2026 Summer Workshop

CWPA Workshop for New, Prospective, and Continuing WPAs

Join new, prospective, and continuing national (and perhaps international) colleagues who administer writing programs of all kinds to discuss the theoretical, curricular, and political dimensions of our work. The 2026 CWPA workshop will build on the previous year’s workshop through a focus on navigating social and professional change in equitable ways. Change is a constant that impacts higher education and writing program administration with the consistency of weather. Technology, social policies, social injustice, discrimination, war,  genocide all contribute to campus environment, student dispositions, and critical thought in ways that are difficult to predict, and sometimes difficult to navigate. We will engage in an interactive and dynamic workshop that focuses on the role of social impact on institutional mission to the development of a program profile that embraces and engages student voice, and the recognition of harm as a part of administrative literacies essential to navigating change at the ever-evolving modern institution.  

Join us July 20-22, 2026 in Laramie, Wyoming!

Facilitators

Our 2026 facilitators will be Michelle Bachelor Robinson, Spelman College, and Darci Thoune, University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse. 

Dr. Michelle Bachelor Robinson is the Director of the Comprehensive Writing Program at Spelman College and teaches courses in writing at various levels in the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing. Dr. Robinson’s work is most actively involved in community-engaged research and writing in historically Black spaces, and through service-learning and community-based research projects, she has also found ways to engage her students in this work. Her scholarly publications include the senior contributing author for OpenStax Writing Guide with Handbook and co-editor of The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric. Dr. Robinson also has articles in Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition and Council of Writing Program Administration (CWPA).

Dr. Darci L. Thoune (she/her) is First-Year Writing Program Coordinator and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where she teaches first-year writing and a range of upper-level writing courses in the writing and rhetoric major. Her primary research interests are in writing program administration and curriculum, including writing program development, WPA identity, and writing pedagogy. She has published in several edited collections and in various rhetoric and composition journals, including Composition Studies, Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Across the Disciplines, WPA: Writing Program Administration, College English, and Community Literacy Journal.

Registration Fees: $675 for Members or $750 for Nonmembers

Registration officially closes on July 1, 2026, but we encourage participants to register early for planning purposes. If you're interested in attending this year's CWPA Summer Workshop but won't be able to register until this summer, we'd love to hear from you by April 30, 2026. You can send a brief note to Erin Lehman at elehman4@ivytech.edu. 

Registration includes

• Three-day workshop in Laramie, Wyoming
  • Day 1 will focus on the newly published WPA Statement on the Five Knowledge Domains of First-Year Composition (4.0). During our discussion of the new Domain Statement will explore the exigence for the statement, offer suggestions for using it in a range of writing programs and institutions, and provide space for workshop participants to make plans for how they might use the statement in their writing programs.
  • Day 2 will focus on discussions and activities surrounding labor (including the Wyoming Resolution--the reason for the season!), assessment, and developing action plans. 
  • Day 3 will focus on "Renewing Our Vows: Reflecting on a Year of Cultural Assessment Conversations," WPA self-care and community, and GenAI. Day 3 will also include two guest speakers and time to work and reflect on this year's workshop.
• Workshop materials
  
• Meals*
  • Sunday: Intimate dinner with workshop participants
  • Monday: Breakfast and Lunch
  • Tuesday: Breakfast and Lunch
  • Wednesday: Breakfast and Lunch
• A fall 2026 virtual follow-up meeting with workshop facilitators

* Dietary restrictions should be noted on the registration form, when prompted

Register Here

Accommodation options

The workshop meetings will be hosted on campus and in-person at University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. 

On-campus accommodations are available for $85/night, which will cover lodging  in new dorms as well as meals. Workshop participants may also opt to stay in local hotels or rentals; CWPA has not reserved a block of rooms at any hotel for the event.

Support from CWPA

If you need a letter from CWPA to support your request for funds to attend the workshop, please reach out to Erin Lehman at elehman4@ivytech.edu.