The Roles of Writing Centers in Redefining Student Success:

Sharing Our Practices and Research

The Northern California Writing Centers Association's 2013 Conference 

Hosted by Sacramento City College

Saturday, April 13, 2013  9 AM to 5 PM

Registration for the conference is closed. We have reached the maximum attendance capacity for the rooms that we have reserved for the conference.

Registration is still available for the pre-conference workshop on Friday, April 12th. To register for the workshop, email Mandy Proctor at NCWCA2013@gmail.com .

A pdf of the conference program is now available here.

Travel and Accommodation Information

Keynote Speaker: Tom Fox

•Professor, Department of English, Chico State University
•Author of Defending Access: A Critique of Standards in Higher Education and The Social Uses of Writing: Politics and Pedagogy
•Leader, Northern California Writing Project
•Outstanding Professor, 2000-2001, Chico State University

Ever since the late 1970s, writing centers have become increasingly familiar and public features of higher education. Writing center historians such as Neal Lerner have revealed that our history goes back much further, into the mid- 19th century, when writing centers (or clinics or labs) provided a very different range of options for student success that would otherwise not have been possible. Writing center contributions to student success have been both ongoing and varied.

But writing has changed since the mid-19th century, as have the media, forms, and contexts within which students write. We generally consider a much wider range of ‘texts' appropriate to higher education than would have been the case even twenty years ago. Students are writing blogs. They are making PowerPoint presentations. Many more of our students are English-language learners. Students are pursuing careers that may not yet exist, that certainly are very different from the careers available only fifty years ago. The kinds of writing that students are doing in their majors and programs are increasingly diverse. As the range and roles of writing, as well as higher education's definition of student success, continue to change, so does the work we do within our writing centers. As those roles continue to evolve, we must be active participants in the ongoing work of redefining what successful writing includes and the impact that work has on our ideas about student success. Writing centers can contribute significantly to the ‘on the ground' understanding of student success. Writing centers can help institutions understand what students need to be successful. In fact, no one else can do this important work in the ways that writing centers can.

Pre-Conference Workshop:
Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter
Friday, April 12, 2013   1pm - 4pm
Sacramento City College Learning Resource Center

Bill Macauley will lead a pre-conference workshop based on his new, co-authored book with Ellen Schendel, Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter (USUP, 2012). Workshop participants will move through a process of developing and articulating writing assessments that matter for their own writing centers. The workshop will guide participants through a process of developing specific assessment questions and then pursuing those questions through a focused process of development. Participants, especially those who come to the workshop with specific assessment topics, questions, and/or interests, will leave the workshop with workable assessment plans.

Registration for the conference is closed.

Registration Prices:

Pre-Conference Workshop (Friday, 4/12 1-4pm)          $20

There is a $20 late registration fee after March 25, 2013.

Travel and Accommodation Information

If you have any questions about the conference, contact Susan Griffin at griffis@scc.losrios.edu.