WPA SUMMER CONFERENCE SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP PROPOSAL

Title of 2004 Session: Professionalization of the Graduate Student WPA: Politics and Practice

Type of Session: Ongoing Special Interest Group

Description of Session:

Attending sessions at the annual WPA conference is a vital part of graduate students’ immersion in the field. However, graduate students often lack the background in WPA work that would provide them the context to participate comfortably in these sessions. The purpose of this session is to create a forum for peer interaction, networking, and advocacy among graduate students who are involved in WPA, considering it as a professional career, or studying it as part of their graduate work. This SIG will offer a flexible space where graduate students can candidly speak and inquire about issues such as professionalism, recognition for WPA work, and the future of WPA on a peer-to-peer level before (or concurrent with) becoming involved in more established forums such as WPA-L and WPA Journal. Because of varied interests and institutional contexts, this SIG will also help graduate students to educate each other on the nuances of WPA work and the different venues that exist for research, faculty and program development, and curriculum design. Finally, this SIG will allow graduate students an opportunity to seek representation with the executive board by delivering a report of the session at the CWPA town hall meeting. In sum, the proposed SIG will provide graduate students a space to theorize about WPA work, better understanding it as a field and discipline. Graduate students are a vital component of writing program administration and this SIG will likely increase their attendance at and participation in the WPA conference. While this proposal grew out of graduate student inquiry currently going on at Purdue, we envision the membership of the SIG will evolve according to interests, opportunities, and geographical locales. In order to promote an organic membership and ongoing participation, at each meeting of the SIG a call will be put out for the following year’s moderators and theme.

Proposed Agenda for 2004 SIG:

Opening/Introduction:

  • Deb Rankin (5 minutes)

Featured Presentations:

  • Jonikka Charlton (5 minutes)
  • Jennifer Courtney (5 minutes)

Focus Groups:

  • Discussion: Finding a place in WPA—Political and practical issues (20 minutes)
  • Group A—led by Jonikka Charlton
  • Group B—led by Jennifer Courtney
  • Presentations (10 minutes each group)

Conclusion (5 minutes):

  • Distribution of Contact List
  • Call for Election of upcoming moderators, theme
  • Distribution of Feedback Form

Participants:

Chair / Deb Rankin
PurdueUniversity
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038
Phone: (765) 494-3740
FAX: (765) 494-3780
Email:
Speaker #1 / Jonikka Charlton
PurdueUniversity
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038
Phone: (765) 494-3740
FAX: (765) 494-3780
Email:
Speaker #2 / Jennifer Courtney
PurdueUniversity
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038
Phone: (765) 494-3740
FAX: (765) 494-3780
Email:

Abstracts:

Speaker #1: “Attitudes Towards Professionalization in WPA Education.” This paper surveys the literature to uncover various negative attitudes towards professionalization in our field and considers how those attitudes can affect (or have affected) WPA education.

Speaker #2: Title and abstract forthcoming.

GWPA-LLISTSERV PROPOSAL

Rationale:

Many graduate students interested in pursuing Writing Program Administration as a career audit the WPA-L listserv as a way of coming to understand the discourse community of writing program administrators. We, as graduate students, have found our “lurking” valuable for the insight we’ve gained into what it takes to be a WPA—the politics, the budgeting, and negotiating, not to mention the teaching, the mentoring, and the theorizing—and the list has augmented the discussions we’ve had as members of a graduate-level WPA seminar. Yet there is a risk in a graduate student moving from a “lurker” to a full participant in the listserv. Graduate students often do not feel they have the ethos to debate writing program administration issues with veterans in the field, especially because graduate students’ experiences as WPAs are often dwarfed by those of the veterans.

We are proposing a graduate student WPA list serve, not to replace WPA-L, but to augment the forum for a very specific audience—graduate students interested in WPA work. We believe this forum will allow graduate students a peer-centered space to toss out ideas for candid discussion and engage in the intellectual work of considering WPAs’ issues, even if the participants don’t have the positions in which to put this intellectual work to practice. We hope this forum will prepare graduate students to step into the work of a WPA, as well as the larger community of the WPA list serve.

Functions & Boundaries Of GWPA-L:

The graduate listserv, GWPA-L, will provide a forum for participants to candidly discuss a range of theoretical and practical writing program administration issues similar to those discussed on WPA-L, but from the perspective of graduate students within the general WPA community. In addition to topics that might be discussed on WPA-L, participants of GWPA-L might explore the following: professionalization and labor issues unique to graduate students in their roles as scholars, teaching assistants, and graduate WPAs; concerns of how graduate students might best represent themselves in their job searches; administration of the proposed Special Interest Group (SIG) for the Council of Writing Program Administrator’s annual summer conference; and issues brought up in the proposed SIG.

Implementation & Moderation Of GWPA-L:

Implementation of the Graduate Student WPA listserv (GWPA-L) will involve contacting programs with concentrations or courses in writing program administration. Announcements will be made for the students in these programs for this new forum. In correlation with the SIG on Graduate WPA concerns, the GWPA-L will include student site moderators who would be designated to monitor the list, alerting non-members of current discussions, keeping institutional context as a permanent feature of list conversations, and providing divergent voices on the issues. Advertising for the list will take place in relevant academic listservs and publications.

We can anticipate the GWPA-Llistserv will be similar to other academic lists, in that the content of posts and conduct of the members will moderate themselves. The GWPA-L list will require minimal work. The moderator’s main function will be in helping members with their subscriptions. Since the purpose and rationale of this list restrict membership to graduate students, the moderator will be responsible for reviewing requests for subscription and then adding the subscriber to the list. Subscription would be based on the requestor providing responses to the following two questions:

  • What is your university affiliation?
  • Why are you interested in joining GWPA-L?

This minor gatekeeping activity will make it possible to create and keep a peer-centered environment for graduate students interested in WPA work or studies.

PurdueUniversity has agreed to provide server space for GWPA-L, which will incur no costs for the WPA council or members of the list. Purdue has also made a commitment to include GWPA-L moderation as part of the job description for one of two writing program assistant directors.

WPA Graduate Student Proposal, page 1