Hello all! Happy Hallo-week!
The East Central Writing Centers Association (ECWCA) is thrilled to share that our Call for Proposals for our 2027 Conference is now live!
https://ecwca.org/conference/ecwca-2027/2027-call-for-proposals
Hosted by Indiana University Bloomington’s Writing Tutorial Services & Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning, our 2027 conference will be held March 18-20, 2027.
Conference Topic: Curiosity, Discovery, Inquiry: Research(ing) with/in Writing Center Contexts
Proposals due December 15th, 2026.
Please reach out to us at ecwca2027 with questions, or to me directly at mtruglia !
Please find the full CFP attached as a PDF and below:
Curiosity, Discovery, Inquiry: Research(ing) with/in Writing Center Contexts
Writing centers from multiple contexts (higher education, K-12 schools, community centers, and beyond) have long been sites of teaching, collaboration, advocacy, and inquiry. From Stephen North’s foundational argument that writing centers exist to produce better writers rather than simply better writing, to contemporary conversations about assessment, access, belonging, and institutional change, writing center practitioners have consistently generated knowledge through the everyday work of tutoring, administration, and campus and community partnerships.
Yet what counts as research in writing center contexts remains an open and productive question. Research may involve large-scale assessment projects, institutional data analysis, and quantitative studies, as described in Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s “RAD Research as a framework for writing center inquiry”. It may also emerge through tutor reflection, narrative inquiry, focus groups, archival work, ethnography, community partnerships, service-learning projects, and of course, from conversations with students and other writers (both tutors and those served by the writing center staff). Neal Lerner’s work on “counting beans and making beans count” reminds us that assessment is not merely an administrative exercise, but a means of understanding and advocating for writing center work.
The theme “Curiosity, Discovery, Inquiry: Research(ing) with/in Writing Center Contexts” invites participants to explore research not only as a process seeking quantifiable results, but also as a process of wayfinding through curiosity, discovery, reflection, and re-examination. The parenthetical construction emphasizes both researching and re-searching: revisiting assumptions, rethinking familiar practices, interrogating inherited stories, and imagining new possibilities for writing center scholarship and practice.
Writing center scholars have repeatedly challenged the field to examine its narratives and assumptions. Elizabeth Boquet’s historical work traces the development of writing centers across changing institutional contexts. Romeo Garcia uses autoethnography and writing center experience to call attention to “the opportunity for a community of scholars to make and re-make writing centers in productive and meaningful ways” (32). Jackie Grutsch McKinney argues that the field’s “grand narrative” can narrow our understanding of what writing centers do and who they serve. April Baker-Bell asks us to confront the lingering legacies of imposing standardized American academic English upon Black writers and speakers who have historically been marginalized and dismissed. Marcelle Haddix compels us to reconsider the prevailing social narrative that K-12 students aren’t capable, competent, and willing writers, and Rich Kent suggests that student-led, student-staffed writing centers in K-12 schools can provide important counterstories about youth literacies. Nancy Grimm and Harry Denny remind us that knowledge-making is shaped by identity, power, context, and institutional structures.
This conference seeks proposals that investigate how writing center practitioners engage in inquiry, evidence gathering, storytelling, reflection, advocacy, and knowledge-making. We welcome administrators, tutors, faculty & instructors, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, campus colleagues, K-12 directors & staff, K-12 students/tutors, and community partners interested in exploring the dynamic relationship between research and practice. Everyone connected to writing center work is welcome and encouraged to apply and attend.
Defining Research Broadly
For this conference, we wish to define research expansively. We welcome empirical studies, assessment projects, historical investigations, critical reflections, community-engaged scholarship, creative inquiry, practitioner research, and exploratory projects. We are especially interested in work that begins with curiosity, empathy, observation, or a felt need within a writing center community. We welcome presenters to also consider submitting research that is still in progress, and get feedback and support.
Research might include coding and analyzing appointment reports, conducting focus groups, collecting stories, preserving institutional memory, studying tutor education, examining partnerships, exploring accessibility practices, or developing innovative methods of understanding student experiences. We invite presenters to challenge conventional definitions of evidence and to consider how writing center values and the realities of our work environments shape the questions we ask and the methods we use.
Questions and Topics for Consideration
Curiosity
What ‘counts’ as research in your writing center?
What questions are you asking, and how did those questions emerge?
What stories, counterstories, and institutional memories shape your work?
How can empathy interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic approaches expand our understanding of writers’ needs?
What does your center need or want to know more about? How will that support growth?
Discovery
How do centers collect, analyze, interpret, and communicate data?
How can research support advocacy, leadership, sustainability, and resource development?
What partnerships are integral to your research goals?
How can research advance access, belonging, and responsive practice?
How does role or position influence the research one can conduct?
How do institutional, political, or state constraints shape research possibilities?
Inquiry
What do you do with the information you gather?
How do you/your center utilize data to tell a story about your center to audiences who matter to you?
How are centers using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodologies?
What foundational texts continue to resonate, and what assumptions need revision?
How do tutor education programs engage with influential but historically situated scholarship?
What are the limitations of research and assessment? Whose voices are we still not hearing?
Presentation Formats
We welcome submissions for all presentation formats from any- and everyone who works with/in writing centers: Tutors at all stages in their educational journey (K-12, undergraduate, and graduate), professional/staff tutors, writing center administrators (staff and faculty), and other folks who do not explicitly work in a writing center but collaborate with or create writing center-related knowledge. We also encourage collaborative presentations of all kinds that reach across the tutor/administrator divide, and presentations from community writing centers, community partners, and campus/school partners.
Presentation types:
❖ Individual presentations [15–20 minutes] [will be combined by the conference organizers] or [60 minutes]
❖ Panels [60 minutes]
❖ Roundtables [60 minutes]
❖ Workshops [60 minutes]
❖ Posters [will be featured in a poster session]
❖ Community-engaged project showcases [30-60 minutes]
❖ Digital and multimodal projects and
❖ Experimental formats (tell us more).
Proposal Requirements
Please submit your proposal through this form:
https://forms.gle/asTT4w4nqsjeEBRc8
Required elements:
❖ a presentation title,
❖ 150-word abstract,
❖ 300–500 word session description,
❖ your desired presentation format,
❖ a short [c. 100 words] justification of why you believe it is the best fit for your topic,
❖ presenter(s) information,
❖ a brief statement [c. 100 words] describing the proposal’s connection to the conference theme
Mary Helen Truglia, PhD
Director, Writing Tutorial Services
Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
Affiliate Faculty, Hutton Honors College
Affiliate Faculty, Department of English
Indiana University, Bloomington
mtruglia