Dear Regional Western States Colleagues,
Greetings! We’re writing across our professional listservs with a brief update and a request for your input; please forgive cross-postings.
We’re reaching out to colleagues across the Western states – broadly defined, as we don’t have formal borders or designated states for this region – to invite you to help shape how we move forward regionally and nationally after the Cs/NCTE. If you’ve been wanting to participate, this is a great opportunity to join the conversation. Please feel free to share this message with your regional networks.
A request and an update from the West:
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Help us plan our first Western States Ideation Symposium post-Cs de-chartering: Please take this brief survey to help us schedule and plan the initial Western States Ideation Symposium, which will be held during the week of November 2, 2026. We will hold two rounds of the same meeting to support broad participation. Each round will be held on Zoom. (For colleagues unable to make one of these online synchronous meetings, we will also provide opportunities for asynchronous participation.)
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Call for Facilitators: The survey also includes a request to note your interest in facilitating a small group during a round of this ideation symposium. In advance of the symposium, facilitators will read brief materials on the sensemaking process and will be invited to an optional facilitator training meeting.
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Follow-up from the August 24 conversation: The organizing team reviewed notes from a one-hour meeting on August 24 to help determine our next steps as a region. About 65 regional colleagues gathered for this conversation, which was centered on questions such as: What do I want from a professional community? What do I want from a professional network? You can find the synthesis from that meeting, including the breakout-room discussions, here. We plan for the ideation symposium to build on that initial conversation.
Meetings will be aligned to other regional sensemaking and ideation symposium approaches. For more information on sensemaking, please see this document, and make sure you’ve bookmarked cccc-l.
We strongly encourage our Western States colleagues to take a few minutes to complete the ideation symposium survey and join us in imagining what our next regional and national professional community might become.
If you have any questions or would like to be involved in the organizing process, you can email the organizing group, Western States Cs Organizing Group. <western.states.csorganizing>
Sincerely,
Western States Organizing Team
Jennifer Burke Reifman (San Diego State University)
Ana Castellon (UC Davis)
Angela Clark-Oates (Sacramento State University)
Kimberly Drake (Scripps College)
Paul Gibbons (UC Merced)
Angela M Laflen (Sacramento State University)
Casey Manogue (UC Davis)
Olivia McMurray (UC Davis)
Joy Ok (UC Davis)
Sasha Osorio (UC Davis)
Kristi Prins (Cal Poly Pomona)
Lisa Tremain (Cal Poly Humboldt)
Kathryn Tucker (University of Redlands)
Lisa Tremain, PhD (she/her)
Professor of English & Writing Practices
Director, First-year Composition Program
Cal Poly Humboldt | Founders Hall 222
On the ancestral and unceded territory of the Wiyot People