Joshua StorieArts Faculty Council has succeeded in calling university administration to halt moving the Centre for Writers’ (C4W) administration away from its current place in academics.
Writers across the university have one year to access the centre while it runs as an academic unit, rather than a student service. Arts Faculty Council had recommended that the university delay the move for one year, which Provost Steven Dew announced his agreement to at General Faculties Council on May 30. The next year will be used to consult with students and staff in the C4W and the wider university community, as initial consultations did not include the voices of the C4W’s director, staff, clients, and other stakeholders.
The university originally planned to change the C4W from an academic unit in the Faculty of Arts to a student service in the Office of the Dean of Students by July 1. According to those in the C4W, removing its academic direction could substantially impact writing education at the University of Alberta, as the centre’s academic tutoring would no longer be guided by a professor specialized in writing centre theory.
Moving the C4W into student services would have also cost centre director Lucie Moussu her appointment.
Moussu was told mid-April that her term as C4W would expire July 1, 2016 despite her academic term’s expiry date of July 2017. Moussu has since been reinstated as director for one year — she can now finish her academic term in the role she was originally hired for as C4W director and professor of WRS301: “Introduction to Writing Centre Theory and Practice.”d
“The C4W tutors and I are really grateful that we were granted a second chance to show everyone at the University of Alberta the many facets of the work we do,” Moussu wrote in an email.
Provost Dew said postponing the move will allow the university to “take the time to do it right.” In the next year, Dew said stakeholders such as the University Writing Committee, the C4W, the Centre for Teaching Learning, the Faculty of Arts and other faculties, the Students’ Union, and the Graduate Students’ Association will be involved in the consultation process. Details as to how the consultations will be carried out are still being decided by the university.
“I just want to put in place an ecosystem that supports writing across the campus,” Dew said. “There a number of components to that … the C4W is one part.”
The Provost and Faculty of Arts administrators saw the C4W’s move as a simple administrative change. Dew, as part of a response to a question posed at General Faculties Council on May 30, said the Dean of Students is the most appropriate unit for hosting C4W because it provides student support services and it’s accountable to all faculties.
Stuart Landon, Acting Vice-Dean of Arts, had also justified moving the C4W because it did not fit the Faculty of Arts’ mandate of teaching and research, arguing that the C4W did not offer for-credit courses or produce research as a unit. But the Canadian Association for the Study in Discourse in Writing identifies writing centres as teaching units — learning happens when tutors are guided by a writing specialist.
Moussu and other professors furthered that the C4W does offer teaching, as it houses students completing practicums for credit in WRS301. Moussu also conducts research out of the C4W in the global field of writing centre study, which is used to guide writing centre practice in tutoring and improving ESL services.
The proposed move also contradicted a three-year study prior to the C4W’s formation that said the centre should be directed by an academic faculty member.
A website will be created in the upcoming term to gather feedback on the C4W’s move. In the meantime, Dew has said stakeholders can send feedback directly to him.
Writing centre administrative moves part of a bigger trend
Attempts to move university writing centres into student services with little consultation are happening more and more, according to Shareen Grogan, president of the International Writing Centers Association .
Changes such as the one proposed at the U of A show a misunderstanding in the pedagogy of running a writing centre, where expert directors consistently instruct writing centre tutors in practice, Grogan said. Tutors pass on this instruction knowledge of the writing process — more than just grammar and punctuation — to clients. Writing centre directors who are also faculty are able to collaborate more within the university, as they can sit on more academic committees to strengthen writing across the institution.
When Grogan’s writing centre at the National University in San Diego, California was moved into student services, administrators tried to move away from the model of tutoring students one-on-one to improve efficiency. She also saw less emphasis on the training of writing tutors, causing her to spend more time communicating with administrators about what made writing centres different from editing services.
“My cynical view is that it’s an educational fad,” Grogan said. “The drive to give students access to all the resources they need has been translated to simplifying the administrative structure. Doing that speaks to a misunderstanding about the different tutoring (types.)”
Grogan’s concern for the C4W if it did not have an academic director would be the possibility of future writing tutoring focusing on basic edits rather than critical thinking.
Some writing centres have successfully moved into student services at other universities, but they face the challenge of appearing as a remedial centre for struggling writers, Grogan said. The assumption of writing centres only existing to help troubled students can turn potential users away, and is one of the risks with transitioning to a student service. Students may assume that services are only for remedial purposes.
“Some students don’t go to writing centres because they say, ‘Only stupid students go there,’” Grogan said. “They perceive it as somewhere to play catch-up … It might be harder for a writing centre director to communicate what we do if we’re put in a department where people do different things.”
The university’s proposed change would have involved removing Lucie Moussu from her position as director of the C4W, which makes the situation “a mystery” to Grogan, as Moussu is a published researcher in writing centre study and second language acquisition. The removal if Moussu’s C4W directorship would have marked a huge loss for the field, Grogan said.
“It makes everyone (in writing centres) feel vulnerable that this could happen at their institution,” she added.
Writing centres as teaching units
“Recovered grammar cop” Allison Holland has worked in writing centres for almost 27 years — her past 19 have been spent directing the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s (UALR) writing centre. Holland sees a writing centre training necessary for good direction.
Directors need to monitor their student tutors to maintain a quality tutoring process and to provide assistance when specific situations in writing arise, which is often since writing concerns are often situational, Holland said. Some writing centres will even record tutoring sessions to help its tutors improve their instruction.
Writing centres tutor according to individuals’ needs and goals through the process of drafting, writing, editing, and finishing papers. A student might be looking for concrete edits, but the writing centre’s goal is to have educated the student in writing that will be used in future assignments and courses. Writing centres take a positive approach to tutoring, and have one of the biggest roles on campus in retaining students, Holland said.
“If students don’t pick up anything in their freshman writing classes, no one else on campus will teach them how to do it,” Holland said.
Holland’s institution is home to around 13,000 undergraduates, 75 per cent of which are adult learners. While UALR’s writing centre works on a lot of technical writing for students, other clients including faculty come to the centre for guidance as well. At the U of A, one of the C4W’s biggest client demographic are second-language students, who are sometimes challenged in meeting academic standards in their coursework.
Students can go to their professors with concerns about assignments, but many professors intimidate students by focusing on errors when they mark coursework, Holland said. Writing centres provide an accessible, positive, extension of the feedback received in the classroom. Holland, once focused on spelling and grammar, looks instead to the content and ideas within a paper, which improves the writer in a more holistic way.
“(Improvements) can’t be done in one visit, and it’s more than just taking a student’s paper and showing them errors,” Holland said. “There’s a much more involved process, and that’s why writing centres are critically important in our education.”
