Beyond considering how writers will benefit from a program, my holistic writer-led praxis extends that philosophy to include what writers-as-collaborators reveal, reject, or teach as active participants in assessing and challenging our pedagogical assumptions. The work of tutors and writers in a writing center consultation, for example, is at the heart of writing center work, but the center’s identity and location on campus, its significant albeit invisible effect on writing culture across the disciplines, and its participatory role in how academic literacy develops and moves around campus suggest the writing center's reach must involve all sorts of writers—students, tutors, instructors of every level, and faculty across the disciplines—not just the individual student writer.
How can we make our writing center or our writing program mean something to all writers across the institution?
Accordingly, I have developed four tenets of my writing center and program administration philosophy:
Develop inclusive and accessible curriculum and pedagogy.
Foster a collaborative and supported community of staff and instructors.
Decision-making through a theoretically and data-driven collaborative mindset.
Perhaps the most challenging and rewarding experience of my career was serving the 6,000 graduate students across Penn State's University Park campus during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the world was shutting down, our GWC experienced a transformation not only in its existence and practice, but in its spirit. Graduate student writers seeking connection, support, and kindness among chaos and inexplicable demands for productivity looked to me and our GWC staff. I am proud of the work we did as a staff to revolutionize how our GWC was perceived, accessed, and characterized for the graduate students writers we served and who came to know us for the first time during lockdown. My administrative tenure during the pandemic demonstrated to me precisely how writers who attend consultations are also potential collaborators for that center's ongoing development, pedagogical refinement, and institutional presence. In other words, writers are always remaking the writing center in various explicit and implicit ways; as an administrator, I take seriously my role in listening, attuning, and responding to that collaborative remaking.
Managed daily GWC staff operations, scheduling, and custom workshop facilitation
Collected, analyzed, and processed consultation and workshop data to produce semester operations reports
Promoted GWC services and increased GWC–Graduate School partnerships which resulted in a 207% rise in new clients served and an increased in repeat clients served
Secured funding for 2 additional graduate consultant hires through collaboration with the Associate Dean of Graduate Student Affairs
Designed and implemented an ongoing consultant training model to complement our established onboarding processes
Take a look: https://gwc.psu.edu/
From my time as Program Assistant for the Program in Writing & Rhetoric (PWR) at Penn State, I gained a keen institutional perspective concerning the chasm of inequities for instructors' pedagogical training and professional development opportunities. I am fortunate and grateful to have been both a participant and facilitator of PWR's extensive year-long curricular support for new and incoming graduate student instructors-of-record and teaching faculty who participate in the course regardless of age, rank, and teaching experience. My experiences in supporting first-semester day-to-day operations of an incoming cohort of 40 instructors, preparing a first-year writing syllabus for 100+ sections, and preparing and teaching a Composition Theory & Pedagogy course for that incoming cohort undergird my Writing Program Administration (WPA) philosophy to support mentoring across all levels for improved student learning outcomes through writing. As a WPA, I believe effective administration requires collaboration with institutional partners, responsiveness to changing contexts, and attending to the diverse support/mentoring needs of faculty, staff, and students.
Created syllabus for and taught a graduate-level course on Composition Theory & Pedagogy
Created, implemented, and supervised a year-long teacher mentoring plan which was adopted by subsequent PWR teams
Managed trouble-shooting and instructor support for all first-year writing instructors and faculty
Supervised undergraduate interns for day-to-day operations and the editing and publication of the digital student-writing journal, Penn Statements, which is a required text for all first-year writing courses
Organized and led a week-long fall orientation for 40 incoming graduate assistant instructors and teaching faculty
Take a look: https://www.pwr.psu.edu/
While not WPA work, the institutional engagement and perspectives I've experienced as a Graduate Instructional Consultant for the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE, Penn State's learning and teaching center for all its campuses) have positioned me well for WPA work in terms of program development, evaluation, and refinement. Once I realized during my time with PWR that graduate student pedagogical training and professional development opportunities were not commensurate–or even available–across graduate programs, I was motivated to be a part of significant interdisciplinary and interdepartmental efforts to remediate those structural deficits. As a Graduate Instructional Consultant at SITE, I have the privilege of collaborating with a dynamic team of research faculty in Educational Development to design, facilitate, and evaluate data-driven programming for a diverse and multidisciplinary population of instructors and teachers across Penn State's Commonwealth Campuses. Our mission at SITE is to improve undergraduate education experiences and outcomes for students and we do that through multifaceted programming, research on teaching and learning, and responding to diverse and emergent pedagogical development needs. Through my own initiatives at SITE, I have embraced this administrative philosophy and created various longitudinal feedback loops such as an operations reporting model for a certification course, resource handouts to supplement workshop content, and enhanced participant-feedback surveys.
Develop and facilitate new programming for a diverse and multidisciplinary population of graduate student instructors-or-record and TAs (including a focus on international TAs)
Consult with faculty and TAs on course planning, delivery, and teaching evaluation
Facilitate pedagogical development workshops on a variety of evergreen topics (e.g., Handling Disruptions in Class; Planning a Class Session; Developing a Syllabus) and emergent issues/topics (e.g., AI and Writing Assignments; Instructor Mental Health & Impostor Phenomenon; Navigating Challenging Social Climates in Class)
Maintain and curate an online repository of teaching resources for the graduate and post-doc community at Penn State
Collect, analyze, and synthesize workshop, programming, and consultation feedback data to generate program and curricular development proposals and plans
Supervise undergraduate interns to develop and promote a web and social media presence and resources
Take a look: https://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/