Call for Proposals and Registration Now Available for Carolinas WPA Fall Conference 2024 at Wildacres

Photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina

We are proud to announce that the 17th Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will take place September 16-18, 2024 at the Wildacres Retreat Center, centering on the theme We Are the Storytellers (more below).

Click here for a call for proposals and more information about the conference. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please complete this form.

Proposals are due by 11:59pm on Monday, August 26, 2024.

You are entirely welcome to attend without presenting, but those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda. This may help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals.

Registration and Cost. The registration fee of $240 for full-time tenure track faculty and $220 for other faculty and graduate students includes 2 nights’ lodging in double occupancy rooms, and 5 meals at Wildacres, as well as all conference materials and annual voting membership in Carolinas Writing Program Administrators.

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://forms.gle/oypGZyeggTAS3T5b9

Deadline. Conference goers must register by the end of day on Friday, August 30th, 2024.

Plans changed? Registration will be fully refunded if we are notified by 8 am on September 2, 2024.

LOGISTICS:

Please visit https://wildacres.org/ to get a sense of the location, which truly is serene. All meals are provided at the conference center. Please note below or email Shawn with any dietary needs or restrictions that we should be made aware of. Lodging is dorm style accommodations with private bathroom. Each room has two beds, a private bathroom. Spaces have common areas to hang out — both indoors and out. If you have a roommate preference, please indicate so on the form.

Questions can be sent to President Shawn Bowers Buxton (bowerss@queens.edu).

We Are the Storytellers

Last year marked our return to Wildacres, a place that is deeply connected to the story and identity of CarWPA. In the fall of 2023, we rooted into the notion of place and how it can serve to renew us and our pedagogy. Last fall was a return “home” in many ways, when the veil of the global pandemic finally lifted enough for many of us to “normal,” except we didn’t know what normal meant anymore or if we wanted to even go back to normal. And so, to understand where we want to go, as educators and as a community, we realized we needed to revisit our origin story. In the spring of 2024, at our annual Meeting in the Middle, Wendy Sharer (and Tracy Morse in absentia) shared that story and invited us to consider our key values and what the future of this beloved organization might look like.

Stories and storytelling are important tools in knowledge-making (Legg & Sullivan, 2018) and stories are critical to community organizing practices (Goldblatt, 2010). Indeed, as Wendy and Tracy shared with us back at MitM, “Storytelling is the discursive form through which we translate our values into the motivation to act.” (Ganz, 2001, p. 279).

With this in mind, we invite you to the mountains this fall to participate in storytelling, to engage in the work of collective dialogue that enunciates communal values we can usher forward as an organization and bring to our respectives campuses and programs. What stories guide our work? What values inform our practices and pedagogies? And: What stories (“lore”)––about writing program administration, students, the teaching of writing, higher education in the Carolinas, our work more generally––do we need to respond to in our work? Consider stories about policy, programming, faculty feelings, practicalities, politics, pedagogies, diversity and inclusion, scholarship and research, advocacy, archive, collaboration. We want to share stories about the bright and important work we’re doing in our classrooms and schools, and we want to create plenty of space for storymaking and brainstorming.

Conference Schedule and Format. The conference begins at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 16, and concludes at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 18. On Monday evening, we will host a collective brainstorming session about the stories we want to collect and write. Tuesday will follow with a slate of workshops and presentations, but also with open-ended sessions to allow for networking and ideation. These sessions might be organized in conversation with the conference proposals we receive, but we hope to weave them around ideas of storytelling and rhetorical empathic listening. As always, we strive to create pockets of unscripted time, too. Our time will conclude with a closing session Wednesday morning, where we hope to share some reflections – and maybe even leave with some “story” we started . All meals are provided.

Wildacres Retreat is a low-tech, informal setting conducive to relaxing, collaborating, and learning with friends and colleagues across the Carolinas. We welcome teams or solo participants from across our region. The main lobby area has wifi, as do some of the classroom meeting spaces, but presentations at Wildacres tend to be projected slides (think PowerPoint or downloaded Canvas slides) or good ol’ paper handouts.

Monday Evening Plenary Session: What Are Our Stories?

This relaxed session will be loosely moderated. Our hope is that members will share their stories – how did you first learn about CarWPA? Who invited you? Why does CarWPA matter? What role does CarWPA serve in the greater community of writing educators and program administrators? We will build off the values Wendy and Tracy shared with us at Meeting in the Middle to consider what values direct our work.

Tuesday Morning Plenary Session: What Stories Sustain Us?

Using Monday evening’s discussion as a springboard, we’ll spend some time Tuesday morning identifying “hubs” – areas of interest or engagement to create some space to have story circles.

Hubs might focus on issues that came up from our 2024 MitM (i.e.: documenting and sharing our origin stories, meaningfully engaging DEI in our programs, addressing generative AI in our writing programs, formalizing mentoring/buddy networks, creating collaboration spaces for SOTL and writing studies work). Hubs might also be inspired by 4C’s presentations or reflections.

Plenary sessions will be facilitated by members of the CarWPA board.

Registration and CFP for the 2024 Meeting in the Middle now available!

Our 18th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person from at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, February 9, 2024. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present using this Google Form and submit a payment by visiting this webpage and selecting the “BOGO” option.

Registration is $30 and, as in years past, this is a “Buy One/Get One” cost, covering two persons’ conference registration and membership in Carolinas WPA.

Call for Proposals: Carolinas Writing Program Administrators – Meeting in the Middle 2024

When: February 9, 2024, 10:00am EST (full schedule to come)

Where: UNC Charlotte, Dubois Center, 320 E 9th St., Charlotte, NC 28202

We cordially invite you to Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference which will be held at UNCC’s uptown campus in Charlotte.

Keynote Presentation: “Then & Now”

Almost always, you need to know where you’ve been in order to know where you’re going. In 2023, Carolinas WPA celebrated twenty years of existence, twenty years of fostering mentorship, support, continuing education, allyship, and friendship for writing program centers, programs, instructors, and students. It’s been a long journey, and now is a good time to revisit our past in order to re-envision our future.

This call extends the work begun at Wildacres this past fall. Nestled in the cocoon of the Blue Ridge mountains, we considered what it means to renew ourselves in the context of our profession and explored how the places we abide change as we change. So then, how has Carolinas WPA changed over time and how can we ensure this space continues to be a place of invention, invigoration, and support?

We can think of none better to lead on this introspective look than Tracy Ann Morse and Wendy Sharer. They’re both a fundamental part of this organization. Drawing on their article, “The Affiliate as Mentoring Network: The Lasting Work of the Carolinas WPA,” which was co-written with Carolinas WPA co-founders Meg Morgan and Marsha Lee Baker and published in WPA: Writing Program Administration (2020), Tracy and Wendy will share a history of the organization and point to the many gaps it has filled for WPAs and writing instructors across North and South Carolina over its twenty-year history. They will also guide us in discussions about how the organization can grow and change to meet the current and future needs of members and their writing programs.

Keynote Speakers:

Tracy Ann Morse is the Director of Writing Foundations at East Carolina University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric and composition. Her research focuses on disability studies and writing program administration. Her recent work has been published in Composition Studies, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and College English. Along with Patti Poblete and Wendy Sharer, she currently edits the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She served as President of Carolinas WPA from 2015-2017.

Wendy Sharer teaches writing and rhetoric at East Carolina University and specializes in feminist rhetorics, the history of rhetoric, and writing program administration. Along with Tracy Ann Morse and Patti Poblete, she currently edits the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She is also the Immediate Past President of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CFSHRC). She has previously held the positions of Director of ECU’s Quality Enhancement Plan, “Write Where You Belong” and Director of Writing Foundations in the Department of English. Additionally, she has served as President of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators (2009-2012), as a member of Executive Committees of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and as the Associate Editor for Peitho (the peer-reviewed journal of the CFSHRC). Her current research project is a study of writing instruction in the camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s.

Conference Theme: In a post-pandemic world, the spaces and places where we learn and teach have drastically changed. Hybrid, in-person, synchronous online, asynchronous online – these modalities have extended the classroom in far-reaching ways, which necessitates new lenses in the profession we hold so dear.

Blueprints & Visionboards:

How do we bring the lens of place, especially as place has changed so much, as a way of mindfulness in our teaching?

In order to move forward, we might have to deconstruct and reconstruct the blueprints of our classroom spaces. What is the essence of what we do? What pillars of our pedagogy stay essential, regardless of the evolving context; what changes are necessary? How has technology, new approaches to the work we do, and emerging research make us better teachers and administrators? How have our students, and their shifting experiences as learners, impacted the ways we approach our work as we attempt to create invitational spaces for teaching?

Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that address this evolving landscape alongside the immovable foundations we squarely root into. We invite reflections of this topic, the sharing of ideas and insights that inspire us to process new visions of our classrooms.

We welcome proposals for traditional presentations, where presenters share pedagogies, ideas, experiences from the field. These individual or group/panel presentations are slated for 45-60 minutes total.

Returning this year will be roundtable discussion proposals–you might not have material to present in a traditional sense, but you might be interested in leading. , or at least starting, a conversation about a particular issue relating to this question. We’re planning to organize the day based on conceptual groupings for discussion.

To help with considerations for potential discussion concerns, we’ve provided a few broad topics/ideas, but you’re more than welcome to suggest your own. Roundtable discussions are expected to run for roughly 45-60 minutes.

How can I incorporate location – where might I situate learning beyond my physical or digital classroom?
“I’d like to create a more inviting LMS for my students and would love to share ideas!”
“I’ve made the switch to upgrading, but hitting some road bumps. . I’d love to talk shop with others and trade strategies.”

Deadline: 11:59pm, January 31, 2024

We are excited to offer BOGO registration this year for all participants: $30 for two attendees: the registration fee for the paying applicant also covers the cost of annual membership dues for both attendees. To register for the conference, please complete this registration form (including the names of all registrants) AND THEN visit the following page, where you can select the “BOGO” registration for a pair of registrants: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/join-carolinas-wpa/. (If you are registering more than two persons, please be sure to submit a BOGO payment for each pair of registrants.)

Want to bring a TA or graduate student? We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee. Please email bowerss@queens.edu to inquire about this offer.

More information about the event and the Carolinas WPA organization can be found at https://www.carolinaswpa.org; Questions about the event can be sent to Shawn Bowers at bowerss@queens.edu. Questions about registration/payment specifically can be sent to Kevin Brock at brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.

16th Annual Fall Conference to take place September 11-13, 2023…CFP available!

We are proud to announce that the 16th Fall Conference of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will take place September 11-13, 2023 at the Wildacres Retreat Center, centering on the theme Homecoming: Finding a place for renewal in the profession.

Click here for a call for proposals and more information about the conference. When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please complete this form.

See the PayPal button below for means to submit a payment. (Note that the cost of the conference is $210 for students and NTT faculty and $220 for TT faculty; the cost includes a year of membership in the organization.)

If you have questions about the conference, please contact Carolinas WPA President Shawn Bowers at bowerss@queens.edu.

Registration and CFP for the 2023 Meeting in the Middle is now available!

Our 17th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place in person from at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, March 3, 2023. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register and submit a proposal to present using this Google Form and submit a payment by visiting this website and selecting the “BOGO” option. Registration is $30 and, as in years past, this is a “Buy One/Get One” cost, covering two persons’ conference registration and membership in Carolinas WPA.

When: March 3, 2023, 10:00am EST (full schedule to come)

Where: UNC Charlotte, Center City Campus 320 E 9th St., Charlotte, NC 28202

We are beyond thrilled to announce that this year’s Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Conference will be held in person! We return to UNCC’s beautiful uptown campus in Charlotte, and we invite you to join us (CFP details below). Our keynote speaker this year is Kevin Gannon.

About our keynote speaker: Kevin Gannon is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University Of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, published in April, 2020, as part of the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series from West Virginia University press. He is a regular contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and his work has appeared in outlets such as Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. You can find Kevin online at his blog, thetattooedprof.com, and on Twitter: @TheTattoedProf

Keynote Presentation: “Sustaining Communities of Hope”

It might seem perverse to talk about something like “Sustaining Communities of Hope” in our current context, shaped as it is by racism, violence, economic dislocation, political rancor, and—oh, by the way—a global pandemic. In higher education, we find ourselves in an environment of crisis, in teaching and learning spaces that are unfamiliar to many of us and significantly more difficult for all of us. This session WILL NOT talk about “silver linings” or “making the most of the new normal.” In fact, one of the crucial elements of acting with hope is an honest acknowledgement that “normal times” were unsatisfactory and unsustainable. The session will, however, offer some avenues to ground our pedagogy in an ethic of hope, as opposed to a program dictated by fear. In doing so, this session will also critically interrogate the current fascination with “innovation” in higher ed, and think about ways to reclaim that discussion for meaningful, sustainable teaching and learning.

Conference Theme: In the pandemic, we reached for technology to help us adapt to the new landscapes of learning as classes went from an embodied experience in a classroom to modalities that embraced both synchronous and asynchronous online spaces. We hi-flexed, we hybrid-ed, we pivoted so, so many times! With that memory still very fresh in our minds, we introduce you to this year’s conference theme:

Beyond Resilience: Moving from Reactive to Sustainable Spaces

How do we process our experiences of the last two years and use what we learned to create sustainable teaching practices?

The global pandemic created such upheaval in academia, and institutions everywhere scrambled to react to unprecedented times. Faculty and staff embraced new technologies, proving we can learn new tricks. But this was all done in reactive space–adjusting the ship to traverse the uncharted waters we found ourselves navigating. It seems we’ve docked on dry land now, after three years braving the wilds. Only now are we reckoning with the collective and individual trauma of the last three years. In processing what we’ve come through, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of learning spaces we want to usher in. We have an opportunity to reframe innovation, think less about the fancy tools we want to use, and focus on ways to bolster sustainability in our programs and courses. How do we take the lessons learned from the pandemic and develop teaching strategies that can weather future storms?

Carolinas WPA welcomes proposals that address this topic, share ideas, insights, reflections that inspire us to process, to move away from reactive spaces into sustainable landscapes. How do you reconsider technology and innovation? What strategies position us to deliver quality instruction regardless of external factors?

Returning this year will be roundtable discussion proposals–you might not have material to present in a traditional sense, but you might be interested in leading, or at least starting, a conversation about a particular issue relating to this question. We’re planning to organize the day based on conceptual groupings for discussion.

“How do I leverage technologies used during online modalities now that we’re back in person?”
“I’d like to learn what HIPs (High Impact Practices) others are seeing success with.”
“I’ve made the switch to upgrading, but hitting some road bumps. . I’d love to talk shop with others and trade strategies.”

Deadline: 11:59pm, Feb. 10th, 2023

We are excited to offer BOGO registration this year for all participants: $30 for two attendees: the registration fee for the paying applicant also covers the cost of annual membership dues for both attendees. To register for the conference, please complete this form AND THEN visit the following page, where you can select the “BOGO” registration for a pair of registrants: http://www.carolinaswpa.org/join-carolinas-wpa/. (If you are registering more than two persons, please be sure to submit a BOGO payment for each pair of registrants.)

Want to bring a TA or graduate student? We might have funds to offset or waive the registration fee. Please email bowerss@queens.edu to inquire about this offer.

Registration and CFP for the Fall 2022 conference at Wildacres is now available!

17th Annual Fall Carolinas Writing Program Administrators Conference
September 12-14, 2022

Proposal deadline: 11:59 p.m., Thursday, September 1, 2022

Visit this link to register and submit a proposal to speak and visit the Fall Conference website to pay for your registration.

Theme: Presence, Attendance, and Engagement

As we attempt to live and work through difficult times, many of us struggle with questions about how to get by as teachers and scholars, let alone how to persevere or thrive.

Even when students are physically or virtually present, they may not be attending to the concerns we want them to in order to succeed in class. Asking for them to engage with us and with their peers in that work, as important and necessary as it may be, can feel even more daunting, especially when we can barely summon the strength to engage them or our work ourselves. Recognizing and embracing reciprocal teaching and learning invites students to not only be active learners, but also invites them to be teachers. This is a critical component in reciprocity and one that serves everyone that crosses the threshold of a classroom.

And yet we need to do so in order to perform the critical work of our profession: reciprocal teaching, learning, administering programs, and sharing knowledge as well as administrating our writing programs.

Beyond the classroom, we are members of our local communities. How can we similarly be present in our communities, attending to their–and our–needs, and also engaging them in beneficial, productive, and supportive ways? How can we locate what we need to thrive and how can we offer contributions that, in turn, support our communities?

Put more briefly: how do we facilitate presence, attendance, and engagement?

Carolinas WPA invites submissions for presentations, discussion roundtables, workshop ideas, or other forms of conversation-starters to be held at our fall conference at Wildacres Retreat in Little Switzerland, NC, on Sept. 12-14, 2022.

Presentations can include (but certainly are limited in imagination!) traditional presentations of research, concepts you’ve tried with meaningful success in the classroom, ideas around pedagogy and teaching you feel are worth sharing, reflections from the field, and so much more! (30 or 60 minute presentations, including Q&A)
Discussion roundtables involve large or small group dialogue around a central theme or subtopic. These can include case studies, “problem/solution” scenarios, or practical applications that benefit from group discussions. Responses to published think pieces related to our field or provoking questions that help usher meaningful reflection are also invited. (45 or 60 minute presentations, including Q&A)
Workshop ideas are more participatory. These might include developing assignment concepts, revising syllabi based on research, reflection, or new pedagogical approaches, exploring new classroom activities, etc. (45 or 60 minute presentations, including Q&A)
Other possibilities are concepts that are still in creation mode. Maybe it’s an idea you have brewing for publication, or a larger conference. Maybe it’s the beginning stages of IRB study that you’d like feedback for. Maybe it’s just space to share reflections on the past few years and hear, “me, too.” (30 or 60 minute presentations, including Q&A)

Proposals include:

Names and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your proposal
Type of presentation/roundtable/workshop/etc. and time requested, if any
A title and 200-word (more or less) description for the program

Deadline for proposals: Thursday, September 1, 2022

We recognize that there are many reasons for caution about an in-person conference, especially a rural retreat, during the COVID pandemic. Wildacres has available at the top of its home page a “Commitment to Care Plan” document outlining the protocols the staff has in place for visitors: https://wildacres.org/ . Additionally, we will look at CDC recommendations leading up to Wildacres. At the moment, we will ask participants to mask indoors during presentations and group meetings. Outdoor and inside personal occupancy spaces (bedrooms) will be left to participant discretion. Please note, masking policies are subject to change. Our wish is to be respectful and safe!

Questions can be sent to Kevin Brock (brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu) or Shawn Bowers (bowerss@queens.edu).

Registration and CFP for the 2022 (virtual) Meeting in the Middle now available!

Registration is now open for this year’s virtual spring gathering of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators, the 16th Annual Meeting in the Middle. This meeting will take place on Friday, March 4, 2022, beginning at 10:00 a.m., via Zoom. The theme of the conference is “Staying the Course: Where to Find Motivation and Keep It” and the meeting will feature a panel keynote given by Courtney Adams Wooten, Jacob Babb, Kristi Murray Costello, and Kate Navickas, the editors of the book, The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration.

To register for the conference ($30 covers two persons!), view the CFP, and propose to present, please visit the Meeting in the Middle website. The deadline to register or submit a proposal is 11:59 p.m. on Friday, February 25, 2022.

Please contact Shawn Bowers (bowerss@queens.edu) with questions about the event and Patrick Bahls (pbahls@unca.edu) with questions about registration and payment. We look forward to seeing you in March!

2021 Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle Call for Proposals and Participants

Carolinas Writing Program Administrators is delighted to announced that our 15th Annual Meeting in the Middle will take place from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, February 19, 2021. Please see the CFP below for more information. You can register by completing this Google Form. Registration is free; however, we encourage all attendees to support Carolinas WPA by renewing their membership to the organization ($20/year for full-time TT faculty and $10/year for other faculty and students). Follow this link to renew your membership. Visit the Carolinas WPA homepage to learn more about the organization.

Teaching, Writing, and Administrating in the time of Corona: Building and Maintaining Community in Remote Spaces

It is an obvious understatement to say that this past year has been tremendously difficult–heartbreaking, overwhelming, unpredictable, seemingly unending–and we’ve all been affected in different ways by events local and (inter)national alike. Trying to figure out how we can forge ahead as writing teachers, scholars, and administrators–if not maintain or reduce our expectations for what we’ve been able to achieve in the midst of everything that’s happened–might well seem like yet another insurmountable obstacle.

To work through these dilemmas, Carolinas WPA invites you to a virtual session of our annual Meeting in the Middle conference for a day of coming together to share resources and ideas, to strategize collaboratively, and to socialize with treasured friends, old and new alike. We want to learn: how have we worked and fought to sustain ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities throughout it all? How might we continue to do so?

Participants are not obligated to attend with any particular ideas or questions in mind to address, but we want to provide plenty of opportunity to work through some helpful and important issues that impact each of us, both in general and in this particular moment.

If you would like to have some time dedicated to presenting information about a project you’ve been working on or to discussing a particular question/issue you’d like feedback on, we can make sure that happens! Alternatively, if you just want to log in to say hello to friends you might not have had the chance to see or talk to for a year, that would be absolutely great, too!

Registration is completely free — we’ll send the Zoom info to registered participants as we get closer to the date of the event. Also, while registration is free, this could be an excellent opportunity for you to join or renew your membership in Carolinas WPA to help support the organization. Click here to renew your membership!

Questions about the event can be sent to brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.

Kevin Brock

President, Carolinas Writing Program Administrators

A message from Carolinas WPA President Paula Patch re: Wildacres 2020

Dear Carolinas WPA Members and Friends:

After some discussion, Collie, Kevin, and I have decided that it is best to go ahead and make a decision about Wildacres. We think that waiting until later is simply putting off the inevitable: The uncertainty of the virus makes it impossible to hold a face-to-face conference in September. We have decided to cancel Wildacres for 2020.

Even if we were able to gather, we fear that the demands on our members in the “next normal” of the fall semester, the instability of funding, and the very real danger for some of us to be in close quarters with others would make the retreat feel like too much of an obligation—or too much an occasion to feel real FOMO—for our members.

We will be in touch later in the summer about options for gathering virtually in the summer or fall—not so much to replace Wildacres, the magic of which is its in-person, off-grid, retreat nature—but to support one another as we make and implement tough decisions about our programs and communities.

Take good care—we’ll see each other as soon as it is possible!

Paula

2020 Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle: CFP and event information

Conference theme: Language, Translingualism, and Multilingualism

We are excited to send out this call for proposals to present at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators’ fourteenth annual spring conference, “Meeting in the Middle,” to be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on February 14, 2020, at UNC Charlotte.

Our theme for the meeting is language, particularly translingualism and multilingualism, and how the complex systems of meaning we use to communicate inform our composing practices as well as the teaching thereof.

How do students employ their languages and literacies in different situations and environments? For that matter, how are we doing so? How can we recognize and discuss code-switching, code-meshing, and translanguaging as they relate across a variety of contexts? How can we help our students, and learn with them, about how to do so in more rhetorically effective fashions?

Jennifer Eidum from Elon University will present a morning workshop that presents key theories of translingualism and multilingualism as they play out in higher education, with particular focus on first-year writing classrooms. Then, we will shift from theory to practice, exploring specific linguistic & cultural challenges WPAs and writing faculty might encounter in writing spaces (including their own). With an emphasis on collaboration and community-building, participants will leave the workshop with resources, connections, and new ideas for recognizing (and building upon) the linguistic and cultural diversity in their writing programs.

Time will be provided for participants to begin planning activities and assignments for their courses and/or to sketch out structures for relevant language-focused faculty workshops or projects.

Proposal Details

Proposal Deadline: Wednesday, January 29, 2020. We have a quick turnaround and presenters will be notified by Monday, February 3, in order to have as much time as possible to make travel arrangements.

You do not have to present to attend! We welcome you regardless! That said, those whose proposals are accepted will be listed on the formal agenda for the conference–which might help you advocate for travel funding. Proposals will also help us plan appropriate groups and design activities around members’ goals.

We encourage both individual and team proposals from people in the Carolinas who are working in any teaching or administrative positions related to writing. We also welcome creative interpretation, and deviation, from this year’s theme.

Three different presentation types reflect members’ interests:

Problem: Describe a teaching, program leadership, or research problem that you would like help thinking about with other attendees. 10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
Showcase: Share a teaching method or writing program leadership strategy that is working well at your site. Or present findings from a study you’re involved in that would interest writing teachers and WPAs. 10-15 minutes includes feedback time.
Other: You have an idea that doesn’t fit either category. Explain! You still have 10-15 minutes to present.

Proposals should include:

Name and contact information (email, phone, home institution) for each person associated with your proposal
Type of presentation (problem, showcase, other)
Title and brief description of your presentation for the conference agenda
Your specific goals for presenting

Please use this proposal form.

Registration

The registration price of $40.00 includes lunch and the opportunity to bring a guest for free (who also gets lunch!). Parking options are limited near the building (see “Parking” below). Carpooling is encouraged!

The registration deadline is Friday, February 7, 2020. Registration is now open on the Carolinas WPA website.

When you “bring a guest for free,” you must register the guest when you register yourself.

Parking

In the past, attendees had the option to purchase event parking passes as part of conference registration. Unfortunately, event parking is currently unavailable, although there are several pay-to-park options nearby. From the UNC Charlotte Center City website:

“Due to construction and other activity surrounding UNC Charlotte Center City, parking is extremely limited. The parking lots adjacent to Center City (422 E. 9th Street and 319 E. 9th Street) are currently reserved for faculty, staff and students with a University-issued parking permit. Please encourage visitors to prepare and plan for their visit to Center City, including consideration of carpooling and ride services.”

“Visitor parking for events is currently not available. There are a number of pay-to-park options within walking distance of Center City. Seventh Street Parking Deck is a short walk through First Ward Park. Visitors can pay to park by the hour. Additional pay-to-park options can be found on the Preferred Parking website. The closest of these is 422 E 9th Street on the corner of 9th and Brevard Street. Other nearby lots are at 8th & College, 9th & College, and 9th & Tryon. There are metered spaces on Brevard and 8th Street to pay during the day. These meters are free after 6pm weekdays and all day on weekends.”

Map (in .png image form) of parking options in the Center City vicinity.

Hotels

Google map of hotels near the conference.

Questions or comments? Direct them to Kevin Brock at brockkm2@mailbox.sc.edu.

Carolinas WPA Wildacres Retreat, 2019 Call for Proposals

15th Annual Fall Carolinas Writing Program Administrators Conference
September 16-18, 2019

Proposal deadline: 11:59 p.m., Monday, August 26, 2019
Registration deadline: 11:59 p.m., Friday, September 6, 2019

Cost: $210 for students and NTT faculty; $220 for TT faculty. The cost covers two nights’ lodging and five meals at the retreat center.

Theme: Holding Space: Trauma, Community, and Care in Writing Programs

Today I write on behalf of the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators to extend sympathy, strength, comfort, and compassion to all of you. You have built and led this organization. You have hosted us in your space. We have shared ideas and strategies, meaningful glances and laughter and tears, meals and M&Ms, coffee, wine, and good beer, mountain sunrises and city sunsets. In so many ways, your campus is our campus; your students, our students; and thus, your heartbreak, pain, trauma, and healing—ours, too. We are holding space for you as long as you need it.

Carolinas WPA President Paula Patch wrote and published these words on May 1, 2019, hours after a gunman shot and killed two UNC Charlotte students in a classroom on campus. At Wildacres this year, we continue to make good on our promise to our UNC Charlotte colleagues and to all our colleagues in writing spaces in North and South Carolina. We hope you will join us in the space of healing through learning and sharing.

Conference Schedule and Format. The conference begins at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 16, and concludes at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 18. Jan Rieman’s Monday evening plenary session on will be followed by a full day Tuesday of workshops and presentations for and by writing teachers and program administrators. Non-tenure track members and attendees are invited to gather to talk shop and make connections during the NTT Network portion of the retreat. Paula Patch will convene that group. Unscripted time will be available, too, on the beautiful mountaintop of Wildacres Retreat, with a closing session Wednesday morning. All meals are provided. Wildacres Retreat is a low-tech, informal setting conducive to relaxing, collaborating, and learning with friends and colleagues across the Carolinas. We welcome teams or solo participants from across our region.

Monday Evening Speaker and Tuesday Workshop Leader: Jan Rieman, UNC Charlotte

“Developing Trauma-Informed Practices in Writing Programs: Addressing the Impact of Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on Students, Teachers, and Programs”

By the time they reach college, 66 to 85 percent of youth report lifetime traumatic event exposure, with many reporting multiple exposures (Read, Ouimette, White, Colder, & Farrow, 2011; Smyth, Hockemeyer, Heron, Wonderlich, & Pennebaker, 2008). College students are particularly vulnerable to experiencing a new potentially traumatizing event (PTE); and as many as 50 percent of college students are exposed to a PTE in the first year of college (Galatzer-Levy et al., 2012). In addition, data show that nearly ⅔ of U.S. adults have Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Given the high rates of students who have experienced traumatic event exposure or ACEs, writing programs need to reexamine their institutional roles in order to better address the impact of trauma and ACEs on our students, our institutions, and on ourselves. Trauma in postsecondary learners can manifest in a number of ways: difficulty focusing, attending, retaining, and recalling; tendency to miss a lot of classes; challenges with emotional regulation; fear of taking risks; anxiety about deadlines, exams, group work, or public speaking; anger, helplessness, or dissociation when stressed; withdrawal and isolation (Hoch et al., 2015). Researcher Bruce Perry notes that students dealing with the aftereffects of trauma and ACEs often struggle to process new information when they are triggered or stressed. “The major challenge,” he writes, “is to furnish the structure, predictability, and sense of safety that can help [these students] begin to feel safe enough to learn.”

Despite the challenges and limitations we face as non-mental health professionals, having a trauma-informed framework can help rhetoric and composition teachers and WPAs be better prepared to not only recognize how trauma, ACEs and other adversities impact learning, but to develop policies and procedures to more holistically support learning in the midst of the realities of our students’ lives.