This thread begins 08 May 2015 with a post by Susan Meuller, “Writing Center Director at a seven year pharmacy school for 12 years.” The entry describes her duties as a WC Director, and though she claims these duties require at least 45 hours a week, this isn’t “the problem;” “The problem is that I have a dual reporting structure.”
The crux of Meuller’s post is that her “supervisors,” who reside in two places (Liberal Arts Dean’s Office and Student Services), seem to have no clear idea what she does, what it takes to do what she does, and the extent to which this work is scholarly/tenure-worthy or not. She worries that her retirement will mean the disintegration of her Writing Center and all the hard work she’s invested in it.
She ends asking these questions: “If anyone could do my job, then how is all of this tenure worthy? If they move someone with no expertise into the position and it crashes burns–tutors leave, usage tanks–what happens then? Or what if that person actually believes it takes no time and doesn’t do it? How can the budget operate on one set of parameters and position decisions operate totally on another?”
Contributors to this thread include Melissa Ianetta, Julie Bach, Danielle Cordaro, Muriel Harris, Lise Buranen, Neal Learner, Amber Hunsaker, Lori Salem, Bill Macauley, Kathryn Inskeep, Lisa Ede, Lisa Belle, Michelle Liptak, Kurt Bouman, Al Deciccio, Dawn Fels, Rebecca Babcock, and Jeanne Simpson. Ultimately, the thread discussion seems to end in Lisa Bell’s separate and subsequent thread post “What a Writing Center Does document”(Thu 5/21/2015 10:59 AM).
Some of the advice coming through to Mueller via responses to her original post includes these suggestions:
- “put our work in writing”
- “…[have] a copy of Jeanne Simpson’s “What a Writing Center Director Does” readily available…” (in process and available on listserv)
- Other potentially helpful scholarship:
- Jeanne Simpson “Perceptions, Realities, and Possibilities: Writing Centers and Central Administration” ERIC ED385855
- Joyce Kinkead & Jeanne Simpson, “The Administrative Audience: A Rhetorical Problem” ERIC EJ622960
- Assessing needs, identifying an institutional home, and developing a proposal, J Simpson – The writing center resource manual, 1998
- “Harvey [Kail] argues that, because we have this comprehensive mission, that is to work with all writers, we know the members of our institutions. He points out that such knowledge is helpful to us because we can reach out to stakeholders, make alliances, ask for assistance, and augment what resources we may need to accomplish our missions.”
- Take admin to visit other, successful Writing Centers
- Craft a detailed job description
- Make current decisions based on your perception as to what will help your successor the most
- Draw upon Summer Institute training to help define what WC Director’s do
- Create a special issue of “WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship….or WCS for short” dedicated to discussion “what” WCDirectors do and what training/skills they need to do what they do
- “[Mine] the the IWCA’s ‘Position Statement on Professional Concerns of Writing Center Directors’” for communicating with admin
- Hire an outside consultant to assess and communicate program state and needs to admin
- “May I suggest the Writing Center Director’s Resource Book, edited by Christina Murphy and Byron Stay.”
Kurt Bouman’s (Wed 5/20/2015 10:20 AM) contribution seemed extremely insightful and useful:
- For me, the path to understanding (and hence to argument) needs to focus a great deal less on “what” and a lot more on “where”, “why”, “when”, and “how”. When we spend our time arguing about the “what” that we do–or even about the “who” we do it with/to–then I think our work may indeed look a lot like it can be realigned, streamlined, downgraded, outsourced, cost-shared, and otherwise efficientized. But if we can shift the attention to the “where”, the “why”, the “when”, and the “how” of our work, we can make a stronger case, I think, for the importance of a strong, stable, and disciplinarily grounded academic and professional home within our institutions.
The thread paints an intriguing (and troubling) picture about the foggy nature of WCD work, and how the fog results in labor exploitation. It also demonstrates the value of scholarship among the members of this intimate group, and the need for more of it.
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