Chairs, Coordinators, Directors, Leads, WPAs: The Shifting Nature of WPA Work

Annual Conference: July 10-11, 2025 (held online)

Summer Workshop: TBA

The purpose of our conference theme, “Chairs, Coordinators, Directors, Leads, WPAs: The Shifting Nature of WPA Work,” is to highlight the varied voices that are doing WPA work and have important insights to share.

The variety of titles and responsibilities in our field mirrors the complex and shifting nature of WPA work today. These changes include the widespread availability and uptake of machine-writing tools by students and faculty; the increasingly politicized teaching environment fueled by anti-DEI legislation; and concomitantly, the ongoing necessity of supporting student writers through culturally-affirming and sustaining policies, pedagogies, and practices–including real conversations about linguistic prejudice and discrimination. We wonder whether to describe these shifts as rich and varied, or splintering and fractured.

You are invited to join our 2025 conference, which will be offered virtually as synchronous sessions, and share the ways your leadership and administrative work around the teaching of writing is stretching and changing. On our Proposal Guidelines page, you'll see three themes for thinking through submissions to the conference: hierarchies, upheaval, and fostering belonging. (PDF version of the Proposal Guidelines for CWPA's 2025 National Conference also linked here.) We will be accepting proposals through March 31, 2025.

Your experiences and expertise are valuable, and you are invited to be part of the CWPA. We hope you will submit a proposal and share your programmatic expertise at our virtual conference this July 10-11, 2025. Presenters can have up to two (2) speaking roles at CWPA's National Conference.

On behalf of CWPA

Respectfully submitted by Erin Lehman, with generous assistance from the CWPA Conference Planning Committee (Kelly Blewett, Daryl Lynn Dance, Callie Kostelich, Amanda Presswood, Christal Seahorn, and Mary Lourdes Silva). 

For Inquiries

If you have any questions, please contact one of the following members of the Executive Board:

For registration issues or website issues, contact Amanda Presswood, CWPA Secretary: cwpasecretary@gmail.com

For scholarship inquiries or any other general queries about the conference or CWPA, contact Kelly Blewett, CWPA President: councilofWPA@gmail.com