CFP: North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing

North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing
Shifting Platforms: New Media, Emerging Literacies, and the Writing Teacher

February 4-5, 2011
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC

The North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing is interested in facilitating discussions focusing on how best to navigate and respond to the continued emergence of new media technologies and resultant literacies. As scholars and educators, we must continue to reconsider the role these new media and literacies play in our students’ lives and writing classrooms. More than ever before, students continue to face profound changes in their literacy journeys from the beginning of their education to its culmination. With these changes educators are faced with a new set of opportunities and challenges. Given that reality, the symposium organizers welcome proposals for panels and papers on a variety of topics; those addressing any of the concerns above will be given special consideration.

Related topics include (but are not limited to):
* Defining new literacies and new media
* Influences of new media on student writing and literacies
* Negotiating professional development and learning in regard to evolving and emerging media
* Instructor education and integration of web logs (blogs), wikis, message boards, etc. in classroom environments
* Assessment of student writing from different multimedia platforms
* Using multimedia rhetoric
* Altered approaches to composition practices in an online, networked environment including multimedia or multimodal friendly platforms
* Emergent opportunities for and negotiation of collaborative writing
* Resultant connections between information technologies and plagiarism
* Intersection of authors: defining intellectual property in an age of information
* Curricular transfer: application and efficacy of composition strategies from high school writing environments to community colleges and universities
* Fostering critical awareness regarding composition’s changing relationship with new media

The keynote speaker for this year’s symposium will be Andrea Lunsford, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. Professor Lunsford has served as Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chair of the Modern Language Association Division of Writing, and as a member of the MLA Executive Council. She has written or coauthored eighteen books, including Writing Matters: Rhetoric in Public and Private Lives; The Everyday Writer; Everything’s An Argument; and Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition, as well as numerous chapters and articles related to composition and rhetoric.

Specific Guidelines for Submission:
Individual paper proposals should be 200-300 words in length. Panel submissions should not total more than 1000 words. Panels will be 75 minutes in length, including Q&A.

All sessions will be held in rooms with Internet access and projection capabilities. Please indicate any other technology requirements.

We encourage participation from all faculty ranks, and we particularly encourage contingent faculty, K-12 faculty, and graduate student participation.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, October 1st.

Submit proposals as a Microsoft Word compatible attachment (.doc or .docx) or PDF to:Bridget Cooper (cooper.eng101@gmail.com)

First-Year Writing Programs in NC and SC

As you might remember, the Carolinas WPA website once listed basic information about several first-year writing programs in the Carolinas. Jessie Moore, the Carolinas WPA Web and List Manager, currently is working to re-launch an improved version of that resource as the first of several Carolinas WPA web resources on writing programs in NC and SC.

Please help make this resource as comprehensive as possible by completing the First-Year Writing Programs in NC and SC survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CWPAfirstyearwriting or by forwarding it to the first-year writing program administrator at your school.

While this initial survey focuses on first-year writing programs, future surveys will address writing centers, writing across the curriculum programs, undergraduate writing majors, and graduate writing programs. Information from each survey will be posted one month after the survey is released; the surveys will remain open, though, with updates added to the corresponding web resource twice a year.

Thank you for your help making this a valuable resource for Carolinas WPA members!

Fall 2010 Conference CFP – Writing Program Assessment

Call for Proposals

CWPA Fall 2010 Conference

Writing Program Assessment: Accountability and Enrichment

Proposal deadline: Friday, July 16th

Conference Theme and Design

More than ever, Writing Program Administrators, Writing Center Directors, and teachers and tutors of writing at the post-secondary level are feeling the pressure of Accountability: we are required by external bodies (such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a.k.a. SACS) to study and document the impact of our curricula and, subsequently, to revise our programs in response to what we learn. Many of us are in the middle of SACS reaccreditation; many of us have just finished the process; and many of us are soon to begin that process. The process is confusing, intimidating, and enormous, particularly for many of us who haven’t had a lot of training in assessment design and implementation.

Often, external pressure leads to “assessment dread”—the assessment process becomes another hoop to jump through or another way in which our work becomes vulnerable to attack by administrators and outsiders who don’t understand what we do. Lost in this scenario is the promise of assessment—the ways in which assessment can be used to enrich our courses and to improve the work we do on behalf of our students. It is easy, too, to lose sight of the fact that program assessment can perform important research and lead to significant publications in the field of composition and rhetoric.

In response to the pressures, and sometimes dread, that surrounds the topic, the Fall 2010 CWPA Annual Meeting at Wildacres Retreat Center in Little Switzerland, NC will focus on “Writing Program Assessment.” More specifically, the meeting is intended to foster conversations about topics such as

  • Current research on practices of writing assessment,
  • Assessment terminology,
  • Assessment design for external (satisfying accreditation requirements) and internal (improving curricula, advancing research) purposes,
  • Assessment implementation (logistics and getting program instructors “on board”),
  • Assessment reporting (presenting assessment results in rhetorically effective ways for different audiences).

Conference Schedule and Format

The format of the conference encourages full engagement of participants from a broad variety of institutions and programs. We will mix small, working group discussions with individual and roundtable presentations about writing program assessment.

The conference will begin at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 20, and will conclude at 10:00 am on Wednesday, September 22.

Read Full Call for Proposals

Download Registration Form

Advanced Reading for Meeting in the Middle

We look forward to seeing many of you on Friday, February 19th, for Meeting in the Middle. To prepare for the morning session on Supporting ESL Writers: Dispelling Myths, Developing Strategies, we recommend reading the following:

CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers

Friedrich, Patricia. “Assessing the Needs of Linguistically Diverse First-Year Students: Bringing Together and Telling Apart International ESL, Resident ESL and Monolingual Basic Writers.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 30.1-2 (Fall 2006): 15-35.

Shuck, Gail. “Combating Monolingualism: A Novice Administrator’s Challenge.”WPA: Writing Program Administration 30.1-2 (Fall 2006): 59-82.

Please print these texts – or download an electronic copy – to bring with you to Charlotte. We hope you will find time to read one or more before the morning session.

Supporting ESL Writers & Showcasing Writing Programs

Carolinas WPA Meeting in the Middle

Friday, February 19

Charlotte Uptown Center

Charlotte, NC

9:30am-4:30pm

Theme:  Supporting ESL Writers & Showcasing Writing Programs

As writing programs throughout the Carolinas welcome growing numbers of ESL students, Writing Program Administers (WPAs) seeking strategies for supporting this student group can learn from the flourishing field of second language writing. Our 2010 morning session features local scholars who have had active leadership roles in the CCCC Committee on Second Language Writing and the TESOL Second Language Writing Interest Section. In addition to sharing the recently revised CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers, the speakers will share strategies for supporting ESL students in writing programs ranging from writing centers to first-year writing programs at R1 institutions to WAC programs in private universities.

The theme for our afternoon session also responds to current issues faced by WPAs and composition instructors. As budget constraints continue to have an impact on writing programs and writing instruction, students and faculty are finding it prudent to highlight more of what we already do well.  During the afternoon, participants are invited to present posters as a way to display and explain our successes, both for each other and, after the Meeting in the Middle ends, for promotional purposes within our own institutions.  Please see the “Request for proposals” below for more information.

Continue reading Supporting ESL Writers & Showcasing Writing Programs

Writing Research and Program Preservation in Tight Financial Times – Register Today!

The conference schedule and list of presenters is now posted. Please use the navigation to the left to visit the 2009 Fall Conference pages. Keep reading below for the highlights and for registration information.

Continue reading Writing Research and Program Preservation in Tight Financial Times – Register Today!