Take Aways and Applications

So what...? Now that we've compiled data on past composition theory in the context of the social, cultural, historical, and economic context, what is the writing center's role in today's college institution?

Let's take a look at those guiding questions.

How can college writing centers use writing studies, composition theory, and comp history to inform how they help students continue writing work outside the classroom? 

From this project, I learned just how intertwined comp studies and writing center studies are in terms of research, theory, and objectives. While the field of comp and rhetoric investigates what a post-process comp theory means and looks like, writing centers like WCC's writing center are taking on anti-racist assessment and anti-biased rhetoric using scholarship like Asao Inoue's Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies. But, an essential part of the peer-reader training at the WCC writing center involves looking backward at how language has been weaponized against individuals in our world in the past and the present. 

How can writing centers help support BIPOC and non-traditional students and counter compositions' gate-keeping tendencies? 

I learned that writing centers must work collaboratively with their composition instructors and cultivate a dialogue around anti-racist assessment. Although the writing center can help welcome and heal student's language traumas, the peer-readers and student writers are at the will of the rubric. Writing centers create collaborative environments that welcome students to express themselves and share their unique thought and writing processes. But, if an assignment or instructor uses Current Traditional Rhetoric in their classroom or prioritizes their standard of "correctness" then the interaction between reader and writer is constrained. In order to unlock the potential of the writing center, instructors need to work in collaboration and close proximity to the peer readers and staff. Comp instructors have a lot to learn from writing center directors and staff, as writing center staff has a lot to learn from comp instructors. 

What is the difference between university writing centers and community college writing centers? 

This question is yet to be fully addressed. I need to interview other writing center staff and directors and collect training materials in order to analyze those discourse communities.  

Across Washington State, what are the emerging models utilized in writing centers to help support students' writing development?

Sherri shared that IWCA this year circulated ideas about anti-racism, anti-racist and anti-biased assessment and learning environment ecology, which closely reflects activity analysis theory.  Reflecting on the training material in WCC's peer-reader training materials, readers are holding dialogical and critical spaces where they get to challenge past theories and models. Sherri highly values the voices and perspectives of her students, and I believe this is why the writing center is so successful; it is run by students, the way students want it run, for their peers. They discuss transfer theory and rhetorical situaions, but at the heart of their learning center model, they prioritize the individual voice and expressivism, along with acknowledging how all writing and communication is contextually situated, especially within the racist history of the academic institution.