Need Feedback:NWCA

[Joan Mullin <jmullin@UOFT02.UTOLEDO.EDU>]

NWCA needs some community input so an informed decision can be made. Please
e-mail your response to the following to the list or to me:

Proposal: Next year, at NCTE, we would like to show the professional
community what it is we DO in writing centers. Therefore, we would like to
propose that we establish a working writing center at the conference. The
Conference Writing Center would be located in a booth among the textbook
vendors and would be staffed by two tutors (that's two of us folks): one
would be a tutor, the other would be there to field questions about what we
do (are doing) and to talk about writing center publications which would
also be featured at the booth. The tutor would work with colleagues on
anything they are writing or on conference proposals for next year's NCTE. 

Rationale: Every year NWCA is guaranteed a workshop or session at NCTE.
These are not always well attended for many reasons--not the least of which
is that those sessions do not always meet the needs of the high school AND
college populations at the same time. Sessions proposed by individual
writing center people seem to have better attendance because they are
clearly high school or college focused, or because they are clearly tackling
specific problems in an hour. Also, the writing center workshop competes
with workshops on proficiency exams, multi cultural literature, and computer
technology. Yet CLEARLY there are a lot of people at the conference that
want to know about writing centers (in one session, 53 people signed up for
more information about NWCA).

We thought we would PILOT this Conference Writing Center this next year in
Detroit. NCTE is excited about this and willing to promote it in their
advertising materials. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to a session or
workshop.

Problem to be solved: We will need volunteers to staff the booth. Therefore,
we would need firm commitments ahead of time (to the conference, of course!).

RESPONSE????

joan

Dr. Joan Mullin
Writing Center
University of Toledo
Toledo, Ohio 43606-3390
419-530-4913
419-530-4752 (fax)
jmullin@uoft02.utoledo.edu