Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 2 (2023)
Faculty Writing Groups for Writing Center Professionals: Rethinking Scholarly Productivity
by Kara Poe Alexander, Erin M. Andersen, Julia Bleakney,
and Jennifer Smith Daniel
Erin.Andersen@centenaryuniversity.edu
danielj@queens.edu
Abstract
In this article, we discuss how participating in a writing group during and after the COVID-19 pandemic helped us reimagine what scholarly productivity means for us as writing center professionals (WCPs). Drawing on our experiences in an online writing group for almost three years with WCPs from four different institutions, we identify three themes that emerged across our experiences: (1) writing center work as scholarly and intellectual; (2) professionalization and mentoring; and (3) social support. Identifying these themes made visible for us a broader notion of scholarly productivity. It also helped us think more strategically about the complex and layered work we do as WCPs as we consistently juggle competing work demands. We hope this article can help WCPs not only re-conceive what it means to be productive as writing center scholars but also to integrate a broad range of scholarly work more fully into what they are already doing.
Introduction
For the past two years, the four of us—all Writing Center Professionals (WCPs) at different institutions— have participated in an online “Write Club” together. Initially formed in May 2020 through the International Writing Centers Association’s (IWCA) summer writing program, our writing group has continued for almost three years. This group has proven valuable to us as we have sought to maintain active research agendas while also navigating our jobs and the COVID-19 pandemic. At the group’s formation, we each had modest goals to keep our research agendas going, yet the Write Club has provided us with an unexpected opportunity to rethink the value of writing productivity more broadly, particularly in a context where efficient productivity and high levels of output are often the main elements of faculty evaluation. Such a rethinking not only has helped each of us move our research agendas forward but also to recognize how to integrate our research with our other work as WCPs (e.g., teaching, administrative duties, tutor education, faculty outreach).
WCPs have long grappled with their conflicted and overlapping identities as administrators, instructors, and researchers (Caswell, McKinney, and Jackson; Geller and Denny). The responsibilities of WCPs in each of these distinct roles makes the work of WCPs varied and rewarding, but it can also be challenging when attempting to prioritize this time-consuming labor. For example, Caswell et al. focus on the difficulty WCPs face in maintaining an active research agenda. This challenge largely emanates from being pulled in many different directions and being required to fill many roles at once. From vision-casting, collaborating with campus partners, working with faculty, and budgeting to hiring, supervising, and training staff, directing a writing center can be stressful, overwhelming work (Geller and Denny).
In spite of these challenges, many WCPs, particularly those tenured or on the tenure-track, are expected to maintain a productive research agenda. The combination of administrative work with research expectations, as well as the blending of theory and practice in ways that live outside or straddle traditional disciplinary boundaries, means that many writing center positions are distinctly different from their departmental colleagues’ positions, especially those faculty with traditional teaching and research roles and no administrative responsibilities. Such dissimilarities can lead WCPs to face barriers when making their case for tenure and/or promotion to which most of their departmental colleagues are immune. For WCPs whose positions do not require publication, staying up to date on relevant research, integrating scholarship with practice, and developing evidence-based programs and training are important aspects of professional practice; however, these practices also add additional work that is not visible or compensated. Thus, the challenge for WCPs is maintaining active research agendas within these (and other) constraints.
One practical action many faculty have taken to help maintain a productive research life is to start or join a writing group. Writing groups have historically been an important part of the work faculty do and have proven particularly valuable for women and other marginalized groups in increasing motivation, fostering mentoring and social support, and decreasing feelings of anxiety, doubt, and fear (Alexander and Shaver; Bosanquet et al.; Gere; Shaver and Alexander). Writing groups also create accountability (Alexander and Shaver; Friend and González) and allow members to broaden their networks and find friends (Aitchison and Guerin; Shaver and Alexander). Together, these outcomes foster scholarly productivity and career satisfaction and help jumpstart or maintain an active research agenda (Aitchison and Guerin; Shaver, Davis, and Greer).
For WCPs, writing groups may counteract some of the constraints for engaging in scholarly work, especially for WCPs who may not be explicitly required to conduct research but are motivated to do so. Although little research currently exists on WCPs and writing groups, research is available on how writing centers support faculty and staff writers in general: they coordinate writing retreats, writing boot camps, writing workshops, and write-ins and often make their centers available to faculty and staff writers (Aitchison and Guerin; Brinthaupt, et al.; Cuthbert et al.; Geller and Eodice; Lee and Boud; ). While many writing centers today support faculty and staff writing, WCPs themselves who coordinate and run these faculty writing programs also need support with their writing if they are to foster the scholarly part of their work and identity. Additional research therefore is needed on the efficacy of writing groups for WCPs. To be sure, any community composed of members from a particular field can and do create and maintain effective writing groups; there are also advantages to writing in groups with folks from various positions across a campus community. However, given the specifics of our roles as WCPs, we discovered that working with members of the same field and in the same administrative roles proved to have more longevity and effectiveness for us because of the shared purpose (e.g., a scholarly agenda; administrative challenges) and particular professional experiences. Our group’s design is not better (or worse) than other such writing groups; we merely hope to add another perspective to the rich narrative about the positive possibilities for writing groups. Such research is important if we are to better understand the ways that WCPs can continue to develop and expand their scholarly identities while also balancing their other obligations. WCPs can face additional pressure and scrutiny, especially if they are at an institution with concerns regarding budgets for tutoring or training, enrollment decline, or reduced funding for research. Increased scrutiny on academic productivity and demands for more accountability became more present in the 1990s (Townsend and Rosser), and faculty workload in terms of both teaching load and expectations for publication has only continued to increase. Due to this reality of ever-rising expectations for scholarly output, some scholars have begun to offer counterpoints to this narrow concept of academic productivity, a concept modeled after the fast-paced efficiency drive of industry and business. Starting with Ernest Boyer, who offered a reframing of scholarly productivity beyond discovery
(Scholarship; “Scholarship”), and continuing with books such as The Slow Professor (Berg and Seeber), articles such as “For Slow Agency” (Micciche), and the Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders podcast “Slow Agency” (Habib, Namubiru, and Li), scholars are inviting faculty to broaden their notions of scholarship and to also slow down and reclaim deep thinking as central to their work. This line of scholarship helped us rethink what productivity meant to us. In fact, through this group we came to understand that designing tutor education, preparing annual reports, drafting proposals, or tracking center usage were as much knowledge-making activities as authoring a public-facing article. WCPs must navigate between the push for more accountability and productivity and the pull to slow down and think more deeply about writing center praxis and their own scholarly identity. As they navigate these complexities, they also have to negotiate the need to justify the value of their writing centers to upper administrators.
Within such complex and demanding contexts, we have walked a line in our Write Club between sustaining a productive research agenda and reimagining what a productive research agenda should look like, all while in a global pandemic. As part of this reimagining, we decided to use Write Club to emphasize the process of writing rather than the artifacts it produces (for example, we don’t give each other feedback on drafts; we don’t ask if someone has submitted an article for review). Our weekly writing goals are based on time spent writing, rather than amount written, and on making progress with various writing projects that support the praxis of our centers. We also continually reflect together on what counts as academic productivity and how our own values align with that. As one example, Erin expressed how thinking about productivity differently has worked for her. Reflecting on her experience writing scholarship prior to our writing group, she notes:
I had been approaching scholarship as something to which I should be dedicating large blocks of time, that I should even be spending my weekends on. I carried around this awful guilt for not being more productive and for not using my days off as writing and research days. But in joining the writing group, I saw that, well, not everyone does those things—at least not the successful, awesome people in my group. And if they could be successful and awesome without that kind of self-flagellation, so could I. Erin has rethought what writing, research, and scholarly productivity means to her, and it is this kind of reimagining we explore here.
In what follows, we first describe the background and context of our writing group and situate ourselves within our individual institutional contexts and roles. Next, we explore three themes that emerged across our experiences: (1) sharing an understanding of writing center work as scholarly and intellectual, (2) professionalization and mentoring, and (3) social support. Together, these themes demonstrate the value of this writing group to us in particular but also the value of writing groups for WCPs more generally, especially those consistently juggling competing work demands. These themes also make visible a broader notion of scholarly productivity both by expanding what may be included in scholarship (to include evidence-based work that is not published, for instance) and by demonstrating that productivity in a writing group does not need to be defined by scholarly output but by a more capacious sense of community and connection. By reconceiving scholarly productivity, we think WCPs will also be able to integrate time for scholarship more fully into what they are already doing.
Background and Context for Write Club In Spring 2020, after the annual in-person IWCA Summer Institute was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IWCA Board, led by Jackie Grutsch McKinney and John Nordlof, put out a special call for an “IWCA Write Club.” The purpose of this venture was to help individuals in writing center studies maintain active research agendas throughout the difficult and challenging time of a pandemic, with the support and encouragement of other WCPs. Participants would write on their own throughout the summer and then come together weekly for video check-ins with other participants. At the beginning of the summer, the leaders encouraged us to set goals based on the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based) system and to visually track our goals on a calendar or chart. Almost 100 people participated in the program in June and July 2020.
In addition to the large group check-ins, participants were invited to join a smaller writing group formed by the IWCA Write Club leaders. Those who volunteered were then divided into groups of four or five, with the purpose of checking in weekly with a more intimate group to discuss progress and goals. Each group could decide what kind of writing group it would be (sharing feedback, write-on-site, weekly check-in, etc.). Our group decided that rather than just checking in with each other or spending our time commenting on each other’s drafts, we would spend our time actually writing together over Zoom one day a week for three hours. We chose this format because several of us were already in writing groups where we shared drafts, and others were working on long-form projects like dissertations, books, or tenure and promotion portfolios that did not lend themselves well to sharing pages or drafts. Still others were overwhelmed by the pandemic and a three-hour time spent writing together was all they could dedicate. Ultimately, an approach focused on writing together at the same time over Zoom best suited our needs.
For the first 20-30 minutes of each week’s writing time, we checked in with each other about how our writing centers were running, shared our writing progress from the previous week, noted our writing goals for this session’s writing time, and encouraged one another on our individual research projects. For the remainder of the time, we muted our volume, kept our cameras on, and wrote together in the same “space.” We continued our writing group throughout the IWCA Write Club that summer, and we decided to continue throughout the next academic year. After that year was over, we extended the group a year longer, and we are now in our third year together (It is February 2023 as we are writing this.). The reasons we have continued for over two and a half years now are varied but include: accountability, designated writing time, moving our research agendas forward, networking with other writing center directors, social support, motivation, and creating a habit. Together, these reasons helped us also to consider how this writing group has structured and supported our changing notions of scholarly productivity.
Our approach to drafting this piece was to each write out our individual goals for joining the Write Club, reflect on how the writing group has been beneficial to us, and consider how the group has helped us define what “productivity” means in this group. We build a connected story of the value of our writing group that showcases our common experiences but also leaves room for our individual voices. This approach is a common one in feminist methodology, as we create a dialogue that is multi-voiced (Burnett and Rothschild Ewald) and collaborative (Lunsford and Ede). Informed, as well, by recent work on “slow scholarship” (Berg and Seeber), we made the decision that focusing on outcomes or the products of our time together was not an effective way to examine how Write Club has benefited us; rather, we deemed the process and habits of writing as more important.
Institutional Contexts and Why We Joined the Write Club
All four of us work at private, not-for-profit universities, though our institutions have different Carnegie classifications. The similarity in our institutions was important in helping us better understand our different publication expectations and how our writing centers operate within these contexts. We were all writing center directors, but we were at different places in our careers. We also all identify as female and white and recognize that our stories by necessity come from our own positionalities.
Kara’s Story: I am professor of English and director of the University Writing Center at Baylor University, a private mid-sized Research 1 university in the Southwest. I have been on faculty at Baylor since 2006 when I finished my PhD. I became writing center director in 2017 and have a one course reduction per semester to direct the writing center (I teach a 1-1 load, with administration being 25%, teaching 25%, and scholarship 50%). At the time this group was created, I was in two other faculty writing groups, both at my university: one write-on-site group that meets weekly and where members write together in a shared space and an interdisciplinary writing group that meets monthly and exchanges drafts. I decided to join the IWCA Write Club because, as a fairly new writing center director, I wanted to learn more about writing center scholarship and expand my research into this area. I had participated in the IWCA Summer Institute in Summer 2019 and one of the aspects emphasized by the leaders was research and publication in the field. Since I had never published in writing center studies, I joined the group to learn more about what others were doing, to bounce ideas off of others, and to begin forming my own writing center research projects. I also wanted to connect professionally with IWCA colleagues and other directors, most of whom I did not know. Finally, I wanted to find some semblance of productivity when the country was on lock-down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This group provided a valuable entryway into the scholarship and practice of the field.
Erin’s Story: I am associate professor of English and the director of the Writing Collaboratory at Centenary University, a private small liberal arts college (SLAC) in the Northeast. I have been in my position since fall 2016 and have a 2-3 teaching load (the standard is a 3-4). When I joined the writing group, my goal was to break out of my writing funk and to get something published. In graduate school, writing seminar papers alongside friends and classmates had made me productive and made the activity joyful, and I wanted some of those feelings back. I finished my dissertation in 2017 but had not been able to get any substantial writing done since then due to my teaching and administrative responsibilities at work and some personal issues with which I had been dealing. My goals were to form better writing habits, see how more successful academic writers worked, and produce at least one piece of publishable scholarship over the summer. I also was going up for promotion in AY2021-2022 and wanted to work on publishing for reasons of promotion in addition to my personal writing goals.
Julia’s Story: I am associate professor of English and director of The Writing Center within the Center for Writing Excellence at Elon University. I have been at Elon, a private doctoral/professional university with a strong commitment to undergraduate education, since 2016, but I have been directing writing centers since 2004. My current position is administrator with faculty rank, and scholarship is an important and expected part of my job. I have a 1-1 teaching load. At my university, there are no general guidelines regarding number, quality, or type of publication that leads to promotion and tenure; rather, we each must make our own case for the value of our work. Teaching is paramount, and the university values the integration of teaching, scholarship and other professional activities, mentoring, and service. I went up for promotion to associate professor in the fall of 2021. I was already in a writing group with female identifying colleagues at my university and found it productive and useful to have the weekly time scheduled on my calendar. Because my writing group members were doing scholarship on teaching and learning, we understood each other’s broad scholarly agendas. Yet my group met for just 90 minutes each week, so I was certainly feeling that I needed more dedicated time to write. In addition, Write Club initially was a summer commitment and I work in the summer (I have a 12-month contract), but my writing center is quiet, so I felt like the group would provide me with some structure and accountability, which would help ensure my summer work included meaningful scholarship and reflection.
Jen’s Story: I am director of the Writing Center and the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) Programs at Queens University of Charlotte, a small, regional comprehensive in a major urban city in the Southeast. Currently, I hold a staff classification with the faculty rank of instructor for my role as the director of the writing center and an administrative classification in my role as the director of the writing across the curriculum program. Simultaneously, I am a PhD candidate working on my dissertation. I also teach in our writing major and first-year writing program, with a 1-1 teaching load. My current classification does not afford me a path to tenure but neither am I expected to participate in the responsibilities of a tenure-track position such as publication or university service. I do both, however, because I think they are vital to performing my job well. Research keeps me in touch with myself as a teacher; university service gives me ways to build cross-campus relationships that support both the writing center and WAC programs. Originally, I joined the group to develop a habit of dedicated writing time. I was beginning the dissertation process and starting a new part of my job as WAC director. Both of those factors meant I needed to be more intentional about writing. Finally, I liked the idea of writing with folks who understood what it meant to be a writing center director. The joy and challenge of this position is that you are often pulled in a multitude of ways. Some of the duties consistently take time and attention from less urgent matters—such as writing and research—as they relate to supervision or teaching. Writing always seemed to be the runner up for me. Although our stories are specific to each of us, we hope that readers both can see themselves in our stories and recognize some of the challenges that WCPs face as they seek to retain a scholarly identity while also teaching and completing administrative duties.
Features of Our Writing Group and Expanding Ideas of Scholarly Productivity The value of writing groups for writing studies scholars has been well documented in the literature, yet their value for WCPs whose diverse range of duties may impede widely accepted definitions of scholarly productivity is less studied. In this section, we explore the three themes that emerged from our writing group experiences, themes that demonstrate the value of writing groups for WCPs and that both reconfigure and broaden the notion of scholarly productivity.
Administrative Work as Scholarly and Intellectual
One theme that emerged that stimulated new ways of thinking about scholarly productivity for us was the idea of administrative work as scholarly and intellectual. Writing center administration is often considered and categorized within departments and universities as service. Upper administrators may view writing center administration the same as any administrative position, which fall into a category distinct from intellectual and scholarly work. Over the last four decades, scholars in writing studies have argued for writing program administration—which includes first-year writing, WAC/WID programs, and writing centers, amongst others—to be considered scholarship (e.g., Bullock; CWPA; Day et al.; Enos and Borrowman; Hult; Ianetta et al.; Rose and Weiser). These scholars argue that writing program administration requires scholarly expertise and disciplinary knowledge to be effective and that it also produces new disciplinary knowledge (CWPA). Such a focus separates it from other administrative positions within the university that primarily have financial or managerial responsibilities (Day et al.). Because writing center administration requires disciplinary expertise and contributes to the field of writing studies more broadly, like others, we believe it should “count” towards scholarship in the tenure and promotion process.
One benefit we found of centering a writing group around administrators was that we could take for granted that the work we were doing—both in terms of research and administration—would be valued as scholarship. It can be demoralizing as a WCP to constantly have to explain your work or justify your worth, yet the fact that our writing group was made up of all writing center administrators proved invaluable. Three of us (Kara, Jen, and Julia) had been longtime members of writing groups on our own campuses, but we all realized very quickly that having a group of writing center administrators who were doing writing center related work was an added level of benefit, providing common ground, cohesion, and camaraderie. One of the pervasive myths of academic life is that research must fit into the traditional notions of what counts as scholarship in order to be valuable (e.g., monograph, single-author, print-based work) (Bernard Donals; Boyer, Scholarship; Guillory). Although the writing center field has consistently advocated for more capacious definitions of scholarship, scholars in writing studies still face difficulty because they are often evaluated by tenure committees that do not accept such broad views of research (see Alexander). These challenges are compounded for WCPs who face even more difficulty due to the integrative nature of our work, where the lines between administration, teaching, mentorship, and scholarship are intertwined and blurred. This reality can make it difficult to explain to others how some of these areas should be considered scholarly. In our writing group, however, we took it for granted that others in the group both understood and valued our research. We did not have to explain, rationalize, or justify the kind of work we were doing or its value to the field. This common ground was beneficial because it allowed us to spend our time together in more meaningful ways, such as focusing on the writing process, finding delight in making new discoveries, and encouraging one another in our individual research projects.
In a similar vein, as writing center directors, we knew that we would not be judged for the kind of writing we were completing during our weekly meetings. We know that administrative and service work is sometimes seen as a barrier to finding time for writing, yet for WCPs who are expected to do research, administration and service are just as important as research. In our field, administrative work is evidence and research-based, and research agendas and projects inform administrative practice. It is hard to separate out the various pieces of our work. As one example, Julia found that being in a writing group with others who understand this view affirmed for her that this integrated approach to work is valued and that it was acceptable to use the writing group to work on scholarship one week, reporting the next, assessment the next—that all writing counted because it was valuable to our work. There was a common level of respect for the intellectual labor we undertake as WCPs, which proved effective for us in our work and writing.
Another reason this writing group was so effective was because each of us understood the daily ebb and flow and pressure of writing center work. Jen, for example, viewed this group successful because all members understood the demands that accompany our jobs as WCPs. She remarked, “If one of us was having a difficult day, we knew we could quickly vent to this group and that they would understand and empathize— and likely be going through something similar.” The ability to acknowledge the issues and offload the stress and anxiety that are regular parts of our jobs with others in similar situations helped us then focus our time on the writing and leave the other stuff until later. We could put aside the affective burdens until there was time to properly respond, and they wouldn’t become a barrier to our writing processes. Finally, the commonalities among our positions established an affinity group that benefited us in our work. As WCPs, not only did we make assumptions about the ways other group members thought about the value of the work, but we also got feedback on writing center-related issues from colleagues who understood the challenges. For instance, when questions came up about an issue facing one person’s center, others responded by sharing stories of how they navigated that or a similar challenge. Erin commented:
It was good to be able to get feedback on research and everyday work that was specific to writing centers. Although I’m extremely lucky and have a great relationship with the WPA on my small campus (who has deep knowledge of the field of rhetoric and writing studies in general and has published prolifically), her background is not in writing centers. Sometimes it is important to get feedback from folks who have read the literature in your specific sub-field and can point you in the right direction for your project. Erin’s comment points to the importance of writing groups centered around a common theme or identity. For us, having similar roles on campus proved to be an invaluable part of the group.
The writing center element also fostered affinity as we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic in our own writing centers. Kara was a fairly new writing center director at the time, and she was writing her first article in the field. She decided to join the group to have an audience of other administrators who understand scholarship in writing center studies. This writing group was vital to her not only in terms of the kind of research she was doing but also in learning about the ways that other writing centers and writing center directors were navigating the challenges of COVID both online and in person. In short, listening to how others handled the constantly changing landscape of education and writing center work as different waves hit, as well as helping others through decision-making moments, had direct impacts on our writing centers and our work as WCPs. The support of fellow WCPs during the pandemic was invaluable.
Professionalization and Mentoring
The second theme to emerge that helped us think more strategically about scholarly productivity was professionalization, which came in the form of mentoring and other forms of professional development. In their 2020 review of the IWCA’s Mentor Match Program, Maureen McBride and Molly Rentscher highlight the importance of field-specific mentoring at times of promotion and career transition for WCPs. The authors describe their own experiences and the benefits of having someone in one’s scholarly field to take counsel with during a promotional cycle (McBride and Rentscher 78). Their experiences mirror ours in many ways, although we did not set out to develop formal mentoring relationships. McBride and Rentscher ultimately argue for more mentoring opportunities in our field (83), and we would argue that our sustained, long-term writing group provided us with exactly that: much-needed field-specific professionalization and mentoring opportunities.
The writing group functioned as a place to find acknowledgement, support, and legitimization of our work as both writing center directors and professional women in higher education during COVID times. Two of us (Julia and Erin) submitted tenure or promotion application materials in the first full year of the group; another (Jen) was working on her dissertation; and yet another (Kara) found herself in a fairly new administrative role on a campus without the field specific knowledge and experience others had. Working towards these professional goals with the support of other professionals in our field made all the difference for us as we were all undergoing challenges during a time when we were also siloed from members of our campus communities. This group kept us anchored to a professional support community at a crucial time for all of us.
For Kara, the writing group was beneficial because of the regular conversations at the beginning of our writing sessions about the day-to-day operations of our centers. These discussions were especially helpful in terms of navigating uncharted waters as a writing center director in the midst of a pandemic. We often discussed how we were handling safety protocols, face masks, social distancing, and other COVID-related issues in our own centers. We also discussed the logistics of online and video conferencing, as well as training consultants to tutor online. Learning from others about what they were doing not only gave Kara ideas as to how she could implement those approaches in her writing center, but it also gave her confidence to make these decisions in light of the turbulent situation we were all facing. Julia and Jen, mid-career writing center professionals, felt similarly, as navigating COVID was a new challenge we all faced.
Erin similarly appreciated hearing of the everyday work of her fellow group members, as it helped her transition from feeling like a “junior” faculty member to a more experienced one. Listening to the day-to-day lives of each group member grew to be just as important to her as hearing about what they were working on during our weekly sessions and even the writing time itself because the others’ struggles were often so similar to hers (despite the fact that not all of the group members’ schools are similar). Moreover, sometimes Erin was the one posing a solution to a question or problem they were facing, which gave her confidence in her professional abilities and experiences. Jen also appreciated having access to feedback from peers who understand the ways that institutions can undermine or dismiss ideas because it helped to legitimize her expertise, especially since most campus colleagues operate within other goals and frameworks. These kinds of opportunities would not be gained from either a campus-based writing group or from a short-term conference environment. Rather, they come from the co-mentoring that occurred in a group like ours.
Julia and Erin also benefited from the mentoring offered through the group as they prepared materials for tenure and promotion. Julia, who would be going up for promotion, was able to get feedback on approaches she was taking, how to make the case for the value of aspects of her writing center work, and even the organization of her materials. Since other group members had already been through these processes, she drew from their experiences to make decisions about how to make her own case most successfully. Erin, too, was preparing her materials to apply for promotion and tenure, and she found it helpful to check in with someone else also going through that process but without the pressure of worrying if she was doing it “correctly,” a feeling both Julia and Erin had when they were speaking with campus colleagues.
The writing group thus offered opportunities for practical individualized professionalization experiences for each of us. These moments of conversation, information-sharing, and professionalization could be “counted” as scholarship, as they offered opportunities for showcasing administrative discussions that we recognize as intimately connected with our scholarly activities. Those informal moments of professionalization and mentoring provided us with opportunities to slow down, break away from the tasks we had assigned ourselves for the group that day, and listen and learn from each other. By allowing ourselves to follow those lines of discussion and inquiry, we were participating in Laura Micciche’s “slow agency.” We were consistently negotiating what it meant to be productive during each particular session, recognizing that often conversations about managing difficult situations with colleagues, handling promotion, article, or review deadlines, or navigating conversations with departments or administrations had to take precedence over pumping out a certain number of words on the page. In our group, then, part of being productive was allowing time for this informal professionalization and mentoring conversations.
Social Support
The third theme that surfaced from our writing group and another important element in our shifting definitions of scholarly productivity was social support. Our writing group modeled a concept of enclave thinking, “a dialogical context of shared trust and learning that precedes the emergence of shared expectations and negotiated projects” (Bradbury, Lichtenstein, Carroll and Senge 111; see also Friedman), and our enclave was constituted by a shared relational space. This shared trust and learning constituted by our enclave made us effective in offering social support. This enclave helped us navigate a myriad of material realities that defined our roles, the most pressing early on being the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thinking and risk-taking in our enclave was less fraught than in the larger fields of writing center studies or even higher education generally because the very purpose of our group was imbued with trust as a space for learning and sharing.
Kara received encouragement and support through her participation in the group. As a newcomer, she looked to the other three in the group to answer her questions and provide reassurance. She enjoyed learning about how other writing centers function and how to advocate for her own writing center with relevant stakeholders. On one occasion, Kara was working on an article written for a writing center audience. However, since she had never published in writing center studies before, she was unsure where to submit it. She also thought that it might be relevant for the larger field of rhetoric and writing studies (RWS). She brought this dilemma to the group, and they encouraged her to submit the article to the RWS journal, pointing out that both the larger field and writing center studies would benefit from an article on writing centers being published more broadly. Kara had to revise the article fairly extensively to make it fit with the larger RWS audience, but, in the end, she thinks this choice was a good one. This article has been accepted and is forthcoming with the RWS journal.
Jen also found the emotional support of the group essential as she navigated difficult experiences. Collaboration and coalition building are part of Jen’s ethos, not only as a teacher but also as a human, and as we moved towards our initial ending date of summer, Jen found herself lamenting the loss of the collaborative and supportive space, the invaluable resources of the group, and the dedicated time to do the work. This writing enclave meant that she could pose questions and dilemmas to the group with minimal contextualization since they were in similar roles, thus saving time and energy. The group kept Jen from feeling lonely and demonstrates how groups like this support members who may be frustrated with the institutional gatekeeping both at the local level and the larger field of education in general.
Like Kara and Jen, social support also fostered a sense of well-being and camaraderie for Julia. Ever since she first became involved with writing centers, she has always felt more “at home” with other WCPs than with scholars in adjacent fields, even as she has some amazing collaborative and supportive colleagues in RWS at her institution. Attending writing center conferences and working on research collaborations with writing center colleagues from other institutions has always been important and sustaining, but due to COVID’s impact, conferences were a no-go and many of her cross institutional collaborations stopped. The Write Club thus came at an important time for maintaining important connections with other writing center colleagues and keeping motivated to maintain a writing agenda.
Erin also noted social support as important to her. She feels lucky to be working at a small campus with incredibly supportive colleagues and a fellow RWS scholar to share ideas and commiserate with but having this writing group gave her a level of support in the field that she had lacked since graduate school. Formerly, she was surrounded by other campus writing center practitioners and administrators. Since finishing grad school, however, she has only had steady contact with one other director (a friend from graduate school who lives relatively close), and this became worse as COVID impacted conference attendance and the ability to keep up her network of contacts. The formation and longevity of this writing group filled a valuable space to help her feel more connected to the field and more invigorated to take on new research projects. The group ultimately provided a renewed sense of belonging.
In short, explicitly spending time on social support during our Write Club helped us reimagine what scholarly productivity can look like. Without social support, the writing would have been harder and the work would have been less meaningful and more isolating. As WCPs whose scholarly work includes publications, teaching, administration, and service, social connection led to useful conversations that informed all the areas of our work. Time spent on social support during our designated meeting time was not time away from writing but time spent in service of writing. This realization was crucial for us, especially during COVID when so much of our working lives moved online and the casual connections possible in a physical working environment were almost completely lost. In conclusion, because we are all WCPs who understand the value of writing center work, we recognize and value a broad range of what counts as scholarship. We share an understanding of the inherent value of writing center work and have been able to help each other develop professionally through mentoring, encouragement, and social support. All in all, this writing group helped us redefine scholarly productivity and to more fully integrate the work we are already doing with our research and writing goals.
Discussion
Our writing group produced some expected benefits for all four of us in terms of accountability, motivation, and protecting time. Kara, for example, found that the group provided her with accountability in terms of maintaining her writing productivity, especially during a challenging time as a parent. Kara has three children and states, “I became a homeschool mom off-and-on for the better part of two years. This writing group provided motivation and accountability, as well as a sense of camaraderie.” For Kara, the weekly writing time was a motivator and a benefit in terms of continual writing, even though the writing process was much more slow-going for her than prior to the pandemic. Julia discovered how useful the group has been to protect her writing time. She notes: “What I find useful is using the time in a focused/productive way—in other words, knowing what I want to work on during the time so that I can ‘hit the ground running’ once I log onto Zoom.” Jen, too, used the writing group as a way to protect her time: “By committing to this writing group, I found myself actively protecting this writing time, which had long been a practice of my male colleagues. Having dedicated time with this writing group meant that I was more loath to allow other events/needs to encroach on the time.” Jen also reflects on how the group has been helpful as she writes her dissertation, stating: “Writing the dissertation is a lonely business for anyone, which is quite difficult for me as an extroverted person who sees writing as a social activity. Moreover, the pandemic protocols made it lonelier, so having this group there for encouragement and brainstorming helped ease the fraughtness of that space a bit for me.” These narratives reflect the tangible benefits for our group, which are common in many writing groups.
Write Club also provided some unexpected benefits in terms of stress management and work-life balance that can interfere with productivity. Protecting her writing time during the weekly meetings helped Jen manage the stress around the writing that her role requires: “Just the knowledge that I would have the time at some point in the week to write actually worked to reduce my stress about writing or not writing. I could show myself some grace if I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted towards writing on any given day because I knew this space would be available. It reduced my stress level.” Julia found that dedicated writing time helped protect non-writing time for other things: “It is helpful for me to write during this time and not write outside of this time—it helps contain my work and protects the rest of my time for other work and, in turn, it protects my evenings and weekends as non-work time.” Our writing group was particularly important to us at a time when we each had to recalibrate what was possible in the midst of a global pandemic. We learned quickly how writing time can suffer due to physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. This exhaustion, among other factors, prompted each of us to rethink our work priorities, yet the movement to reimagine what counts as scholarly productivity has long preceded COVID. Our writing group helped us carve out and protect time for research and writing, which helped us adapt and even flourish in a very difficult time. This was only possible because we talked intentionally about what we wanted our writing group to be: acknowledging the importance of slowing down, measuring writing success in terms other than publication output, and elevating the types of administrative writing we do as WCPs to the same level of importance as writing for publication.
For those interested in creating a writing group of fellow writing center colleagues, we close by sharing some questions that you can use to get your group started and to be more intentional about the identity, pacing, substance, and outcomes of your group:
● What are each participant’s writing goals? How do those goals relate to their writing center goals and/or their scholarly goals?
● What counts as scholarly writing in your group (annual reports, tutor training materials, internal grant proposals, conference proposals, etc.)?
● Does the group want time for a check-in? What will that look like? What is the purpose of the check-in? What will you discuss?
● How can the group celebrate successes not just measured by article acceptance or publication rate?
We often coach our tutors to consider the impacts of emotions, stress, and other external pressures on the writers they tutor and how these factors impact learning. Our experience reminds us that when we apply that same advice to ourselves, we find a space that is more productive. We find a productivity that is generative and not oppressive. Because of our lived experiences as WCPs and our shared understanding of what that means, we were able to decide collectively what productivity looks like for us.
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