One of the highlights of the past summer for me was attending the Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Workshop and Conference at Purdue University in Indiana. The four-day workshop, led by Doug Hesse from Illinois State University and Martha Townsend from the University of Missouri-Columbia, brought together 29 writing program administrators from across the U.S.--plus me as the token Canadian--for an intensive series of workshops and discussions on diverse aspects of writing program administration. Although it targeted new WPAs, the workshop also attracted a few veterans including at least one WPA back for a refresher course.

Workshop sessions focused on a variety of issues: long-term planning and priority-setting; administering and staffing WAC/WID, freshman composition and other courses; dealing with higher administration; and evaluating courses, programs, and instructors. The facilitators effectively designed the workshop to allow participants to focus on issues of concern to them. In one session, participants split into groups focusing on WAC or freshman composition depending on their interests. Later sessions split the group up into smaller discussion groups to discuss administrative problems of concern to them; problem-solving scenarios for discussion were drawn from a hot-off-the-press NCTE publication, Administrative Problem-Solving  for Writing Programs and Writing Centers: Scenarios in Effective Program Management, edited by Linda Myers-Breslin. The workshop also included time for participants to meet in pairs for a half-hour with one of the facilitators. I met with Marti Townsend, a WAC administrator, to strategize ways of implementing WAC programs.

An excellent three-day conference on writing program administration followed the workshop. I found two sessions especially valuable: one proposed an innovative approach to course evaluation and the other reviewed the relevant literature on organization change and culture and applied it to the task of writing program administration.

I found both the workshop and the conference highly valuable: I returned home with a binder full of notes and resources, a tentative three-year WPA plan, a three-page to do list, and lots of ideas. (Now if I could only find the time to implement some of them . . . )

The 2000 WPA   Workshop & Conference

The next WPA Summer Workshop will be held July 9-13, followed by the WPA Conference July 13-16, 2000, in Charlotte, North Carolina. For information, see www.cas.ilstu.edu/english/hesse/wpawelcome.htm

The Council of Writing Program Administrators also publishes a journal Writing Program Administration. A sampling of articles in recent issues includes “Identify and Location: Astudy of SPA models, memberships, and agendas,” by Jeanne Gunner, “New Visions of Authority in Placement Test Rating,” a set of guidelines proposed by the WPA council. Susanmarie Harrington, and “Evaluating the Work of Writing Program Administration.”