Re: Need Feedback:NWCA

[Howard Tinberg <htinberg@bristol.mass.edu>]

I'd be glad to help staff the center.  What a wonderful idea  I 
especially like the way such a center could help colleagues with their 
own professional writing.  
Regarding the relatively low turnouts of wc presentations.  My feeling is 
that we wce folk need to do a better job of presenting the wc as a site 
for genuine academic inquiry/research (which was Mickey's plea at the 
last C's).  If we built such sessions, I believe they would come.

Howard Tinberg

On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, Joan Mullin wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
>