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About Feature Pieces
We welcome pieces from all over the world, but encourage pieces from colleagues outside of the North American context that explore how their local writing center work or scholarship are “negotiating and modifying” the writing center model and local literacy practices within the push-pull of globalization and transnational mobility. Check out our submission guidelines for more information.
Past Features
My Journey into Writing Centre Work
As writing center people, our focus is on our students' diverse backgrounds and how they come to the center. But how do we the writing center directors, managers, and consultants find our way to the center? What motivates us to remain in the field and make a career out of it? Dr. Natashia Muna (University of Cape Town Writing Centre), scientist and Director of the UCT Faculty of Heatlh Sciences Writing Lab, shares how she found her way to the writing center. If you want to share your literacy story, email wlnblog.editors@gmail.com.
Centering the South African Writing Centre through Research and Collaboration
I came into the writing centre quite by chance – an offer by my then Head of Department to ‘investigate’ the possibility of establishing a writing centre, saw me not just investigate, but rather immerse myself in the possibility – and our small faculty-specific writing centre opened just a few months later. Today, we are just a few months short of our eleventh birthday.
Journeying Through the Birth and Development of the Peer Tutoring Scheme (PTS) @ CUHK
In the funding proposal, I made it clear that it would be a learner-centred project to provide additional support to both undergraduate and postgraduate students in need of personalized assistance in their academic literacy, especially in speaking and writing domains. It would also be a platform for internationalization to happen at home due to the diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds of our tutors. The leap of faith paid off beyond our imagination. We experienced showers of blessings on all fronts. The Peer Tutoring Scheme (PTS) was officially launched in 2016 with a handsome fund for three years.
From WLN: Insourcing and Identity: A Writing Center’s Claim to Relevance
Hello blog readers! This month, we want to draw your attention to an article titled "Insourcing and Identity: A Writing Center’s Claim to Relevance" from the Summer 2024 issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. The authors, Michael Albright and Lori B. Baker, shared their reflection and action in response to the rollout of an online tutoring resource in their university's learning management system. Check out the rest of the issue: https://wac.colostate.edu/wln/
Finding People Power at the 2024 Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association Conference
Grounded in antiracist and decolonial writing center scholarship, as well as the work of community organizers and activists, the conference invited tutors and administrators to consider how we can build life-affirming writing centers in spite of current conditions and in light of the institutional power we hold as university employees.
The Excessive Writing Center, 25 Years On
They say that you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but the folks who say that don’t have heroes like Beth Boquet. Dr. Boquet, Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA, wrote “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions” in 1999, and it quickly entered the canon of essential articles in writing center studies. On the occasion of the article’s twenty-fifth anniversary, our guest contributor, Dr. Graham Stowe, spoke to Dr. Boquet about the origins of the article, the shape of writing center studies in the subsequent twenty-five years, and what has become of the excessive writing center.
