Taking the Mic: Audiences and Writing Center Blogs
/Should consultees have a chance to speak up about Writing Center practice on Axis?
Read MoreA Writing Center Journal
What happens when we write? Why do we teach writing the way we do? How does writing education engage with questions of race, gender, accessibility, and cultural difference? How does the writing center function as an interdisciplinary space?
Axis extends the writing center conversation from Praxis, our peer reviewed scholarly journal, into a public forum. Exploratory, experimental, and informative, the blog speaks to questions on the cutting edge of writing center theory and practice. Axis features writing from undergraduate and graduate educators at the University of Texas at Austin, and guest writers from universities across the United States.
Should consultees have a chance to speak up about Writing Center practice on Axis?
Read MoreHappy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin' until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, 'till we meet again.
Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It's the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here's a happy one for you.
A brief welcome and update from the new senior managing editor.
Read MoreToday we have asked Dawn Fels, Clint Gardner, Maggie Herb, and Liliana M. Naydan to comment on recent administrative decisions related to specific writing centers- decisions that have attracted a great deal of attention in the field. We are grateful for their willingness to enunciate their stance with such vigor and clarity. We welcome responses to and elaborations of this post, as we do with all AXIS posts.
Read MoreToday a public/private partnership between New America, Arizona State University and the online magazine Slate will hold an event called “Trust But Verify: The Crisis in Biomedicine.” The ‘crisis’ the title refers to results from a recent, widespread realization that important research in the field may be fundamentally flawed, a majority of it impossible to replicate for various reasons. This same crisis is occurring in the field of psychology, causing practitioners to question some of their basic clinical assumptions. An obvious question presents itself: is there a reproducibility crisis in writing center research?
Read MoreI’ve spent a lot of time as the only man in the room. Having worked (mostly with infants) in early childhood education after earning my English degree, and having attended a master’s program in feminist theory, spaces where women are the norm are familiar and pleasant places to me. Maybe this is why I like writing centers.
Read MoreThis is the transcript of an interview conducted by Dr. Tom Lindsay, an active member of our editorial review board, with Praxis Managing Co-Editor Thomas Spitzer-Hanks. Dr. Lindsay is representing Praxis today at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Houston, Texas and we'd like to thank him for the opportunity to publish this interview.
Read MoreTwo weeks ago today the North American writing center community was shocked and saddened to hear that the University of British Columbia, one of the largest and oldest universities in Canada, ranked among the 50 most reputable universities in the world by U.S. News & World Report, Times Higher Education, and The Academic Ranking of World Universities while educating 58,000 students on two campuses that occupy nearly 15,000 acres, plans to close their writing center in September 2016.
Read MoreToday we are restarting another feature from vintage Praxis: the Featured Center. This feature's original purpose was to provide an opportunity for writing centers to share information about their operational practices and the philosophy behind them; today's center, The Writing Center at Mississippi State, has very generously shared a great deal of information that not only offers other centers the opportunity to think critically about their own operational practices but about why those choices were made. AXIS would like to thank Stacy Kastner, Rich Raymond, Kayleigh Few and Sava Kolev for their cooperation.
Read MoreThis week I received another reminder that there is very little in this hyperconnected world of ours that doesn’t eventually figure in an encounter between writer and writing center consultant. The writing center is the kind of place where a consultation devoted to lamb kebab and the mechanics of writing ends up also being about the difficult, hazardous aspects of human sociality.
Read MoreBy now the internet rage cycle has moved on, but last week a great many people were looking at and talking about a powerpoint slide from a University of Houston Faculty Senate meeting. Aside from the remarkable fact that 1) something exciting and noteworthy happened at a faculty senate meeting, and 2) a powerpoint slide was that ‘something exciting,’ the presentation itself did make some remarkable recommendations. The question is whether these types of recommendations, and the heightened presence of guns on Texas campuses after August 1st, make any difference to writing centers.
Read MoreAs part of our monthly Consultant Spotlight series, today we sit down with David Vaughan DeVine, a graduating senior and long-time writing consultant at the University of Texas at Austin's University Writing Center, to talk about his experience as a writing center consultant, as a scholar, and as a colleague.
Read MoreIn Writing Center Studies we have plenty of data, both quantitative and qualitative, on how to best work with writers. Techniques for working with specific populations, ways of theorizing the uniqueness of writing center work in higher education, and strategies for continual improvement are our stock in trade, and over the last fifty years Writing Center Studies has become an academic field characterized by longevity and supported by substantial research. While research on how to best perform writing center work is ongoing, one area of Writing Center Studies has received almost no attention: the labor conditions in which writing center work is done. A new study currently soliciting for participation aims to change that.
Read MoreToday the Praxis editorial team is pleased to announce the theme for a Guest-Edited Fall 2016 issue! The topic on which Praxis 14.1 will focus is one close to the hearts of the Praxis editorial team, and one we feel the journal is particularly well-suited to showcasing.
Read MoreAs the field of Writing Center Studies matures and the institutional settings in which the work is done slowly change, there seems to be a research hierarchy emerging - one in which quantitative research is valued over qualitative research. While institutional pressures and the desire to improve writing center efficacy feed into this phenomenon, it remains unclear what is driving the 'quantitative turn' in Writing Center Studies. It is also unclear what, if anything, is lost by it.
Read MoreThis week Robert Cochran, a veteran Front Desk staffer, describes his experience at the University of Texas at Austin's University Writing Center.
Read MoreFor many years, Praxis regularly featured “consultant spotlight” columns – brief interviews where an individual writing center worker was invited to reflect on their background as a writer, their consulting style, and their experiences in their home writing center. In conjunction with the recent issue on “Writing Dis/Abiltiy,” I asked the Praxis editors if they would be interested in a consultant spotlight column focused on a writing center worker who experiences disability in some way. They graciously said yes, and so a few months ago I sat down for a conversation with Lizzie Picherit, a graduate student in the department of English at the University of Texas at Austin and consultant in UT’s University Writing Center.
Read MoreWe are enormously proud to be publishing this issue. While previous issues have always included one or two articles, columns or features focused on what could be considered non-traditional or non-typical subject matter for the study of writing center research and practice, this issue takes as its focus just that: the non-typical.
Read MoreAs part of our ongoing series on dis/ability, today we revisit a post by Elizabeth Picherit, former Praxis archivist, as she describes her experience "putting her disability cards out on the table" with a consultee requesting accommodations.
Read MoreToday we return to Katie Logan's blog post from February 2015, which describes ongoing training UT's disABILITY Advocate Program, administered by Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), offers writing center consultants. In the coming weeks we will be revisiting blog posts on dis/ability as the publication date for our upcoming special issue on dis/ability in the writing center approaches.
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