Call for Proposals
IWCA Research Incubator
Background
As COVID-19 continues to recede in the everyday dynamics of writing centers, other challenges arise from legislative restrictions on what staff can address to shifting institutional commitments that challenge their continue existence. For writing centers everywhere and seemingly all time, leaders are forced to make cases for their institutional expenditures or produce rationales for personnel decisions. This new normal isn’t entirely unique to this public health crisis and its aftermath; writing centers have long had to explain themselves to stakeholders across their campuses and to other publics. Many people involved in writing centers lack the experience, training, and mentoring to engage in research that addresses central questions about our success and persistence as units. McKinney (2013) asks us to reconsider how we study and argue for the questions that arise in our spaces. Faison and Treviño (2017) ask us to consider the make up of our spaces around retention and inclusion. Garcia (2020) challenges us to consider racial and ethnics assumptions that might feed power dynamics in writing centers. Driscoll and Devett (2020) pushes us toward awareness of transfer as a potential outcome in writing centers. Inoue (2016) positions writing tutoring at the intersection of identity and assessment. These scholars advance our field and just as importantly invite a range of perspectives and voices to operationalize research in a variety of contexts. How do we pivot from lore and grand narratives to inquiry practices rooted in transdisciplinary research methods? And what do we do when we don’t have the requisite training in empirical methods to address the questions that administrators want and value while also producing evidence that we want and value? How do we foster and develop individual disciplinary identity(-ies)–as well as the growth of writing center studies as a discipline–as we address the everyday through a sustained research agenda? Our “research incubator” addresses these questions by engaging writing center professionals in sustained mentoring and supported inquiry to develop empirical research projects.
Modeled on the well-regarded the Dartmouth and Elon Summer Institutes, we imagine a years-long mentored experience in which participants would explore a range of questions and concerns (not an exhaustive list):
· What would it mean to show “my writing center is effective”?
· How is the definition of “effectiveness” consistent with the values and the mission of my center?
· How effective are my writing center’s efforts to address issues of equity and social justice?
· How does my writing center compare to others? In what ways is it possible to measure this?
· What are students’ and consultants’ experiences of the writing center? How might I collect and interpret this data?
· How do student consultant identities affect their sessions?
· What pedagogical techniques are being practiced in my center (e.g., individual f2f, synchronous or asynchronous online, small group, workshops) and how do I best understand their impact?
· What role do academic Englishes play in sessions? What place or dynamics of Englishes, multilingualism, and translanguaging play in them or how we go about mentoring consultants, faculty, staff, and institutions?
· What sorts of methods and designs work to answer different sets of questions?
· What bodies of published research best inform the work I want to do?
The organizers of this initiative recognize that their expertise is limited. Based on applicants’ areas of interest, Research Incubator facilitators will be drawn from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and diverse perspectives on research and knowledge making, all in an effort to match participants with mentors who can best support their work. We plan to complement the original organizers with “graduates” of the first iteration of the incubator.
We invite proposals for sustainable, data-driven research projects that could develop over a 24-month period or longer. Participants may submit as individuals or collectives, and we will especially value projects from people and institutions historically under-represented. We seek proposals no longer than two single-spaced pages that succinctly and cogently make a case for their project which attends to as many of these questions as possible or relevant.
Proposal Specifics
In a one- to two-page document (no more than 1,000 words), give us a sense of how you get to this project and what sorts of research questions you’re seeking to take up (what’s the story that gets us to who you are and what you are interested in engaging research on?). Imagine what communities of practice or (inter)disciplinary conversations you are drawn to as well as new or different ones from which you would like to learn. Indicate these identities of sorts in your proposal and consider how they fit with your research questions. How might this research project help you grow as an individual, as a writing center leader, and as a participant in writing center field conversations? Finally, write about what sorts of institutional support you have (sometimes it’s just moral support), and what kind of support you wish you had and that this incubator could help facilitate.
Evaluation Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated according to the following dimensions:
· Who needs the most help? The intent of this Research Incubator is to support writing center professionals who are most in need of that support. We will draw on the ways prospective participants frame this need in relation to their positions within their programs, departments, and in the larger field of writing center studies.
· Who doesn’t get support? We intend to target prospective participants who otherwise are not supported in their research efforts.
· What’s interesting? And to whom? Tell us the story of how you get to the research question. Ultimately, the intent of this initiative is not to teach the fundamentals of empirical research but to support nascent or in-progress projects that have the potential for the greatest return, whether for the individual, the individual’s institution, or the larger field.
Timing
Deadline for submissions, September 18, 5:00 p.m. (EST). Accepted applicants will be notified by early October, 2023. We imagine our first conversations at the IWCA Conference that month in Baltimore, with additional working sessions in 2024, during the Spring Collaborative at CCCCs and over the summer.
To apply or share questions:
Writing.lab
Harry Denny, Ph.D.
Professor, English
Director, On-Campus Writing Lab (OWL)
Co-Editor, Writing Center Journal
230B Krach Leadership Center
West Lafayette, IN 47907
