Possibilities

Outreach

• • Promotion of writing center (WC) to diverse groups and spaces

  • Partnerships with support services, library, and others (Herb and Sabatino 17-35)

    • Head of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

    • Disability Support Services

    • Center for Diversity and Social Justice

    • Multicultural Center for Research and Practice

    • Center for Academic Innovation

    • AULA’s Bridge program

  • Adjunct faculty, as instructors who are the least supported

Sponsorship of initiatives/groups

• • University Writing Coalition

  • Building Anti-Racist White Educators

  • Reading Group(s)

    • Group for faculty focused on anti-racist teaching

    • Campus or University system -- One Book, One College program

    • Student groups -- BIPOC authors, LGBTQ+ books, Disability in Fiction, etc.

  • Multilingual Writers Group

  • Adjunct Faculty Support

Official Statements

• Holistic, collaborative approach to writing

• Social justice and WCs

  • Explicitly addressing value of dialects, including domestic ones

Policies

• • Systematic process for regular review and critique -- combating "benevolent white woman"/"whitely writing centers" shortcomings (terminology from CounterStories from the Writing Center (2022))

  • Accessibility issues

    • Poor internet connection -- backup plan for virtual sessions

    • Support for students with disabilities -- assistive technologies, consultations in different modalities, etc.

    • All WC sites and materials screenreader friendly

Services

• • Conversation partners for ELL students

  • Embedded tutors for built-in writing support (and clear prioritization of writing) in content courses

  • Gather spaces/groups

    • Conversation opportunities for multilingual students

    • Accountability partners for writing projects

    • Coffeehouse writing chats

Professional development for WC directors

• • Paid monthly reading and reflection work on anti-racism/social justice efforts in WC administration

  • Paid time for development and sharing of materials

  • Conference support

  • Publication support

Recruiting, hiring, and support

• • Recruiting from diverse content areas to improve representation

  • Clear administrative support for BIPOC consultants (Lee 129-139) -- must be "heard and validated" (Morrison 38)

    • Deliberate building of community so no tokenizing

    • Support for emotional labor of consultants of color

      • Established system for reporting problem writers (those who use racist, assaultive language, for instance)

      • WC directors empowered to handle problem writers

Training

• • Decentering Standard American English and academic writing, championing linguistic diversity

    • Helping writers through collaborative benevolence:

      • “What we ask for is a shift from white benevolence to collaborative benevolence. [. . .] In writing, the goal of collaborative benevolence is to work with clients, to engage and form bonds with them through listening to their stories, being explicit about the ways academic writing can silence their stories if they do not learn certain rhetorical moves, and showing clients the choices they can make in writing, i.e., adding their own linguistic writing moves to help support their claims” (Faison, García, and Treviño 93).

  • How to talk to writers about issues of race and social justice in their writing

  • Working with ELL writers

    • Reading through accents

Professional development

• • Paid monthly reading and reflection work on anti-racism/social justice issues in peer tutoring

    • Consultants identify/select readings, lead discussion

  • Conference and publication opportunities

Faculty support

• • One-to-one consultations to assist with specific writing instruction issues

  • Workshops

    • Writing Across the Curriculum program

      • How to incorporate more writing in course content

      • How to structure assignments to allow for revision

      • How to give effective feedback

    • ELL-specific

      • Multilingual students as writers

      • How to support multilingual writers

      • Responding to and assessing multilingual writing

      • Cultural citation practices

      • Multilingual writers in content courses--learning the material and the language