Research Grants
Each year WPA awards several research grants in writing program administration.
Minority WPA Workshop Grants
Each year WPA awards several grants to support participation in the summer workshop by WPAs in underrepresented groups.
Outstanding Article
Every two years, WPA selects the outstanding article published during the previous two years in WPA: Writing Program Administration.
Outstanding Book
Every two years, WPA selects the outstanding book related to writing programs and program administration.
Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies
Every year, WPA recognizes outstanding scholarly work in writing program administration studies completed by graduate students.
Calls and Guidelines
CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2006 WPA RESEARCH GRANTS
Overview The Research Grant Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites research proposals to investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. Applicants must be current WPA members; all current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A project overview of no more than 500 words in which you:
• explain the problem or question your project will investigate • outline the methodology with which you will approach the problem • connect the project to previous, published research • give a timetable detailing how the project will proceed • describe your expertise in this area • explain your plan to disseminate results professionally
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page.
Criteria for Selection You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal. The Committee will use these to conduct blind reviews of all proposals. You may also want to read this sample proposal and this annotated sample research grant proposal, showing how reviewers applied criteria.
1. Relevance: The project is relevant to the work of writing program administrators. It applies to contexts beyond the immediate nstitutional context of origin, and writing program administrators will benefit from its outcomes.
2. Contribution: The project is related to prior research and also makes an original contribution to scholarship in the field.
3. Expertise: Through prior research and experience, the proposers are well-prepared to to undertake this project.
4. Method: The methodology is clear, workable, and appropriate to the project.
5. Feasibility: The project can be completed in the proposed time frame.
6. Cost: Budget expenditures are reasonable and the project’s outcomes justify its expenses.
Restrictions: Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for the following: released time, purely local initiatives or projects, outside consultants or evaluators, production of non-researched materials, dissertation research, or supplements to existing grants--unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend a project in new directions. You may not submit more than one proposal per year. First consideration will go to those who have not received an award in the last three years.
Expectations of Reward Recipients Grant recipients will be expected to do the following:
1. Present a poster of research results at the 2007 WPA Breakfast during the CCCC Convention.
2. Submit resulting articles to the WPA Journal for first consideration.
3. Submit a final written report of 5 to 7 pages to the chair of the Research Grants Committee by June 15, 2007.
Questions should be directed to Raúl Sánchez at rsanchez@english.ufl.edu
Proposals should be submitted to the same, as Microsoft Word attachments. Deadline is January 13, 2006.
Winners will be announced at the 2006 WPA breakfast in Chicago.
A downloadable pdf version of this announcement is attached.
Read an annotated version of this proposal applying the criteria of proposal reviewers:
Sample Research Grant Proposal in PDF Format
Proposed Project
Since 1995, we have asked students to construct portfolios in our first-year courses so that they can begin to see the breadth and depth of their learning in the courses. During the 1997-1998 academic year, one of the principal investigators of the proposed study participated in on-line discussions of the Outcomes Statement (OS) developed by members of WPA and CCCC. In the spring of that year, at the annual CCCCs meeting in Chicago, he participated in the day-long workshop in which participants revised a draft of the Outcomes Statement. As he thought about the Outcomes Statement and the portfolios that students construct in our courses, he realized that combining the two would allow the Composition Program to provide evidence that our students are accomplishing much in first-year composition.
In the summer of 1998, the two of us collaborated with several other colleagues to link the Outcomes Statement and students' portfolio work. That is, we constructed a portfolio assignment that asked students to use the items in the OS to reflect on their work in the first-year courses. Since then, we have revised the assignment each semester, and there are slightly different versions for each of the first-year courses.
Teachers in our large program (roughly 145 teachers; 13,000 students; 600 sections annually) regularly use portfolios in our courses; they reflect fairly thoughtfully on the uses of portfolios; and they even rave about the learning evident in the portfolios. Further, students in their reflective cover letters for their portfolios note that the portfolios offer them surprising insights into the skills and knowledge that they developed.
This is all well and good, but we have yet to examine students’ portfolios in some systematic way to assess students’ learning program-wide. We need to engage in such an assessment to demonstrate the value of our program to the university’s upper administrators, to the board of regents, and to the legislature. Further, such a large-scale assessment at such a large Research I University could provide useful data to WPAs at other institutions.
We are asking for a WPA Year 2000 Research Grant to help us begin this large-scale assessment of learning outcomes evident in students’ course portfolios. We believe that once we get the assessment begun that we can seek institutional funding to continue and to expand the assessment.
In the proposed study, we will focus on portfolios that students construct in our two-semester sequence for basic writers. We feel that this focus is important and timely because of current national debates about the appropriateness of offering courses to students who are perceived to be poorly prepared to do university-level work. (Of course, the acrimonious discourse of the debate about CUNY course offerings is currently the most publicized portion of that national debate. Each week the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as the popular press, includes some stories about CUNY.)
Data Collection and Analysis: Each spring, approximately 450-500 students complete our two-semester basic-writing sequence, and each of them constructs a portfolio each semester. We plan to randomly select 5 portfolios from each of the 20 or so sections of the second-semester course for analysis. We will train two graduate research assistants to "mine" the portfolios for evidence of the learning outcomes described in the WPA/CCCC Outcomes Statement. We will ask the RAs to label each instance.
Before we ask those RAs to read through the 100+ portfolios, we will design a "Guideline for Reading" the portfolios, which in essence translates the language of the OS to what is exemplified in the students' portfolio.
Here's an example (and we're just brainstorming now--we’d have to construct the actual Guidelines): the OS lists that ". . . students should know how to use multiple drafts to improve their texts . . ." Our assignment translates that OS concept into a prompt:
Our Guidelines, then, would ask the research assistants to note what the portfolio "does" with this prompt, something along this line:
Multiple drafts are
_____ mentioned
_____ examples of more than one draft are provided
_____ examples of more than one draft, with changes highlighted, are provided
Here's another example: the OS indicates that students should ". . . be able to document primary and secondary sources appropriately . . ." Our assignment translates this concept into the prompt:
Our Guidelines might ask
Documentation of sources is
_____ mentioned
_____ examples of how primary sources are cited were provided
_____ examples of how secondary sources are cited were provided
We will ask the graduate students to work together (that is, at the same time), so that if what's in the portfolio does not exactly match our scoring guide, they can collectively be able to decide how to interpret that section of the portfolio. We do not see our Guidelines as a "scoring" guide of some kind, but rather as a research-gathering implement to show us how the OS concepts are actually exemplified in real portfolios. We will use appropriate statistical tests to determine differences in the level of demonstration that exists in students’ portfolios.
We assume that the results of this study would be of interest to all members of WPA. With that in mind, we plan to present the results at the annual summer WPA conference and/or at the WPA session(s) at the annual MLA conference. Of course, we also plan to submit the results for publication in WPA: Writing Program Administration.
Timetable: We plan to gather a random sample of students’ portfolios at the end of the semester in May of 2000. We plan to complete the data analysis in the summer of 2000. We will spend the fall of 2000 writing the results of the study for publication and for presentation at the CCCC and WPA conferences. (Criteria #4 )
Budget
We wish to hire two graduate research assistants to read students’ course portfolios to "mine" them for evidence of achieving the learning outcomes described in the Outcomes Statement developed by members of WPA and CCCC.
$1700 pay two RAs to do close reading of 100-125 students’ portfolios
($10 per hour x 85 hours x 2 RAs)
_____
$2000 Total
Attached to this page is a sample research grant proposal in PDF format that has been annotated with the comments of proposal reviewers. To help prospective applicants for WPA research grants, we have created an annotated versionsof a proposal that received funding in the past. We hope that by revealing the judgments and comments of the Research Grants Committee on various aspects of the proposal, we can more effectively explain the criteria that are used to make funding decisions. Once you open the PDF file, you will see a color-coded key at the top. Mouse-over the highlighted areas so see a pop-up comment, or click on the hightlighted areas to open a box. Although the proposal was successful, the Committee has also included suggestions for making them even stronger. By providing information about the criteria of Contribution, Methods, Relevance, Cost Effectiveness, and Feasibility, we hope they can become more formative and productive, rather than purely evaluative.
The Research Grant Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites research proposals to investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. Applicants must be current WPA members; all current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A project overview of no more than two pages
single-spaced in which you:
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page.
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal; WPA Grant Committee will use these to conduct blind reviews of all proposals.
Restrictions: Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for released time for the grantee or others; for purely local initiatives or projects with little relevance to other settings; for outside consultants or evaluators; for the production of non-researched materials; for dissertation research; or for supplements to existing grants, unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend the project in new directions. You may not submit more than one proposal per year. The Committee will give first consideration for awards to those who have not received an award for three years.
1. Grantees are expected to submit articles resulting from the research to WPA Journal for first consideration.
2. Grantees are expected to offer a poster presentation of research results at the annual CCCC’s WPA breakfast in the year during which the award is granted.
3. Grantees are expected to submit a final written report of their research outcomes to the Chair of the Research Grants Committee by June 15 of the year after they receive the award. Ordinarily, reports will be 5–7 pages in length. In some circumstances, grantees may need some more space, in which case a report of up to 10 pages is acceptable. These reports should outline specific plans for submitting an article reporting the results to the WPA Journal as well as other plans for dissemination.
Questions about proposals can be directed to Linda Adler-Kassner at Linda.Adler-Kassner@emich.edu.
Preferred method for proposal submission is a Microsoft Word attachment to an e-mail to Linda Adler-Kassner at Linda.Adler-Kassner@emich.edu. If applicants need to send paper copies, please send four copies of the proposal to Linda Adler-Kassner at the address below. E-mails and paper copies must be date-stamped/postmarked no later than January 10, 2005
Linda Adler-Kassner
Chair, WPA Research Grant Committee
Department of English
Eastern Michigan University
612 Pray-Harrold
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
Winners will be announced at the 2005 WPA breakfast in San Francisco.
The Council of Writing Program Administrators is seeking nominations for its Best Book Award for 2006-2007. This award recognizes book authors or editors who have made an outstanding contribution to the field of writing program administration over the past two calendar years.
Award Requirements
Nominating Procedures
Rita Malenczyk, Chair
WPA Book Award Committee
English Department
Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham St.
Willimantic, CT 06226
All nominations must be received by January 10, 2008.
Members of the Best Book Award Committee are Stephen Wilhoit (University of Dayton), Barbara L'Eplattenier (University of Arkansas-Little Rock) and Rita Malenczyk (Eastern Connecticut State University).
Any questions? Contact Rita Malenczyk (malenczykr@easternct.edu).
CALL FOR 2007 RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSALS
The Research Grants Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites proposals for research projects that investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. Applicants must be current WPA members; all current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A project overview of no more than two pages single-spaced in which you:
• explain the problem or question your research project will attempt to investigate or solve • briefly outline the methodology you plan to use to approach the problem • describe how the project will address the problem or question you have identified • give a timetable detailing how the project will proceed • connect the project to previously published research and scholarship • describe your expertise in this area • describe how the results will be shared professionally (See “Expectations of Reward Recipients†below)
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page.
CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal. The WPA Grants Committee will use these criteria to conduct blind reviews of all proposals.
1. Relevance: The project is relevant to the work of writing program administrators, it applies to contexts outside of the immediate institutional context of origin, and writing program administrators will benefit from the outcomes of this project.
2. Contribution: The project not only is related to prior scholarship and research but also makes an original contribution.
3. Proposer’s Past Scholarship/Expertise: Through prior research and expertise, the proposer is well-prepared to undertake this project.
4. Methods: The methodology is clear, workable, and appropriate to this project.
5. Feasibility: The proposer can reasonably complete the project in the proposed time frame.
6. Cost Effectiveness: The budget expenditures are reasonable and the project’s outcomes justify the project’s expenses.
Restrictions: Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for released time for the grantee or others; for purely local initiatives or projects with little relevance to other settings; for outside consultants or evaluators; for the production of non-researched materials; for dissertation research; or for supplements to existing grants, unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend the project in new directions. You may not submit more than one proposal per year. The Committee will give first consideration for awards to those who have not received an award for three years.
EXPECTATIONS OF REWARD RECIPIENTS
1. Grantees are expected to submit articles resulting from the research to WPA Journal for first consideration.
2. Grantees are expected to offer a poster presentation of research results at the annual CCCC’s WPA breakfast in the year during which the award is granted.
3. Grantees are expected to submit a final written report of their research outcomes to the Chair of the Research Grants Committee by June 15 of the year after they receive the award. Ordinarily, reports will be 5-7 pages in length. In some circumstances, grantees may need more space, in which case a report of up to 10 pages is acceptable. These reports should outline specific plans for submitting an article reporting the results to the WPA Journal as well as other plans for dissemination.
Questions about proposals can be directed to Susan Miller-Cochran at susan_miller@ncsu.edu.
The preferred method for proposal submission is a Microsoft Word attachment to an e-mail sent to Susan Miller-Cochran at susan_miller@ncsu.edu. If applicants need to send paper copies, please send four copies of the proposal to Susan Miller-Cochran at the address below. E-mails and paper copies must be received no later than January 10, 2007.
Susan Miller-Cochran Chair, WPA Research Grants Committee Department of English North Carolina State University Campus Box 8105 Raleigh, NC 27695-8105
Winners will be announced at the 2007 WPA breakfast in New York City.
CALL FOR 2010 WPA RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSALS
The Research Grants Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites proposals for research projects that investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. Applicants must be current WPA members; all current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Deadline for Proposals: January 1, 2010
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), the proposal/project title, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A project overview of no more than two pages single-spaced in which you:
· explain the problem or question your research project will attempt to investigate or solve
· briefly outline the methodology you plan to use to approach the problem
· describe how the project will address the problem or question you have identified
· give a timetable detailing how the project will proceed
· connect the project to previously published research and scholarship
· describe your expertise in this area
· describe how the results will be shared professionally (See “Expectations of Reward Recipients” below)
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page. For grants over $1000, in-kind budget items or alternative budget sources need to be included in the budget. State also if you will accept partial funding.
CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal. The WPA Grants Committee will use these criteria to conduct blind reviews of all proposals.
1. Relevance: The project is relevant to the work of writing program administrators, it applies to contexts outside of the immediate institutional context of origin, and writing program administrators will benefit from the outcomes of this project.
2. Contribution: The project not only is related to prior scholarship and research but also makes an original contribution.
3. Proposer’s Past Scholarship/Expertise: Through prior research and expertise, the proposer is well-prepared to undertake this project.
4. Methods: The methodology is clear, workable, and appropriate to this project.
5. Feasibility: The proposer can reasonably complete the project in the proposed time frame.
6. Cost Effectiveness: The budget expenditures are reasonable and the project’s outcomes justify the project’s expenses.
RESTRICTIONS
· Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for released time for the grantee or others; for purely local initiatives or projects with little relevance to other settings; for outside consultants or evaluators; for the production of non-researched materials; for dissertation research; travel to present your research at WPA or any other conference. (Funding for travel to conferences for research purposes may be considered) or for supplements to existing grants, unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend the project in new directions.
· WPA does not generally fund institutional overhead. If grants are approved that require institutional overhead, WPA will allow no more than 10% of funding to institutional overhead.
· You may not submit more than one proposal per year. The Committee will give first consideration for awards to those who have not received an award for three years.
· Former WPA Board members should wait a year after their term has expired to apply for a grant.
EXPECTATIONS OF REWARD RECIPIENTS
1. Grantees are expected to submit articles resulting from the research to WPA Journal for first consideration.
2. Grantees are expected to produce a brochure presenting research results at the annual CCCC’s WPA breakfast in the year during which the award is granted. Applicants should budget approximately $200 for production of the brochure in their application.
3. Grantees are expected to submit a final written report of their research outcomes to the Chair of the Research Grants Committee by June 15 of the year after they receive the award. Ordinarily, reports will be 5-7 pages in length. In some circumstances, grantees may need more space, in which case a report of up to 10 pages is acceptable. These reports should outline specific plans for submitting an article reporting the results to the WPA Journal as well as other plans for dissemination.
Questions about proposals can be directed to
Barbara L’Eplattenier bleplatt AT ualr.edu
The preferred method for proposal submission is a Microsoft Word attachment to an e-mail sent to Barbara L’Eplattenier bleplatt AT ualr.edu
If applicants need to send paper copies, please send four copies of the proposal to the address below. E-mails and paper copies must be received no later than January 1, 2010.
Barbara L’Eplattenier Department of Rhetoric and Writing 2801 S. University Ave Little Rock AR 72204-1099
Winners will be announced at the 2010 WPA breakfast at the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
Call for Nominations
Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies
The Council of Writing Program Administrators is pleased to announce the call for nominations for its recently created award recognizing outstanding scholarship by graduate students writing on issues in writing program administration. Please review the following description of the award and guidelines for eligibility.
Purpose and Criteria for Selection: This CWPA Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies recognizes outstanding achievements by students of writing program administration and is intended to encourage graduate scholarship in WPA studies. Entries will be judged on innovation, scholarship, relevance, and clarity of writing. Projects examining major trends and issues in writing program administration will be preferred.
Eligibility: Eligible entries must be written by students enrolled in coursework at either the master’s or doctoral level. Entries/nominations for the award must be accompanied by an affidavit* signed by a faculty member or instructor at the student(s)' institution verifying that the student project was completed for graduate credit.
Entries: Entries should be unpublished manuscripts of 5,000–8,000 words or an equivalent multi-media and/or web-based project. The submission must include a 100-word abstract* or other brief description; manuscript submissions should conform to the editorial and stylistic guidelines of the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration (http://wpacouncil.org/journal/index.html ); other kinds of projects should be publication-ready as appropriate.
Prize: A certificate and cash prize of $300 for the winning project. In accepting the award and prize, the author(s) of the winning project agrees to submit a proposal for a presentation based on the project for consideration for inclusion on the program of the WPA Summer Conference in the year following receipt of the award.
Selection Committee: Submissions will be judged in a blind review by a selection committee.
Nominations: Any WPA member in good standing can nominate a graduate paper or project.
*Application Deadline and Timeline: Nominations are due by May 31, 2009 (or the last day for reporting grades for spring term at the student(s)' school). Entries will be reviewed and a winner selected by September 1, 2009 and the winner will be notified as soon as possible thereafter. Subsequently, but no later than March 2010, the winner of the award will be publicly announced and will be recognized at the annual WPA Breakfast at the 2010 CCCC.
*Forms for Cover Sheet, Nomination, Affidavit, and Abstract are provided in the Nomination Packet available as an attachment below. Website users must be logged in to see and download the nomination packet.
Winners Announced for 2008 WPA Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies: First WPA Award for Graduate Writing Goes to a Board Game
The Council of Writing Program Administrators is pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies. The first-place award goes to “The WPA Game,” a board game created, developed, and produced by six students from Purdue University: Harris Bras, Dana Driscoll, Cristyn Elder, Megan Schoen, Thomas Sura, and Jaclyn Wells. The second place entry is “Writing in the Disciplines,” an essay by Jennifer Cover, a graduate student at Virginia Tech.
The CWPA Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies recognizes outstanding achievements by students of writing program administration and is intended to encourage graduate scholarship in WPA studies. Entries were judged on innovation, scholarship, relevance, and clarity of writing.
Members of the Award Selection Committee Duane Roen (Arizona Sate University), Carrie Leverenz (Texas Christian University), and Steven Wilhoit (University of Dayton) noted, “It is especially gratifying to see such strong and interesting work being done by those who are the newer members of our profession.”
Winners will receive their awards at the WPA Breakfast at the CCCC meeting in San Francisco on Thursday, March 12, 2009 and have agreed to submit proposals to present their projects at the 2009 WPA Summer Conference in Minneapolis.
More information about the Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies can be found on the WPA website at this URL: http://www.wpacouncil.org/node/1228
CALL FOR 2008 RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSALS
The Research Grants Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites proposals for research projects that investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. Applicants must be current WPA members; all current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A project overview of no more than two pages single-spaced in which you:
• explain the problem or question your research project will attempt to investigate or solve • briefly outline the methodology you plan to use to approach the problem • describe how the project will address the problem or question you have identified • give a timetable detailing how the project will proceed • connect the project to previously published research and scholarship • describe your expertise in this area • describe how the results will be shared professionally (See “Expectations of Reward Recipients” below)
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page.
CRITERIA FOR SELECTION
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal. The WPA Grants Committee will use these criteria to conduct blind reviews of all proposals.
1. Relevance: The project is relevant to the work of writing program administrators, it applies to contexts outside of the immediate institutional context of origin, and writing program administrators will benefit from the outcomes of this project.
2. Contribution: The project not only is related to prior scholarship and research but also makes an original contribution.
3. Proposer’s Past Scholarship/Expertise: Through prior research and expertise, the proposer is well-prepared to undertake this project.
4. Methods: The methodology is clear, workable, and appropriate to this project.
5. Feasibility: The proposer can reasonably complete the project in the proposed time frame.
6. Cost Effectiveness: The budget expenditures are reasonable and the project’s outcomes justify the project’s expenses.
Restrictions: Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for released time for the grantee or others; for purely local initiatives or projects with little relevance to other settings; for outside consultants or evaluators; for the production of non-researched materials; for dissertation research; or for supplements to existing grants, unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend the project in new directions. WPA does not generally fund institutional overhead. If grants are approved that require institutional overhead, WPA will allow no more than 10% of funding to institutional overhead. You may not submit more than one proposal per year. The Committee will give first consideration for awards to those who have not received an award for three years.
EXPECTATIONS OF REWARD RECIPIENTS
1. Grantees are expected to submit articles resulting from the research to WPA Journal for first consideration.
2. Grantees are expected to produce a brochure presenting research results at the annual CCCC’s WPA breakfast in the year during which the award is granted. Applicants should include approximately $200 for production of the brochure in their application.
3. Grantees are expected to submit a final written report of their research outcomes to the Chair of the Research Grants Committee by June 15 of the year after they receive the award. Ordinarily, reports will be 5-7 pages in length. In some circumstances, grantees may need more space, in which case a report of up to 10 pages is acceptable. These reports should outline specific plans for submitting an article reporting the results to the WPA Journal as well as other plans for dissemination.
Questions about proposals can be directed to Joe Marshall Hardin at joe.hardin@wku.edu.
The preferred method for proposal submission is a Microsoft Word attachment to an e-mail sent to Joe Marshall Hardin at joe.hardin@wku.edu. If applicants need to send paper copies, please send four copies of the proposal to Joe Marshall Hardin at the address below. E-mails and paper copies must be received no later than January 14, 2008.
Joe Marshall Hardin Chair, WPA Research Grants Committee Cherry Hall 135B Western Kentucky University 1906 College Heights Blvd. #11086 Bowling Green, KY 42101-1086
Winners will be announced at the 2008 WPA breakfast in New Orleans.
THE DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2008 WORKSHOP GRANTS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO JUNE 10.
Purpose: The WPA Fund for the Support of Minority Writing Program Administrators provides financial support to writing program administrators who are members of underrepresented minorities to attend the WPA Summer Workshop. These groups include African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and other Latino and Latina Americans, and Native Americans. Involvement in and contributions to the work of writing program administration by members of these groups is critically important to our profession.
Grant Amounts and Deadline for Applications: The Council provides up to 3 grants of $500 each, which covers most of the cost of tuition and meals for the recipients for 5 days. Applications will be accepted through June 10, 2008, and recipients will be notified by June 16, 2008.
Criteria for Selection: The WPA Grants Committee considers the following in awarding the WPA Fund for the Support of Minority Writing Program Administrators Summer Workshop Grants: financial need; willingness of the applicant's institution to recognize and provide additional support (travel, remaining workshop costs, etc.) in recognition of the usefulness of the candidate's participation to his or her campus; centrality of the workshop experience to the applicant's current or desired position; and prior experience as a WPA (those with less experience are given higher priority). All new and future WPAs, including non-tenure-track and part-time faculty as well as graduate students, are welcome to apply.
To Apply: Please complete the attached application and email it to Jeff Andelora at jandelora@mail.mc.maricopa.edu. Please also include a cv. Application materials will then be forwarded to the Grants Committee for review.
1999-2000 “Constructing Composition: Reproduction and WPA Agency in Textbook Publishing,” by Professor Libby Miles (Fall/Winter 2000) http://www.wpacouncil.org/archives/24n1-2/24n1-2miles.pdf
2001-2002 "Using Multimedia to Teach Communication Across the Curriculum," by Mary Hocks (Fall/ Winter 2001).
2003-2004 "Politics, Rhetoric and Service Learning," by Candace Spigelman (Fall 2004) http://www.wpacouncil.org/archives/28n1-2/28n1-2spigelman.pdf
2005-2006 To be announced at the WPA 2007 Summer Conference
Recipients of Award for Outstanding Book on Writing Program Administration
2000-2001 Coming of Age: the Advanced Writing Curriculum, edited by Linda K. Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert A. Schwegler (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 2000)
2002-2003 The Writing Program Administrator's Resource: A Guide to Reflective Institutional Practice, edited by Stuart C. Brown and Theresa Enos (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2002) and
The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship, edited by Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead. (Utah State University Press, 2003).
2004-2005 Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration : Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline, edited by Barbara L'Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo (Parlor Press, 2004).
This project aims to identify specific strengths and weaknesses of students “mainstreamed†from remedial writing courses to the standard first-year college composition course, and the pedagogy most appropriate for a one-credit supplementary course intended to meet their needs.
BACKGROUND Over the last several years, it became apparent that the distinction between two courses in our institution's first-year composition curriculum, English 095 and English 101, was a distinction without a difference. Students in English 095 are assigned to read three academic essays during the course of the term, as are students in English 101; like students in English 101, English 095 students are required to write complex and frequently-revised texts in response to the assigned readings. The work of students in both courses is evaluated by a portfolio committee at the conclusion of the term, but 095 students do not earn graduation credit for their work. The placement test—a multiple-choice grammar, usage, and reading test—used to determine which students were required to take English 095 does not measure the critical reading and writing skills valued by our curriculum, and instructors who taught both English 095 and 101 reported little or no difference in the writing of their students or in the instruction they offered. However, it was clear that English 095 often obstructed students’ academic progress by requiring them to take English 095 as an additional, non-credit course. Last semester, a “Mainstreaming Committee†designed a pilot study to test the feasibility of eliminating English 095. During the Fall term, we mainstreamed 82 volunteer “basic writersâ€â€”students whose scores on the placement test would ordinarily require English 095—into English 101 and English 105, a one-credit course called “Editing College Writing†that provides an additional site for work on the writing these students produced for English 101. While we are awaiting comparative data from this term, we are pleased to report that the mainstreamed students’ performance was at least equivalent to that of students placed directly into English 101 over the last two years. If next semester’s students enjoy similar success, we will have strong evidence supporting a credit-bearing alternative to a mandatory and often-counterproductive “remedial†writing course. However, in order to design an appropriate pedagogy for working with the students in English 105, we need to identify the specific strengths and weaknesses these students bring with them to their composition courses.
RESEARCH POTENTIAL Over the Fall semester, mainstreamed students completed three short-answer questionnaires about their reading and writing practices, a quantitative course assessment at the end of the term, and a portfolio of three essays for their 101 class. English 105 instructors also answered questionnaires about their experiences with the course. This substantial archive of documents provides the means for a nuanced textual analysis that could contribute to contemporary WPA research in alternatives to traditionally-structured curricula. Now that we have established that students classified as “basic writers†can pass English 101 with the assistance of English 105, we want to investigate both the weaknesses and the strengths of these students and identify the best pedagogy for effectively addressing them.
METHODOLOGY A team of reviewers--compensated for their time by grant monies--would be asked to identify patterns in the mainstreamed students' responses to the questionnaires distributed during the term. The reviewers would also read mainstreamed students' portfolios (with a corresponding number of randomly-selected English 101 portfolios serving as a control), noting strengths and weaknesses in both sets of portfolios. The Mainstreaming Committee would compare identified strengths and weaknesses in mainstreamed students’ essays with those same students' accounts of their concerns and experiences with reading and writing. The Committee would then cross-check the pedagogical conclusions to which this comparison would lead with the 105 instructors' responses to their experience teaching mainstreamed students, ultimately leading to guidelines for revisions to the 105 course. While this study has immediate implications for our 101/105 pedagogies, it will also contribute to what we believe are two under-explored issues in the literature on mainstreaming: first, a delineation of the specific "differences" that are often read as "deficiencies" when devising first-year composition curricula for "mainstreamed"students, and second, the specific pedagogies for the kinds of "adjunct" and "studio workshop"courses often recommended in mainstreaming projects. This information could help WPAs rethink not only traditional distinctions between “remedial†and standard first-year composition courses but also ways to address the needs of students assigned to either one.
TIMETABLE The Mainstreaming Committee will begin devising templates for reviewers before the completion of the Spring Term. During the summer of 2005, a team of five reviewers will meet several times to read and evaluate approximately 240 portfolios. (The Fall and Spring Pilots will generate about 120 portfolios; a corresponding number will be selected at random from concurrent sections of English 101.) The reviewers will finish their work by August 1st; a report will be drafted by September 15th. We anticipate no trouble in submitting a revised copy to the Chair of the Research Grants Committee by the deadline of June 15, 2006.
PROJECT CONTEXT While much groundwork in the reconsidering of the role of “basic writers†in our composition classes has been laid by writers for CCC and the Journal of Basic Writing (e.g., Peter Dow Adams, David Bartholomae, Rhonda Grego and Nancy Thompson, Judith Rodby and Tom Fox, Mary Soliday), we wish to follow the lead of Gregory Glau, who brought scholarship on his “Stretch Program†to the readership of WPA. As recent collections like Gerri McNenny and Fitzgerald’s Mainstreaming Basic Writers and Rose and Weiser’s The Writing Program Administrator as Theorist have shown, a reconsideration of “basic writers†necessarily involves a reconsideration of “mainstream†writers and the courses intended for them.
INVESTIGATOR EXPERTISE The director of this project has extensive research and teaching expertise in basic writing specifically and composition generally. Current Director of Composition and Professor of English at a large public research institution, s/he is author of two books on composition (NCTE 1999 and SUNY Press 2000) and numerous essays in CCC, College English, JAC, the Journal of Basic Writing, and elsewhere. S/he is the winner of the Richard Braddock Award and the W. Ross Winterowd Award for Most Outstanding Book in Composition Theory. The two principal co-investigators, the Assistant Director of Composition and the English 105 Course Coordinator at the same school, have significant experience teaching composition and have presented at regional and national conferences in rhetoric and composition, including CCCC.
PRESENTATION OF RESULTS In addition to preparing a poster-presentation at the WPA Breakfast at the 2006 CCCC, we would also plan to submit a detailed article to The WPA Journal, giving the full story of the implementation and follow-up on our 2004-2005 Pilot Study, complete findings from both semesters, and recommendations for portable curricular redesign based on our results.
BUDGET We have obtained a course release for one of our rhetoric and composition graduate students for the Spring and Summer terms of 2005. This means that much of the work of drafting the questions and templates for the reviewers, coordinating the reading sessions, compiling data, and drafting the Final Report can be done without further expense to the First-Year Composition Program. A $1000 grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators would enable us to compensate a team of 5 graduate-student readers (5 readers @ $10/hour x 4 [5-hour sessions]) for reading and evaluating approximately 240 po
Lisa Lebduska, Director of College Writing Wheaton College
Project Overview I am requesting $1000 in funding to complete the second half of a modest longitudinal study of undergraduate writing that seeks to understand how undergraduates’ evaluation of their own writing and of writing in general changes over time. I wish to compare reflections that seniors make about their freshmen writing to the reflections that they made about the same writing when they were sophomores. The study will also investigate the extent to which student GPA, major, final grade in First-Year Writing (FYW), and final grade in First-Year Seminar (FYS) correlate to the types of evaluations students make about their own writing. Internal funding allowed me to complete the first half of this study, which involved collecting the freshman papers and gathering reflections about these papers when their authors were sophomores. With WPA funding, I will be able to support the second half of the study as I collect information from the students who will be seniors in Fall 2005. Methodology. The methodology I will employ in this study will be similar to the methodology I employed in 2002 when I began the study.
In December 2002, I collected approximately 1000 papers that had been written in 17 out of 25 sections of our college’s First Year Seminar, which is taught by members of almost every department on campus and focuses on themes ranging from “Visions of Paris†(taught by a French faculty member) to “Next Stop Mars†(taught by a Physics faculty member). A year later, when the students were sophomores, I put out a call to a randomized sample of them requesting their participation in a study about their writing; after receiving a very low response rate, I contacted all of the students, finally gathering a group of thirty participants.
To elicit reflections about the writing the students had completed in their FYS seminars, I adapted the methodology employed by Kathleen Blake Yancey and Meg Morgan in their 1994 study of University of North Caroline exemption portfolios. After returning all of the collected FYS papers to the students who had written them, I asked students to answer the same questions used in the Yancey/Morgan study: 1.) Which of the papers in this collection is your strongest and why? 2.) Which of the papers is your weakest and why? and. 3.) If you were able to rewrite the weakest paper, what changes would you make to the paper and why?
After reading these reflective essays, I have categorized the student responses to see to what extent their responses fall into the same categories as those used in the Yancey/Morgan study: 1.)a-rhetorical textual features; 2.) references to the immediate rhetorical context, and 3.) references to conditions other than the immediate rhetorical context.
For the second half of this study, I will contact the seniors, ask them to revisit their freshman papers again, and will repeat the evaluative questions, again categorizing responses for the above features. I will then compare the responses to determine how and to what extent, if any, did the students’ evaluations of their writing change over time. I will also include an additional question asking them to assess what changes they have noted in their own writing processes and products during their undergraduate careers.
I’ll request that the College’s information retrieval specialist provide me with the data about participants’ majors, and GPA’s in FYS, FYW and overall. After obtaining this data, I’ll consult with a quantitative analyst for assistance analyzing the statistical significance between the logistical data and the qualitative responses. For example, is there a correlation between GPA and reflective responses that tend to emphasize a-rhetorical textual features? Does choice of major correlate with a particular set of responses? Does their understanding of their writing performance correlate to their grades in FYS, FYW or their GPA in any way?
Timetable. Sept. 2005-Jan. 2006. Contact the seniors and collect and read their reflective responses. Jan. 2006-March 2006. Request and analyze data. March-May 2006. Complete final draft of findings.
Relation to Previous Published Research and Scholarship. While the Yancey/Morgan study provided useful information about students’ reflections in high-stakes contexts, and Peggy O’Neill has identified strategies for helping “resisting [the] ritualistic discourse†of reflection, my study should contribute insights into how students reflect in relatively low-stakes contexts. Additionally, because my study will be longitudinal, I wish to see to what extent it affirms and/or complicates the Harvard longitudinal study conducted by Sommers and Saltz. Will there be a correlation between students who saw themselves as novices and those who achieved the greatest success at college writing?
I further imagine that the results of this study will contribute to researchers’ understanding about the teaching of writing in first-year seminars and I hope that it will raise questions about the existing and potential relationships between first-year seminar and first-year writing.
Proposer’s Expertise in this Area. A WPA for the last three years and a writing center director for 6 years prior to that, I have published articles in the anthology Student-Assisted Teaching and Learning, Chemical Engineering Education and Kairos and currently serve as a reader for Writing Center Journal. I will present the results of the first part of this study at 4C’s 2005.
Dissemination of Results. I will submit a proposal to 4C’s 2006, and I will submit my results to WPA journal and Research in the Teaching of English.
Budget
Personnel Information Retrieval Specialist 4 hours@$25/hour $100.00 Quantitative Analyst 2 hours@$50/hour $100.00 Student Assistant 50 hours@$10/hour $500.00
Materials Books $300.00
Total Request $1000.00
"Does it Transfer? Tracing FYC Students' Rhetorical Practices across Multiple Mediums": Jenn Fishman, Mary Jo Reiff -- Co-Principal Investigators Bill Doyle, Casie Fedukovich, Hiie Saumaa, Stacey Pigg -- Project Researchers University of Tennessee-Knoxville $2000.00
"Are We Making it Harder? A Comparison of Online and Paper Based Writing Instruction Focusing on Subjective Cognitive Workload": Lisa Emerson Massey University, New Zealand $1098.87 (see report presented at 2007 WPA Breakfast, attached below)
"Reformist Opportunities: A Study of Writing Program Partnerships": Diana George, Kelly Belanger (Department of English) Marie Paretti, Lisa DuPree McNair (Department of Engineering Education) Virginia Tech $1997.00
Research project results will be presented on posters at the 2007 WPA Breakfast at CCCC. Research reports or articles resulting from the research projects are submitted to our journal WPA: Writing Program Administration for first consideration.
Note: a copy of this information is available to logged-in site users as an attachment that can be downloaded and printed. See the link at the bottom of this page.
Lindemann, Erika. “Composition and Rhetoric: An Annual Annotated Bibliography.” 1982. UNC-Chapel HillAward: $250
Strenski, Ellen. “TAs: The Invisible Essential in Writing across the Curriculum at Research Universities.” 1989. UCLAAward: $284.40
Rose, Shirley K. and Little, Sherry. “A Comparative Study of Programs and Philosophies for Teaching Teaching Assistants.” 1989. San Diego StateAward: $300
Sommers, Jeffrey. “A Program in Portfolio Writing Assessment.” 1990. Miami UniversityAward: $500
Ebest, Sally Barr. "The Status of Women in Composition." 1992. University if Missouri-St. LouisAward: $300
Papers & Presentations· Ebest, Sally Barr. "Gender Differences in Writing Program Administration." WPA: The Journal of Writing Program Administration (Spring 1995): 53-73.
· "Finding One's Voice." Conference on College Composition and Communication. Washington, D.C. March, 1995.
Ebest, Sally Barr. "Preparing Graduate Students for Writing Program Administration." 1995. University if Missouri-St. LouisAward: $871
Publications & Presentations:· "How Are Comp/Rhet Graduate Students Being Prepared to be WPAs? A Report from the Field." Conference on College Composition and Communication. Milwaukee, WI. March, 1996.
· "Preparing the Next Generation of WPAs." Women's Program Council Fall Conference. St. Louis, MO. October 16, 1997.
· "Breaking Precedent: Preparing Graduate Students to Teach." Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL. April 2, 1998.
· Ebest, Sally Barr. "Preparing the Next Generation of WPAs." WPA: The Journal of Writing Program Administration (Spring 1999): 66-85.
· Ebest, Sally Barr. Changing the Way We Teach. (SIUP 2005).
Gradin, Sherrie and Duncan Carter. [Study of the teaching of writing in Portland State’s new general education program]. 1995. Portland State UniversityAward: $2,000
McLeod, Susan. “Whither WAC?” 1995. Washington State UniversityAward: $2,000
Publications and Presentations:· McLeod, Susan and Eric Miraglia. "Whither WAC? Interpreting the Stories/Histories of Mature WAC Programs." WPA: The Journal of Writing Program Administration. (Spring 1997): 46-65.
Sewell, Lauren. [Study of how new TAs develop a sense of authority, both as teachers and as novice members of our discipline during their first year in a writing program]. 1995. University of LouisvilleAward: $1,745
Townsend, Martha. [Study of how teaching writing-intensive courses affects the tenure cases of junior faculty across disciplines]. 1995. University of Missouri at ColumbiaAward: $2,000
Holt, Mara. and Leon Anderson. [Focus group interviews, one phase of a planned multi-method study of how WPAs manage and negotiate conflict]. 1996. Ohio UniversityAward: $1,800
Harrington, Susanmarie. [Placement rating systems that use group reading sessions and rely on teacher experience in the classroom rather than on norming sessions with scoring rubrics]. 1996. Indiana University-Purdue University, IndianapolisAward: $978.60
Devitt, Amy and Mary Jo Reiff. [Role of teaching teams in ensuring continuity among classes in the Freshman-Sophomore English sequence, maintaining standards, and making the work of administration more collaborative and collegial]. 1996. University of KansasAward: $2,000
Publication and Presentations:
Award: $1,000
Publications and Presentations:· Mathieu, Paula. "Teaching Writing and Reading Cultures." Conference on College Composition and Communication. 1998.
Ballenger, Kelly, Mary Jo Reiff, and Clyde Moneyhun. “Going Online with WAC.” 1997. Youngstown State UniversityAward: $1,000
McCormick, Kathleen. “The WPA and the Centrality of Academic Intellectual Work.” 1997. University of HartfordAward: $1,000
McQueeney, Pat. “Writing in Large Classes: Operative Variables." 1998. University of KansasAward: $2,000
Gilliam, Alice. "Investigating Alternative Models of Writing Program Administration: A Case Study and Survey." 1998. University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeAward: $950
Desmet, Christy and Kathy Houff. “Mainstreaming Computer Instruction in a Large Freshman Composition Program.” 1999. University of GeorgiaAward: $1,000
Boehm, Diane and Eric Gardner. “Teachers in the Center.” 1999. Saginaw Valley StateAward: $900
Publications and Presentations:
Summary of project:Research grant to study the impact of Teachers in the Center (Saginaw Valley State University program in which faculty in various disciplines volunteer to work with students in the SVSU Writing Center. Participating faculty reported greater awareness of the issues facing student writers; greater focus on improving students' thought and revising processes; redesign of course assignments and of strategies and rubrics for feedback and assessment; enhanced commitment to developing student writing proficiency. Hourigan, Maureen and Lizbeth Bryant. “Writing Program Administration at the Millennium: Composition and the Academy Revisited.” 1999. Kent State University, Trumbull Campus; Ohio State Mansfield
Award: $900
Kelly-Riley, Diane, Susan Webber, and Bill Condon. “An Exploratory Study of Problematic Writing in a Campus-Wide, Rising-Junior Writing Portfolio Requirement.” 2000. Washington State UniversityAward: $1,024
Roen, Duane and Greg Glau. “Enacting the Outcomes Statement: How do ENG 101 Students Exemplify its Goals and Objectives?” 2000. Arizona State UniversityAward: $2,000
Publications and Presentations:· "Using the WPA Outcomes Statement to Guide Students' Portfolio Construction." WPA Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2000.
Project Description
In 2000, Duane Roen and Greg Glau received a grant from WPA to examine students’ portfolios in Arizona State University’s (ASU) two-semester basic writing sequence. Since Glau at that time was the Director of Arizona State University’s basic writing Stretch Program, we decided that information would be collected from that group of students. (Briefly, Stretch does what its name implies: it “stretches” ENG 101 over two semesters, to give more time to those students who enter college without a great deal of varied writing experience. Stretch students use the same books and construct the same writing assignments, but do so more slowly, in smaller classes (for more information, see Glau “The Stretch Program” and <http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/composition/cbw/stretch.htm>). For this project, we decided to collect papers from the second part of the Stretch sequence, ENG 101.) In the spring semester, 2000, the 17 Stretch Program teachers were asked if they would like to participate in this research project; 12 of them submitted papers and permission forms from their Stretch Program ENG 101 classes. The methodology used to evaluate the students’ reflective portfolio letters involved a series of steps. First, Glau and Roen developed a scoring sheet (See Appendix) based on the OS that the scorers could use to evaluate the portfolios’ reflective letters. Second, the scorers numbered the portfolio sample and then randomly selected 130 portfolios to read and score. Third, the scorers developed a rubric to explain what qualified as a 0, 1, 2 or 3 on the scoring sheet. Our ranking was outlined like this: if the item from the OS is
Fourth, following the rubric development was a norming process during which the scorers utilized letters that were not part of the 130 letter sample in order to practice scoring and to practice consistent application of the scoring sheet to the portfolios. These two steps were done to help the scorers establish a degree of interrater reliability. Fifth, the scorers rated the reflective letters from the 130 sample using the scoring sheet. Bergmann, Linda and Janet Zepernick. “Student Perceptions of Writing Across the Curriculum at a Technological University.” 2000. University of Missouri-Rolla
Award: $1,635
Fendley, Kimberly, and Erica J. Reynolds. “Twelve Writers Reading.” 2000. University of ArizonaAward: $1250
Takayoshi, Pamela and Katherine Willis. “Building a Methodology for Studying the Intersection of Writing Program Administration and Computer-Aided Instruction in First-Year Curriculum.” 2001. University of Louisville L’Eplattenier, Barbara. “Comparing Administrative Strategies of Women WPAs during the Progressive Era.” 2001. University of Arkansas – Little RockAward: $1,000
Leverenz, Carrie Shively. “The Ethics of Access: Three Contexts for Computer-Supported Writing Instruction.” 2001. Texas Christian University Kelly-Riley, Diane, and Bill Condon. “An Exploratory Study of Problematic Writing in a Campus-Wide, Rising-Junior Writing Portfolio Requirement.” 2002. Washington State UniversityAward: $1,300
Publications and Presentations· Condon, Bill and Diane Kelly-Riley. “Assessing and Teaching What We Value: The Relationship (?) Between College-Level Critical Thinking and Writing Abilities.” Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 56-75.
· Kelly-Riley, Diane. “Washington State University Critical Thinking Project: Improving Student Learning through Faculty Practice.” Assessment Update.(July-August 2003) 15.4 5-14.
· Kelly-Riley, Diane. “Washington State University Critical Thinking Project: Improving Student Learning Outcomes through Faculty Practice.” In Banta, T. W. (ed.) Assessing Student Achievement in General Education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, (2007) 35-43.
· June 2006, Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom, Workshop for Summer Institutes, Spokane, Washington.
· February 2005, Workshop Leader for the Northern Nevada Assessment Conference, Two sessions on Critical Thinking, University of Nevada Reno.
· February 2005, Assessing and Teaching What We Value, Core Curriculum Workshop, University of Nevada Reno
· June 2004, From Sandbox to Mortarboard: Promoting Critical Thinking K-20, three day workshop, Sleeping Lady Resort, Leavenworth, WA,
· June 2004, Two day critical thinking workshop for Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia with Bill Condon and Cathy Perillo.
· March 2004, Two day critical thinking workshop for Core General Education Faculty at University of Nevada-Reno with Bill Condon.
· August 2003, One day Critical Thinking Workshop Leader for University of Idaho Core of Discovery faculty. Moscow, ID.
· July 2003, Three day Critical Thinking Workshop Leader for CO-TEACH participants. Sleeping Lady Resort, Leavenworth, WA.
· November 2002, Two-day Critical Thinking Workshop Leader for Wenatchee Valley College Faculty, “Articulating Expectations for Student Critical Thinking,” Wenatchee, Washington.
· August 2002, Critical Thinking Workshop for the General Education Faculty at WSU with Bill Condon and Lisa Johnson.
· “You can lead them to school, but you can’t make them think” Workshop at the Inland Northwest National Council of the Teachers of English, Moscow, ID October 2004 with Jason Johnstone-Yellin, Lisa Johnson, Karen Weathermon, and Collin Hughes.
· “Promoting Critical Thinking K-20” AAHE, Denver, CO June 2004 with Rena Mincks, Jason Johnstone-Yellin and Bill Condon.
· “Critical Thinking Assessment That Teaches: Higher Order Learning That Matters,” Workshop at the Washington Assessment Group Conference, Vancouver, WA, May, 2004 with Bill Condon and Jason Johnstone-Yellin.
· “WSU Critical Thinking Project Update.” FIPSE Project Directors’ Meeting. Denver, CO, December 2003.
· “WSU Critical Thinking Project and Freshman Seminar,” with Kay Tronsen, Geoff Gilmore and Camarin Davidson. First Year Experience Conference, Vancouver, BC, July 2003.
· “Improving Faculty Practice by Integrating Critical Thinking Expectations.” Workshop with Bill Condon, Jason Johnstone-Yellin and Michael Delahoyde, AAHE, Seattle, WA, June 2003.
· “An Exploratory Study of College-level Critical Thinking and Writing Abilities.” “Thinking or Writing or Social Reform or all or None of the Above: What’s up in the composition classroom.” Panel presentation with Yvonne Merill, Irvin Peckham and Greg Columb. CCCC New York City, March 2002.
· “An Exploratory Study of College-level Critical Thinking and Writing Abilities,” with Bill Condon. Poster Presentation at the WPA Breakfast, New York City, March 2002.
· “Communicating our expectations to students: Critical thinking in the classroom” WPA Summer Conference with Bill Condon, Park City, UT, July 2002.
· “Articulating Expectations for Student Critical Thinking: Addressing Needs for Student Learning, Faculty Teaching Reform, and Statewide Accountability,” with Kim Andersen, Paul Smith and Karen Weathermon, AAHE, Boston, MA, June 2002.
· “Fostering Student Critical Thinking within a University-wide General Education Curriculum: Student Access, Teaching Excellence, and Institutional Reform” Pacific Planning, Assessment & Institutional Research Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2002 with Bill Condon and Lisa Johnson.
Strickland, Donna. "The Emergence of the National Council of Writing Program Administrators: A Comparative Critical History." 2002. Southern Illinois University Zawacki, Terry Myers, and Christopher Thaiss. "Alternative Discourses in the Disciplines: Implications for Program Development." 2002. George Mason UniversityAward: $2,000
Publications and Presentations:· Thaiss, Chris and Terry Myers Zawacki. Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life. Heinemann (2006).
Ralph L. Walstrom and Mark Hammer, State University College at Buffalo State College, for "Reviewing a Directed Self Placement for Writing Programs: Concerns, Recommendations, Revisions" 2003 Amy Ward Martin, College of Mt. St. Vincent, for "Definitions of and Ethical Attitudes Toward Plagiarism Among Students and Faculty Across the Curriculum" 2003 Courtney, Jennifer and Christine Norris. "Establishing on Online Archive for Research in Writing Program Administration." 2004. Purdue University; University of Nevada-RenoAward: $2,000
Cripps, Michael. "Seeding WAC: The Impact of Interdisciplinary Writing Programs on WAC Faculty Development." 2004. York College, The City University of New YorkAward: $1,450
Project DescriptionFaculty development initiatives are a central concern for Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) engaged in Writing Across the Curriculum(WAC) initiatives. The literature on WAC and faculty development is principally focused on helping existing faculty across the academic disciplines incorporate WAC pedagogies into their discipline-specific classes through the WAC workshop.The research described in this proposal explores the possibility that writing programs with an interdisciplinary teaching pool of emerging and recent PhDs form an alternative to WAC workshops. The principal hypothesis for this project is that these interdisciplinary writing programs seed WAC by exposing future faculty in the disciplines to WAC pedagogies at a formative period in their own development as college instructors. Ianetta, Melissa, and Shelley Reid. "More than a Feeling: Researching the Relationship between Writing Centers and Writing Programs in TA Preparation." 2004. Oklahoma State University
This study examined the role of tutoring experience in the formation of teacher pedagogy. It was comprised of two parts: a survey of writing programs that use TAs in the writing center (that part that's being published in WPA) and a study of the writing program at Oklahoma State University. For the latter, I conducted interviews with teachers who did and did not have writing center experience and asked them to respond to a set of student essays to explore any trends in response.
Fishman, Jenn, Mary Jo Reiff, Bill Doyle, and Stacey Pigg. “‘Does it Transfer?’ Tracing FYC Students Rhetorical Practices across Multiple Mediums.” 2006. University of Tennessee-KnoxvilleAward: $2000
Publications and Presentations:· Fishman, Jenn and Stacey Pigg. "Reinventing the University—Online" Paper presentation at the Computers and Writing Conference, Detroit, 2007.
Emerson, Lisa. “‘Are We Making it Harder?’ A Comparison of Online and Paper Based Writing Instruction Focusing on Subjective Cognitive Workload.” 2006. Massey University, New ZealandAward: $1098.87
(a report on this award is available as a downloadable attachment at this node: http://wpacouncil.org/node/498)
George, Diana, Kelly Belanger, Marie Paretti, and Lisa DuPree McNair. “Reformist Opportunities: A Study of Writing Program Partnerships.” 2006. Virginia TechAward: $1,997
Presentations and Publications
Preliminary work has led to the co-authored paper, "Outcomes Assessment as a Site of Integration: ABET Meets the Council of Writing Program Administrators," Marie Paretti, Lisa McNair, Kelly Belanger, and Diana George. It will be presented by Marie Paretti and Lisa McNair at the 2007 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education on Monday, June 25, 2007.The next project connected with this research is to draft a paper for submission to WPA Journal.
Project Description:
One key challenge of writing program cross-disciplinary collaborations has been reciprocity--that is, achieving collaborations that inform both the writing program and partner disciplines rather than simply delivering courses or supporting cross-disciplinary instruction. To address that issue, the Virginia Tech Composition Program formed a partnership with Virginia Tech's Engineering Education Department. Our aim was both national and local. Nationally, we surveyed programs to identify past and current partnerships and their degree of reciprocity or perceived reciprocity. Locally, we are conducting a case study of a composition sections linked to first-year students in Engineering Education courses that clearly keep both ABET and WPA Outcomes in the forefront of course design and delivery.
Bawarshi, Anis. "Accessing Academic Discourse: The Influence of First-Year Composition Students’ Prior Genre Knowledge." 2007. University of WashingtonAward: $2,000
McClure, Randall. "Researching the Presence of Advocacy and Commercial Websites in Research Essays of First-Year Composition Students." 2007. Minnesota State University, MankatoAward: $1,500
Reid, Shelley. "Theories and Practices: Problem-Solving Strategies of New and Continuing Composition Teaching Assistants." 2007. George Mason UniversityAward: $1,113
Rowan, Karen. "Writing Centers in Minority-Serving Institutions." 2007. Morgan State UniversityAward: $1,490
=== 2008 WPA Research Grants Awards
Peter Dow Adams; Community College Baltimore County Diane Kelly-Riley; Washington State University Chris Anson, Susan Miller-Cochran, Matt Porter, and David Rieder; North Carolina State University
===
The recipients of the 2009 WPA Research Grants are
1. Sue Doe and Karla Gingerich full funding-$1980
“The Role of Direct Instruction and Assessment Criteria in the Development of Writing Skills and Efficiencies of Grading: Empirical Results for Review and Discussion”
Top-down writing integrations are often greeted with resistance by faculty in the disciplines and can thrust WAC and WPA scholars into situations where their expertise is needed but their preferred processes have been circumvented. One challenge in such situations is to persuade a reluctant faculty by building support after the fact. At our large, public R1 institution, a state-mandated writing initiative involving two colleges has yielded high levels of faculty resistance, although not from the Psychology Department, where graduate teaching fellows (the instructors of record) and their course director have embraced the initiative and engaged in ongoing professional development and multi-modal assessment efforts. In general, this department has shown enthusiasm for learning best practices for assigning and responding to student writing, perhaps because the graduate student faculty (competitively selected doctoral candidates) believe they are building their vitae. This study will build upon the Psychology Department’s successes and its desire to expand instructional and assessment efforts while also providing important information for other departments and colleges. It will query whether two specific instructional strategies positively impact 1) student writing (as measured through holistic scoring) and 2) GTA grading efficiency (as measured by time spent grading). The two instructional strategies to be tested are distribution of an analytic rubric to accompany the writing assignment and direct instruction in the development and support of ideas in Psychology papers. Development/support of ideas is one area of entry-level student writing that our Psychology Department faculty have identified as needing attention.
For this project, which has obtained Human Subjects approval, we will use a quasi-experimental Solomon 4 design, which controls for both change over time and change caused by the pre-test itself. The study will involve eight intact sections of Introductory Psychology with enrollments of 150-200 per section, for a total of 1200-1600 students. Each intact section will receive a consistent approach. GTAs will be provided training in holistic scoring by an experienced placement director. The study will also involve focus group discussions among undergraduates, GTAs, and teaching fellows to determine their responses to the experimental treatments. Among the questions we will ask of the graduate students are: What were the costs and the benefits of incorporating these approaches? Did the benefits outweigh the costs?
2. Kimberly Harrison and Mike Creeden full funding-$1700
“Using Nontraditional Means to Meet Traditional Aims in First-Year Writing Classes”
At our large, urban, Hispanic-serving university, our first-year courses (approximately 150 sections each semester) have been capped between twenty-seven and thirty; eighty-eight per cent of these sections are taught by adjunct faculty, many of whom are not trained in writing pedagogy. Our context is not an effective one, and the ideal institutional change would be slow in coming. As program administrators, we could not wait for the ideal but needed to respond to our current context to improve delivery of our course content and student learning.
Thus, in Spring 2007, we began a pilot program in which we offered hybrid (two days face-to-face, one day online) sections of our first-year courses. In these hybrid sections, we strategically increased the enrollment cap in exchange for funding to hire five full-time writing instructors to teach the larger-capped classes with teaching assistants. These teaching assistants, doctoral students from departments throughout the College of Arts and Sciences, were funded specifically to work in the writing program, taking our four-hour graduate writing pedagogy class and working in a hybrid writing class.
Our working theory, developed in response to our limited resources, was that with smart technology, a small but strong group of full-time faculty, and well-trained TAs, we could create a “virtual” version of the ideal: a small writing class focused on student writing time and frequent feedback. Although the classes are capped at forty, the presence of two TAs and one instructor brings the student/faculty ratio down to about thirteen students to one instructor, while the hybrid course design (two class meetings face-to-face and an equivalent online) increases both student writing time and points of teacher/TA response. This model allows the benefits of small class size cited in Horning’s article: increased student writing, increased feedback on writing that result in increased revision, the development of valuable student/teacher relationships, improved grades and retention.
Our study will begin to answer the question, can we meet traditional pedagogical goals in our writing classes with nontraditional means? In this portion of what we see as a large-scale project focusing on both teacher and student development and satisfaction, we will focus on student success, which we tentatively define through student perception of teacher/student interaction, course satisfaction, perception of a writerly identity, achievement of course outcomes (measured through portfolio analysis, student self-reporting, and grades), and retention to the next semester of our writing sequence.
3. Heidi Estrem full funding-$930
“Phase 2: Understanding the Problem-Solving Strategies of New and Continuing Composition Teaching Assistants in Multiple Settings”
The stakes surrounding TA education are high: at many institutions, TAs regularly teach hundreds (and even thousands) of first-year writing students each year. Their collective impact on entering first-year college students is substantial, and we desperately need replicable research on writing teacher development. This research project begins to address key questions about TA education: As instructors develop, what “sticks” for them? What happens as they work to negotiate teaching and are confronted by theories (in seminars they take and beyond) that might directly negate or repudiate the “brought theories” they have? How do they develop their own theories of teaching? This multi-year, multi-site study begins to address these important questions.
This funding is for a new phase of an ongoing research project, fully expanding this research to a second site. Phase 2 focuses on sustaining the yearly surveys for two more years (for a total of five years) and adding the yearly interviews at the second research site. The interviews are vital for contextualizing the survey-based data already generated. Through surveying and interviewing TAs each year, we are able to capture their insights over time.
4. Colin Charlton and Jonikka Charlton partial funding-$1390 “The Assemblage Project”
To investigate how WPA identities develop, the metaphors they put into play, the forms they may take in the future, and how these identities affect conceptions of writing and writing programs, we have designed what we've tentatively titled The Assemblage Project. Inspired by instruction‐based public projects like those of Marcel Duchamp, we would like to purchase and circulate several relatively inexpensive and small video cameras among WPAs. With each camera, we would include a set of potential questions and a set of filming instructions.
Contributors would be able to film responses to one or more of our questions and then pass the camera and footage to another WPA until it is returned to us for download and put back in circulation.
Contributors would also be able to see colleagues’ responses as the camera circulates, leading to a kind of extended conference or conversation on film, screened by the contributors while in creation.
=== Date of this version: 6/16/2009
The Research Grant Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators invites research proposals to investigate issues and practices in writing program administration. Maximum awards of $2000 may be given; average awards are $1000. All current WPA members are eligible to apply.
Please organize your proposal as follows:
1. A cover page that gives the names of all investigators (please don’t identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
2. A narrative of no more than two pages single-spaced in which you
3. A realistic, detailed budget on a separate page.
Criteria for Selection
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal; WPA Grant Committee will use these to conduct blind reviews of all proposals.
Restrictions: Ordinarily, you will not receive funding for released time for the grantee or others; for purely local initiatives or projects with little relevance to other settings; for outside consultants or evaluators; for the production of non-researched materials; for dissertation research; or for supplements to existing grants, unless it is clear that the WPA grant provides an opportunity to extend the project in new directions. You may not submit more than one proposal per year. The Committee will give first consideration for awards to those who have not received an award for three years.
Please send four copies of the proposal to Meg Morgan at the address below, postmarked no later than January 30, 2004
Meg Morgan
Chair, WPA Research Grant Committee
Department of English
University of North Carolina Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
You may also submit proposals online to mpmorgan@email.uncc.edu. They must be sent by 5:00 pm on January 30, 2004.
Winners will be announced at the 2004 WPA breakfast in San Antonio.
WPA RESEARCH GRANTS
ANNOTATED SAMPLE PROPOSAL
To help prospective applicants for WPA research grants, we have created annotated versions of a proposal that received funding in the past. We hope that by revealing the judgments and comments of the Research Grants Committee on various aspects of the proposal, we can more effectively explain the criteria that are used to make funding decisions.
When you open the proposal, you will see the text exactly as it was submitted to the WPA Research Grants Committee, with no annotations. At the bottom of the proposal, the five criteria used to judge proposals appear as links. When you click on one of the links, you will be taken to a copy of the proposal that contains highlighted words and phrases. Passing your cursor over these highlights will open boxes that contain the Committee's thoughts about the criterion in question and how it is addressed in the proposal. Although both the proposals were successful, the Committee has also included suggestions for making them even stronger.
Above is WPA's most recent call for proposals, which contains a description of the criteria used to judge proposals. By providing information about these criteria, we hope they can become more formative and productive, rather than purely evaluative.
2004-2005 WPA Book Award
Call for Nominations The Council of Writing Program Administrators is seeking nominations for its Best Book Award for 2004-2005. This award recognizes book authors or editors who have made an outstanding contribution to the field of writing program administration over the past two calendar years.
Award Requirements
1. The book was published in 2004 or 2005. 2. The book addresses one or more issues of long-term interest to administrators of writing programs in higher education. 3. The book discusses theories, practices, or policies that contribute to a richer understanding of WPA work. 4. The book shows sensitivity toward the situated contexts in which WPAs work. 5. The book makes a significant contribution to the scholarship of writing program administration. 6. The book will serve as a strong representative of the scholarship of and research on writing program administration.
Nominating Procedures
1. Nomination should include three (3) copies of the book and three (3) copies of a letter of nomination. 2. Letters of nomination should explain how the book meets the award requirements. 3. Send nominations to
Stephen Wilhoit, Chair WPA Book Award Committee English Department University of Dayton 300 College Park Dayton, OH 45469-1520
4. All nominations must be received by January 7, 2006.
Any questions? Contact Steve Wilhoit (wilhoit@notes.udayton.edu)
The Council of Writing Program Administrators is pleased to call for nominations for the 2002-2003 WPA Best Book Award. The award is given bi-annually to the author(s) or editors(s) of the best book addressing issues in administration of higher education writing programs, including first-year programs, undergraduate writing majors, advanced composition programs, technical/scientific/business/professional writing programs, writing across the curriculum, and writing centers.
The WPA Best Book Award Committee calls for nominations of a book with a publication date of 2002 or 2003. Nominated books will be evaluated for scholarship and research contributing to understanding writing program administration. Nominations (from author[s] or editor[s], reader[s], or publisher) must be received by March 1, 2004, and must include a two-page letter of nomination describing the book and stating its contribution to writing program administration.
Nominated books are judged on the basis of the following criteria:
Please send the letter of nomination—with the subject line “WPA Book Award Nominationâ€â€”to the Committee members: Joe Janangelo (jjanang@luc.edu), Clyde Moneyhun (moneyhun@english.udel.edu), Elizabeth Vanderlei (bvlei@calvin.edu) and Duane Roen (Duane.Roen@asu.edu) by March 1, 2004.
1/21/04
The WPA Fund for the Support of Minority Writing Program Administrators Summer Workshop Grants
NOTE: THE DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2007 WORKSHOP GRANTS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MAY 4TH
Purpose The WPA Fund for the Support of Minority Writing Program Administrators has as its purpose providing financial support to writing program administrators who are members of underrepresented minorities to attend the WPA Summer Workshop. The Council of Writing Program Administrators is committed to the professional development of all of its members, and is concerned that members of underrepresented minorities be encouraged to participate in the organization. These groups include African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and other Latino and Latina Americans, and American Indians. Involvement in and contributions to the work of writing program administration by members of these groups is critically important to our profession.
Grant Amounts and Deadline for Applications The Council provides up to 3 grants of $500 each, which covers most of the cost of tuition and meals for the recipients for 5 days. Applications may submitted anytime after the summer conference call for proposals is issued, and are accepted up until April 15 of each year. Grant recipients are notified before April 30.
Criteria for Selection The WPA Grants Committee considers the following in awarding the WPA Fund for the Support of Minority Writing Program Administrators Summer Workshop Grants: financial need; willingness of the applicant's institution to recognize and provide additional support (travel, remaining workshop costs, etc.) in recognition of the usefulness of the candidate's participation to his or her campus; centrality of the workshop experience to the applicant's current or desired position; and prior experience as a WPA (those with less experience are given higher priority). All new and future WPAs, including non-tenure-track and part-time faculty as well as graduate students, are welcome to apply.
To apply, please complete the attached application and email it to roses@purdue.edu It will be forwarded to the Grants Committee for review.
email questions: Shirley K Rose, President, Council of Writing Program Administrators roses@purdue.edu