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A Blog of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship
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Winter 2020 Newsletter Issue
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The end of 2020 is nigh and we at Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders are happy to say "goodbye!" to this tumultuous year. We also want to say thank you to you, our readers and contributors. Your support has motivated us to launch a new webpage, which we couldn't have done without our brilliant Production Editor, Weijia Li. We're excited about our new "look" and hope you are enjoying it!
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In this Winter 2020 issue of our newsletter, we provide a digest of some of the contributions that your writing center colleagues around the world have brought to you via the blog. These include tutor reflections on resilience in a pandemic, center spotlights from Ireland and South Africa, discussions on how to tutor online during a pandemic, the crossing of borders by starting writing centers in unlikely places, and the reckoning with the writing center's role in diversity and equity issues in academia.
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Thanks to all of our contributors to the blog this year, especially to Darby Agovino (North Park University), Fang Fan (Zhejiang University), Lawrence Cleary (University of Limerick), Alaji Friday (University of Western Cape), Jessica Clements (Whitworth University), Maria Elefteheriou (American University of Sharjah), May Jampathom (Brookdale Community College) and the many wonderful tutors and program administrators who shared their centers' resilience stories during this year of COVID-19.
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Featured Posts
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English Writing Centers as Part of Educational Reform in China
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In this feature piece, Dr. Fang provides an overview of the writing center's movement and development in China. Her university is one of those leading the way and Dr. Fan finds it encouraging that now more and more Chinese universities attach great importance to writing itself.
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New Beginnings: A Dual Campus Writing Center
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The partnership between North Park University writing center tutors and the students at Stateville Correctional Center began in 2018. Darby Agovino (pictured right) describes how the letter partner project between the students and tutors. Projects like this one aptly capture the spirit of our blog: to connect writing centers across borders.
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Dr. Jessica Clements on the Placement of her WLN Article in the Best of Rhetoric and Composition Journals
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Dr. Jessica Clements' WLN article, "The Role of New Media Expertise in Shaping Consultations," is being included in the Best of Rhetoric and Composition Journals, 2020. We interviewed Dr. Clements to congratulate her and ask her to share her insights on the critical role of new media literacy for ourselves and our students, especially in our current climate.
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Global Writing Center Spotlights
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We would like to thank Dr. Cleary (University of Limerick), Alaji Friday (University of Western Cape), and Dr. Fang (Zhenjiang University) for introducing our community to their writing centers! To learn about other writing centers from Brazil, Lebanon, and other places around the world, check out our Google Maps!
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The Regional Writing Centre, University of Limerick
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Limerick, Ireland -- As I wrote in ‘At the Centre of Changing Contexts: A Writing for Life Centre' (Cleary 2019, p.116), Irish law obligates our universities to be outward facing: “…we are a face looking in two directions simultaneously, back to a student’s life before matriculation and forward to the life the student faces when they leave.” Moving forward, we will continue to host a national essay-writing competition for secondary school students, engaging them in debates about social issues that are relevant to them as a way of preparing them for future civic engagement.
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The University of Western Cape Writing Centre
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Bellville, South Africa -- The UWC Writing Centre was the first writing centre to be established at a South African university in 1994. While English is the main medium of teaching and learning in the University including the writing centre, the centre acknowledges and welcomes every student due to the fact that the University itself is a multi-ethnic, multilingual institution.
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The English Writing Center at Zhejiang University
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Hangzhou, China -- English Writing Center began firstly in 2000 when two English professors from School of International Studies, based on their visiting-scholar experience in American Universities, felt it necessary to give one to one instructions for those students in need of help.
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Persevering during COVID-19
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Tutoring online might become a staple for the writing center community as we continue coping with this COVID-19 world. Your colleagues have shared some resources and experiences to help you navigate tutoring online and tutor training for the digital center.
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Our colleagues over at the Purdue University Online Writing Lab have blown us away by generously recording these video tutorials. We thank Tammy Conard-Salvo for letting us share them with you. Watch them here!
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In this presentation, Dembsey and Rogers offer some important questions and tips for writing center administrators as they prepare to use more technology in the writing center.
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From Eileen Rudnick: "I am a writing tutor after years of both observing and experiencing the stresses of accomplishing college-level work with a disability. The stress is great under ordinary circumstances and practically unendurable in the midst of a pandemic."
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From Erin Todey and Dr. Sarah Huffman: "The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a creative adjustment for one programmatic offering at the Graduate Communication Center (GCC) at Iowa State University. Transitioning the GCC’s Peer Review Groups (PRGs) to an online format yielded a surprising result."
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From Keri Carter, Dr. Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, and Dr. James Hamby: "Then one of our tutors, Max Lichtman, proposed that we use Discord. Our tutors quickly embraced this mode of communication to ask tutoring questions of us and one another during their shifts, but they also started using it as a means of socializing as well."
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From Denis Kayima: "I am a student of Ugandan origin who came to South Africa on a masters’ scholarship in 2018. The pandemic threw the country into a national lockdown, which involved closing of Universities to reduce the spread of the disease. This significantly affected my academic progress and the academic writing process that formed part of my responsibilities in the university as a peer facilitator in academic writing."
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Special Announcements
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Stay Tuned for the CWCAB Podcast!
We are excited to announce that the CWCAB Editorial team is working on a podcast! You will be able to hear from writing program administrators, writing center researchers, and others as they discuss critical issues facing the writing center community today.
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Get Involved!
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CWCAB Resilience Project
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The Tutor's Perspective
The editors of the WLN blog, CWCAB, would like to invite writing tutors to share creative and/or academic pieces that take a specific angle on an issue within writing center praxis (theory or practice). Tell us how you are experiencing your work given your own cultural/linguistic identities and/or the current moment you are inhabiting. Check out the most recent contribution from May Jampathom.
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Upcoming Conferences
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Mark your calendars for the following virtual conferences happening in 2021. Submit your proposals soon!
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CFP: Have we Arrived? Transformative Listening and Mindfulness in Writing Center Work.
This CFP stems from the original 2020 South Central Writing Centers Association conference theme that was ultimately canceled because of COVID-19, as many conferences were. The deadline for consideration in this special issue is Jan 15, 2021. Read More!
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SCWCA 2021 Conference on "Collaboration, Confidence, and Compromise: The interrelation Work of Writing Centers"
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The South Central Writing Centers Association, an affiliate of the International Writing Centers Association, is hosting its 2021 virtual conference on March 5 - 7, 2021. The conference theme is "Collaboration, confidence, and compromise: The interrelational work of writing centers". Read More!
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