Theme: “Keepin’ Centered @ NCPTW 2026!”

Submission Deadline: April 24, 2026

Given the challenges that higher education and writing centers are currently facing—budget cuts, a growing reliance on AI, and political unrest unfolding on campuses—these conditions can feel insurmountably heavy. Persistent burnout threatens to consume writing center peer tutors and administrators as we attempt to reconcile a desire for normalcy with the pressing need to address the issues impacting our work. For writing center practitioners, then, the question becomes how can our communities achieve a feeling of centeredness in a world askew? 

Fostering a shared sense of purpose and community from within—what Leahy (1992) described as “centeredness”—can offer a path for writing centers to build resilience against the instability outside. Centeredness can be a stabilizing force that grounds peer tutors in a shared vision of growth and community. Contemplative pedagogy, Sicari and Tunningley (2024) contend, “allows for practices of mindfulness, awareness, and reflection in organic ways, as writing center pedagogy focuses on the importance of the relational, flattening hierarchies, and a focus on the conversation between writer and tutor (or between writers).” These contemplative practices, of course, should also reflect the relationships between tutors and between tutors and administrators. 

Crises, both from within—and outside of—our educational institutions, inevitably seep into writing center spaces. Centeredness, though, is not meant to escape the reality of this situation; rather, it can be an intentional pursuit of balance—a choice to share in the fun, hope, and weirdness of writing center work as a means of supporting the wellness of its tutors and administrators. Giaimo (2023) asserted that this focus on wellness does not need to originate from the remedial fixes of neoliberal wellness culture or the toxic positivity that denies hardship, but from restorative, co-created practices that address these sources of unwellness. Community, then, provides the ground where centeredness and hope can be shared and where wellness becomes collective rather than solitary. Writing center community bonds can deepen when we embrace the “productive weirdness” of writing centers: the unexpected encounters and “messy humanity” that resist conformity and reveal the whole person—leaving room for flexibility, autonomy, and rejecting the impersonal and overly institutional (Garner, 2024, p. 203). Far from being separate, this weirdness connects purpose, wellness, and hope.

Now is not the time to Panic! at the Disco; instead, join us in Boise, and we’ll learn how to “Disco! in the Panic Room” together. For NCPTW 2026, we seek proposals on all topics related to writing centers, with extra interest in sessions that reflect the conference’s theme: 

• How do writing center practitioners keep centered, hopeful, and persistent when the world feels deeply askew due to factors outside of our control?
• How can writing centers use play and fun as a pedagogical approach to inspire collaboration, community building, and restorative wellness practices?
• What constitutes the daily work of writing centers beyond their core functions (i.e., providing writing support to students), and how might this work contribute to feelings of “centeredness” among tutors and administrators?
• Mattison (2006) argues that every center has its own culture, and that “every center looks to grow, individually and collectively” (p. 101). How might an individual center’s culture contribute to the collective growth of all writing centers?
• How can writing centers balance their desire to be perceived as an alternative to overly institutional spaces (by being our weird, authentic selves!) while still embodying a “culture of academic seriousness” (Wingate, 2001)?
• How are the cultures of individual writing centers shaped by their specific institutional contexts (e.g. community colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, secondary schools, TCUs), and how do these contexts impact writers and peer tutors?
• What might we learn about the differences between enthusiasm, joy, and hope (Vogelaar et al., 2025), and how might those differences guide our practice of fostering positive emotional associations with writing center work without falling prey to performative, toxic positivity?
• How can administrators reflect their writing center’s achievements in community-building that “subvert institutional absurdities” when it comes to institutional reporting practices (Cirillo-McCarthy et al., 2023)? What role can/should peer tutors play in shaping these institutional narratives to ensure their lived experiences are accounted for? 

Additionally, we’d love to see poster presentations that utilize a range of anthropological research methods to capture the ways individual writing centers’ microcultures impact their writers, peer tutors, and administrators. For example, what might an artifact analysis reveal about a writing center’s values, practices, and production of positive emotional associations for peer tutors and writers alike?

We encourage all attendees to bring your hopeful weirdness to Boise State, where we plan to build from the authentic idiosyncrasies of each writing center, to re-center our missions and practices in the current climate, and to focus on restorative wellness for all writing center practitioners.