Re: Another reason for needing accreditation

[Joan Mullin <jmullin@uoft02.utoledo.edu>]

Kevin,

Good questions:

>  Have any examples of departments calling NWCA for advice on, say, how to
>kill a "bad" writing center?  Or how to fire a director?  A respected,
impartial
>group will be called upon for that type of advice.  Or are the calls
coming from
>people interested in WCs wanting info on starting/supporting one? 

All I can speak from are the questions received over the last eleven years
in my own region and those I've received as the president of NWCA for the
last year: I have been asked for guidelines for evaluating writing centers
from those both inside wc's and from administrators. The calls have
concerned issues such as salaries, how writing centers are positioned
within insitutions ( e.g., Academic Affairs, Students Affairs, etc.), what
kind of staff training is "usual," whether directors are in tenured
positions or not, what the usual set of duties--teaching and
administrative--are for directors, whether budgets are independent or
attached to another unit. I have evaluated one writing center for program
review (southeastern U.S.)(others have also reviewed wc's) and have been
asked to include reviews of existing or for the potenital of establishing a
writing center at the regional North Central evaluation teams I've been on
for high schools.

No question that we still need to be recognized:
>Last I
>checked--and it's been a while--grad schools in our OWN areas were
unwilling to
>consider WCs as a field in and to themselves, in part because of the
nature of
>the publications and the fact that our organization is a "constituent"
>organization, not a free standing one.


But I look at where the field of composition was several years ago, I look
at where WAC was, and where both are now (the one prominent, the other
gaining recognition), and, of course, I refuse to say that anything is
impossible.

But what about WPA??? They are called upon for program review; they are a
group that is composed of "insiders" yet listened to--you may want to read
the recent C's article on Temple Universiy's program where they praise the
even-handed evaluation given them by WPA . The authors further explain how
instrumental WPA's  program review was when it came to getting support for
making necessary changes to their program. I would like to think we could
do the same.

joan