. The FYC writing program administrator (WPA) is required to navigate the differences between locations while attempting to provide a singular vision for FYC. To be clear, my university has an incongruous multi-campus identity—because some campuses emphasize A.A. programs over B.A. programs, not all students enter the university under the same entrance requirements. The implication is that when it comes to learning support, one size does not fit all, as each campus varies widely in the makeup of students seeking an associate’s or bachelor’s degree (see Table 1 in Appendix A). Even so, the FYC program is uniform across the various campuses, though the campus-specific enrollment in those courses reflects the distinctions in enrollment and degree program (see Table 2 in Appendix B).

In 2018, university administrators launched the Gateways to Completion (G2C) program, an initiative aimed at addressing high rates of failure or withdrawal (aka “DFW” rates) in core curriculum courses. Departments were responsible for making changes to their curriculum that would theoretically improve student retention.The FYC committee at my institution chose English 1101, the first course in the twosemester FYC sequence, as its focal point for reform. The committee developed numerous changes to the course, most of which were Grimm’s Good Intentions, and McKinney’s Peripheral Visions, the idea that the writing center would challenge institutional practices is well-established. Gardner & Ramsey label this perspective “anti-curriculum” (27).

5 Some readers may infer that the narrative portions of my essay recount a disciplinary or departmental conflict.

This is not the case. Any tensions in my department arose from exogenous factors, specifically decision makers in the university system.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 91 revisions to the course structure and instructorbased interventions (e.g. student conferences, iterative feedback on drafts). Suggestions included a scaffolding or portfolio assessment structure for major assignments and the use of peer review during the writing process. Such elements are designed to extend the writing process, thus improving the possibility of completing the assignment successfully. These interventions also make the course more manageable for the numerous contingent faculty members who teach it, since a lengthened period for writing assignments eases the grading load. Other interventions—including visits to the writing center—were provided in a list of “further options” for improving student learning. Nowhere in the planned revisions to the curriculum and to English 1101 did the writing center have a prominent role in improving student retention in the course. In fact, over the three-year period of planning and piloting the Gateways program for FYC, I was never directly consulted by the committee for input on the potential role of the writing center to help them achieve their goal.

Partly because the university’s writing center follows different models on different campuses, the FYC committee decided against giving the writing center a prominent role in their course re-design. Though the writing center would seem like a natural partner in such an endeavor, the differences in structure from campus to campus arguably make it less consistent as a student resource. The focus on process-oriented pedagogy would also seem to encourage student use of the writing center, but the committee instead placed emphasis on instructor intervention, peer review, and hybrid grading, all to create a centripetal system that emphasized the classroom and the instructor.

Relative to the instructor and the students in any course that had to be changed, the writing center was largely overlooked in the committee’s action plan.

The structural change the University of North Georgia made to become a multi-campus environment mirrors changes to the core curriculum. As a result, prospects for collaboration between FYC and the writing center were undermined. The aspiration for student success and retention may have made English 1101 more efficient with a curricular design centered on protracted writing processes and frequent interventions by the instructor. Over time,

however, the changes to the course had what I saw as a predictable impact: fewer FYC students on my campus attended writing center sessions, fewer instructors suggested or required writing center visits, and new instructors were shuttled into the G2C program without considering the value of writing center tutoring as a primary form of supplemental instruction for their students.

The actions taken by the institution and FYC committee reflect what Donna Strickland terms the “managerial” aspect of composition studies.

Strickland defines the managerial as a third term that usefully breaks up the usual dichotomies of teaching/research, marginal/central, and productivity/ consumption that have long circulated through the discourse of composition studies. (7) Put simply, the FYC committee was given the directive to “manage” their curricula in order to improve retention and grade distribution; the FYC course grade distribution was a problem that needed to be solved. Given the constraints of a multi-campus setting, the FYC committee felt it had limited options. Perhaps they could have chosen a less managerial strategy, but that alternative strategy may not have met the requirements of the directive.

The institution-wide directive and the FYC’s decisions had a ripple effect, and the writing center had to adjust to the changed environment. I adopted a number of solutions that addressed both the material and the symbolic domains: I evaluated the Gateways training materials given to FYC faculty in order to understand what was stipulated in the initiative regarding course design, assignment design, and pedagogy; I communicated directly with faculty and administrators about how the writing center might support the increased emphasis on peer review in FYC; and I helped writing center staff adjust their tutoring practices to account for the changes that were now in effect. I also initiated a monthly discussion group with faculty teaching the English 1101/1102 sequence in which we conversed about FYC pedagogy and how to improve the lines of communication between contingent faculty and the writing center. These actions enabled the writing center to account for changes in practice and provided me avenues for shaping the symbolic domains associated with the initiative, FYC, and writing pedagogy. My solution was neither resignation towards nor rejection of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 92 material changes in the institution; rather, I adjusted to the changes in the material domain and negotiated the symbolic domain as an institutional agent. I had misgivings about the operational changes the Gateways initiative would make to the writing center, but I worked to ensure its viability in this new environment.

Though they can both be considered sponsors of literacy, the writing center and FYC diverge in operational ways and serve different roles in academia. But institutional logics can set these entities at odds with one another, and the identities formed as a result may exacerbate the divergence. Such tension is defined by institutional theorists as “differentiation,” a phenomenon that accounts for “the diversity of institutional logics enabling different forms of interaction and organizational practices in organizations and institutional domains leading to institutional complexity” (Thornton et al., 99). In my case, the WPA operated according to the requirements necessary to establish reproducible practices and promote more instructor-centered intervention toward positive outcomes for students in FYC. And though I too wanted positive outcomes for those students, I was interested more in fostering exploratory dialogue in the tutoring session and student-centered interventions. Directly speaking, course grades and retention matter less to the writing center staff than to both the FYC committee and writing instructors. 6 When an institution’s practices or values fundamentally change, paths for agency will emerge. Richard Scott explains: “A more conflicted or ambiguous environment allows for strategic and agentic behavior” (473). In my circumstance, effective agency involved recognizing that hostility toward the Gateways initiative would prove fruitless. As the initiative reshaped existing institutional logics, I saw that my assumptions about the relationship between the writing center and the writing program disciplines needed to change. Instead of spurning the new methods, I engaged writing center tutors and fellow writing instructors in conversations about the 6

The FYC data for the 2019 academic year indicates that more than 70% of students in FYC courses earned a grade of A or B. 7 Amy Ward Martin explains how a multi-campus environment impacts multiple writing centers on those

consequences of the initiative on teaching and tutoring alike, in both formal and informal campus settings. I operated in these contexts as both the director of a writing center and as a department colleague to both reflect on pedagogical strategies and cast a vision for helping students develop their literacy skills. In direct and indirect ways, I made the case that student intervention occurs at multiple sites, and that at every step, institutional practice and institutional discourse are intertwined.

The diversity of student populations across our various campuses results in an FYC program that has no compelling rationale to connect itself to a single model of writing center work. 7 Thus, the FYC program has jettisoned any partnership with the writing center and other related tutoring service in the institution. This posture does not appear to have been a conscious choice; rather, it may be that the FYC program simply does not have the luxury of linking itself to a specific model of student learning support. If so, the relationship between FYC and the writing center can be defined only in part by the shared disciplinary backgrounds of the leadership of the WPA and the WCD: the institution may in fact serve as the primary arbiter for this relationship.

Institutional and environmental forces collectively constitute what scholars have identified as institutional logics. The term institutional logics was first defined by Roger Friedland and Robert Alford as “a set of material practices and symbolic constructions” (Cai & Mehari, 6), a combination of social and discursive elements that provide an institution with its organizing principles.

A New Theoretical Frame for New Institutional Dynamics To understand the role of institutional logics in writing center work, I have augmented writing center scholarship within the context of institutional theory. Institutional theory draws from multiple disciplines to interrogate the assumption that institutional context matters as much—or more—than the shared context of academic discipline. Institutional theory serves higher campuses: “These multiple centers technically exist at the same university and share the same mission, but the characteristics of each campus and the physical placement of each center may shape those centers in ways that may make sense for one campus but not for the other[s]” (127).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 93 education by providing concepts and methods for understanding how universities and colleges work.

Early theories of institutionalism focused largely on how organizations change; new institutionalism focused on how organizations gain stability and legitimacy. More recent strands (Scott) focus on how human agents shape institutional change (Cai & Mehari). 8 Institutional structure may feel passive, but it shapes participants’ lived experience. Richard Scott asserts that “Norms of rationality play a causal role in the creation of formal organization” (5). Organizations are made up of individuals, but the entity influences the thinking in their participants. Patricia Thornton et al. explain the dynamic: “The principles, practices, and symbols of each institutional order differentially shape how reasoning takes place and how rationality is perceived and experienced” (2). Though we bring disciplinary knowledge to an institutional setting, that setting can in turn reshape how we perceive ourselves and our roles as instructors, faculty, or administrators. The given assumptions or logics may be implicit, but not all institutional logics are experienced as coherent by its members. Richard Scott considers how institutions are shaped by “conflicting logics” (13). For example, an institution may appear uniform and efficient in its operations, but it may have agents and agentic forces with competing or divergent assumptions.

But Scott explains the upside to this scenario: “A more conflicted or ambiguous environment allows for greater opportunity for strategic and agentic behavior” (13). For participants who understand their circumstances, chaos and conflict may lead to effective change. Divergent logics arguably provide fertile soil for enacted agency.

Recent institutional theory suggests institutional participants must recognize and inhabit the logic of the institution in order to operate within it effectively. Thornton et al. elaborated upon the work of Friedland and Alford to highlight the potential for both stasis and change within an institutional setting. Thornton et al. defined institutional logics as “the socially constructed, historical patterns of cultural symbols and material practices, including assumptions, values, and beliefs, by which individuals and organizations provide meaning to their daily activity, organize time and space, and reproduce

their lives and experiences” (2). The ILP binary of the material and the symbolic allows researchers to unpack the various ingredients of institutional life and practice. While the material includes actions, daily activities, resources, physical space, and budgetary issues, the symbolic includes ideas, rhetorical situations and tactics, credentialing, disciplinary background and assumptions, and institutional beliefs and values. Institutional logics populate both realms, enabling us to recognize this binary and how these distinctions may overlap.

Thornton and Ocasio added a third institutional realm, the normative, which encapsulates the reproducible or isomorphic elements of institutions. Though these realms may be defined separately, ILP “integrates the structural, normative, and symbolic as three necessary and complementary dimensions of institutions, rather than separable structural (coercive), normative, and symbolic (cognitive) carriers [of institutional logics]” (101). While we may separate these strands in order to analyze them, these strands may prove difficult to separate within the institutional domain.

The institutional logics perspective analyzes the dynamic relationships between the individual actor and the institution and between the material and the symbolic, highlighting how institutions develop a kind of rationality that legitimizes their values and practices and enables those within the institution to make sense of their experiences. Within the ILP, actors have “partial autonomy” (Thornton et al, p.7) and thus can have agency even while they are constrained by institutional forces. Institutional context, which is never neutral, provides exigencies and motives for its participants. These two elements comprise institutional attention, “by generating a set of values that order the legitimacy, importance, and relevance of issues and solutions; and…by providing decision makers with an understanding of their interests and identities” (114). Just as a rhetorical exigence is the seed of rhetorical practice, institutional attention is the seed of institutional agency. One product of institutional agency is the concept of institutional entrepreneurship. The institutional entrepreneur is defined by Cai and Mehari as those individuals who “not only initiate diverse changes in the institutional environment but also actively participate in the implementation

8

For a brief overview of institutional theory, see Yuzhuo Cai & Yohannes Mehari.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 94 of such changes” (5). Such individuals either have or develop agency sufficient for having a transformative impact on their institution. 9 While they are shaped and constrained by the institutional context, the institutional entrepreneur has the agentic capacity to reshape the institutional logics at work, and, by consequence, the institution itself.

When it comes to institutional agency, many WCDs operate within the realm of the pragmatic: we tend to believe that if we can develop the right alliances on campus and obtain our rightful piece of the budgetary pie, then “the rest” will take care of itself (see Simpson, White). But ILP portrays a more complex picture: “The term ideology aligns itself with the doctrine of materialism, whereas the institutional logics perspective emphasizes the interpenetration of the symbolic and material aspects of institutions” (Thornton et al., 5). The social context of the institution ensures that the material and the symbolic may be disambiguated from one another through analysis or reflection but are never truly separate in an institutional scene. Thornton et al. explain: “By material aspects of institutions, we refer to structures and practices; by symbolic aspects, we refer to ideation and meaning, recognizing that the symbolic and the material are intertwined and constitutive of one another” (10).

We may conceptualize the relationship between the material and the symbolic as a kind of feedback loop in which change in one aspect leads to change in the other. For example, if a writing center occupies an out-of-the-way location on campus, that location may indicate a lower-priority status for student support on that campus. If the symbolic aspect within an institution has well-defined values and beliefs, then the material domain may prove difficult to change. That said, one interpretive scheme for understanding the material-symbolic relationship will not account for all contingencies.

The WCD who focuses exclusively on material conditions may ignore the symbolic conditions that determine material conditions. While material conditions feel more tangible and therefore more important, it may be that the symbolic domain should command the attention of the WCD. The intertwining of the material and the symbolic often manifests in broad initiatives,

specifically those whose work concerns student performance and degree completion. The material impact on institutional practice requires specific academic departments and faculty to carry out an initiative by improving student experience and providing tools for students to complete courses successfully. This dynamic constitutes what Thornton et al. define as a “frame,” an amalgam of concrete and abstract information designed to “facilitate identification and mobilization, and therefore agency and institutional change” (152). In changing institutional practices, it sets forth directives and a time frame with a call for deliverables to administrators. Symbolically, it reflects institutional values such as accommodation, inclusivity, student-centeredness, and pedagogical hospitality. But the symbolic serves a material end, as the program is designed to ensure that more students continue and eventually complete their education, maximizing the tuition revenues for the university system. For the upper administration, the emphasis centers on material changes, but the initiative is articulated symbolically to provide a rationale for doing things differently.

The goals for students are clear: retention and degree completion. According to the logic of the initiative, these outcomes constitute success. By consequence, the academic environment makes itself conducive to these material outcomes. The initiative and its influence on literacy sponsors exemplifies what Scott identifies as “conflicting logics” (Cai and Mehari 4). The long-term impact on the institution is conflicted: an initiative directed toward student learning and retention may apply more pressure to contingent faculty while underemphasizing resources such as the writing center—resources designed to alleviate pressure on faculty and improve student learning in writing courses.

The debate about pedagogical interventions for students involves both the material domain of classroom practice and the symbolic domain of institutional values and disciplinary assumptions that shape classroom practice. Though the WCD may want to lean on disciplinary training for a roadmap through such scenarios, it is the institution that enables the WCD to apply disciplinary knowledge in meaningful ways. Such

9 Thornton et al. summarize Richard Scott’s theory of agency as follows: “Scott defines agency as an actor’s ability to have some effect on the social world—altering

the rules, relational ties, or distribution of resources” (67). As both Scott and Thornton explain, agency has impact on both material and symbolic domains.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 95 applications are defined in ILP theory as bounded intentionality, the ways in which an individual is culturally embedded in a social group with which they identify, that affords them not only an identity to which they are emotionally committed…but a cognitive schema that focuses their attention on ‘particular features’ of organizations and their environments, conditions their goals and provides them a distinctive repertoire of practices presumed to attain them.

(Friedland 591) We may tend to think of the institution as supplying the material that runs parallel to the symbolic freight of our disciplinary understandings. But it is the interplay between the material and the symbolic that shows how institutional logics shape our daily lives and change the ways that we define and understand our institutional roles.

The ILP focus on institutional change also sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of scholarly narratives about writing center work.

Jackie McKinney asserts that writing center administrators often describe the work of the writing center according to a “grand narrative” associated with this domain (4). But while this narrative provides familiarity and comfort, its influence may prove deleterious. McKinney explains: “The story has focused our attention so narrowly that we already no longer see the range and variety of activities that make up writing center work or the potential ways in which writing center work can evolve” (5-6). The narrative of writing center work relies on a coherent definition of the place of tutoring in higher education. But the academy is always subject to change. As we attend to what Kris Fleckenstein calls “systems of perception” (10) that shape our work, ranging from institutional logics to disciplinary assumptions, we become more responsive to such changes. It may only be when the material and/or symbolic domains of an institution evolve that we recognize those domains and how they shape our understanding of and experience within the institution. As the ground shifts during seasons of change, contradictions between those institutional logics may reveal themselves. The crisis may prove sudden and acute (e.g. a mandated consolidation of several institutions with different educational missions) but may also reflect an emerging focus in higher education administration (e.g. the

introduction of the retention initiative several years following the consolidation). Thornton et al. define this set of circumstances as “event sequencing”: “the temporal and sequential unfolding of unique events that dislocate, rearticulate, and transform the interpretation of cultural symbols’ and material practices’ meaning” (122). Any significant change at an institution in terms of its makeup and/or leadership may redefine the institutional logics that undergird its day-to-day practices and assumptions.

The WCD can assess how shifts in the values and activities of an institution may affect how the writing center relates to other agents, especially those it would identify as traditional allies.

Michelle Miley asserts that WCDs should focus on “making sense of our work as it coordinates or collides with the work of others” (112). While relationships play a significant part in Miley’s point, “making sense” involves making meaning. Ironically, relationships may depend on the ways in which making meaning “coordinates” or “collides” with other institutional agents. One such “collision” may arise from divergent meanings of pedagogical intervention. At my institution, the institutional directive led system administrators and the FYC director to locate intervention within the classroom. Meanwhile, the writing center located intervention in the tutoring session. The dissonance in institutional logics resulted in material practices that applied disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge in contradictory ways.

Ianetta et al. argue that “if the authority and expertise of the WCD draws on a body of knowledge distinct from that of the composition program director, pedagogical conflicts may emerge from the conflicting paradigms, hindering the efforts of writers and teachers in both settings” (12). Disciplinary camaraderie may be overcome by the pressures of institutional logics. If the WCD and the WPA occupy different positions within the institution, they may well speak different institutional languages. Roger Friedland explains that “[i]t is precisely in such situations, where rival vocabularies are at play and reference is contested, that will and force, identity as subjective commitment and power as compulsion are most likely to be important” (593). Institutional logics may undermine otherwise cooperative relationships among institutional actors and may turn disciplinary allies into institutional rivals.

ILP challenges conventional ways of thinking about agency within institutional settings.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 96 But while its novel approach to both institutional critique and institutional transformation makes ILP an attractive theory, it draws a contrast with the analyses pursued by composition scholars. These scholars have evaluated institutional dynamics through the lens of material working conditions and labor concerns. Strickland and Bousquet characterize the modern university as driven by efficiency and productivity. Such emergent values in higher education have created an environment that values neither student learning nor faculty labor. The aforementioned “managerial culture” which Strickland finds within modern universities prioritizes conformist practices over “disciplinary knowledge and scholarship” (9-10). For Strickland, even the positions of WPA and WCD indicate the managerial role of faculty in composition work.

The creation of the WPA position represents “a conceptual and practical break between the work of studying writing and rhetoric in general and the work of directing writing programs” (85-86).

Institutional forces thus break the bonds of disciplinary identity, as the priorities and values of writing programs and writing centers are surreptitiously undermined by the prevailing culture of American higher education.

Like Strickland, Bousquet places the blame on the managers: “Plainly put, higher education administration pervasively and self-consciously seeks control of the institution by seeking to retool the values, practices, and sense of institutional reality that comprise faculty and student culture” (l2). Institutional change may herald progressive impetuses, but it may also disclose administrative desire for control. But administrators are not the only problem. For Bousquet, the dirty little secret of higher education is “the compliance of the tenured with management’s development of a second tier of labor” (82). That second tier is, of course, contingent faculty and instructors, most of whom are tasked with courses in FYC. Bousquet connects this contrast in faculty workload directly to the development of composition studies as a visible and viable discipline in the academy. He explains that “the disciplinary identity of tenurable faculty in rhetoric and composition has emerged in close relation to the permatemping of the labor force for first-year writing” (158). While FYC has institutional value, most writing instructors lack rhetorical power or professional agency within institutional settings. The result is, as Bousquet explains, that composition studies has moved

away from critical theory toward institutionally-focused pragmatism, toward acceptance of market logic, and toward increasing collaboration with a vocational and technical model of education. (161) The composition faculty member has become a “pragmatic philosopher” (175) and the discipline has become a “management science” (168). Over time, this pattern undermines agency and fosters interpellation—the faculty member no longer acts but instead adapts to institutional expectations. If the rhetorical logic of an institution undoubtedly shapes the work of the WPA and the WCD, these faculty administrators may in turn neglect to respond to that logic with their own disciplinary motives and purposes.

Drawing Inferences, or: Where Do We Go from Here?

So how does the writing center maintain and/or develop agency in such a scenario? First, WCDs cannot forget the purpose of our work: to support the institutional mission. The WCD play their role within a given institution, thus exemplifying “partial autonomy” (Thornton et al., 7) or “embedded agency.” Thornton and Ocasio define “embedded agency” as being a balance between autonomy and restriction: While individual and organizational actors may seek power, status, and economic advantage, the means and ends of their interests and agency are both enabled and constrained by prevailing institutional logics. (103) The role of the WCD within an institution may limit certain options, but it is also a role that affords agency. The daily, in-person work required is not isolated from the symbolic position within the institution. For example, a research skills workshop for FYC students reflects an emphasis on discipline-specific writing. A task that may feel inconsequential to the WCD possesses symbolic implications for multiple agents and entities, not simply for the writing center or the WCD. In applying ILP to the institutional agency of the WCD, I see two main strategies for maintaining and/or developing agency. One is passive, one is active. The first strategy employs what Thornton et al. call “sensemaking,” defined as “the process by which social actors turn circumstances into situations that are

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 97 comprehended explicitly in words and that serve as springboards for action.” Sensemaking enables the institutional actor to recognize and articulate institutional logics, but “sensemaking is [also] a mechanism by which institutional logics are transformed” (96). They continue: “Sensemaking is not merely passive understanding but rather provides symbolic means by which the institutional actor may “resolve ambiguity in ways that enable activity to occur” (133). Institutional logics may remain tacit until a moment of crisis highlights ambiguities, inconsistencies, or competing logics.

Sensemaking helps us to see institutional logics, perhaps for the first time, and to conceptualize how and why those logics might change. If an isomorphic or “business-as-usual” viewpoint may limit the prospects for agency (7), sensemaking allows for agency in both the symbolic and material domains of an institution.

The second strategy is to use what I suggest to be rhetorical entrepreneurship. For Thornton et al., rhetoric has meaning for the symbolic and the physical aspects of an institution.

If sensemaking is primarily analytical, rhetoric in the institutional setting is more creative, more purposeful in its telos: to change institutional logics and institutional practices to achieve a goal.

Thornton et al. connect cultural entrepreneurs with rhetoric to show how specific actors “manipulate cultural symbols to obtain resources and to change practices” (124). Rhetorical entrepreneurship is neither techne nor ideology: We used [ILP] to comparatively illustrate how individuals switched categories that referenced different symbolic analogies, sources of legitimacy, and bases of norms, with implications for a change in practices; it was not simply a struggle over material resources. (Thornton et al., 124) In the ILP framework, effective agency is not limited to counterhegemonic practices but depends upon seeing the two domains of the material and the symbolic as always interrelated.

Agency can be said to be borne of sensemaking, which in turn leads to rhetorical entrepreneurship. Thornton et al. point out that the institutional entrepreneur “garner[s] resources…by identifying contradictions” (177). Whether one

uses the symbolic to address material conflicts or use the material to address symbolic conflicts, the WCD can use these hermeneutics to theorize their institution effectively. Given that the material domain (budgets, campus location, etc.) may be shaped by variables beyond the control of the WCD, they might instead focus on the symbolic domain as the avenue for institutional transformation. To do so means recognizing and interpreting prevailing institutional logics, then applying rhetorical strategies to reshape or transform those institutional logics. Perhaps such an approach will serve to maximize the institutional identity of the writing center and its role in supporting student learning. 10 The writing center exists because the classroom is not the only place where students can learn about writing: it follows the lead of curricula, then responds to students’ needs accordingly. But writing center work is not primarily about efficiency; its impact on academic performance and retention are often subtle. Writing center tutoring operates within the constraints of a writing assignment but transcends the classroom context in order to draw the student writer into fundamental reflection on their literacy skills, including rhetorical awareness, strategy, and tactics. As FYC finds itself increasingly caught up with institutional pressures to rush students to graduation, the result may be a pedagogy measured by quantifiable criteria alone. The term “student success” provides a transparent example of conflicting institutional logics; though the term may be deployed by various administrators to justify their decisions, the term may not hold the same meaning across intrainstitutional contexts. Even given a clear directive, the symbolic domains are in conflict, resulting in “divergent bases of valuation and critique” (Friedland, 87). Examining institutional contexts reveals that FYC and the writing center are stewards of rhetorical pedagogy that may follow different logics and values. The constant changes in institutional dynamics and structure ensure that the WCD can no longer rely on isomorphic assumptions about the relationships among academic sponsors of literacy. Echoing the concerns of Porter et al., the tendency to perceive a given institution as a straightforward instantiation

10 Porter et al. define institutional critique as follows: “Institutional critique examines institutions as rhetorical designs…in order to expose and interrogate possibilities

for institutional change through the practice of rhetoric” (631). Institutional spaces are thus both “material and discursive” (620).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 98 of disciplinary practice may be common, but it is counterproductive to effective critique and prospects for change (618-19). 11 Bruce Speck distinguishes between what he calls the faculty perspective and the administrative perspective. For Speck, the former centers on “values of community and autonomy” that “foster a limited, self-serving perspective of the academy,” whereas one occupying the latter perspective “think[s] globally, to consider the entire needs of the organization” (218-19). Applying Speck’s binary to ILP, I believe that the WCD may occupy a position that blends both the faculty perspective and the administrative perspective.

Given the urgency of addressing workplace issues and material conditions, institutional critiques in composition studies have characterized the symbolic as a reflection of the material. But ILP reminds us that the material and the symbolic exist in a feedback loop—attending to one inevitably reveals the underappreciated significance of the other. In ILP, material conditions are part of the larger domains of practice and activity that constitute the institutional setting.

By implication, critique operates as productive resistance that reflects deep situational awareness and rhetorical sophistication. While the WCD can move against hierarchical power structures and unjust material conditions when the opportunities arise, they can also shape institutional environments to augment the symbolic relevance (i.e. the institutional “meaning”) of writing center work for students, faculty, and administrators. Both the WCD and the WPA should strive to become what Thornton et al. term “cultural entrepreneurs,” agents who use “stories and rhetorical strategies to manipulate cultural symbols to obtain resources and to change practices” (124). Rhetorical skills may not transform material conditions immediately, but those skills may enable a WCD to negotiate and reshape institutional values.

Moreover, the WCD can develop sensemaking abilities that allow them to recognize the subtle institutional machinations of control and efficiency as well as strategies for countering those forces.

With increasing bureaucratic complexity in higher education, institutional priorities may

undermine shared disciplinary background, a background that may not guarantee shared priorities within the institution. If sponsors of literacy are placed at cross purposes to one another, how will they find common ground when the ground has shifted beneath their feet? Michelle Eodice calls for collaboration as a signature practice for WCDs, but extenuating circumstances may render such arrangements difficult if not impossible. As Michelle Miley and Doug Downs demonstrate in their own experience, any chance for effective collaboration begins with open communication (40-1). The WPA and the WCD can work together to find at least some common ground in their analysis of the institutional logics that shape their relationship. Based on shared values and vision and mutual agreement about their institutional context, these administrators have an opportunity to forge an alliance in what might appear to be a zero-sum game. While Eodice argues that the WCD “can and should demand collaboration and continue to work toward boundarylessness” (129), Miley and Downs focus on reciprocity as a critical variable in achieving effective collaboration. This concept assumes a non-hierarchical dynamic in these scenarios, an ideal that may reshape institutional dynamics.

If administrative hierarchies and academic programs do not enable the WPA and the WCD to foster collaboration, then the WPA and the WCD may look to both institutional structures and informal conversation as alternatives (Miley and Downs 40-3). In formal arrangements, the WPA and WCD may find opportunities to interact within institutional committees. Less formally, the WPA and the WCD may generate department-level discussions or forums to engage in open-ended dialogue about institutional writing culture and program mission and vision. Ultimately, these scenarios represent means of getting the WPA and the WCD in the same room with increased frequency and may set the stage for cooperation. In institutional settings that may impede a productive relationship between the WPA and the WCD, such tactics recalibrate those dynamics and use the institutional structure and environment to bridge the distance between these institutional agents.

11

key to changing institutions. We argue that equating institution with discipline denies important physical dimensions and limits the potential for productive action” (619).

Porter et al. explain this point further: “The simple equation, discipline=institution, blocks consideration of material, economic, and organizational factors that are

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 99 Where conflict or institutional estrangement exists, the rhetorical principle of kairos offers a pathway toward resolution. Powell and Takayoshi define kairos as a “theoretical lens for understanding discomfort and dissensus so that we can be more prepared for and responsive to…rhetorical situations” that offers “generative power for rhetoric through…conflict resolution, which leads to new knowledge” (416, emphasis added). The rhetorical responsiveness of kairos enables the WCD to form new bonds with the WPA and to create new solutions in response to institutional challenges.

For most of the modern era of writing center work, writing centers have accommodated the shifting foci and interests of the discipline. But such accommodation has obfuscated the unique locus of the writing center as an institutionally bound manifestation of disciplinary work. Even in the most amicable scenario, the institutional setting complicates the relationship between FYC and the writing center. In my institutional context, administrative directives resulted in a circumstance in which neither accommodation nor rejection was a viable solution to the problems that I faced. As Thornton et al. explain, structure always has a limiting effect on agency (7). My narrative offers a warning to the WPA and the WCD alike—the changing landscape of higher education all but ensures that the institutional environments will become more complex, not less. In that complexity, disciplinary allies may lose track of each other. Thus, it is critical for writing center scholarship to resist isomorphic myths about the relationship between a writing center and a writing program. What “should be” according to disciplinary assumptions may not always prove the case, as institutional logics will regulate value, meaning, and practice within a given context.

Writing center scholarship has much to learn from institutional theory and ILP about how extradisciplinary influences shape disciplinary praxis.

While ILP does not provide formulaic answers to institutional dilemmas, it offers a framework for understanding how the WCD and the writing center may address institutional settings and institutional changes. As academic infrastructures develop retention initiatives and grow more complex through institutional consolidation and multi-campus institutional settings, leaning on traditional assumptions may no longer prove viable. In an era of change in higher education,

writing centers and writing center directors must be prepared to evolve and, when necessary, exchange old paradigms for new ones.

Works Cited Balester, Valerie, and James C. McDonald. “A View of Status and Working Conditions: Relations Between Writing Program and Writing Center Directors.”

WPA Journal, vol.

24, no. 3, 2002, pp. 59–82.

Brewer, Marcus. “Re: INEF0002604.” Received by David Brauer. 16 March 2026. Email interview.

Boquet, Elizabeth. “’Our Little Secret’”: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Edited by Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner.

Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 41–60.

Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. New York UP, 2008.

Cai, Yuzhuo, and Yohannes Mehari. “The Use of Institutional Theory in Higher Education Research.” Theory and Method in Higher Education Research. Edited by Jeroen Huisman and Malcolm Tight. Emerald Group Publishing, 2015, pp. 1–26.

Carino, Peter. “Early Writing Centers: Toward a History.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Edited by Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner.

Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 10–21.

Eodice, Michele.

“Breathing Lessons or Collaboration Is…” The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship.

Edited by Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead. Utah State UP, 2003, pp. 114–29.

Fleckenstein, Kristen. Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action in the Composition Classroom.

Southern Illinois UP, 2010.

Friedland, Roger. “The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process.” M@n@gement, vol.

15, no. 5, 2012, pp. 582–95.

Gardner, Phillip J. and William M. Ramsey. “The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers.”

The Writing Center Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 2005, pp. 25–42.

Grimm, Nancy. Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. Heinemann, 1999.

Haviland, Carol Peterson, et al. “The Politics of Administrative and Physical Location.” The

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Paradigm Shifts: How Institutional Logics Reshape Writing Center Work • 100 Politics of Writing Centers. Edited by Jane Nelson and Cathy Evertz. Boynton/Cook, 2001, pp. 85–98.

Ianetta, Melissa, et al. “Polylog: Are Writing Center Directors Writing Program Administrators?” Composition Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, 2006, pp. 11–42.

Isaacs, Emily, and Melinda Knight. “A Bird’s Eye View of Writing Centers: Infrastructure, Scope, and Programmatic Issues, Reported Practices.”

WPA: Writing Program Administration, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 36–67.

Lerner, Neal. “What is the Writing Center?” A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators (2nd ed).

Edited by Rita Malenczyk. Parlor Press, 2016, pp. 271–83.

Martin, Amy Ward. “The Center Has Two Faces: Developing a Writing Center in a Multicampus University Setting.” The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. Edited by Christina Murphy and Byron L. Stay.

Routledge, 2010, pp. 127–34.

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

Miley, Michelle. “Looking Up: Mapping Writing Center Work Through Institutional Ethnography.” The Writing Center Journal, vol.

36, no. 1, 2017, pp. 103–29.

Miley, Michelle, and Doug Downs. “Crafting Collaboricity: Harmonizing the Force Fields of Writing Program and Writing Center Work.” Writing Program and Writing Center Collaborations: Transcending Boundaries. Edited

by Alice Johnston Myatt and Lynee Lewis Gaillet. Palgrave MacMillan, 2017, pp. 25– 46.

North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice, edited by Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner. Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 63–78.

Porter, James E., et al. “Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 51, no. 4, 2000, pp. 610–41.

Powell, Katrina M., and Pamela Takayoshi.

“Accepting the Roles Created for Us: The Ethics of Reciprocity.” College Composition and Communication, vol 54, no. 3, 2003, pp. 394– 422.

Riley, Terrance. “The Unpromising Future of Writing Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, 1994, pp. 20–33.

Salem, Lori. “Opportunity and Transformation: How Writing Centers are Positioned in the Political Landscape of Higher Education in the United States. The Writing Center Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, 2014, pp. 15–43.

Scott, Richard. “Institutional Theory: Contributing to a Theoretical Research Program.” Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development. Edited by Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt, Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 460– 85.

Simpson, Jeanne. “Perceptions, Realities, and Possibilities: Central Administration and Writing Centers.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Edited by Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner.

Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 189–93.

Speck, Bruce W. “Managing Up: Philosophical and Financial Perspectives for Administrative Success.” The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. Edited by Christina Murphy and Byron L. Stay. Routledge, 2010, pp. 215–24.

Strickland, Donna. The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies.

Southern Illinois UP, 2011.

Thornton, Patricia, and William Ocasio. “Institutional Logics.” The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism.

Edited by Royston Greenwood et al. Sage Publications, 2008, pp. 99–129.

Thornton, Patricia, et al. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process. Oxford UP, 2012.

Waldo, Mark L. “What Should the Relationship between the Writing Center and Writing Program Be?” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Edited

by Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner.

Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 168–75.

White, Ronald V. “Managing Innovation.” ELT Journal, vol. 41, no. 3, 1987, pp. 211–18.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 23, No 3 (2026)

Appendix A

Appendix B