Theme

Our 2026 conference theme, “The Cutting Edge,” invites your consideration in two ways. First, we seek presentations that address community colleges as sites of innovation in teaching writing. Second, we call on presenters to consider how we work amid political hostility that threatens our rights, our funding, our students, our identities, and our values. 

On its first level, the conference theme recognizes that community colleges are often on the cutting edge in responding to our students’ diverse backgrounds, needs, and goals. Many community college students exist in proximity to vulnerability, making them among the first to feel the effects of social unrest and increasing economic pressure. Some students are also facing the demands of work and family in addition to their studies. Thus as teachers, advisors, writers, tutors, activists, scholars, and/or program administrators, we have expertise in creating approaches that can support our students, equipping them for life and work beyond the classroom. This call asks you to speak to your innovations in this crucial work. 

On its second level, the conference theme names the way that the community college and those connected to it are increasingly on the chopping block. The current federal administration threatens our funding, our rights, our pedagogies, our identities, our communities, and our values. This significantly adds to the difficulty of our work, both as teachers and as humans in a stressful environment. This call invites presenters to speak to the ways we sustain ourselves, protect our departments across campuses, engage with students across the political spectrum, support students in jeopardy, reclaim our values when we are pushed to change, and continue to exist amid uncertainty as many of the long-standing assumptions about the value of education come into question.