The Writing Program Administrator S Resource

This handbook offers wisdom and guidance from experienced college writing program administrators. It is intended for WPAs at all levels of experience.

Combining formal quantitative research with narrative-based scholarship, THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION represents multiple voices from faculty balancing between the demands of teaching, writing, and administering writing programs in professional, ethical ways-often under circumstances that can be defined, at best, as difficult. In these pages, junior faculty tell their stories of triumph and trauma, while more firmly established composition scholars reflect upon the changing and challenging profession we all share.

The role of the writing program administrator is one of diverse activities and challenges, and preparation for the position has traditionally come through performing the job itself. As a result, uninitiated WPAs often find themselves struggling to manage the various requirements and demands of the position, and even experienced WPAs often encounter situations on which they need advice. The Writing Program Administrator's Resource has been developed to address the needs of all WPAs, regardless of background or experience. It provides practical, applicable tools to effectively address the differing and sometimes competing roles in which WPAs find themselves. Readers will find an invaluable collection of articles in this volume, addressing fundamental practices and issues encountered by WPAs in their workplace settings and focusing on the hows and whys of writing program administration. With formal preparation and training only now beginning to catch up to the very real needs of the WPA, this volume offers guidance and support from authoritative and experienced sources--educators who have established the definitions and standards of the position; who have run into obstacles and surmounted them; and who have not just survived but thrived in their roles as WPAs. Editors Stuart C. Brown and Theresa Enos contribute their own experience and bring together the voices of their colleagues to delineate the intellectual scope and practices of writing program administration as an emerging discipline. Established and esteemed leaders in the field offer insights, advice, and plans of action for the myriad scenarios encountered in the position, encouraging WPAs and helping them to realize that they often know more than they think they do. This resource is required reading for the new WPA, and an essential reference for all who serve in the WPA role. As a guidebook for WPAs, it is destined to become a fixture on the desk of every educator involved with or interested in administrating writing programs, writing centers, and writing-across-the-curriculum efforts.

This reference guide provides a comprehensive review of the literature on all the issues, responsibilities, and opportunities that writing program administrators need to understand, manage, and enact, including budgets, personnel, curriculum, assessment, teacher training and supervision, and more. Writing Program Administration also provides the first comprehensive history of writing program administration in U.S. higher education. Writing Program Administration includes a helpful glossary of terms and an annotated bibliography for further reading.

A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators (2nd Edition) presents the major issues and questions in the field of writing program administration. The collection provides aspiring, new, and seasoned WPAs with the theoretical lenses, terminologies, historical contexts, and research they need to understand the nature, history, and complexities of their intellectual and administrative work.

Contributors examine the politics of untenured writing program administrator appointments given the demands of writing program administration, and reconciles the tension between WPA position statements and current institutional practice.

This collection of essays discusses writing program administrators' (WPAs') research. The essays pose several questions to characterize WPAs' research practices: "What is WPA research? What characterizes WPA research and the sites of WPA inquiry?"; and "What values guide WPA research?" The 14 chapters are divided into 2 parts, "Writing Program Administrators' Inquiry in Action" and "Writing Program Administrators' Inquiry in Reflection." Part 1 exemplifies WPA research by describing and conceptualizing specific research projects conducted as part of WPA responsibilities, and thereby provides a detailed picture of administrative research. Part 2 then draws on the concrete experiences of particular WPAs and particular writing programs, raising and reflecting on issues about WPA research in general. Each chapter demonstrates that WPAs' inquiry is characterized by a recursive interplay between reflection and action. Some of the many topics addressed in the book include diverse research methodologies for diverse audiences, feminist methods, conflicts between teaching and assessing writing, outcomes assessment research as a teaching tool, the contributions of sociolinguistic profiling, assessing teacher preparation programs, reflective essays, local research and curriculum development, enabling research in the writing program archives, WPAs as historians, historical work on WPAs, the role of research in writing programs, and postmodern mapping. (RJM)

This reference guide provides a comprehensive review of the literature on all the issues, responsibilities, and opportunities that writing program administrators need to understand, manage, and enact, including budgets, personnel, curriculum, assessment, teacher training and supervision, and more. Writing Program Administration also provides the first comprehensive history of writing program administration in U.S. higher education. Writing Program Administration includes a helpful glossary of terms and an annotated bibliography for further reading.